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Yeah, that's why I'm reluctant to watch Bright to be honest. I doubt a film made recently would be able to pull that theme off without beating you over the head over and over and over. Somehow I think that genre films, B-movies, lower-budget films, call them what you want, don't hold the viewer as in much contempt as big-budget films do. I'm also a bit weary of Will Smith films lately and the big red N is just a turn-off for me.

Funny you should V, Easy E! The tv channel I raved about a few weeks ago shows the miniseries every few months. That's how good they are.

Alien Nation probably didn't age that greatly (but then maybe nothing has, depending on how dead-set the viewer is on being critical about minor things), but when I saw half of it recently it was perfectly okay. The funny thing is that James Caan seemed a bit more out of place than the aliens. Something wasn't quite right about him, I felt. Maybe the outfit or something.



Aaandway, last night I watched Porco Rosso (1992)!
There's some gaps in my knowledge of Miyazaki's films, and that's one of them patched now.

Porco Rosso is the story of an Italian World War 1 pilot who after the war becomes a headhunter and helps keeping the Adriatic safe from air pirates. He also got the head of a pig for some reason; people don't know why. There seems to be curse going on or something. The film takes place during the 1920s, and it's made explicitly clear that it does. It also is very clear about where exactly it takes place, which to my knowledge is unique to a Ghibli film. Even beyond time and location, the film references a whole slew of historical people, names and events.

There are very few things for certain in this weird world of ours, but I think it's safe to say that that Miyazaki's (maybe even all of Ghibli's) films are ALWAYS touching, overwhelmingly beautiful to look at (right from the first frame in this film), handle every single topic they touch well, and are just an enriching experience. Even the less strong ones just stick with you and make you think back on them with fondness. Watching his films actively makes you a better and happier person. I'm convinced of that.

Watch It.

P.S.: Oh, and it's the only film I know which features the Austro-Hungarian Marine Airforce!

If Hungaria has an airforce, i hope they named one squad "Lugosi squadron" out of resect for history's most famous Hungarian.

Humanoids of the Deep

A Corman "classic". It looks like it has some themes about Native American rights, Misuse of Natural Resources, and .... oh my..... oh. my. goodness.

The premise of this movie is crazy sleazy. The execution in many ways is too. It is dripping misogyny all over the place.

I am surprised no one has rebooted it yet.

Does that one Buffy episode count?

IMDB has two movies with remarkably similar sounding plots listed, 1980 and 1996, so looks like the reboot came and went.

Yeah, HFTD was remade, and the remake sank like the lusitania. (I know people say sank like the titanic, but the titanic took 2 1/2 hours to sink after hitting the iceberg. The lusitania went under in 15 minutes after being torpedoed.)

As to it being misogynist, well, IMO it just delivered what the classic movie "the creature from the black lagoon" implied. We consider creature to be a classic today, but really, what do you think the creature really wanted from the women it was abducting? Something 50's movies couldn't even hint at.

HFTD was just saying what CFTBL implied.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 greatbigtree wrote:
I had not realized it's a 50 year old film now! I was born 13 years after it was made, and just saw it this past week.

It's in desperate need of a recut. There is so much filler in there. For anyone interested, the IMDB has a few trailers, both old and new, and it really is one of those movies where all the best parts are in the trailer. Perhaps in it's time, but today it just feels like a director that couldn't cut what needed to be cut.

@ the OP: This was fun, I'm going to have to try and remember what the last movie I saw before 2001 was.

Yeah, you should know something about 2001.

it was made before computer graphics existed in any way, when colot tv was still new and not the standard. So those graphic displays you take for granted today did not exist when 2001 was made. A;; thopse graphics, were hand drawn animation rear projected onto screen the actors were facing, which accounts for the idea that a video screen will display imaged on a person's face...

2001 literally invented computer graphics, windows, video displays that displayed actual video and data , etc.

Years later when the compute resolution was beginning to reach homes in the late 70's people wondered how to make the information accessible, and many of them used 2001 as an inspiration. A lot of modern computer display interfaces were based on the displays created for 2001.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Yeah, HFTD was remade, and the remake sank like the lusitania. (I know people say sank like the titanic, but the titanic took 2 1/2 hours to sink after hitting the iceberg. The lusitania went under in 15 minutes after being torpedoed.)

