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Island Zero

A low budget, but not low effort, Creature Feature.

Shades of Alien, Predator and at least a dash of The Thing.

Isolated islanders come under attack from mysterious creatures, and must learn what they are, and how to best them.

If like me you like a creature feature, I think this will prove enjoyable.

 Sigur wrote:

Mr.Cushing's wargaming collection was sold off over the past years, and the Perry twins acquired a ton of his hand-painted flags and loads of his campaign maps and notes. Many of which are written on the backs of film scripts he was working on at the time, which helps dating the notes. Very cool stuff, they put a bunch of it on facebook.

This is the most interesting thing i have heard about this year so far.

Going to have to watch Masks of Death.

Identity

A 2003 thriller that's just 87 minutes long and fills every moment with something that adds to the film. It takes huge influence from slasher films without over focusing on character deaths. I love the shot selection, picking great angles and lighting, showing the director had a clear vision throughout. I don't think there's a single shot in the film that feels like it's a throw away.

Strongly recommended.

Is that the one that takes place in a motel? With John Cusack? That was a good film.

Mr Right on Netflix. Anna Kendrick is pretty and kooky, Sam Rockwell is suave and kooky and they quip and bad people get horribly da aged. Odd but mindlessly entertaining. To be fair I could watch ms Kendrick in basically anything.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is that the one that takes place in a motel? With John Cusack? That was a good film.

That is the one, yes.

 Flinty wrote:
Mr Right on Netflix. Anna Kendrick is pretty and kooky, Sam Rockwell is suave and kooky and they quip and bad people get horribly da aged. Odd but mindlessly entertaining. To be fair I could watch ms Kendrick in basically anything.

She’s in Twilight, isn’t she?

Hyyyyype.

Looks like it might not suck terribly

Do we know when its set, as the pulse rifle at the end isn't quite the classic Aliens pattern.

Not sure. And to be honest it’s one I’m trying to avoid reading up on, as I want to go in knowing as little as possible.

Its called an "interquel"* and set between Alien and Aliens, according to Wikipedia.

*First time I've seen that word in 42 years of life. Is that weird?

Also, I could've sworn this was a limited series? Wasn't there an Alien series on the way?

There’s a series coming too. Dunno if the tie in plot wise.

 nels1031 wrote:
Its called an "interquel"* and set between Alien and Aliens, according to Wikipedia.

*First time I've seen that word in 42 years of life. Is that weird?

Not really. Take a look at Wikipedia for all of the variations on the sequel

Theater near me is doing a showing of The Matrix for its 25th Anniversary in the big Dolby Digital theater with the monster sound system but it was practically sold out so I am not going. Just imagine a mini review while sulk.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

This is a shock-humor film from 2009 starring all of the best 2nd-tier comedic actors of the time as slimy used car salesmen and the people they interact with. All of the actors bring their A games, especially Charles Napier and Kathryn Hahn, but the jokes just aren’t there. In a review for another film I saw the line “it doesn’t go far enough to be funny but it isn’t accurate enough to be interesting.” That’s The Goods to a T.


Don’t Watch unless you really need some 2000’s edgy-comedy nostalgia.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
All of the actors bring their A games, especially Charles Napier and Kathryn Hahn, but the jokes just aren’t there. In a review for another film I saw the line “it doesn’t go far enough to be funny but it isn’t accurate enough to be interesting.” That’s The Goods to a T.

That is a good description. It felt like it should have been better and funnier than it actually was, like all the ingredients were there but it didn't cook quite right.

Yeah, didn’t cook right is a great way to put it.

When I saw the cast list, I had to see it and wondered why I hadn’t heard of The Goods before. Having seen it, now I know why. Still, feels kind of like a time capsule.

The Iron Claw

Tragic tale about the Von Erich wrestling family. As a story, its compelling stuff. As a movie, it seemed disjointed at times. Everybody is great in it, but things just happen so fast and a lot of small seemingly important things get glossed over. Regardless, its worth a watch, I’d say. Solid drama, but its gutpunch after gutpunch. Ending was pretty powerful.

Resident Evil, Welcome to Racoon City

Giving this another whirl. I know I’ve seen this before. But the only thing I remember is the heavy handed intros to the characters from the games.

How heavy handed?



Unconfirmed reports suggest this chap was the script writer. And his wee pal here



Was the script doctor.




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Oh god this film is so bad.

The zombies look cack. Leon is inexplicably utterly incompetent

There’s some fun scenes in the Mansion strongly reminiscent of the original game, but that’s about it.

Not at all surprised this all but sunk without trace. Say what you like about the original movies, but those at least had the good sense to be fun.

@Henry: When I saw it at the cinema I wasn't entirely convinced (because the twist was rather obvious), but it was alright. Nowadays we'd probably crawl over lava to get a 85 minutes psychological thriller.

