Last movie watched...

[Link Prime]

Both V/H/S was great, and there is third film V/H/S Viral, as Parallel segment was the best

I agree, the Parallel Monsters story segment was absolutely brilliant.
Written & directed by Nacho Vigalondo, who also made the sublime Timecrimes (probably the best time travel film ever committed to celluloid).

It was great seeing Vigalondo appear briefly on Future Shock proclaiming his love of 2000AD and how it  has influenced him.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Pixels

I say watched...but it's more like I was there, and it was too.  Utter drivel.  Words cannot express just how awful it was.  I was on the ferry from Belfast back to Scotland, and it was on....there wasn't anything else to do...so I thought, ok....go for it.  I was actually offended by it's dumb-assery.  I even felt offended when some guy a couple seats away laughed at one point.  I should stress.....it was only at ONE point.  I heard no laughter at any other point, not even from the kids watching it. Seemed like the cast pretty much phoned in the job for a paycheck, and it showed heavily in their 'performances'.  Not just a dumb idea for a movie, but a really poorly executed dumb idea for a movie.

[Ghastly McNasty]

Daddy's Home with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. I told the wife how it would finish up and I was exactly right. Couple of laughs though.

Tried watching this on Sunday but both me and wife fell asleep. Couple of laughs was literally all it had.

[Keef Monkey]

We went to see Hail Caesar last night and very much enjoyed it. Lots of chuckles and a few belly laughs (one moment broke me for about 5 minutes). A nice, fun film, and felt like classic Coens.

[I, Cosh]

I think I'll have to mark Ben Wheatley down as someone whose films always sound interesting but do nothing for me. Finally got round to watching A Field in England last night and thought it had exactly the same problems as Kill List. No interest in a conventional plot or narrative - something I have zero problem with, in itself - but too besotted with the idea of being self-consciously weird and culty to actually work as an interesting mood or tone piece.

Basically, some lads talk shit, take mushies, act out in microcosm some of the arguments behind the Civil War related to the nature of authority and the rights of one person to compel another to do something (I'm sort of making this part up in retrospect but I had to ascribe some purpose to it) then it all ends in a load of flashing splitscreen and mirrored images straight out of The Orb's Patterns and Textures video which we used to religiously put on when we got home at 2 in the morning.

There are some decent images in it and a pleasant soundtrack but mostly it's a load of tedious old horseshit not helped by the fact that, in the ever-popular "boggle-eyed loon psychologically and physically dominating a group of more sensible but weaker-willed people" stakes, Tyres from out of Spaced really isn't in the same league as Klaus Kinski or Mads Mikkelsen.

[Apestrife]

I just finished Predestination. A guy at work said it was great, a time travel movie with quite a time paradox twist. Hinting towards clever.

I accidently called the twist fairly early on, for jokes. And then after the film was finished I sat like this



While certainly well made (especially considering the low budget) but as for the story, I felt like I'd seen a Looper written like Donnie Darko by Karl Pilkington.

That said. I quite enjoyed it. Not often I get to see a film as strange as this one. Also impressing that they went for it, and got it made.

[The Legendary Shark]

Mr Holmes. A lovely film about a great and logical man approaching the end of his life and still solving mysteries. His struggle with the mysteries of human emotion, even after all this time, is particularly moving and the film avoids sinking in sugar quite deftly. Sir Ian is, as ever, magnificent. Recommended, definitely.
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The Program. They've managed to make a film about professional cycling that isn't boring, which is an achievement in itself. I did not want to watch this but I'm glad I did.

[Keef Monkey]

Squeezed in a couple this weekend - High Rise and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Both really enjoyable (and very different)! High Rise I found a little messy in its set-up but really interesting and surreal and odd and intriguing and funny and disturbing and...it's a lot of things. My only problem with it (and it's not a big one) is that I don't think it spends enough time letting you settle into the building before it all starts falling apart. I didn't feel like I got to see the social hierarchy while it's 'working' or that I got to see a normal day properly in the building before the collapse, because it all goes to hell so fast that I didn't really get a lot of the relationships. May have just been me, Bea had read the book and did say that a lot of the set-up wasn't as fleshed out in the movie as it could have been.

Other than that I really liked it, Mansell's score is great, it's visually pretty mesmerizing and it's got a weird woozy dreamlike (or nightmare-like) atmosphere that's quite reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. It also reminded me of DREDD very often (there are moments that are basically Peach Trees), which is never a bad thing.

10 Cloverfield Lane was another interesting one, I loved a lot about it and some of it not so much. I can't help but think that slapping Cloverfield on it does it a disservice, it's a very good, very tense and claustrophobic psychological thriller in its own right, and that brand heaps on a fair bit of baggage and expectation. It's definitely one to see before  anyone blurts any spoilers at you, because the nature (or existence of) the threat is one of the sources of tension. For my money (spoilers ahead) [spoiler]I didn't particularly like the resolution and the answers to those questions. It felt a bit tacked on and rushed, and didn't live up to the tense drama that the film had been up to that point. If it had been a quick 'holy shit' reveal it might have worked better for me, or (even better) if they'd managed to keep an ambiguity about it I probably would have love that. As it is, for me it's a really very good film until the last few minutes where I found I wasn't really on board. Everyone will react differently to it though I guess, and I can't say it spoils the film for me, it just left me pretty cold after being so gripped by what came before it.[/spoiler]

So aye, essentially I really really liked it overall.