As to it being misogynist, well, IMO it just delivered what the classic movie "the creature from the black lagoon" implied. We consider creature to be a classic today, but really, what do you think the creature really wanted from the women it was abducting? Something 50's movies couldn't even hint at.

HFTD was just saying what CFTBL implied.

Well, Humanoids from the Deep is no The Shape of Water.....



Also, watched Demon of the Paradise

Yes, it is another water monster movie..... but much crappier than even a Corman produced water monster movie. Just boring and not even the decency to insult me with low-brow sleaziness. However, one of my favorite lines is from the "reporter" who is a reject from a 'Nam movie.

"Here is my detailed 9 point plan to success:

1. Do nothing
2. Do Nothing
3. Do Nothing....."

It he never gets past point 3 in the exchange as the piece of wood hero interrupts him. I was really interested in hearing the rest of his plan so I could mimic it in my own life!

Oh, you want to go off on a cheesy water monster movie tangent? Ok I'm game!

There's 'sting of death" where a mad scientist turns himself into the prefect killer, a create that is half man, half jellyfish.

Behold!



Here's one of his so called victims. (The real victims of this movie were the people watching it...)



There there was "Zaat!" A (literal) nazi scientist reflecting on the fall of the third reich concludes the way to dominants der vurld..ahem, dominate the world is obvious, so he turns himself, as part of his world domnation scheme, into a creature that is half nazi, half....catfish. Because catfish are ferocious and savage fighters and survivors. (I know a lot of people that consider them dinner.)

Man, what was the writer of that smoking and keep it the hell away from me!



This movie boasts it was filmed in florida, and i believe it as i think it must have been written by a true "Florida man"...

Zaat is on my list.

I also started one about a Dr. who gets a prehistoric fish and turns into a monster..... or something.

It starts with "our hero" making a sexist joke and then forcefully tickling his female assistant. OH, the 50's were a magical time.....

Dang, the name is escaping me at the moment.

 Easy E wrote:
Zaat is on my list.

I also started one about a Dr. who gets a prehistoric fish and turns into a monster..... or something.

It starts with "our hero" making a sexist joke and then forcefully tickling his female assistant. OH, the 50's were a magical time.....

Dang, the name is escaping me at the moment.

Zaat is definitely a movie made in Florida...

As to the other movie, i think you may be referring to "monster on campus", where a scientist gets accidentally infected with...juices....from an irradiated Coelacanth.

That is the one!

The Death of Stalin

This is billed as a dark comedy. It is a comedy in the sense that the only rational response to an insane world is to laugh.

People should really see it, but it is not a pleasant watch at all.

On a quick note, sting of death is a truly and irredeemably bad movie. I honestly found it hard to get thru, it was just so bad, and not even funny, just tiresome, dreary, dull, insipid, etc.

I would have more fun watching plan 9 from outer space. Even Zaat was funny in it s badness, the idea of a nazi scientist deciding he could could conquer the world by becoming half nazi, half catfish alone just makes you laugh.

Sting of death had nothing even laugh worthy in it.

If ever there was a movie that was literally "So bad I could eat a roll of film and gak a better movie!" this is it.

Color out of Space

Really enjoyed this. It's a B-movie with A-grade effects and filming, really beautifully shot and the effects are wonderful (watching with the lights off in the room almost seared my retinas a few times!)
Nicolas Cage brings the ham home in predictable fashion, he starts off borderline unhinged and it goes downhill from there. You either love this and find it very entertaining, as I do, or it will switch you off the film.
Storyline is very much B-movie as I have said, but it is so in the traditional sense in that it tries to be believable and is well plotted, not in the modern sense of gak like Sharknado where it is meant to be a joke and all of the cast know it is tongue in cheek. This has some really, really nasty body horror and wouldn't look out of place in a John Carpenter film, with some really good practical effects backing up the (extremely colourful) CGI.

It's currently free on Prime so I think worth an hour and a half of your time if you subscribe to that service, some nice horror/sci-fi schlock.

 Easy E wrote:
That is the one!

