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2025/10/09 00:48:39
Subject: Mini-Movie Reviews- What You Are Watching.... in Miniature
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
Scream and Scream Again
Stars Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. So of course it’s a horror. But also kinda sci-fi.
It’s an odd film, as it has an almost Pulp Fiction structure, with three threads initially separate eventually coming together. So not one for background watching, you need to give it your full attention. If you do, you will be rewarded with something really quite original.
Not quite as scary as it could’ve been, it’s still very much worth a watch. Which you can do on Prime.
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Uhhh... ever seen a movie that tries really hard to be quirky and just ends up being really fething dumb?
I just finished The Menu. A movie where people just accept the fact that they are going to be murdered, and seem generally okay with it, and just hang out until the end of the movie.
Anna Taylor-Joy was mediocre at best, and I do not wish this film on anyone.
I'd rather watch Morbius again than the Menu.
BorderCountess wrote: Just because you're doing something right doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're doing...
Feels like an ancient tale that would take a few minutes to tell a round a campfire but has been stretched out to make a movie.
Possibly written to be half-watched out of the corner of one’s eye. I watched it while cuddling the cat.
Where do they keep getting the horses from? Why if wearing cheap sunglasses protects you from magic don’t the evil Church wear some form of less easily removed eye protection all the time? Why are those guys digging a giant pit outside the only human city? How did your horses get across the chasm?
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
A Comedy of Terrors
Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff star in this comedy horror.
Price is Waldo Trumbull, drunkard and failing Funeral Director. To drum up business, he turns to murder and recycling the firms only coffin.
Opening scene involves a corpse being unceremoniously tipped out of the coffin into the grave to the sound of a Swanee Whistle, then speeded up film as Trumbull and his assistant fill in the grave, dust off the coffin and leave the scene. Which means we’re off to a truly terrific start.
Price is on top form here, delivering venomous lines to his unloved wife with glee and panache.
Available on Prime, and very very much worth your time, even if just for Price’s excellent delivery alone. Every cast member is having a ball, delivering performances suited to the finest stage.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/10/13 09:02:19
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Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Definitely lives up to its name with a barrage of some of the smartest dumb jokes I've seen in years.
Transformers: One
Been meaning to catch this one for a while and its definitely an underrated gem. I'm not super thrilled with the voice acting which definitely steers it more as a kids film but the story is extremely satisfying. Definitely worth checking out for fans of any era of this toy brand.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/10/13 14:36:44
2025/10/13 22:32:49
Subject: Mini-Movie Reviews- What You Are Watching.... in Miniature
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
The Witch In The Window
Extremely atmospheric and well done haunting story. Available on Shudder, I’d call it essential viewing.
V/H/S Halloween
The now long running, low budget, somewhat experimental anthology horror film series continues.
It’s rarely short on inventiveness, which keeps me coming back. However? Results can vary wildly. Because inventive doesn’t always mean good. Or necessarily interesting.
But when a segment is good? It tends to be very, very good. And most are just on the right side of entertaining silliness.
Kinda like 2000ad. The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic is the proving ground for up and coming UK comic writers, inkers and artists. A given prog will have four or five ongoing strips. Sometimes every single strip is right up your alley. Other times, for me anyway, it’s really just Judge Dredd I’m enjoying. But the important thing is it’s forever an outlet for new talent, and damn proud of it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/10/13 22:45:23
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Yeah, anthologies aren't easy. I recently watched Satanic Hispanics, a 2022 horror anthology. Two out of four segments didn't work for me. I couldn't even say what the point of one of them was. But the other two were an absolute blast and well worth the time.
And now for something completely different. I was subjected to The Langoliers the other day. I saw a small part of it back in the day but only got to see the whole thing now. Better late than never, right? Well, maybe not. It's decent enough, if noticeably slow. And I know it's unfair to say something like this about a 1995 movie likely shot on a made for TV budget, but the CGI... well, The Asylum has better effects than that. I wasn't caught by surprise since I actually saw the eponymous critters back in the day, and I don't think I was impressed back then either. But it's definitely something that has not aged well and provoked unrestrained laughter throughout that sequence. Kind of unfortunate because whatever atmosphere the movie managed to build up to that point went straight out of the window and made the comparatively brief wrap up feel exceptionally slow and drawn out. I was just done at that point.
Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone?
2025/10/14 16:22:59
Subject: Mini-Movie Reviews- What You Are Watching.... in Miniature
Available on Prime, and very very much worth your time, even if just for Price’s excellent delivery alone. Every cast member is having a ball, delivering performances suited to the finest stage.
Yeah, that one was really good fun.
I think I once watched half a VHS film, but decided it wasn't for me.
Langoliers the miniseries is a so-bad-it’s-good classic thanks to the dynamic duo of Bronson Pinchot and cocaine. So many of his scenes are gold it’s hard to list them all. The line of the movie is, of course, this:
Edit: oh hey, someone made the Pinchot/Toomey cut:
Check out his business table delusion with Stephen King near the end. Classic.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/10/14 16:34:02
It is what it looks like, and that makes it a fun time. A perfectly schlocky Scifi original kind of movie with better production values and a fair bit of fun watching soldiers get eaten by Dinosaurs. Honestly it's a lot like Legendary's King Kong but I'd argue is actually a better movie? Not like, because it's 'better' but simply because it's more proud of being a schlocky excuse to watch monsters eat guys and guys to shoot guns.
Tron: Ares wasn't as bad as the box office makes it out to be and while certainly not great it is fine. Leto isn't awful, just miscast, and the movie is full of things that make you think how if they had done things a little different here and there it could have been quite good. The devil is in the details and they seemed to have skipped over a lot of things. For instance programs look like their programmer or user, so why does Ares look like Leto? There is no one else in the film at any point that remotely resembles and the villain initially his user is Evan Peters who looks nothing like Leto.
