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It’s one I’ve been aware of for a long, long time. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.

Will have that sorted probably Tuesday night, as I’m off to see Weapons tomorrow.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter is my favorite vampire movie ever.

Isn't that going to be getting a rerelease in the theaters, limited of course, sometime this year?

 Ahtman wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter is my favorite vampire movie ever.

Isn't that going to be getting a rerelease in the theaters, limited of course, sometime this year?

That would be amazing.

I have a soft spot for movies that feature some Errol Flynn level swordplay where you least expect it.

Plus, the frozen sister being fought around must've been a tad nerve wracking for the actress.

King Kong (1976)

Aka Monkey Pervy Stare: The Movie. A stowaway monkeyologist and an adrift actress invite themselves on an oil company bigwig's quest for more money. Monkey business ensues.

It's still a decent adventure movie if you don't mind the 70s pacing, and fairly long for its time. There are a bunch of things that come across as goofy that probably weren't intended, but overall the movie's still fun.

King Kong Lives (1986)

Aka Monkey Pervy Stare 2: The Sequel. It's basically the Star Wars Holiday Special without musical numbers.

This one is very uneven. You might even say nonsensical. At least it's half an hour shorter than the other one.

Notably both movies feature nice models. If you're into that kind of thing, they're worth a look for the model makers' efforts.

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Basically found footage film about a 70s US late night show's ratings-desperate halloween episode in which things happen. I went in remembering nothing about the reviews back then.

What a fun film that is. While watching this I thought that this might be the perfect film if you've never seen a horror film before and meet with friends to watch it on Halloween. Even if you have watched a horror film before, this is a fun haunted house ride. It's not subtle, you know exactly where it's going, it's not overly long (hooray for 90 minutes films), we get carried through it by a reliable host and I found myself laughing more than I was scared. If you're young (and thus also less annoyed with CGI effects) and not know horror films this might scare the crap out of you, so maybe it's just right.



For me, it was just right. A modern, inexpensive fun ride with a leading actor who does very well with the role. I think that this film depends greatly on him doing a good job with that, and he makes it work. Watch It.


Btw, does anyone of you remember the title of that 1990s tv film which was about a talk show which turns into a hostage situation as it goes? I watched that back when it first aired on German TV and it left quite an impression. Haven't watched it since though. This film reminded me a little of that too, with the whole premise and such.

Deadpool and The Wolverine

The most meta of Marvel movies yet. It kind of reminded me of She-Hulk, and definitely had some DEEP cuts of comic book movies. Probably too meta for me to even get half the jokes.

If that is your sort of thing, I am sure you will enjoy it. I am personally really glad I had watched the other two somewhat recently to remind me of some of this stuff.

 Easy E wrote:
Deadpool and The Wolverine

The most meta of Marvel movies yet. It kind of reminded me of She-Hulk, and definitely had some DEEP cuts of comic book movies. Probably too meta for me to even get half the jokes.

If that is your sort of thing, I am sure you will enjoy it. I am personally really glad I had watched the other two somewhat recently to remind me of some of this stuff.

Never watched She Hulk, was it any good? (Come to think of it, I also missed Werewolf by Night & Moon Knight)

It’s…a bit divisive.

I enjoyed it, and there is a decent amount to enjoy.

Werewolf By Night is a pleasing one shot.

Moon Knight is outright brilliant, and pretty different compared to most MCU fare.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s…a bit divisive.

I enjoyed it, and there is a decent amount to enjoy.

Werewolf By Night is a pleasing one shot.

Moon Knight is outright brilliant, and pretty different compared to most MCU fare.

Wait. Aren't you at the theater watching a movie right now?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

Never watched She Hulk, was it any good? (Come to think of it, I also missed Werewolf by Night & Moon Knight)

She Hulk is fine. It's very unfocused and not nearly as good as it could have been with more of a focus on superhero courtroom drama antics. The show rarely focuses on them, but the legal comedy bits are far and away the highlight, IMO. I think it definitely suffers from trying to fill an hour long episode. I enjoyed it, particularly the end, but its not a classic.

