Last movie watched...

[HOO-HAA]

Got RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES ready and waiting, again with the compliments of Blockbusters. 

[Noisybast]

Seem to remember reading about the Vatican endorsing 2001: A Space Odyssey for some reason.
Anyways, it turns out they like a lot o' film -  http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/slideshow/vatican-endorsed-films-10953176
Who'd thought the Blues Brothers would have got the thumbs up?

I stand corrected!

[HOO-HAA]

Got RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES ready and waiting, again with the compliments of Blockbusters. 

Oh dear. File under FREE WILLY 2 

[The Legendary Shark]

Beyond Re-Animator on the Horror Channel. I've always had a soft spot for Jeffrey Combs since his work on Star Trek and he does make a suitably creepy Herbert West. The film itself is a fairly amusing piece of hokum - but the highlight for me came during the end credits, where we see the shadows of a re-animated rat fighting with a re-animated [spoiler]severed penis.[/spoiler]

[The Legendary Shark]

Beyond ReAnimator ending credits (1min).

[JOE SOAP]

Possibly one of the most divisive films of all times is Schindler's List.

                                               


Is it possible to turn the Holocaust into a subject for a film? Can the Holocaust only be truly spoken of by the victims who experienced it? Why is the film told from the perspective of a German? What was the final message of the film; as when it was released in 1993 such crimes against humanity where again being perpetrared in Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, while Britain and America once again looked on and didn't act?

After watching such a film I do not know whether it will deter me from taking the path of least resistance.

I much prefer:






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AdzYnFPetQ

[I, Cosh]

Enter the Void. A film so far up itself there's even an internal POV shot of its own erect penis thrusting out of the screen at the audience. I certainly couldn't recommend anybody watch it but I'm sort of glad I did. It concerns the lives and misadventures of a small group of unpleasant ex-pats living in Tokyo and seemingly spending most of their clubbing, buying or selling drugs. The entire film is shot from the point of view of one young man who dies very early in the proceedings and we then follow his spirit forward and backward in time from that point.

After an hour I was thinking: okay, this has some good ideas but it's starting to drag a bit now. After two hours I was pretty fed up but it seemed to late to give up. Then, for the last twenty minutes everything seemed to come together as a lot of elements ramped up to ludicrous levels and I found myself drawn back in and ultimately left with a sort of confused grin on my face.

So, the story's pretty slight, the acting is mostly pretty ropey and all the characters are pretty unpleasant. What's undeniable is that it has an astounding visual style. There are a couple of drug trip sequences which are really just updated Orb videos. It's the depiction of the real world which is particularly impressive. Everything is coloured and filtered and screwed around with to make it seem different or claustrophobic or disconnected or whatever might be needed. A scene with two men walking down a street is manipulated to the point it looks totally unreal. There's a neon model of a city which becomes interchangeable with the real city to the point that there are scenes where you're not sure if it's a model made to look real or a real street/truck/whatever. It's the neon part that's worth repeating here. The colour scheme is all lurid greens and purples and oranges.

I couldn't help thinking what you could do with such a fantastic visual style allied to an actual plot or story. That some ludicrous Frenchman can come up with something so distinctive and fabulous looking while $50m action B movies languish in gothic tedium or bleached out, post-apocalyptic mediocrity is a crying shame. It pisses all over the likes of Sucker Punch or Tron.

If it was an hour shorter this would be destined to become a cornerstone of the wanky stoner student's film collection. As it is, it's destined to be a little seen curio. I can't imagine I'd have sat all the way through it at home. Or, if I had, it would've been in the background with one eye on the internet or the paper and I wouldn't have had the same experience.

