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Vampire’s Kiss

1989 Nic Cage comedy horror.

First things first. Even more so than usual, if you’ve limited or no appreciation for Nic Cage doing what Nic Cage does? Spare yourself this film. It will not challenge your opinion of the man or his approach to acting.

Me? I think he’s great and genuinely admire his passion and intensity, so I’m loving this. Certainly his testicles to the vestibules approach works well here, giving an interesting, if hardly nuanced, spin on a man losing his mind and becoming convinced he’s actually a vampire.

One thing I saw, think it might have been a Wisecrack video, about Nic Cage is that his acting style is born out of a rejection of "method" as the de facto "best" type of acting. That creating a realistic depiction is not the be all and end all of acting, that the art form can transcend that.

And historically, that's right. People didn't always act in films exactly as actual people do in reality, especially when you go back to stage acting and the silent movie era. You needed big, expressive, physical performances in silent movies to help convey emotion that couldn't be conveyed in the sound of your performance, just like on the stage your performance needs to be readable from the cheap sets in the back just as much as in the boxes and stalls. And there's no reason those performances are worse than more grounded performances, it is just a different style that is trying to use different techniques to evoke the desired response in the audience.

Cage is capable of acting like a normal, real person in movies. He won an oscar for such a performance. He makes a conscious decision to try and do things differently.

Edit: it was a wisecrack video

Also, it’s not uncommon for Method Actors to be insufferable.

Ref Morbius. And Suicide Squad. And literally anything else that gimp has disgraced with his presence.

Knight and Day

An action comedy spy movie where Tom Cruise plays a cool as secret agent and Cameron Diaz an unsuspecting civilian who gets unwittingly drawn into a conspiracy. The action's good and so is the comedy. Light but good fare, although the end kind of disappoints by trying to inverse an earlier situation that feels forced and doesn't really land. Still a good watch for most of its runtime.

Let's be Cops

A cop buddy movie about two guys who came to Los Angeles only to find that their younger selves' dreams didn't come true. In a last bid to find their fortune, they pose as cops. What starts as self-gratification through abuse of power soon turns real as fake cops have to go up against real bad guys, as much as it becomes a struggle of eager imposter versus reluctant imposter.

Great comedy in my super objective opinion that got a lot of hearty laughs out of me.

PREY.

Its simple and at times a little too far fetched with the super-ninja-commando-from-hell antics of it's characters, .but the era and cast are a breath of fresh air, while Mr Pred himself also has his own thing going on. It reminded me of the Darkhorse graphic novel "Predator: Big Game"...in good way!

Ah, Transfomers. A guilty pleasure to help run out Covid infection number 6. It’s so stupid, but entertainingly smashy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I had a thought. Does Transformers use the Marvel film formula, a year before Iron Man released? Ensemble cast, lots of explosions, snarky dialogue. Overly CG set pieces. The Transformers series didn’t manage to follow up so well with the characters as marvel did, but they seem very similar.

They both follow trends of action movies in the 00s. People blame the MCU for overly quippy banter, but quippy banter was entering into style before any of the MCU films released. Mostly I think it's that the MCU so dominated the model of action movie it based itself on, that it became the model.

The definition of 'good artists borrow, great artists steal' in its originally intended sense.

To be fair, Transformers did less "quippy banter" and more "insufferable quacking". I think that the Avengers did it less annoying, but of course it got worse and now we're stuck with humour in dialogues that always comes with 2 superfluous and humour-robbing extra phrases on top of what may or may not have been an actual joke.

As for Vampire's Kiss: Yup, it's good fun, it's best when you don't know whether it's a comedy or not, and Cage is impressive. On the other hand, it also probably launched (in retrospective) the problematic thing about Cage that haunted him during the 2010s, but I think he's come out of the other end of that deep dark "Cage lol" tunnel and can do things now again.



Right. Ghostbusters:Afterlife (2021) (or "Ghostbusters:Legacy", as it's called in german-speaking countries. We're at this stupid point where they wanna have an English term, but they only trust German-speakers - ALL of whom learn English at school - to know about 200 English words and think that looking up stuff makes people sad and afraid instead of smarter).

I retract everything I said before, even the fact that the one kid is called Podcast is only annoying the first three times you hear it. He thinks that influencers and podcasters are jobs or interesting, but he's just a child, born in the late 2010s. He doesn't know any better.