Just watch Werewolf By Night. It's very short and generally just a cool experimental throwback. Well worth your time.

Moon Knight is solid but very similar in quality to the other Marvel shows. A few too many episodes that take a movie level story and stretch it thin. One of the better versions of this though. Probably just short of Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

She-Hulk is the Marvel series designed to make fun of Marvel fans. Therefore, it is not that popular as it is making fun of the usual core audience and is very Meta.

If that is your thing, go for it. I found it clever and subversive. Many others find it rage inducing.

Plus, it features The Porcupine who is a go to (humorous) favorite in this household well before She-Hulk came out.

Weapons

Good News! The trailers reveal very little!

Good News! It’s pretty damned good! Not Bring Her Back excellence, but getting there.

Frustrating News! It could’ve been even better. Whilst I think there’s been studio interference, or rejigging to save fodder for a prequel/sequel, the film is a bit uneven as a result.

Serious Spoilers Follow.

Skinflicker

Another from BFI’s Short Sharp Shocks. And a very early example of Found Footage.

Three ne’er do wells take it upon themselves to kidnap, torture and murder a government minister, filming it all on Super 8 and Cinecam.

It’s an interesting watch, and challenging in the right ways,

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Moon Knight is outright brilliant, and pretty different compared to most MCU fare.

The best bit? Finally we can skip the punching that is the main way to defeat any enemy in Marvel. And in a humorous way.

The House of Mortal Sin 1976.

In which a loony Priest goes about offing his parishioners, when he feels they’re naughty sinners. Or indeed as a result of their confession sessions.

Directed by Pete Walker, who was better known for his sexploitation movies.

I’m greatly enjoying this. The role of the Priest is superbly realised by Anthony Sharp, which really helps things along. Half wretched, half loony.

There are some on-screen kills, including someone bludgeoned with a burning censer, then buried in a handy grave (the perks of being a Loony Priest), but this thrives on the overall atmosphere, and that excellent portrayal. It raises questions over what a life of celibacy can do to someone when, perhaps, joining the Priesthood wasn’t their own choice. But, and I must stress this for Dakka? It’s not specifically a critique of the Catholic Church. The criticism here is purely on the Priest, not his denomination. Though it did predict some scandals, such as cover ups for the good of the church - again without specifically critiquing the Catholic Church.

In fact, I’ve enjoyed this so much, I’ve now bought the rest of Pete Walkers horror offerings. He was also behind The House of Long Shadows I commented on and recommended earlier in this thread.

A Night To Remember. (1958)

An excellent film for it's time. The moment the lights go out is quite a monsterous, chilling moment.

The Abominable Dr Phibes

Vincent Price stars as the titular, in this comedy horror, with a fairly decent balance between the two.

Dr Phibes is our Loony, out to avenge his wife’s death on the Doctors responsible for the surgery that killed her. Long believed killed in a car crash whilst rushing to his wife’s hospital bed, he’s horribly disfigured. The injuries have left him mute, so aside from some technical toys in his lair which allow him to speak? He’s otherwise a silent character, which adds a certain something to things.

At its core, this had real potential to be a serious and creepy horror. But the comedy touches genuinely work, very gently spoofing the horror genre in a respectful way. The murders are themed around the plagues of Egypt, though liberties are taken somewhat. My favourite so far is dousing someone in Sprout Jam, then getting locusts to have a nibble. But some are quite nasty (death by Bats, death by Rats whilst you’re trying to fly a plane, death by bronze unicorn head catapulted at you from across the street).

Very enjoyable, would recommend.

Secret Level - New World: The Once and Future King (2024)

I watched an episode of Secret Level, Amazons curious 3d animated show in which each short (~15min) episode is about some (video) game franchise. New Word is Amazon's curious foray into MMORPGs. Apparently it's still running, which I find surprising.

This one's about king Aelstrom (strangely reminiscent of the very popular pirate metal band Alestorm. There's a lot of that kinda stuff in there, like when you listen to bad radio on which they play these not-really-cover versions of songs, but only use a short sequence from popular songs from 40 years ago, to grab our attention and then go straight back to insubstantial muzac) and his manservant who lands on a beach, attempts to claim the crown of the land, dies during the course of it and then respawns on that beach. So far, so videogame.

