Last movie watched...

[Keef Monkey]

The Invisible Man, thought it was brilliant, really knocked my socks off and was very pleasantly surprised that it's not the fast cut jump scares of a lot of more mainstream US horror.

Instead it's a film of genuinely well crafted and deliberately paced suspense and tension, and I was properly bricking it throughout. Obviously as with all great horror there's the welcome extra layer of allegory for living with and dealing with the trauma of a past abusive relationship and it works brilliantly on that level, but even without that reading it still works great as a creepy as hell and nerve-shreddingly tense horror film. Obviously horror is different for everyone and some might not find it scary at all but I was really, really impressed with it and wanted to applaud some of the craft on display.

[Rately]

The Invisible Man, thought it was brilliant, really knocked my socks off and was very pleasantly surprised that it's not the fast cut jump scares of a lot of more mainstream US horror.

Instead it's a film of genuinely well crafted and deliberately paced suspense and tension, and I was properly bricking it throughout. Obviously as with all great horror there's the welcome extra layer of allegory for living with and dealing with the trauma of a past abusive relationship and it works brilliantly on that level, but even without that reading it still works great as a creepy as hell and nerve-shreddingly tense horror film. Obviously horror is different for everyone and some might not find it scary at all but I was really, really impressed with it and wanted to applaud some of the craft on display.

Good to hear.

I really enjoyed Leigh Whannell's Upgrade. So looking forward to seeing this, and seeing what he does with the idea of an Invisible Man in a surveillance society.

[MacabreMagpie]

Just some brief thoughts on movies I've seen in the last few weeks.

Parasite - Difficult to keep your expectations in check when seeing this one and it did feel a bit long to me but, otherwise, it is very good.

The Invisible Man - it was OK, I'd say avoid the trailer if you do go and see it because I had pretty much pieced together the entire story from that. It does manage one or two unexpected twists though so I'll give it that, plus Moss is always great.

The Lighthouse - Not much to say that hasn't already been said. Effectively unsettling.

[Keef Monkey]

Good to hear.

I really enjoyed Leigh Whannell's Upgrade. So looking forward to seeing this, and seeing what he does with the idea of an Invisible Man in a surveillance society.

I like the look of Upgrade a lot and keep hearing great things, it's one of those movies I'm constantly on the lookout for popping up on one of my streaming services. I should really just bite the bullet and pay for the thing.

[Rately]

Good to hear.

I really enjoyed Leigh Whannell's Upgrade. So looking forward to seeing this, and seeing what he does with the idea of an Invisible Man in a surveillance society.

I like the look of Upgrade a lot and keep hearing great things, it's one of those movies I'm constantly on the lookout for popping up on one of my streaming services. I should really just bite the bullet and pay for the thing.

Great movie, and I'm surprised it isn't more well known.

Has a great soundtrack, and some lovely action set pieces and performances.

[wedgeski]

Walking to the cinema I've been listening to the soundtrack of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. (Sorry, couldn't find the 'film soundtrack' thread!) I haven't considered it so closely before, but it is a work of thematic genius!

Without a shadow of a doubt James Horner's best work. From the overtures to the ambients to the Reliant/Enterprise combat music, a work of real talent. Some of his other work gets rightly criticised but I have no doubt of his brilliance between this and STIII.

[Greg M.]

It's good, but it's not Krull.

[radiator]

Onward.

Didn't do much for me, honestly. I was really quite bored throughout.

Overall it seemed really lacking Pixar's usual stamp of quality and level of polish - I found the character design and plotting especially weak. The central concept is a clever one and seems like it would be rich in terms of ideas to explore, but the execution is quite half-baked and the 'quest' plot seemed really perfunctory and lacking in imagination.

There are occasional flashes of visual invention but overall it feels like a concept and story that needed a lot more time in the oven. Definitely lower tier Pixar, wouldn't recommend.

[repoman]

Pontypool

Was alright.  Bit limited by the setting but pretty good. 

I really liked the film that the same writer went on to do.  It was called Ejecta and it was a pretty effective alien horror film.

[Professor Bear]

The Stranglers Of Bombay is based on the British military's (apparently apocryphal) uncovering of the Thugee cult in 19th century India, and is surprisingly brutal even for a monochrome Hammer offering.  Highly enjoyable camp.

War of the Worlds: Goliath - animated steampunk sequel to the HG Wells novel.  Surprisingly enjoyable given the clearly limited animation budget and raft of z-list stars doing the voices, though I wish they'd leaned a bit more into the knowingly-outrageous jingoism that sees a ripped AF Teddy Roosevelt toting a machine gun atop a stampeding tripod vowing to send the Martians back to Hell.  If you liked the Starship Troopers 'toons and don't mind retro-futurism and downgrading to cel animation, you'll probably like this.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Shiteburn. Sorry, Brightburn.