The film's alright and nice. I only wish they hadn't had the old people show up. I don't want to see the old people. They add nothing, they hold us back.

Watch It, if you're okay with watching a Ghostbusters film from 2021. It's better than you'd expect.

Transformers One

In short? Loved it. A really good showing of a huge mix of influences from Generation 1, the aligned universe, and just about everything in between.

The visuals and voice cast were great; however, the soundtrack was forgettable compared to the 1986 movie or the Bayverse films.

It's definitely set itself up as a very evergreen intro for Transformers as a whole and proves the point that human characters aren't necessary for a good TF story (in fact I firmly believe the better stories are TF focussed).

 Sigur wrote:
Right. Ghostbusters:Afterlife (2021) (or "Ghostbusters:Legacy", as it's called in german-speaking countries. We're at this stupid point where they wanna have an English term, but they only trust German-speakers - ALL of whom learn English at school - to know about 200 English words and think that looking up stuff makes people sad and afraid instead of smarter).

I retract everything I said before, even the fact that the one kid is called Podcast is only annoying the first three times you hear it. He thinks that influencers and podcasters are jobs or interesting, but he's just a child, born in the late 2010s. He doesn't know any better.

The film's alright and nice. I only wish they hadn't had the old people show up. I don't want to see the old people. They add nothing, they hold us back.

Watch It, if you're okay with watching a Ghostbusters film from 2021. It's better than you'd expect.

Have you seen Frozen Empire yet? It integrates the old guys more naturally and in slightly larger roles, even if it's still about the next generation. Afterlife is gratuitous fan service in that regard, but in hindsight you might look at it more as a way of reintroducing old characters with a bang and setting up the next one without taking the focus off the new characters.

As far as passing on the torch movies go I think Ghostbusters is a nice, perhaps rare example in which returning old characters are treated with respect and not get diminished to make the new characters look better.

Ray in particular gets a lot of cool scenes in Frozen Empire

Mr Crocket

Horror film on Disney+, a riff on Freddie Kruger, but the baddie is a demented kids’ TV host, like a Mr Rogers gone very, very bad. And a hint of Ring.

It’s pretty good. Derivative, yes. But has its own charm and is if nothing else an interest adaptation of the overall trope.

Not sure I’d want to see in the cinema, but as a streaming freebie I’m satisfied by this fare.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Invasion

Watch the 1970’s version instead. It’s vastly, immeasurably superior in every way.

*Eerie high-pitched alien scream*

Watched monster hunter. Ouch that was painful. Had very little in common with the game it's trying badly to cover.
Had little to do with the game at first and then got much worse with the introduction of modern US military which has absolutely no relation to the game. As someone who's enjoyed the game since first playing the original Japanese version mumble mumble years ago I was hoping to enjoy it. Didn't even make it to the end as I was getting increasingly frustrated and annoyed with it.
If you want to watch something based on the capcom game don't go near it!
However if you just want to watch a well acted action film then definitely don't go near it.
On a scale of 1-100 I'd give it negative 50.

Phantasm IV: Obl-IV-ion

The continuing romantic misadventures of Reggie.

Contains 50% new footage.



This is where the Phantasm series crosses the Buckaroo Banzai threshold of self-involved lore. There’s at least ten minutes of explanatory flashbacks to the previous films sprinkled throughout, not including all of the cut footage from the original Phantasm that found itself woven in.

The old footage works surprisingly well in this film, as there is a whole The End is the Beginning is the End theme even beyond the (multiple?) time loop(s). On the upside, the limitations of low budget mixed with big ideas give the film the same kind of wonderous charm as old Doctor Who and TOS. On the downside, multiple characters now talk like Vorlons.

Then there are the Reggie scenes, little slices of Evil Dead-style cheese to keep the audience interested. He gets plenty of so-bad-they’re-good one liners, and some really gooey gross out scenes. No fewer than three cars explode.

It’s schlock, but endearing schlock.

I don’t think I’ve seen any of the phantasm films, so popped over to Wikipedia to have a quick peek.

The plot synopsis starts thus

“ While having sex in Morningside Cemetery, a young man named Tommy is stabbed by his partner, who is revealed to be the local mortician, in supernatural disguise as "The Lady in Lavender".”

What an opener!

That might be the least-weird horror element in the movie.