[TordelBack]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Well that was darned good! I managed to remain relatively unspoiled, despite having seen two direct sequels, and really enjoyed it.  Whichever one of the Chrises this is (I lost track several movies ago) is still great as Cap, and I can't help but root for such a resolutely good guy. I loved the implication that his real superpower is that people believe in him. Thrilled to see [spoiler]the great Toby Jones return as a 70's Nazi supercomputer -[/spoiler] what a turn. Conversely thought seeing [spoiler]Peggy with memory problem was a kick in the goolies -[/spoiler] very well done, but a big downer.

My only real niggle was the hand-waving re: Falcon, whose tech and skills just seem too good to be true, [spoiler]given that he's just an ordinary bloke using US military flight gear, an yet is able to evade Shield's ultra-doom weaponry with ease.[/spoiler] That said, loved his moves, and thought Anthony Mackie was charming in the role, something I hadn't picked up on in his Ant-Man cameo.

Very impressed that Black Widow took her hair-straighteners on the run, now that's a super spy.

[Satanist]

Tales of Halloween - 10 (very slight) stories in 1 film loosely connected as happening in a small town at Halloween. Directed by a lot of folk I've never heard of and Neil Marshall. Cameos from Adrienne Barbeau, John Landis and Joe Dante are fun. Some of the stories work better than others but it didn't outstay its welcome and when it worked it worked well.

Highlights are the story where two kidnappers unwittingly kidnap a small demon, Friday the 31st segment  and Neil Marshalls story about a killer pumpkin.

[Hawkmumbler]

Had a small post apocalyptic marathon yesterday afternoon with some friends and beer, it was bloody glorious.

Kicked it off with Escape from New York, which as utterly ridiculous and often unintentiounaly hilarious as it is is still one of the best action films of the 80's. Kurt Russell is like a more up market Chuck Norris, whit actually having some degree of acting chops (not on display here) and not being a xenophobic prick.

Followed it up with, you guessed it, Dredd. Still a chuffingly fantastic movie and just perfect on screen Judge Dredd. Can't believe it was nearly 4 years ago it was in theatres. Madness. What struck me this time however, was the very real sense of expanded worldly-ness (not a word, I know). Maybe these movieverse megazine stories are actually working in hindsight and actually give me a greater appreciation for the movie.

Next up was Waterworld, which is an utterly incopetant mess but a pretty, visualy interesting mess of a movie which if done right could actually have been a classic of the era but sadly a hollow plot, dreary acting, a sluggish by the numbers plot and some truly unremarkable twists just add up to another overblown box office turkey trying to cash in on Mad Max.

Speaking of which, final movie of ghe tables was Fury Road which truly is the movie thatkeeps on giving. It's just such an adrenaline fueled joy ride of a movie, so much going on with such a simple premise. So many fascinating characters and such visually stunning cinematography. It really is just a borderline perfect movie, you couldn't improve it anymore IMHO.

[Colin Zeal]

The Streetfighter film was on the telly last night and I decided to watch it to see if it was as bad as I remember. The film is pretty poor, but my word Raul Julia is fantastic throughout as M Bison. He appears to be having huge fun in the role and makes a fairly ridiculous character that bit more believable.

[TordelBack]

The Streetfighter film was on the telly last night and I decided to watch it to see if it was as bad as I remember. The film is pretty poor, but my word Raul Julia is fantastic throughout as M Bison. He appears to be having huge fun in the role and makes a fairly ridiculous character that bit more believable.

It's a tribute to the great man that even while dying he almost saved that terrible movie singlehanded.

[Hawkmumbler]

Their have been a slew of Street Fighter movies, both live action and animated, before and since the most famous JCVD helmed outing and all are simultainiusly superior and inferior to it. Superior in that they are all just over all better made movies, inferior because theirs only one Raul Julia.

[Professor Bear]

My gran passed away while I was watching Street Fighter so it's ruined forever for me, but that's no reason for anyone else not to watch and enjoy it for the glorious car crash that it is.  "For me... it was Tuesday."

Star Trek: Horizon - a not-great Star Trek outing, but a commendable achievement in terms of fan-movies.  Set during the period when Enterprise would probably have been really good if it had continued on its upward quality trajectory and not been cancelled because all of its inherited goodwill had been squandered on a first season dedicated to treading water, it follows the exploits of the crew of the Discovery as they take on a Romulan super-weapon, though it feels like the script could really have used a pass or two under the nose of a decent editor who'd maybe have cleared up why it feels like you've walked in halfway through another story.  The acting isn't great, the dialogue is occasionally painful, the fx can sometimes be glaringly fake, and I'm pretty sure some of the plot elements it touches upon (like the temporal cold war) were not only resolved but wiped from canon to boot, but these niggles are possible to observe because the rest of it is pretty solid.  It's not theatrical-release quality, and the blurry cgi backgrounds might cause the odd viewer a migraine, but otherwise, a decent enough way to pass 90-odd minutes.