The Death of Stalin

This is billed as a dark comedy. It is a comedy in the sense that the only rational response to an insane world is to laugh.

People should really see it, but it is not a pleasant watch at all.

Totally agree, it's definitely a dark comedy and very uncomfortable to watch at times. But, excellent I thought there are some really stand-out scenes in it and it has a great cast.

The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie stops poncing about in the Middle Ages and returns to the territory that made him and that he clearly knows best.

If you enjoyed Snatch and Lock Stock then you'll likely enjoy this too, it hasn't got quite the same fire as those two, but it hits most of the right notes. If you don't like those films, this will do little to convert you.

Special about to Hugh Grant clearly relishing playing something other than a bumbling upper class Englishman and McConaughey manages to add another film to his résumé to balance out all the relentless trash he's made in the past.

Watch if you like Guy Ritchie London Gangsta movies, or fancy just under 2 hours of people running around yelling "caaaant" at each other.

The Tax Collector

A fairly tight, well paced, American gangster movie featuring Shia LeBeouf channeling his best Ben Kingsley/Sexy Beast/Don Logan in both looks and quirky viciousness.

The first half is wonderful character building. Not knowing what I was getting into, I was prepared for this to be the extent of the film and I would have been happy with that. What follows in the second half is a satisfying explosion of violence, but as visceral as the blood spilling gets it never feels gratuitous.

Recommended to watch if you fancy a latinx mobster flick.

 Azreal13 wrote:
The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie stops poncing about in the Middle Ages and returns to the territory that made him and that he clearly knows best.

If you enjoyed Snatch and Lock Stock then you'll likely enjoy this too, it hasn't got quite the same fire as those two, but it hits most of the right notes. If you don't like those films, this will do little to convert you.

Special about to Hugh Grant clearly relishing playing something other than a bumbling upper class Englishman and McConaughey manages to add another film to his résumé to balance out all the relentless trash he's made in the past.

Watch if you like Guy Ritchie London Gangsta movies, or fancy just under 2 hours of people running around yelling "caaaant" at each other.

That sounds interesting!





The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) got old! He's choosing a successor to don the black mask and fight evil military types and peasant-exploiting bigwigs.

Never seen this film before, but I had a very good time with it last night. Zorro is a superhero I can get behind. Banderas is the perfect choice for the character too, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is equally nice to look at and to see act and do stuff. Good female lead. Anthony Hopkins does things, the bad guys do things, it's all fine. I really, really enjoyed the fencing and action scenes in general. Those looked great.

Watch It. It's perfectly alright.


The Untouchables (1987)

Brian de Palma film about prohibition timey policemen (Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, etc) who try to catch moonshiners, but mostly organized crime and Al Capone (DeNiro).

As a period piece it looks really nice, there's plenty of solid action scenes, lots of guns, and all that stuff. It's rather cartoony, but Costner deliberately made his performance bland (so I read) to ground the whole thing a bit. And it works. The Untouchables is a classic, Sean Connery got an oscar for his performance, all probably justified. It's got very little to do with historical events, but oh well.

Watch It.

I thoroughly enjoy The Untouchables, the only problem for me being Connery's Irish accent is about as convincing as his Russian one in Hunt for Red October.

Shadows and Bone

Great steampunk magic series that chickened out in the last episode leaving nothing resolved.

Hope it gets a season 2, it would be a crime to leave it where it is.

Suffers a bit since the gang of thieves are much more interesting than any of the main characters.

The Untouchables (1987)

The amazing score by Morricone deserves praise as well, amongst my favourites.

I just tried to watch a British sf movie called 'horizon'.

Didn't make it.

I mean yeah the effects looks like a modern Dr. who episode. And i suspect one of the stars was picked because she looked like Jodie Whitaker's sister, the low budget didn't bother me, the story and jumping around in a plot with more holes in it that ten tons of swiss cheese bothered me.

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just tried to watch a British sf movie called 'horizon'.

Didn't make it.

I mean yeah the effects looks like a modern Dr. who episode. And i suspect one of the stars was picked because she looked like Jodie Whitaker's sister, the low budget didn't bother me, the story and jumping around in a plot with more holes in it that ten tons of swiss cheese bothered me.

