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Talk To Me (2023)

Every year there seems like there is a much hyped horror flick that dominates critically/commercially and proves why the horror genre is so lucrative ($4.5 mil budget, $67 mil theater take) and why its a genre that has no end in sight.

Once I heard how hyped this movie was, I forced myself into a media blackout regarding this movie and went in blind as could be, aside from a few trailers.

For me, it deserved the hype. Its part haunting, part possession and pulls off both pretty damn well. Won’t get into plot spoilers, but I felt it did a better job of sticking to its mythology then some previous breakout horror hits. Did a great deal with very little and it worked. Didn’t go heavy with jump scares either, which I’m finding to be a cheap, overused tactic. Its also pretty dense and didn’t waste a lot of time, another thing that I appreciate.

Also, Eowyn has aged well. Or I’m just old. Loved her no nonsense mom character in this movie.

A prequel has been filmed apparently, and a sequel is in development.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Van Helsing was a film so joyfully stupid I’m surprised it wasn’t a mega hit. Everything from the over-the-too Dracula to “I want to liiiiiiiiive” Frankenstein to the horse carriage making the Speed bridge jump was so bad it’s good gold. My favorite part of the movie is: every scene in Dracula’s lab has this one minion ugnaut thing on a wheel contraption suspended from a cable pedaling around the ceiling. That’s all he does! He pedals around and around!

I do wonder if it suffered from the snootiness of its time, and daring to be Fun over Award Worthy.

There’s a definite ambition to the whole thing, and it draws nicely from its forebears for the scenery chewing and cheese. We even get moments of Tragic Villain, with Dracula just wanting children.

Granted him getting that is bad news for everyone, but he and his hotties definitely sell their grief with the failed attempts.

 nels1031 wrote:
Talk To Me (2023)

Every year there seems like there is a much hyped horror flick that dominates critically/commercially and proves why the horror genre is so lucrative ($4.5 mil budget, $67 mil theater take) and why its a genre that has no end in sight.

Once I heard how hyped this movie was, I forced myself into a media blackout regarding this movie and went in blind as could be, aside from a few trailers.

For me, it deserved the hype. Its part haunting, part possession and pulls off both pretty damn well. Won’t get into plot spoilers, but I felt it did a better job of sticking to its mythology then some previous breakout horror hits. Did a great deal with very little and it worked. Didn’t go heavy with jump scares either, which I’m finding to be a cheap, overused tactic. Its also pretty dense and didn’t waste a lot of time, another thing that I appreciate.

Also, Eowyn has aged well. Or I’m just old. Loved her no nonsense mom character in this movie.

A prequel has been filmed apparently, and a sequel is in development.

I also watched this due to the hype and was also not disappointed. A24 are usually pretty consistent (apart from X which I really wasn't a fan of) but I was also hesitant. But agree with all you have said, also a great cast of (for me) unknowns (apart from Eowyn obviously) who did a really great job.

I also think it's a great allegory for teenage drug use but that might be me overthinking it.

Alitia: Battle Angel

Caught this on D+ last night. Thought it might be fun.

Well, there was some fun, but it was a bit odd. It starts out with an seemly quick start with simple dialogue and a simple love set up as our protagonist meets a cute boy. Maybe he's a bit bad (wears black, rides a motorbike) but is fresh-faced and clean, so he's clearly just "Disney bad". (But turns out to be a little badder than that). But then the world has a largish population of cyborgs, a fair few reduced to a brain and a face sitting on top of a robot body. and then before long people are being sliced in half or dragged into crushers. The mooks in the movie are straight out of a second rate 80's action movie: all scowls and bad attitude. It's a real clash of halves. The pacing is also a little off for a 2 hour movie, going slow when it should be building up to the climax. It also ends as if they were expecting to make a sequel. It's also a movie where the actor playing the 'big bad' isn't actually credited, because he doesn't talk.

I supposed I'm glad I saw it. Don't need to see it again.

Van Helsing is the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra of Gothic Horror!

Honestly?

Yes.

Though I’d still call GI Joe, Rise of Cobra, dodgy as it is, far better than it had any right to be.

Spesh Scarlett.


Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Scarlett.

StraightSilver wrote:
I also think it's a great allegory for teenage drug use but that might be me overthinking it.

Yeah, I definitely had the same thought really early in the movie.

 Easy E wrote:
Van Helsing is the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra of Gothic Horror!

