Last movie watched...

[Eric Plumrose]

but nowhere near as depressing as Lars von Trier's new one, "Melancholia".  (The first half is a bit of a drag, but essential to set up the uber-depressing second half.  Even Jack Bauer can't save the day!)

See, I actually prefer 'Justine' to 'Claire'. Part Two loses its way for me once Jack bau's out. No idea if it was von Trier's intent but, as much as I adore someone with BPD accepting the end of the world better than those about her, 'Claire' does come across as accusing science of being smug and weak-willed.

[radiator]

Nowhere Boy was on last night so ended up watching that.

Really enjoyed it, and though I don't know enough about John Lennon to tell, I imagine that it's on the same level of historical accuracy as The King's Speech. Very cinematic rather than authentic, complete with predictable character arcs etc. Enjoyable nonetheless.

Good performance by Aaron Johnson, I liked his transition from cocky youngster to swaggering rock star (was Lennon really such an arrogant prick at that age?) but I thought the kid playing McCartney was very miscast - he looked about ten!

I remember this film being really hyped as the next big thing before it came out, but then pretty much sank like a stone on release. They did a really crap job marketing it IMO, the poster was dreadful and didn't really communicate what it was about at all.

[Professor Bear]

I finally saw the rebooted Star Trek this evening. I'm sure if I was a real Trekhead I could argue that it wasn't really Trek or somesuch but I'm not and I thought it was tremendous fun.

I'm a Trek fan of long standing and I enjoyed it because it did little that we haven't seen in Trek before, be it Phase 2's shaky-cam space battles or Enterprise's tendency towards fist fights on something huge and barmy (like the fight between Archer and the Galaxy Quest alien on a giant Doomsday weapon or the Archer/Robocop scrap on a flying mining rig/death ray complex).  The movies are always much more accessible, action-packed and prone to jokes than the tv show, the reboot no more or less so than usual, though I could have done without the forced slapstick.

[SpetsnaZ99]

Nowhere Boy - was Lennon really such an arrogant prick at that age?

I liked that film too. I read a book about him too and seems to me he was a knob all his life. didnt contact his son when he left his wife for yoko, no birthday pressies or anything.

[Robert Frazer]

I'm an embarrassingly huge fan of the manga Gunslinger Girl, so after finding a DVD in the bargain bucket I sat down to watch one of GSG's chief sources of inspiration, Leon: The Professional, which is memorable for introducing Natalie Portman as an adolescent assassin a good fifteen years before Chloe Moretz sassed into frame as Hit-Girl.

It's an interesting film, and one which develops in unexpected ways - while the tempo sometimes misses a beat and there are a few plot dimples, it's an effective piece and with Portman's precocious skill a successfully emotional one as well. Now I just have to lament frustratedly that due to studio bickering the follow-up Mathilda will never be produced...

[radiator]

Leon's an odd one - I thought it was amazing when it came out but imo it hasn't aged terribly well. The tone is all over the place, and the Director's Cut - the version I own - has some pretty dodgy stuff going on.

I still enjoy watching it, though - it really captures something of the time it was made in - the soundtrack and visuals are so 1990s.

[Mardroid]

I found Natalie Portman (I didn't even know it was her until a good while later) was great in Leon. I often find child actors annoying or bad (or both) but she played a great character.

[SmallBlueThing]

Insidious.

PG-13 horror that manages to be very, very, VERY scary, while at the same time being a remake of the Poltergeist series before turning into a partial remake of Nightmare On Elm Street 3, with Darth Maul in the Freddy role.

Craig Nelson lookielikey and his family lose a child in a house, ghosties come to get them, they move, ghosties follow. Maybe the house isnt haunted, but the child. Before you can say 'dont go into the light carole-anne' all manner of manifestations occur, youve jumped out of your seat several times, and Nightmare producer bob shaye's wife lyn has turned up in the zelda role.

Loses points for last third being ridiculous, gains points for being extremely frightening up to then.

Directed by the guy who made Saw- but it more closely resembles his Dead Silence; which like this is destined to be an underrated gem.

SBT

[Eric Plumrose]

RED STATE. Kevin Smith IN almost very good film SHOCK.

[SmallBlueThing]

The House By The Cemetery.

Classic Lucio Fulci ex-video nasty, given a lovely dvd release by cult box/ arrow video. Beautiful transfer, uncut as far as i can tell at first glance- and certainly more explicit than my vhs pirate copy, which can now be consigned to the bin.

House... is, for fulci, a fairly straightforward story (which i shan't ruin for anyone here), but is stuffed with typical unfathomable fulci-isms: why is the cleaning up of a massive blood smear never mentioned, despite it being done in front of a main character? Why does everyone walk about with echoing bangy footsteps? Who is the crying child who's sobs are heard throughout- is it freudstein's daughter, as the editing suggests, or freudstein himself, as inferred by the closing caption? Is the resolution a death, or time-travel? Does Bob *become* freudstein, with the ginger girl his wife? Or just what? Bloody what? Argh!

