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Started by SmallBlueThing, 04 February, 2011, 12:40:44 PM

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TordelBack

Always listen to what Marc Maron has to say. Wise, and funny.

MacabreMagpie

Netflix's Apostle.

Wow! Was seriously impressed with this one, not a single way I can fault it. Looks gorgeous, superbly acted, keeps you interested over its two-hour run time and I almost wish it was a 4-6 episode mini-series or something as I feel like you could easily expand on a lot of it.

Not a lot on the horror front but there is one good and unexpected scare and another scene that I couldn't even watch, I had to hit the "skip forward" button a couple of times.

Well worth a watch.

Frank

Quote from: MacabreMagpie on 11 October, 2019, 07:35:22 AM
Netflix's Apostle

or, as all the cool kids are calling it ...


WELSH BONE TOMAHAWK


See also: The Wickermen Of Harlech. I was interested in this as overspill from the Dredd3D covfefe, it being directed by Gareth Evans, the Indonesian filmmaker with the Welshest name since Ivor Pitclosure (i)

Despite the Welsh setting, Evans retains the key creative collaborators from his Raid movies, which might explain the off-centre feel of the film. That's most apparent in fight scenes, where the established tone of naturalism suddenly gives way to genre stylisation.

One of the many documentaries on Texas Chainsaw features a filmmaker remembering the panic he felt when he realised the kids who made the movie he was watching didn't know the rules of cinema - which meant anything could happen.

That's how I felt here - you can't do that to X; they've been established as a goodie - and Stevens, in particular, suffers more indignities than agents commonly allow films to inflict on male leads. Stevens makes choices regarding mannerisms that are maybe brave (ii)

The Children Of The Corn mythology's (mostly) left unexplained, which is good, but taking the same approach to the physical infrastructure of the colony - the tunnel system underpinning it - makes for some odd transitions at first.

Those sudden transitions from one world to another reflect the nature of the film. One minute you're in a Victorian detective story, then suddenly you're watching From Usk Till Dawn (or Se7ern), which makes the storytelling feel a little uneven.

That jumble of ideas and narrative shunts (iii) mean The Apostle feels like a first film, although one that looks absolutely fantastic and is otherwise very well made. On that basis, I'm keen to see what Evans & Co do next and would recommend this to fans of the horror genre(s), but maybe not The Raid.


Netflix





(i) The Land Of His Fathers flung money at this - in the form of tax breaks, I assume - so Victorian Wales is a picture postcard and the valleys never more green. That and the casting of Stevens might see Netflix's algorithm pimp this to Downton fans, which would be a hoot.

(ii) in the Sir Humphrey sense

(iii) The music, too. The score's great, but the diagetic music is very much what Indonesian composers imagine Welsh Victorians might play - guitar-led variations on the zydeco or bluegrass they've heard in Westerns, rather than the popular ballads, folk or music hall and austere instrumentation Britons of that period suffered.

Apestrife

Prince of darkness by John Carpenter. Weird mix between scares and cheesy fun. Has a very intersting premise of the god in the bible perhaps not being the good god people are hoping for, but rather an anti god who grows stronger the more people pray to it.

Doesn't look like it had a very high budget, but Carpenter made impressive work with what he had. Some really amazing visuals. Has a dream like quality to it which reminds me a bit of Twin Peaks. Wouldn't surprise me if Lynch and Frost picked up a thing or two from it.

Not my favorite by Carpenter, but easy to recommend. Too interesting to pass up.

Mattofthespurs

Quote from: Apestrife on 13 October, 2019, 03:21:27 PM
Prince of darkness by John Carpenter. Weird mix between scares and cheesy fun. Has a very intersting premise of the god in the bible perhaps not being the good god people are hoping for, but rather an anti god who grows stronger the more people pray to it.

Doesn't look like it had a very high budget, but Carpenter made impressive work with what he had. Some really amazing visuals. Has a dream like quality to it which reminds me a bit of Twin Peaks. Wouldn't surprise me if Lynch and Frost picked up a thing or two from it.