Is this praise for GI Joe TROC or condemnation for Van Helsing? I never saw any of the GI Joe movies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Alita was a weird movie. Based on an old manga, stuck in production hell for a decade, it felt dated and incomplete when it came out. But it struck a chord with some anime fans…and with some culture war types, which gave it a sort of uncomfortable hype. Everything in the whole film up until that last shot of Ed Norton felt slightly misjudged.

 nels1031 wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:
I also think it's a great allegory for teenage drug use but that might be me overthinking it.

Yeah, I definitely had the same thought really early in the movie.

I also got a bit of commentary on social media and how youth tend to think they are invincible. Playing with incredibly dangerous things like it is a game because "nothing bad will happen to me".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I never saw any of the GI Joe movies.

Only saw the initial one but it is an odd sort. It has all the things that you think of with GI Joe: secret bases, individuals instead of units, COBRA, vehicles, and relatively bloodless action but while mildly entertaining it just feels off. It is missing something keeping it from standing out. Perhaps it is a bit to restrained when it needed to be even more ridiculous? Like it wants to balance being a military film and a crazy Saturday morning cartoon instead of picking one or the other.

Rise of Cobra is an odd fish.

I think if you took away its heritage, and it was just a random tween targeted action flick, it would either be hailed as a revelation, or reviled as brainless nonsense. Because it is absolutely both of those things at the same time.

But importantly? It Is Fun. And unlike Transformers, the best iteration of GI Joe to ever grace/disgrace the Big Screen.

Certainly it’s one of those films I’d love to just show a kid, a kid who knows nothing of the legacy it’s part of, and get their thinks on it.

I reckon they’d be positive thinks!

 Ahtman wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:
I also think it's a great allegory for teenage drug use but that might be me overthinking it.

Yeah, I definitely had the same thought really early in the movie.

I also got a bit of commentary on social media and how youth tend to think they are invincible. Playing with incredibly dangerous things like it is a game because "nothing bad will happen to me".

Indeed, I was going to convey the same thought about social media and kids recording while something unnatural and horrifying is happening but I couldn’t break it down with brevity like you did.

Now, onto Voyage of the Demeter or The Boogeyman.

 Easy E wrote:
Van Helsing is the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra of Gothic Horror!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - The Secret of the Ooze

Not quite as cool as it’s illustrious “why is it this good?” predecessor, but still a decent amount of fun.

Not as violent overall, and considerably more cartoonish in feel. But still a perfectly serviceable slice of nostalgic silliness.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Last Stand

Surprisingly above par, slightly tongue in cheek, Arnie Action Vehicle.

Small Town Sheriff and Deputies have to stop an escaped gang boss escaping south of the border in his souped up sports car.

Rather than a chase movie, this is more about the Sheriff’s preparations.

And honestly? I’d say this is above par. Arnie isn’t pretending to be in the prime of his life, and the gun play isn’t ridiculous. Silly yes, I mean there’s a Vickers in the mix. But not ridiculous.

Decent way to spend a couple of hours on a lazy Saturday evening. Though needless to say if action flicks aren’t your jam, this won’t change that.

The Boogeyman (2023)

Do you like scary movies? Did you like the Game of Thrones episode 3, season 8 “The Long Night” where you couldn’t see gak because it was so dark? How about a good amount of blurry and out of focus shots in addition to the darkness, as well? Well, this is the movie for you!



Its based off a Stephen King short story so of course there is deus ex machina and a gak ending.

Deserves the 6/10 IMDB rating, but only because the 3 main leads clearly didn’t phone it in. I’d rate it much less if not for them.

I should’ve watched Last Voyage of the Demeter instead, but that’s for tomorrow. I heard mixed things about that, but I feel it’ll be an improvement over this flick.

The ending is almost certainly not from the short story then. There’s no dues Ex machina, although there is a cornball Tales from the Darkside kind of twist. It’s a really short story.

Must be like Lawnmower Man, a very short story transformed into almost a completely different story through adaptation.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The ending is almost certainly not from the short story then. There’s no dues Ex machina, although there is a cornball Tales from the Darkside kind of twist. It’s a really short story.

Must be like Lawnmower Man, a very short story transformed into almost a completely different story through adaptation.

To be fair, it pretty subtle as far as deus ex machina’s go. I had to confirm it twice on what I was viewing and confirmed it when reading another spoiler review on another website.

Does it end with


?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Does it end with

Spoiler:

the therapist was the Boogeyman all along

?

Negative.



