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It’s a deeply silly film, but purposefully so. I consider it an unironic gem of lo-fi film making.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A Knight’s Tale

Pretty sure I’ve wiffled, wibbled and wafted about this this before.

But talk about a film which, by all rights, should’ve been a great big steaming pile, but somehow turned out magnificent.

The trailers were particularly bad, showing the modern music in a historical setting in the worst possible light, and demonstrating none of the sheer charisma of our cast.

Much as I think I could’ve stomached a sequel or spin off, I’m glad it didn’t happen. Because instead we have this oddity of perfection.

Super Mario Bros. Movie

This is a peculiar film as there isn't much of a story to talk about. In fact, as a film I think it's a complete failure. But I don't think the producers or director were looking for a traditional film and in many regards they succeeded. It's fast, unconstrained and never eases up - almost like it's designed for the modern phenomenon of breaking a larger production into bite size pieces that can be endlessly re-memed.

There's a long list of famous actors doing the usual job of being incompetent at voice acting roles (even Jack Black with all his experience is uninteresting). Chris Pratt does a commendable job as the lead and the key line of "Here we go" is delivered flawlessly by Anya Taylor Joy (or is that my Anya bias showing again?).

I think if I were in my pre-teens I'd love this film, so I think it is a successful production. It's just not interesting as a traditional film.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

A Knight’s Tale

Much as I sometimes groan at your entertainment selections Doc, I'm pretty sure we're of the same generation and this is one delightful piece of cinematic silliness. What elevates it is the unrestrained, sincere performances by all the cast. A film that is far better than it has any right to be.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Pretty much perfection. Definitely a classic for very good reason.

But my absolute favourite thing? Rufus plays a critical part, but mostly leaves our boys to it. He doesn’t coach them on history. He doesn’t tell them what their redeeming presentation is gonna be.

Oh no. Like a good educator? He gives our heroes access to the resources they need to make their own learning fun. The show is of their own devising. Having gathered the historical figures, it’s Bill and Ted who figure out how to carry the day.

Not Another Teen Movie

One of the better spoof movies of the early 2000’s. And like Airplane! it does work better if you’ve seen what it’s spoofing. That being said, it still works as a goofball comedy.

There are some gross out scenes, but being mixed into sight gags and a decent comedy script it’s not reliant on them, unlike weaker efforts in this genre. Also bonus points for some top notch cameos.

Oh, but negative points awarded for involving Good Charlotte. Who are about as punk as my dear departed granny. And she always voted for Thatcher.

Babel.

Didn't know what it was going to be about and it was pretty fresh. A lot of tension when you realise it's not a type of film where all characters must get a good ending. A superficial but flavourful glance at different cultures. All in all a pretty depressing (as it is about serious consequences of stupid decisions) but intense movie. Worth watching if in proper mood.

Freelance

Amazon Original John Cena Action Comedy vehicle.

It’s perfectly serviceable. Not only is John Cena one of the greatest Wrestlers of all time, but he’s a decent enough actor with good comedy chops.

Proper little popcorn pleaser of a movie.

Cyel wrote:
Babel.

Didn't know what it was going to be about and it was pretty fresh. A lot of tension when you realise it's not a type of film where all characters must get a good ending. A superficial but flavourful glance at different cultures. All in all a pretty depressing (as it is about serious consequences of stupid decisions) but intense movie. Worth watching if in proper mood.

Yeah, Babel was pretty cool. The sort of film you don't necessarily put on, but which should be watched, because it actually stays in your memory and (despite it not having the greatest of stories or anything) feels like it's of a bit more value than other things.


Speaking of value or the lack thereof - right now i'm watching Valerian. In little bits, one at a time. Because I'm not very interested in the story, but the film looks really, really, really good. Recently I've become more of a fan of Luc Besson and what he does than before.

You should watch it in bits, because it doesn't hold together as a whole.

The Last Duel.