@Flinty: Yeah, my stance on the matter of Anna Kendrick is kinda the same.

 nels1031 wrote:
The Iron Claw

Tragic tale about the Von Erich wrestling family. As a story, its compelling stuff. As a movie, it seemed disjointed at times. Everybody is great in it, but things just happen so fast and a lot of small seemingly important things get glossed over. Regardless, its worth a watch, I’d say. Solid drama, but its gutpunch after gutpunch. Ending was pretty powerful.

Oh yes, I gotta see this.

Road House 2024

Hmm.

Just..hmm. Watchable, but otherwise unremarkable.

This I must not see.

Hey, what's our opinion on that sort of remake? Do we prefer them to be just abysmally bad or so-so, bland and forgettable just so we can get past them and forget about them (like 80% of these)?

It…depends.

Shot for shot remakes can range from utterly pointless (Psycho) to an interesting outcome (Night of the Living Dead, which had some changes). But they’re mostly utter pointless.

Reinterpretations (Robocop) I give more leeway to provided when what’s being attempted is interesting. Interesting ideas can paper over wonky execution. An example where I’m genuinely torn would be Ghostbusters. I don’t think that’s a bad film as such. But it is a poor, poor Ghostbusters film and is all over the shop tonally. It also didn’t introduce anything particularly new or interesting.

Funnily enough I'm listening to a podcast about the latest Ghostbusters film right now. Which Ghostbusters film are you referring to? 2016 or the pandemic one with the kid named Podcast?

2016 one. As a comedy it’s perfectly average.

I had a bit of a Cyberpunk(?) go last night with a double feature.

The Creator
A pretty interesting flick that almost is great, but the script needed another once over to tighten it before filming.

Blade Runner 2049
It had been a long time since I have seen the original version, so it was pretty hazy in my memory.

Still, for my money the best Cyberpunk steals all the best bits from old 'Noir films and papers over it with future-tech. This delivers on that front. It also seems like all the action is surprisingly personal.

Ana de Armas is especially good in this. Her character's whole arc and the meta-commentary here is very intriguing.

Of course, it looks beautiful and I think the pacing is great for what it is. Everything is very deliberate, just like the main Protag. Still a touch long overall.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2016 one. As a comedy it’s perfectly average.

Yeah, thart one I found alright as well (apart from the last 20 minutes, which were absolute garbage).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2016 one. As a comedy it’s perfectly average.

Best criticism I have seen is all four actors wanted to be the funny one, while the original had 3 playing it straight and Murry as the obvious funny one.

So, Ghostbusters Frozen Empire

It’s fun. But flawed. Third act was rushed and quite messy, but it more or less came together in the end,

Importantly, I’ve strong ideas on how it could’ve gone smoother. Which is fairly unusual for me as I tend to just take my media as it comes.

RT has a “professionals” score of 45%, and an audience score of 87%. Me? It’s easily more toward the Audience rating. It ticks a lot of boxes, and needs just a nip/tuck of editing. I suspect the foul finger of studio meddling.

In terms of in-universe ranking? I don’t know if l like this more than Afterlife. Afterlife was a tighter plot, but here we spend more genuinely quality time with the originals. Ray in particular gets some character development, as does Winston albeit to a lesser degree. Venkman is Venkman and I’m perfectly fine with that.


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The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2016 one. As a comedy it’s perfectly average.

Best criticism I have seen is all four actors wanted to be the funny one, while the original had 3 playing it straight and Murry as the obvious funny one.

That I’d agree with. But for the most part, we get fairly natural comedy, especially between the two mains. Then we get Holtzman just being goofy (but good goofy) and Thor being goofy (but bad goofy). Everyone was having fun making the film, and that came across in the film. Just needed the Director to enforce a little restraint. Spesh on Thor.

Ghostbusters (and to a lesser extent Ghostbusters 2, the Alien Resurrection of the franchise) worked because they played goofy stuff straight, like Leslie Nielsen in Airplane! and The Naked Gun. But Ghostbusters 2016 was an embarrassing failure because it played straight stuff goofy, like Leslie Nielsen in Spy Hard and Wrongfully Accused.

Afterlife was awkward and uncomfortable as a reverential pedestal for old nerds to place their childhoods onto, about as funny as a CGI Leslie Nielsen singing “Those were the days, my friend” by Mary Chapin.*


I have no choice but to watch Ghostbusters Frozen Over since my son really wants to see it. I just hope Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt are funny in it.

*Also, I cannot get over the fact that multimillion dollar Hollywood Blockbuster starting people capable of shame just straight-up lifted the climactic beam fight of Dragonball Z’s Cell Saga and thought we wouldn’t notice.

PS: I got a better Ghostbusters style occult comedy kick from the Behind the Bastards episode about L Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons trying to summon the Antichrist in the Mojave desert than I did from Ghostbusters Afterlife. Spoiler: L Ron is evil Venkman.