Anyway, extras include a docu on fulci, u.s and euro trailers, tv spots, and a deleted scene ('we were unable to locate the sound' says the intro- look in the euro trailer, fools, it's part of that!).

A few years ago it would have been inconceivable that i could legally sit down with my wife to watch this. It was judged 'likely to deprave or currupt' by the filth police. However, it's now legal, and can be revealed to have depraved and corrupted no one at all. And yet, despite this, our country still finds it appropriate to ban films. When will we learn?

SBT

[Spaceghost]

The House By The Cemetery.

Classic Lucio Fulci ex-video nasty, given a lovely dvd release by cult box/ arrow video. Beautiful transfer, uncut as far as i can tell at first glance- and certainly more explicit than my vhs pirate copy, which can now be consigned to the bin.

I remember borrowing a pirate video of this from a mate at school when I was about 12 and watching it with my brother when my parents were out.

We were bloody terrified! Especially the scene where [spoiler]Freudstein rips the dad's throat out in the cellar[/spoiler], I'd never seen anything so gory in my life. Gave me nightmares for years but I loved it.

[SmallBlueThing]

Yeah, the gore quotient is rather high, isn't it? And done so well, too. Oscar worthy, should they ever go mad and start awarding them thirty years after the fact to sequences designed to make the audience vomit.

Ive always loved the Italian splatter cycle, and time was when i knew them all inside out. However, the passing of years and their (let's be kind) 'dreamlike' narratives have rendered them a miasma of foggy misrememberances, and so i came to House... almost afresh.

There's much to love. I will admit that Italian horrors of this period have a peculiar style that doesnt sit well to modern eyes. It's not so much that they have dated (the climax here is as petrifying now as it was back then), but they were never overly competent in the first place- at least in comparison to slicker, Hollywood, features. It's the non-adherence to established film grammar, the cuts to silence in the middle of a musical flourish, the dubbing, the 'interesting' casting of character actors who have a face for radio, and the willingness to go sailing past any perceived limits of taste that render them odd and difficult to watch. Not to mention they are, at their heart, trying to be something they're not: american, and so give us a weird skewed glimpse of what italians in the 80s thought foreign audiences would like to see. I suppose, in that, there's a level of artifice that it's hard to get through.

House... is no exception, it drags in parts, has an incredible cast of bland, comely wenches and ugly men (the library helper is a stand-out, and deserves a subplot of his own- something about necro wanking, possibly) but when it explodes into violence, or creepiness, demonstrates fulci's mastery of those particular things. Much is baffling, but in a good way- the comedy eyes in the cellar are deeply troubling for instance; who's are they? Not freudstein's, he has none. And the childlike sobbing that accompanies him is horrible.

Im off to track down decent copies of The Beyond and City of the Living Dead now.

SBT

[chaingunchimp]

watched a few films while trying to get some work done last night.
I saw the devil (totally brilliant serial killer madness)
Hatchet 2 (not so good, but watchable i suppose, tony Todd is always good)
Simon Says (terrible Slasher rubbish)
and Silver Bullet (which I've seen a few times before but it's always enjoyable. not the best werewolf effects but Gary Busey's in it and the guy playing the priest is pretty good, kind of reminds me of the wonder years but with werewolves and gore,nice) 

[Greg M.]

The House By The Cemetery.

Classic Lucio Fulci ex-video nasty, given a lovely dvd release by cult box/ arrow video. Beautiful transfer, uncut as far as i can tell at first glance- and certainly more explicit than my vhs pirate copy, which can now be consigned to the bin.

I have the Region 1 version, though my first exposure to it was the crappy old Vipco R2 release. It's probably the classic Fulci film I have rewatched least ('City of the Living Dead' has rather inexplicably become my favourite, ousting long-time holder of the crown, 'The Beyond'.) The final section of 'House...' is definitely an absolute cracker though – I admire Fulci's stated desire to show you exactly what it would look like in the lair of the sort of monster that threatened our fervid childhood imaginations. (He and John Carpenter have a lot in common in this respect - 'In the Mouth of Madness' is virtually a tribute to Fulci, via Lovecraft.) Wonderfully haunting ending, though the idea of Bob becoming Freudstein never occurred to me... I saw it as a sort of temporal trap, like 'The Beyond'.

As I say, 'City...' seems to have become my favourite. It is unremittingly nasty and features the wonderful Giovanni Lombardo Radice. What more could you ask for? One of the things I love about Fulci is the way that plot effectively goes out the window - things are set up and never followed through, things happen that make no rational sense and don't connect to anything else - and it doesn't matter a bit. His command of atmosphere is second to none, and everything else is pretty much irrelevant.

[Eric Plumrose]

Im off to track down decent copies of The Beyond and City of the Living Dead now.

In that case, I'd recommend:

DvD Compare