Yeah, but no, but yeah

It is indeed a stinker of a movie, I watched it a while back as it was as close to local as films ever get, felt like watching a LaRP event with phone based fx nailed on

The Conjuring: TDMMDI

Despite broadly being a fan of horror, I was quite late to The Conjuring-verse. I'd seen the first, but totally failed to realise there were sequels until the spinoffs started.

By and large I've enjoyed the franchise, but it's undoubtedly suffered from diminishing returns.

Sadly, this doesn't do anything to reverse the trend. While the Farmiga/Wilson led installments are broadly the stronger, this stretches the conceit of "based on a true story" while also being decidedly predictable.

I'll grant that it carries the near 2 hour running time fairly lightly, again largely thanks to the core cast performance, but it largely fails at a horror movie's core objectives to scare and/or unsettle.

Were I convinced that the events were less exaggerated than logic tells me they are, it might land a little harder, but as it stands it's just a reasonably entertaining story.

Four Lions

A superior comedy satire on radical Islam.

Definitely worth a watch.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Four Lions

"Rubber dinghy rapids bru"

I could talk for hours about how this film is more important than just taking the piss out of terrorists and their sympathisers. It's a comedy and a tragedy.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Four Lions

A superior comedy satire on radical Islam.

Definitely worth a watch.

Oh yes, I really like that film. Watched it thrice I think.

 Henry wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Four Lions

"Rubber dinghy rapids bru"

I could talk for hours about how this film is more important than just taking the piss out of terrorists and their sympathisers. It's a comedy and a tragedy.

Indeed. Looking up the making of, it was thoroughly researched by Mr Morris. Not just with terrorism experts, but Imams and Muslim communities.

The main characters are really quite pathetic people in their own way, yet we feel sympathy with them because they’re such oddballs. It doesn’t make light of their crimes either, which is quite the balancing act. It can still prove heavy watching, especially when we see just how in over his head Waj is, and how manipulative Omar is.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It doesn’t make light of their crimes either, which is quite the balancing act. It can still prove heavy watching, especially when we see just how in over his head Waj is, and how manipulative Omar is.

Waj is the first person that comes to mind when thinking about this. His last scene in the kebab shop is heart breaking and it really is that balance between acknowledging the horrific things they are planning to do with how relatably human they are. Powerful stuff.

 Sigur wrote:

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) got old! He's choosing a successor to don the black mask and fight evil military types and peasant-exploiting bigwigs.

Never seen this film before, but I had a very good time with it last night. Zorro is a superhero I can get behind. Banderas is the perfect choice for the character too, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is equally nice to look at and to see act and do stuff. Good female lead. Anthony Hopkins does things, the bad guys do things, it's all fine. I really, really enjoyed the fencing and action scenes in general. Those looked great.

Watch It. It's perfectly alright.

One detail I really love in this movie, is that the main villain is NOT afraid to do his own dirty work when he needs to.

He can twirl a sword with the best of them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Shadows and Bone

Great steampunk magic series that chickened out in the last episode leaving nothing resolved.

Hope it gets a season 2, it would be a crime to leave it where it is.

Suffers a bit since the gang of thieves are much more interesting than any of the main characters.

No, this series just stank of YA Fiction through the whole thing. I felt it was weak sauce, and the band of Thieves were ridiculous caricatures. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the whole thing turned out to be an RPG Campaign that they wrote down as they went. It felt like someone had played too much Blades in the Dark to me as I watched it.

The Lost Boys

It’s a classic for a reason.

However, after years of ragging on Twilight and its stupid sparkly vampires (amongst other sins, such as god awful toxic relationships)...watching The Lost Boys in HD reveals that the goo the Frog Brothers get covered in after staking Marco?

It’s....it’s glittery. Glittery.

I need a support group, I don’t know who I am or what I think anymore.



Because if I have to notice it, you have to notice it.

These are the end times.

I just watched Saint Maud.

It's from A24, the same stable as Midsommar, Hereditary, The Witch etc.

It's a bit unfair to bill it as a "horror" movie because it's so much more, but I can't say too much without giving away spoilers.

Highly recommended though.