The drawing power of this episode (apart from maybe the curiosity of the people who care about New World. Which I'm surprised is still running.) is soley on the shoulders Arnold Schwarzenegger, who voices the main character. Pretty sure it's just the English version though; for the German one (which features some pretty good styrian/eastern austrian dialect terms) they use an impersonator. I can't decide if it looks good. Some of the character models do, especially close-up, the very, very few wider shots look just likea video game. Maybe deliberately so. Overall, it's pretty much one of the old Blizzard render sequences, but with less impact and everything looks cartoony. So maybe more like one of those mobile game ads, but with slightly better graphics.

It's a very comedic piece, very much 2024 comedy. I chuckled once, as they showed a sequence of a number of competitions in which the king attempts to win the crown. It's just 2 seconds, but one of those competitions is them standing on a long log, fighting each other with morning stars (the kind with chains and such). Which struck me as funny because of the absurdity. The rest of the humour is rather aggrevating. Just regular 2020s stuff. Peacemaker stuff. Surely marvel superhero stuff, probably Ghostbusters: Frozen thingy stuff. Very unfunny to me.

The story. For years now, a bank here in our funny little country is running a series of tv ads which tell a little story that's supposed to manupulate us emotionally. Really, really cheap, basic stuff (kids,family, old people, absurd depictions of 'freedom', VW busses, CGI squirrel families around christmas, that sorta stuff). The plot of this episode could be cut down to 2 minutes and be one of those. It's very predictable, it's very basic, it'll work all around the world, under any regime.

There's references to Schwarzenegger films, there's the idiot who then turns good, there's smug people, there are repugnant fight scenes of the sort that have to make clear that somebody is a better swordsman than the other person because of the equivalent of wireworks. We're on that level. There is a certain amount of entirely unnecessary gore (but it's all part of the concept of triggering us into feeling anything or to keep our eyes off the cellphone for just another minute before you go back to browsing amazon's web store). There are several minutes wasted on some side plot about the king putting on 'corrupted' stuff to gain power, which goes nowhere. I'm sure that makes sense to people who are interested in New World (which I'm still surprised is still running). But people who play that probably don't have the time to watch an ad for the thing they play alredy.

this is very bad. Don't Watch. This isn't even an ad because the people who are into the product won't care. It's not for Schwarzenegger fans, because they have been burnt by his appearances in Chinese blockbusters and ads for mobile games. It's not for comedy fans (which everyone is), because it's not funny. It's not for people who want to see a heart-felt story of redemption because this is the lowest of the low when it comes to that. Any fairy tale with that topic is better. It's vapid content. Oh, and it was in part (let's hope it's just a part) by French tax money, because a french animation studio made it.


I watched it at the behest of my brother, who found it really funny, so I had to make a brave face, but it really was dire. I mean it wasn't horribly badly made, it was just boring, predictable, very bad comedy (which is always painful); it just had Amazon Studio Production (no concept, not one idea, just working off corporate bullet points) drip from every pore.



This is also why I don't want to watch War of the Worlds. I'm mildly curious about it, but it just has this amazon thing. The ending is crap, we all heard about it, but I'm sure by now they call it 'self-aware', because - and this is one of the most disheartening things of the past 10 years - all the mechanisms which make the world worse right now are so incredibly amoral that they have no problem incorporating critique or satire (which probably has become entirely neutered by that) and spit it back at us as a product or a meme. Replicated 100 times faster than people can, spread by people who don't know any better or just don't care.

Let's just hope that Amazon paid for this and did not exert some creative control....

Because Amazon now owns and is producing every project I want to see over the next few years:

The Pacific Rim (Early Years) series, James Bond, Nic Cage Spider-Man Noir, and that unnamed Henry Cavill wargaming series.

The whole thing looked like all Amazon control, no creativity.

But of course stuff like James Bond has to prove it's good, so at least in the beginning I'm sure they do it well.

Dr Phibes Rises Again!

First and sadly only sequel to The Abominable Dr Phibes. And again it’s a horror comedy.