[I, Cosh]

DOA: Dead or Alive. This is undoubtedly the best film I have ever seen based on a fighting game. In fact, there's a strong argument for it beng the best based on any game. Perhaps not one for the Library of Congress but it does a number of simple things right which none of its peers seem to have managed. First, there is fighting and plenty of it. Second, the silliness of the enterprise is wholeheartedly embraced. There is a ludicrous plot about an evil tycoon attempting to use nanotechnology to steal and sell people's fighting ability but none of the risible, po-faced seriousness of Tekken or Mortal Kombat.
Naturally, much of this comes from the source games. Where MK has a dark, apocalyptic setting, the DOA franchise has always been somewhat more light and frothy; the developers more concerned with modelling the physics of bouncing breasts than blood spatter patterns. Yes, it does feature a beach volleyball match.
The TnA approach does cause some problems. None of the top billed characters are genuine martial artists so there are a lot of fight scenes which jerk back and forth between the kick and the kicker. On the other hand, everyone likes the idea of pretty ladies beating them up and they take it with vim and gusto. Also, there are enough decent fighters in the lower orders to allow for one or two pretty good action scenes. The one with that bloke out of Matrix 2 fighting his way into the secret lab probably the standout.
Naturally, these films have to include as many references as possible for fans of the games. As ever, this leads to really stupid finishing moves in the fights but it also provides some fun moments as each of the leads gets her own little Bond style intro movie, fights are broadcast on big screens with running commentary  - "K. O." - and one or two scenes of amusing visual invention.
Intrigued by how much I'd enjoyed this, a quick trip to imdb revealed the director to be Corey Yuen, the chap behind the first Transporter - one of my favourite B movies of recent years - and co-director (with Samo Hung) of Dragons Forever: comfortably the best Jackie Chan film never shown on Channel 4 with an intro from Johnathan Ross.
Recommended, but bear in mind that I like Charlies Angels: Full Throttle.

[Van Dom]

I love DOA too. I'm a big fan of the 'hot chicks kicking ass' genre, such as the Jolie Tomb Raider films and Milla in Resi Evil. You can't go wrong with some sexy girls being all tough and shit. Big fan of Jaime Pressly too so that was extra bonus points for D.O.A.

The only film of this type which I didn't like that springs to mind was another Milla one - Ultraviolet. Sweet Jesus that was just so bad. I don't even know who was to blame, Milla did her schtick, the story was alright-ish.... I think it had to just be the direction and editing of the thing, it rendered it practically unwatchable.

[I, Cosh]

Not a fan of the Tomb Raiders (although 2 has a good coat) but the Resident Evil series is like a sordid and destructive relationship that I can't quit. Same goes for Underworld!

I'm guessing you'll already be familiar with some of the Hong Kong variants like The Heroic Trio and Lethal Panther Force but there they are, just in case.

[HOO-HAA]

Not a fan of the Tomb Raiders (although 2 has a good coat) but the Resident Evil series is like a sordid and destructive relationship that I can't quit. Same goes for Underworld!

Another vote for the Resis and Underworlds. Very entertaining McMovies!

[Van Dom]

Only ever watched the first Underwold - yeah. I think I enjoyed it. Must look up the rest.

[Tiplodocus]

See, I like Data. But then I never saw him as a Spock replacement.

[The Legendary Shark]

Spock is better than Data but Picard is better than Kirk. Then again Scotty is better than Geordie, Dax is better than Chakotay, Archer is better than Janeway and Tuvok is better than Checkov but Paris is inferior to Sulu.

The Trek Universe is indeed an odd place.

[Professor Bear]

I meant more in that someone clearly thought he should be the second lead and a distinctive visual associated with TNG in the same way that Spock was visual and conceptual yardstick for TOS (and arguably for sci-fi in general).
I don't actually recall hating Data in the show or for the first two movies (even though there's far too much of him in First Contact), but at some point someone had to step in and say that they'd gone to the well often enough with that character and moved onto someone else like Worf, or even Riker and his dumb beard (the one on his face, not Deanna), as Data is central to every movie story, and to me this became grating because he just isn't that visually distinctive or interesting as a character, a charge I feel holds out when you look at how often the movie plots recycled one of his stories from the tv show (emotion chip, evil double, missing memory, etc).

Picard is better than Kirk.

Obvious Troll is not even trying.