I don't know why I waited so long to watch this one. Excellent, precise storytelling, beautiful cinematography and visuals (locations, costumes etc.). A pleasure to watch.

Also a must-watch for anyone building a Bretonnian army right now, especially a grimdark one

Team America: World Police

Another “classic for a reason”. Wilfully silly and gloriously so. Definitely the South Park boys at the top of their game.

Cockneys vs Zombies

It's pure B-movie gold.

Zombie Millwall fans brawling with zombie West Ham fans? Check.

Richard Briers with a zimmer frame with an Uzi strapped to it? Check.

Just go watch it...

 Easy E wrote:
You should watch it in bits, because it doesn't hold together as a whole.

That actually is a good take on the film.

Crispy78 wrote:
Cockneys vs Zombies

It's pure B-movie gold.

Zombie Millwall fans brawling with zombie West Ham fans? Check.

Richard Briers with a zimmer frame with an Uzi strapped to it? Check.

Just go watch it...

‘Ave some of this, twinkle toes!

Definitely a film which should’ve been utter dreck, but a genuinely fun.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
Cockneys vs Zombies

It's pure B-movie gold.

Zombie Millwall fans brawling with zombie West Ham fans? Check.

Richard Briers with a zimmer frame with an Uzi strapped to it? Check.

Just go watch it...

‘Ave some of this, twinkle toes!

Definitely a film which should’ve been utter dreck, but a genuinely fun.

Also, on a personal level - Alan Ford in it looks quite unsettlingly like one of my uncles!

John Wick 4. The highlights reel.

For all the flashy fight scenes I’m not really that engaged with this one. It’s basically picked out the high points of the first three and smooshed them together just because they can. Wacky assassin world politics. A helpful pupper with a taste for person bits. An overly long drawn out fight in a wacky glass case room. Cartoonish armoured bad guys that need some proper doing.

The fight scenes are now totally outlandish and flabby. The martial arts look stilted and overly choreographed. The Arc de Triumph scene is actively annoying. Mr Reeves just looks tired all the time.

I’ve still got about an hour to go in the run time and it’s all much of a muchness.

The first one was tightly focussed and a breath of fresh air. Hopefully 4 is the death rattle and some other story can get some space to breathe.

 Flinty wrote:
Hopefully 4 is the death rattle and some other story can get some space to breathe.

I believe the film makers and Reeves have said they are up for making more.

I have to say I'm content with the only John Wick film remaining the only John Wick film. Good fun. Beautiful in its simplicity. Nothing more than what it is and exactly what it needed to be with no sequels worth worrying about.

A perfect example of a movie that doesn't need sequels and is best with out them.

So as not to disrupt my thread criticising its predecessor?

Alien vs Predator: Requiem

Screw you, I genuinely enjoy this movie. Its flaws are many (oh god the lighting!), but in terms of what I wanted from an AvP movie? This delivers.

It’s pulpy. It’s schlocky. It dumb. But unlike AvP, the Predator isn’t dumb.

The inevitable human factor works better for me, because they’re all just Us. Standard, average, smelly Hoomans going about their day and night, only to run afoul of incredibly deadly beings from another world have a jolly good punch up.

The single biggest flaw here is the lighting. Yes. Alien and Aliens both employed dusky tones and poor lighting to strong effect - mostly to keep a sense of mystique about the Xenomorph. And I don’t think aiming for that was itself a mistake. The trouble here? I can’t see bugger all. The shadows are too deep. The darkness is too inky. I what were probably really nicely choreographed scenes? It’s all wasted because the camera barely penetrates the incessant gloom. I will praise the locations though. Alien movies work best with a claustrophobic arena. Be it a space ship or a sealed habitation. And so the initial bit is set in sewers. Overly dark sewers yes. But I’ll accept them as a real-world proxy of a Xenomorph’s preferred environment and nesting site.