This time, with Phibes having resurrected himself from the dead, he’s off to Egypt to find the fountain of life, to bring back his wife. His glamorous assistant is back, despite having been killed by accidental acid dousing in the first film.

Inventive kills once again, and almost proto-Saw after a fashion. And we’ve a much larger cast, including Peter Cushing.

Yes it’s a silly film. But you simply cannot go wrong with Vincent Price.

Hopefully at least one of those will be the good Amazon rather than the bad. They put out a lot of good stuff, but it does seem like the bigger the release, the more likely it is to be at best mediocre. And adaptions where the creator is involved tend to be pretty good. I read that Bezos wants to his wife to be the next Bond girl, so that should be interesting at least.
---------

Warfare

SEAL team occupying a house is discovered prematurely and must hold the building while surrounded by enemies in GWoT era Iraq.

This film is an attempt to get the viewer to feel the stress/anxiety of "real" combat, and to show how that stress can lead to bad decisions as people begin to disassociate. And I found it pretty effective in that regard. Visceral, haunting, and frustrating to watch at times. While there isn't as much action as the film title might suggest, it is probably the best movie I've seen this year.

8/10

Billionaires ruin everything they touch, because at a certain point of money you are too big to fail.

Bond will be no exception.

 Easy E wrote:
Billionaires ruin everything they touch, because at a certain point of money you are too big to fail.

Bond will be no exception.

Quite so.

Warfare sounds interesting though; that's on my to-watch list.


edit: Dang, a full day I rant about Amazon, now they put In Search of Darkness on Prime (I got that again for 30 days for free now, so why not). That's rather nice.

I hope that Amazon TV show work out better than Disney.

I didn't dislike Wheel of Time, and the last movie I saw Jeff Beszos in was my favorite Film with Tyler Perry.

So based on premises that have no basis in coherent thought, I hopeful.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dr Phibes Rises Again!

First and sadly only sequel to The Abominable Dr Phibes. And again it’s a horror comedy.

This time, with Phibes having resurrected himself from the dead, he’s off to Egypt to find the fountain of life, to bring back his wife. His glamorous assistant is back, despite having been killed by accidental acid dousing in the first film.

Inventive kills once again, and almost proto-Saw after a fashion. And we’ve a much larger cast, including Peter Cushing.

Yes it’s a silly film. But you simply cannot go wrong with Vincent Price.

I'm a big fans of the two Dr. Phibes films, with the first being the better film IMHO.

They’re both silly fun, and while the premise of the second is grander, the first is superior. Mostly because there’s no sudden retcon of the ending. Like Vulnavia suddenly being Not Actually Dead.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They’re both silly fun, and while the premise of the second is grander, the first is superior. Mostly because there’s no sudden retcon of the ending. Like Vulnavia suddenly being Not Actually Dead.

It wouldn't be a proper horror movie sequel if one of the bad guys that was killed in the first film didn't come back to life to show up in the second film...

True, true.

The underlying story to both Dr Phibes is still solid. Part of me wouldn’t say No to a remake, whether leaning further into the comedy or the horror. But the other part wants them left as they are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Black Torment 1964

Period set ghost story, where a Gentleman, having been in London for 3 months returns to his estate with his new life.

Except….his men and villagers are suddenly distrustful, believing him to have killed a village girl most brutally. Yet….he was 100 miles or more away, wasn’t he?

Costumes and script here are excellent, and the story is by modern means a bit tame and obvious. But it’s all done very well, making for a compelling if fairly simplistic who/wotdunnit mystery. Spooky and atmospheric rather than scary.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They’re both silly fun, and while the premise of the second is grander, the first is superior. Mostly because there’s no sudden retcon of the ending. Like Vulnavia suddenly being Not Actually Dead.

Yeah, Vulnavia coming back is kinda silly (Apparently they forgot she died in the first one and were too far along to write her out), but it fits with the surreal, dream-like quality of the films.

If you check out the wikipedia article, there were numerous attempts over the years to do more Phibes stuff but nothing ever got off the ground. The TV show idea where Phibes is a crime-fighting anti-hero sounds amazing.