Not my favorite by Carpenter, but easy to recommend. Too interesting to pass up.

Watched this in 4k UHD format just over a month ago.
I remember not liking this at all when I originally saw it in the cinema during it's original run but liked it a lot more this time round.

As you say, some cheesy fun.

broodblik

I watched the new Godzilla movie "Godzilla King of the Monsters" and if you like some brain dead do not think let's destroy everything paper-thin plot lines then this is the movie for you.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Keef Monkey

Quote from: Frank on 13 October, 2019, 12:26:02 PM
On that basis, I'm keen to see what Evans & Co do next and would recommend this to fans of the horror genre(s), but maybe not The Raid.

If you want to see an Evans (short) film that's more likely to appeal to both, you should check out his segment in V/H/S 2, Safe Haven. It also features a sinister cult, but it's him doing found footage horror with all the energy that he threw into The Raid and it's exhilaratingly bonkers. When I heard about Apostle I actually assumed it would be a fleshed out version of Safe Haven, but it turned out to be a really different film (which I also liked a lot).

Watched El Camino, the Breaking Bad movie that just came on Netflix and it's great. I was happy with the way the show ended so didn't have any real hunger for an epilogue going in, but as soon as it started I was so glad to be in the company of those characters again and loved it.

I had a similar 'not fussed/actually love it' feeling about Better Call Saul when it was announced, I couldn't see how that show was a good idea at all, and I now rate it higher than Breaking Bad personally. I should probably stop thinking I know what I want, because I'm almost always wrong.

Professor Bear

Quote from: broodblik on 14 October, 2019, 02:36:11 PM
I watched the new Godzilla movie "Godzilla King of the Monsters" and if you like some brain dead do not think let's destroy everything paper-thin plot lines then this is the movie for you.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is one of the most astute anti-American polemics I have seen in quite a while.
The entire film could have ended after the first half hour when Godzilla is about to kill King Ghidorah, who is literally decapitated as their natural cycle is coming to a close in the way it is supposed to, but then the US military decides to intervene and the result is that the whole thing ends up being a drawn-out mess in which cities are destroyed and an incredible number of people die.  The Americans are directly responsible for everything that happens after King Ghidorah escapes death because of their interference, including the wild weather that causes many American cities to become flooded.  They interfered in the sovereign affairs of a South American country, ended up allowing a genocidal monster to go on a rampage that costs countless lives, and set in motion a chain of events that destroys the environment, and all this is before you even start to unpack the human arcs like the blonde lady who gets radicalized by a terrorist and ends up joining him in attacking the US and its allies, how the Americans respond to this and every other turn of fortune with some variation of "welp that was a whole ten minutes ago and we gotta team up to fight the bigger monster now", or the environment being fixed with magic.

TordelBack

#13553
Who is Godzilla in this wonderful analogy?  Autochthonous elf-determination?

Professor Bear

Godzilla is nature itself righting its course in response to human climate change - and that's not even my spicy take, that's the explicit text of the film.  My take is that Godzilla is communism, if only because it would explain why the Americans can't stay out of his fucking business.

The Legendary Shark


No, no, no - Godzilla is cheese, the USA is ballbearings and Japan represents existential indifference.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




M.I.K.

You're thinking of Gorgonzola.

MacabreMagpie

Been sticking on various horror movies throughout the month, so haven't been too fussed about re-watching things. Decided to go with 'Cabin Fever' the other night, which I (still) haven't seen in about 15 years and discovered I was actually watching a remake. I remember so few specifics and it follows it so closely early on that I didn't notice until one of the characters referenced GTA5 and I thought "huh?!" and googled the movie.

Didn't get to the end. This is true of the original, but the way the female characters are treated is pretty gross; there only to titillate and suffer much more visceral and horrific deaths than the men.

MacabreMagpie

mother!

Wow. That was an intense viewing experience. I'm going to have that one rattling around my brain for a while.

On a purely technical level, they pulled off what must have been some very difficult scenes to shoot and Jennifer Lawrence was superb in it.

broodblik

Watched Aladdin but I must say I preferred the animation one
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.