"Evil Superman" is not a film. It's barely a pitch. This effort was so dependent on knowing the Superman story that it became the movie equivalanet of a comic board thread post.

[Tiplodocus]

Snowpiercer

Knew nothing about this going in and thought it had a terrible name. The info on the Film4 preview just sounded so bad and silly... and yet something about the trailer caught my attention. And I'm so glad it did. Just wonderful, wonderful stuff.

Its like Wes Anderson did a dystopian action movie... well one that doesn't involve cool animated dogs anyway... its off centre tone just worked so well to give you the sense of other and make a film that on any real level made no sense make complete sense. I was pulled in, belief suspended and just relished the ideas, humour, violence and madness as if the whole thing made perfect sense. Just brilliant.

Watched this on Amazon in preparation for seeing Parasite and really enjoyed it.

There's a momentum to it that drags you in and like the best train journeys (Or lives) it has a little bit of everything. At times it feels like Wizard of Oz. At times it feels like Fury Road. I particularly liked the reveal about sacrifice near the end and the very violent but not excessively gory action.

Chris Evans was great, but so is everybody, and Colin's point above about how it makes no sense and perfect sense at the same time is spot on. That's the power of metaphor for you.

[Mardroid]

Shiteburn. Sorry, Brightburn.

"Evil Superman" is not a film. It's barely a pitch. This effort was so dependent on knowing the Superman story that it became the movie equivalanet of a comic board thread post.

I enjoyed it, and found it a rather effective and genuinely unsettling horror story. Sure, it plays with Superman's toys, but that's kind of the point.

[Keef Monkey]

Was at Glasgow Frightfest over the weekend so saw a load of movies, and very nearly all of them were enjoyable to some degree so can't complain.

Saint Maud was probably the best thing there and is going to make The Witch/Hereditary/Midsommar style waves when it comes out I reckon because it's really that good. The writer/director did a Q&A and apparently it's her first feature which is amazing (the composer had never scored a film either and the music is fantastic).

Lots of other cool stuff though, I'd already posted tiny reviews on Facebook so I'll stick them here -

GREAT STUFF:
SYNCHRONIC - cool sci-fi timey wimeyness from the makers of The Endless that I really, really liked
A GHOST WAITS - really touching and funny ghosty romance
ZOMBIE FOR SALE - brilliant, warm and hilarious zombie comedy, loved it loved it loved it!
SAINT MAUD - blown away, probably the best film of the weekend, really intense and powerful and just...wow. Probably going to hit big when it comes out, it's pretty incredible
VFW - really fun splattery early Carpenter homage with an amazing cast and good synthy score. Action was pretty unreadable a lot of the time - really shakey fast cutty and dark and murky - but the whole energy of the thing and the ensemble badass performances made that very easy to forgive. Other than that loved it and will watch again for sure

GOOD STUFF:
DEATH OF A VLOGGER - decent cheap DIY spooker that gets by on the charm of its lo-fi format and some surprisingly good scares!
THE CLEANSING HOUR - fun trashy internet exorcism movie with some decent ideas and a great baddie
IN THE QUARRY - really grim slow burner that you know is heading towards nasty tragedy so feels horribly tense
SEA FEVER - good 'infected on a boat' stuff, which you've seen before on in space or arctic research bases, but the boat gave it a cool vibe
THE MORTUARY COLLECTION - a really fun and funny Creepshow homage that nails the format and has great wraparound stuff
BUTT BOY - a guy puts things and sometimes people up his bum to a cool Feathers soundtrack. Opinions on whether this is a thing that should exist may vary, but I give it a big brown thumbs up while also acknowledging that it might have been better suited to a 15minute Tim & Eric short or something
A NIGHT OF HORROR: NIGHTMARE RADIO - another anthology but not as successful as Mortuary Collection because it feels way less authored and more obviously some disparate shorts cobbled together. There was a really short Spanish segment and apparently the projector wasn't set up to handle the subtitles so those were missing - that would have been fine but right before the end of the segment they fussed around trying to sort it which meant stopping the film and having a chunk of stoppage time to reboot it (just in time for the segment to finish) - was a really heavy handed reaction I felt and it killed any atmosphere or momentum the film had unfortunately

HONKERS:
ANDERSON FALLS - the only objectively bad film I reckon. Love Shawn Ashmore so was really looking forward to this and he did his best but the writing was just wonky as hell throughout and unintentionally funny in its tin-eared clunkiness, really disappointing and because of a technical problem closed Saturday instead of opened it so ended the fest on a bit of a wet squelcher

[Tiplodocus]

PARASITE? More like PARASHITE.





Nah, that was excellent stuff. So much to unpack.