But make no mistake. This film was kinda bold. From a pre-pubescent kid getting Facehugged, and temporarily becoming the world’s youngest father, to seeing a senior Predator clean up the crime scene and kick all shades of Xenomorph tail. It at least tried some new things. It also showed that even our modern day firearms can and will ruin a Xenomorphs day, which is why an uncontrolled swarm of them is so terrifying.

Also? In terms of hybrids, the Predalien may look a bit crap, from what little they let us see of it in the murk. But it’d still head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toast, above the god awful look of the Hybrid out of Alien Ressurrection.

Apart from Ressurrection’s face. That was genuinely creepy and very expressive. It’s just….the rest that was crap.

Looking at the reviews cited on Wikipedia? There’s one I particularly agree with, and that where it’s described ratings wise as deserving the B in B-Movie.

Black Panther:- Wakanda Forever

Not as good as the first one, it's a bit over long, kinda fizzles out at the end and Black Panthers replacement doesn't really work for me (I get why they didn't recast T'Challa, but I think there were better characters to take up the mantle).
However, I thought it was still pretty good, I particularly liked the re-jig of Namor and his people, not sure why the Internet thinks so poorly of it.

It is an odd film. There’s a decent amount of really cool stuff going on. And not only was it made during the Pandemic, but of course had lost its lead actor, someone who was incredibly charismatic.

Whilst flawed (I really don’t like the submarine fight, but the Namor v Shuri was solid), it’s still a masterpiece of salvaging something.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

Watched that last night! A comet is about to hit the earth and wipe it all out, we follow Steve Carell over the last month of humanity. At some point he teams up with one of his neighbors' girlfriend (Keira Knightley) and they go on a quest together to get to a place each they want to get to.

What the film does great is how it depicts how people react to the news that the world is ending, especially in the insurance firm where Carell's character works. I have to admit that I loudly claimed my dissatisfaction when the leading lady turned out to be Keira Knightley. I find her irritating. First film I saw her in was the excellent The Hole. She fit that role in there really well. Anyway, they do her up and write her as likeable as possible. Getting dangerously close to manic pixie dream girl though at times, maybe even crossing the line here and there. But she's a good foil for Carell's character. Both are a bit over the top, because after all the whole premise is a little construed. But anyway, it works for a film, and I'm perfectly okay with a construed premise.

The film is a bit road tripp-y and set piece-y, and nowadays this would have been turned into a tv show and rather boring or annoying. Who knows.

Steve Carell around 2010 was a real gift to hollywood. Because that place seems to be rather struggling with finding dudes who work as an everyman, are still charismatic enough to carry a film and have that indie-appeal. Because Steve Buscemi was booked to comedies or too indie and William H.Macy was showing his age. Paul Giamatti wasn't pretty enough, and Brendan Frasier was still burnt. Seth Rogen and his pals all were too boyish and too happy.

Things I did not like specifially:


Things I specifically liked:


Anyway the film is perfectly nice which leaves you with a positive feeling. And the concept of the film gets you thinking.

Watch It. The actors keep this film afloat pretty well.

Solar Impact: The Destruction of London

As I understand your mater familias once did vouchsafe to the Vicar? That’s quite a mouthful.

And it’s a low/zero budget Zombie type flick. In which like, fragments of the sun or a meteor or a comet land in London, and those caught outside at the time mutate into crazy mental Zombie type things.

So far? It’s actually quite good. For its budget. There is some needless CGI (not the impacts and background stuff afire, but fighter jets and helicopters) which admittedly does look fine. But the actors are clearly going with it, and for it. And the director clearly has some idea of how to make a horror film have impact.

I’ve seen far lazier efforts made with more of a budget, let’s put it that way. And what we get is genuinely entertaining. Not brilliant. Not groundbreaking. But entertaining and competent enough.

There is a reliance on existing abandoned office blocks and that as an environment, which with boarded up windows suggests a longer period of “everything’s gone wrong”. But with budget film making, I’ll wilfully ignore that unintended impact.