That reminds me of some podcast I heard where Lovecraft's Arhtur Jermyn came up and the guy was like 'dude gets a box, looks inside, immediately sets himself on fire. Now that's how you start a story. The rest of it is so uncomfortable but damn that opener!'

Cabin in the Woods

The SCP Foundation Some generic evil organization puts 5 college coeds into a horror movie scenario to [REDACTED]. Keter level threat.


Cabin in the Woods is a fun horror comedy that’s also a loving homage to countless other horror movies. It’s not as humorous or weird or disturbing as Waxwork, but it has a similar big ending. I was expecting more one liners after seeing Joss Whedon’s name in the credits, but it still had its moments.

I love that movie. I watch it probably once a year. It's just really well done and fun without being TOO much like Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (which gets watched every other year or so)

I’d probably rewatch it for Bradley Whitford and co even if it didn’t have the awesome climax.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Cabin in the Woods

The SCP Foundation Some generic evil organization puts 5 college coeds into a horror movie scenario to [REDACTED]. Keter level threat.


Cabin in the Woods is a fun horror comedy that’s also a loving homage to countless other horror movies. It’s not as humorous or weird or disturbing as Waxwork, but it has a similar big ending. I was expecting more one liners after seeing Joss Whedon’s name in the credits, but it still had its moments.

funnily enough, I find Whedon's influence to be the worst part of the film. I found it far too quippy as-is. the core concept is fun, and there's some good laughs throughout, but I wish it was more about being a horror movie in addition to everything else

Bram Stoker's Dracula. Some really cool horror moments , silly accents, and dark humour. Some of it belongs in a Zucker & Abrahams send-up movie, but still a good watch nonetheless - at least watch it for the first five minutes!

The Worst Witch. No how matter how old the cheese is, sometimes you just want to have a trip down memory lane to when you were a little'un. Diana Rigg, Tim Curry and Fairusa Balk star in this pre-Harry-Potter musical".

The Monster Squad. Comical love letter to the classic universal horror icons, and while not quite The Lost Boys its still a damn good laugh and who can say no to Stan Winston's wonderful practical effects?

Near Dark. What happened to Hudson, Vasquez and Bishop after ALIENS? They became vampires of course! A modern-day horror-western that...has layers to it that are either briefly mentioned, hidden in plain sight, and even method-acting mythology that you wouldn't know about unless you follow up on cast interviews. Its a finished film that sometimes comes off as awkward, but still feels...right somehow. Just watch it!

Shadow In The Cloud. Serious-but-then-silly action-horror movie about a female pilot who takes part in a flight in the belly-turret of a WWII Flying Fortress called "The Fool's Errand", and is protecting a "classified" package. But then she sees something moving around on the plane outside...

I quite enjoyed the ironically titled Bram Stoker's Dracula, but Near Dark! I haven't seen that since my 'what can I rent form my local VHS rental store this week' days, having seen the trailer at the start of another rented VHS (probably Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone)! I seem to remember enjoying it but being different to what the trailer sold it as.

Near dark was awesome...

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Near dark was awesome...

The 'Thirty Days of Night' of its time.

It's a kick, ain't it?

Yeah, Near Dark is bloody good, but there's this other vampire movie I only caught the ending of - donkey's years ago - and I honestly don't have a clue what it is! Here goes...

"I'm gonna pluck your face like a chicken!" as one of the big vamp-toughs is pinning someone down, and a female vampire - resigned to her fate - walks off into the sun rise as the film ends?

I’m pretty sure GoodBadFlicks covered that one a couple months ago in one of their “5 Underrated ______ Movies” videos. I’ll see if I can find it…

I think it was loosely based on a Joan Collins book like Sunglasses At Night. It’s on the top of my tongue.


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I think I was conflating a few movies. Some googling makes me think maybe it was The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice. I was mixing that up with Sundown: Vampire in Retreat and something else in my addled memory.

Well, at least thats two more vampire flicks to check out.

Cheers!

Yeah, Near Dark is lovely. That Kathryn Bigelow knows her stuff. For several decades now. Give her something to shoot and night and things turn out well. The other things are good too.

30 Days of Night did vampires properly as well. The sequel is dire, btw.



I've been watching more 21 Jump Street. With time every single episode turns into a 'very special' one. I find it enjoyable, but yeah, it is very preachy and very ..:Reagan?