Still the sound and visual design are great and really spark the imagination. If you can see it on a full IMAX or big dolby screen with full chair shaking sound system it is worth the ride, but if it is a normal theater I don't think it will be much different than seeing it on a decent home set up.
Spoiler:
There was a good line when one of the bad programs, Athena, kills Gillian Anderson in the real world and tells her "We've died thousands of times for The Grid, you only have to do it once."
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
2025/10/15 10:59:17
Subject: Mini-Movie Reviews- What You Are Watching.... in Miniature
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
Screamtime
1981 Anthology Horror, in which some Naughty Men steal a VHS tape from a shop, and upon watching it find its short horror films.
A US/UK collab, this is honestly pretty good. Not as gory as horror would become, but effective enough. Not quite on a par with my beloved Amicus Portmanteaus, this is still a solid effort.
Middle segment was apparently translated into a full feature starring Charisma Carpenter.
Available to view on Amazon Prime.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Any my slasher film collection has now expanded to 58 volumes.
Currently screening The Town That Dreaded Sundown, with Uncle Sam for afters.
I’ve also picked up Prey (no, not that one) and Bad Channels.
So that’s me sorted to the end of the week.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The Town That Dreaded Sundown really, really needs to pick a theme.
The attacks are pretty straight up slasher. Not especially graphic, but not “just off screen”.
Then we cut to the Police and Texas Ranger trying to catch the killer, where it’s all a bit tongue in cheek, portraying silliness akin the Sheriff in Porkies, nearly verging on Police Squad.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2025/10/15 19:37:18
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[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
Easy E wrote: I assume this is not the newer version of The Town That Dreaded Sundown?
Is this the movie with the trombone kill?
No it’s not.
Yes it is.
In that order.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Uncle Sam
90’s slasher, in which an Undead Veteran, killed by friendly fire terrorises his hometown when his remains are flown home for burial.
Isaac Hayes stars as one of our protagonists.
Much better than The Town That Dreaded Sundown, and reminiscent in style and substance of Maniac Cop (which I really need to watch again soon. Got it and its sequel on DVD). Which, a cursory google reveals is probably down to being made by the same creative team.
In the best slasher tradition, he goes around offing people that don’t meet his moral standards. Only he’s a psychotic wrong’un that abused his sister and nephew.
There’s also an underlying, unfortunately underplayed anti-war theme here. It’s not preachy as such and is in its own way measured. But it doesn’t really commit to it. For instance, it’s revealed Uncle Sam, the killer, was always a psychotic wrong’un. So it’s not trying to portray how the military can turn pretty normal people into veterans that struggle to adapt to civvy street.
I’d honestly be interested in what an actual Vet makes of its tone and message.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/10/15 21:33:15
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I saw this with some folks in an empty theatre on a Wednesday evenig in 3D in a small town in a deeply Red state. This wasn't exactly going to be a packed audience hall no matter what. Cyberpunk isn't exactly a hot commodity in these parts.
So, what did I think? This will not be one of the movies I will think about much beyond this review, unless it is in the negative sense. It is not "bad" per se, but it is not good either. It is content with a surprisingly sedate pace for an action movie, and prefers to roll around and revel in the visuals of it all. It kind of reminded me of the Bond movie Spectre in that sense. For heavily marketing the NIN soundtrack, they down play it through most of the movie.
Now comes the pretensious part. If you are not into that, please just skip ahead to the next commenter.
Are you sure? Are you really sure??
Spoiler:
This movie was John Gault style hot garbage. There is not a single character in this movie who is not from the corporate C-suite. Our CEOs bravely battle each other using proxies for domination of the Hi-tech industry and we are supposed to think one is a hero CEO and the other is a villain? Get the feth out of Dodge.
Secondly, this is AI and Big Tech propoganda mouthed by another big mega-corp. This is techno-Fuedalism propoganda disguised as a pinochio story where out "hero" bravely disobeys and breaks out of the techno-fuedalist hierarchy.
I suppose on its surface that makes it look like a Cyberpunk story. Except Cyberpuk stories are about the little guys winning over the Corpos. This was not that. This was one Corp simply beating another Corp to make massive profits and boost their heroic CEO over another Corp getting massive profits and boosting their heroic CEO.
Sure, in the Tron world of the 80's we could still believe that the CEO of a company was also a good program. This is 2025 and the era of Billionaires. No one believes that Elon, Zucks, or any CEO actually know how to program anymore.
The whole movie felt sort of tone deaf about what is going on in the world. Did we really need a pro-AI, Pro-Big Tech, Pro-CEO movie at the moment? Read the fething room people!
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2025/10/16 15:30:14
Subject: Mini-Movie Reviews- What You Are Watching.... in Miniature
I’m glad I read that spoilered section. I probably wasn’t going to see the movie in the first place, but I like being able to have an informed rejection.
I want to know who thought a tech CEO who was raised from birth in a corporate aristocracy to be a tech CEO would have full sleeve tattoos and chest up to and part of the neck. Could you imagine Jeff Bezos with a "THUG" tattoo on his neck popping out from under his shirt?
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
2025/10/16 17:48:18
Subject: Mini-Movie Reviews- What You Are Watching.... in Miniature
Can you imagine a tech CEO falling so far down the too-online rabbit hole that he based his whole personality on manosphere grifters preying on male insecurity? What kind of Tech CEO would start taking steroids and supplements and hitting the gym half-assed, challenging people to fights only to chicken out, making poor life decisions and living the shitpost?
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 