If low/no budget horror is your thing, and you enjoyed the 28 Later movies? I say give this a shot.

Aye, it's nice to find a low/zero budget film and finding joy in it. Better than watching a blockbuster film and finding it "not as bad as you'd think".


I watched The Graduate last night. First time in a good while since I saw it in full. It's such a fun film. The way so many of these shots are engineered just jumps off the screen and adds to the impression of youth and a certain carelessness about film making even though it tells such a human story.

Yes, it can be critizised from a 2024 standpoint (but that's always such a boring and simplistic exercise, isn't it), but the impression how this film is a timeless story about people seeking their place in the world and just having no idea what/who they are what what/who they're supposed to do is just so much stronger than some low-level critique that usually only serves to cloud the look at what things are actually about.

Watch The Graduate.

The Meg 2: Trench Something

Honestly I loved it. It's so silly and over the top and so very very fun. None of the science makes any sense no matter how much they try to convince you it does with toss off lines, the bad guys are terrible, and the overall plot is borderline wear a padded helmet. And yet for all that it's a really really fun movie. Jetski harpooning of giant sharks, super death tadpoles, a KRAKEN. You can also just feel the main group had fun making it (not any of the villains, they're all drab trash).

Zombies: The Beginning

It's a rip off of Aliens.

Comically so actually. Like literally, whole scenes are lifted near word for word from Aliens! The only thing that's even remotely different is zombies instead of aliens and surprisingly it's not that different.

Game Night

This was a fun comedy-thriller. There were some cringy parts at the beginning, but it soon gets going and doesn’t let up until the end.

Didn't watch a film! I met with peeps to watch the third season of Occupied (a show I really enjoyed in the past. I'm aware that the third season probably is worse than the second, which wasn't as good as the first, but I like the show so I'll watch it). Instead we ended up watching the first episode of an adult cartoon show called Pluto (seems very good and - despite being new - even looks rather nice). It's no Netflix. Interesting show.

The Batman. Dark and atmospheric, sure. But overly long, self-indulgent, and dare I say it - boring. Very disappointing.

 LordofHats wrote:
Zombies: The Beginning

It's a rip off of Aliens.

Comically so actually. Like literally, whole scenes are lifted near word for word from Aliens! The only thing that's even remotely different is zombies instead of aliens and surprisingly it's not that different.

Hey, I know that movie!

Also, hey, I know that movie!

A couple of things. Whatever else you might say about the movie, it's got a good script.

It's interesting that for a movie made in this century, stylistically there is a lot that hearkens back to Italian horror movies of the 80s and late 70s. You can tell it's a modern movie, not the least because it's filmed in HD, but a lot of its character is reminiscent of traditional Italian movie style. Dub included.

For a zombie movie, especially one made fairly recently, it's remarkable that there aren't just shuffling zombies, but that the movie is largely consistent about the zombies being slow throughout. Definitely worth noting. A lot of low budget zombie movies don't manage to stay the course in a similar fashion.

If there's something about the movie that stands out negatively, it's that it has a few scenes in slow motion that would make Zack Snyder proud. Aside from that, it's a pretty worthwhile zombie movie if you're into the lower budget, and specifically Italian variety, of the genre.

A note on the Aliens ripoff, it feels a lot more natural than Shocking Dark, which does the same thing (plus some Terminator for good measure). Sure, scenes and dialogue are lifted one for one, but here it integrates pretty decently into the zombie scenario.

Bonus points for pretty decent make-up and effects.

A bunch of Tom Selleck westerns on one of the cable stations.
By the looks of Selleck & some of the other actors I'd say from the late 90s/early 2ks.
Sorry, couldn't tell you the titles as I keep missing them while painting away on Legion Imperialis stuff (and I don't care enough to look them up).

Overall? Pretty average fair.
Two of them were so similar that I could've sworn i was (half) watching 1 movie. It wasn't until his character was addressed by a different name I realized things had changed while I was in the kitchen for a few minutes....