Another thing against this movie, they wasted David Dastmalchian (Peter De Vries in new Dune, Polka-Dot Man in Suicide Squad). I don’t think the dude is an A-list, must see actor, but he deserved more. He was a good part in his brief appearance. Conicidentally, he looks to be in The Last Voyage of the Demeter that I may watch tonight, or definitely watch tomorrow.

Escape Plan

Stallone is not a very naughty boy. But a very good boy. His job is to be put in pris to figure out how to escape from Pris, to stop Very Naughty Boys escaping from said Pris.

He is very good at his job.

His team help, but really don’t do that much (mostly because as well as being a crap musician, 50 Cent is also a crap actor). But his business partner Vincent D’Onofrio decides to remove him by getting him locked away on a prison based on an oil tanker.

Arnie helps. Everyone escapes. Bad guys go boom. Vinnie Jones gets kicked down a staircase and goes splat.

Enjoyable enough. A film seemingly made from streaming.

Bones

No, not the TV series. The Snoop Dogg sort-of-Vampire-movie.

This? Is actually surprisingly good. Certain tones of The Crow in feel and cinematography. And a movie I discovered on one of those “3 for the price of 2” DVD deals we got in the olden days.

Snoop Dogg is Jimmy Bones, one-time crime lord of his neighbourhood, who kept the peace and looked after his folks.

But he’s betrayed, the neighbourhood becomes horrendous. So he comes back for some supernatural vengeance.

Whilst slated upon release, there is a lot to enjoy about this turn of the millennium horror blaxploitation homage. Indeed, I’m already getting some ideas for a Vampire chronicle from this.

Last Voyage of the Demeter

In the words of Dyatlov from HBO’s 2019 Miniseries Chernobyl : “3.6, Not Great, Not terrible.”

Definitely longer then it needed to be. Also a ton of horror movie tropes, but I didn’t mind that as this movie tried to do something different with the Dracula mythos. Some cool scenes and imagery, but had I paid money for this, I’d have been a bit more down on this movie.

I do have serious questions of the plot :

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not quite as cool as it’s illustrious “why is it this good?” predecessor, but still a decent amount of fun.

It's awful. It's absolutely awful. For years I remembered it being great until I finally watched it again as an adult and realised just how trash (and how compromised) that film was. And that's before you even get to Vanilla Ice.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not as violent overall, and considerably more cartoonish in feel. But still a perfectly serviceable slice of nostalgic silliness.

Big thanks to the UK for that. Teenage Mutant "Hero" Turtles and their weird objection to nunchucks.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Last Stand

Surprisingly above par, slightly tongue in cheek, Arnie Action Vehicle.

I really like Escape Plan. Just a fun film.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Escape Plan

Stallone is not a very naughty boy. But a very good boy. His job is to be put in pris to figure out how to escape from Pris, to stop Very Naughty Boys escaping from said Pris.

Escale plan was another fun film. Jim Caviziel... however you spell it... as an evil warden!

 nels1031 wrote:

Spoiler:

Dracula brought a snack so he could discretely feed while en route to England. I assume so he doesn’t risk discovery and a potentially fatal interruption in his travel. But even after killing multiple members of the crew, he’s still ravenous. If all those sailors don’t satiate him, how was the carry-on snack (a small woman) that he brought going to hold him over? If his plan was to kill the crew regardless, why bother bringing the snack?

A fix to that : If there were more pieces of cargo (more snacks) brought with him and they were lost/discarded by the ship during the journey or even during dock loading, his near self destructive appetite would’ve made more sense.

Part of the issue IMO, is that they cut the very subtle sub-plot out of that part of the book.

 LordofHats wrote:

Spoiler:

Dracula shouldn't be a faceless monster. He should be charismatically threatening, made all the more disturbing by the fact that however monstrous he is, he's only the most overt form of evil. Demeter needed its Bishop. The traitor in the ranks who is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the monster.

 Ahtman wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

Spoiler:

Dracula shouldn't be a faceless monster. He should be charismatically threatening, made all the more disturbing by the fact that however monstrous he is, he's only the most overt form of evil. Demeter needed its Bishop. The traitor in the ranks who is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the monster.

Spoiler:

I hope you meant Ash (Alien) and not Bishop (Aliens). I agree that would have created more tension and given Dr. Acula more of a reason to be running amok near the end.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Escape Plan

Stallone is not a very naughty boy. But a very good boy. His job is to be put in pris to figure out how to escape from Pris, to stop Very Naughty Boys escaping from said Pris.

He is very good at his job.

His team help, but really don’t do that much (mostly because as well as being a crap musician, 50 Cent is also a crap actor). But his business partner Vincent D’Onofrio decides to remove him by getting him locked away on a prison based on an oil tanker.

Arnie helps. Everyone escapes. Bad guys go boom. Vinnie Jones gets kicked down a staircase and goes splat.

Enjoyable enough. A film seemingly made from streaming.
...

Here's a bit of useless trivia: Me, sitting here in a German-speaking part of the world, was quite interested to see how this would turn out when it was announced. For 40 years, Stallone's and Schwarzenegger's dub voice are the same guy. In the end they just used a different guy to speak Schwarzenegger, but the original voice artist was pretty displeased about it. He would have loved to speak both roles and in a radio interview then claimed that both actors had said they're OK with that.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Van Helsing is the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra of Gothic Horror!

Is this praise for GI Joe TROC or condemnation for Van Helsing? I never saw any of the GI Joe movies.

It is more of a reference to both movies being directed by the same guy, who was supposed to be a new "Wunderkind" for the action genre. However, that never really panned out and he has sunk into obscurity.

However, I have been "watching" the G.I. Joe films a lot lately as they are constantly live streaming on Pluto TV. I put them on in the background when I do other stuff, and I do have a soft spot for both of them. They are not good, but they are entertaining to me.

Clash of the Titans (the good one)

The special effects were outdated even when the movie came out, and yet they’re still quite enjoyable. Harry Hamlin may not be the greatest actor, but he has far more presence in the role than what’s-his-face from the remake. There are a lot of great actors in supporting roles. And the music perfectly fits the movie.

Watch it! If for no other reason, then at least watch it for the Medusa sequence.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Clash of the Titans (the good one)

The special effects were outdated even when the movie came out, and yet they’re still quite enjoyable. Harry Hamlin may not be the greatest actor, but he has far more presence in the role than what’s-his-face from the remake. There are a lot of great actors in supporting roles. And the music perfectly fits the movie.

Watch it! If for no other reason, then at least watch it for the Medusa sequence.

...and for Calibos! And Pegasus. You're making a good point about the effects. They were outdated by the time the film rolled around, but I would say that this just helps this film having a timeless quality. The remake (being post-produced to run in dark, dark 3d) you can place EXACTLY at one point in time, forgettable and inconsequential as the thing is.


October is rolling around so I'm starting to watch stuff about spooky films and such. The Gatiss documentaries on horror films, that one Swiss documentary on that haunted house (I don't give a hoot about the paranormal, but this film I very much enjoy, because it's incredibly low-key, and much more about how to film a documentary on a supposedly haunted house rather than getting a youtuber with much make-up and colourful hair in front of the camera, being excited about a speck on a digital film from the US), stuff on Vincent Price's horror work, stuff like that.


This inevitably led to me watching Ed Wood, and that's always good. Oh, I also watched most of Excalibur. That film kinda rocks.

No One Will Save You

Hulu sci-fi horror flick. Pretty good imo, but might be a bit odd for others. There's nearly no (none really) dialogue in the film. It's all visual context and style, and it's all about the main character (who is really the only character). It's good. I enjoyed it.

A Southern Haunting

I like the premise, but it's pretty meh. The film just hinges too much on the eldest daughter who is far too unlikeable and he relationship with her father who is just a bit too out of focus. Really good premise for a horror film. Nice setting for a period piece.

The films just not that good.

The A-Team

Hmm. How to critique this movie.

Our main cast are solid, as one might expect. And at least a first are good replacements for the originals.

But it’s just not The A-Team. The overall DNA is there, but they’re not the heroic four man ass kicking cavalry coming to assist the underdog. They’re…a black ops military team on a top secret mission type stuffs.

Now, take away the monicker and rename it, and you end up with a largely serviceable action movie which with just a bit more editing and tactical reshoots could’ve been a more solid offering.

If we get another attempt? Go the Ghostbusters Route. With the team exonerated, they remain a mercenary outfit, but with new recruits. Think an underground vigilante organisation, founded wrangled and trained by the original heroes. That gives us a solid reason to revisit, and could even spin-off to a new TV series. Like Expendables 3, but ideally Not Gak.

Heck, even draw from Supernatural. Face is the Bobby equivalent, their “man in the chair” BA as the specialist trainer. Murdoch as well I’ll think of something, because that’s a failure of my imagination right here.