Last movie watched...

[Professor Bear]

The Evil Dead (Have Eyes) lost me about four minutes in when it dropped all pretense and opted for someone in zombie makeup screaming obscenities at a gang of inbred hillbillies before getting their head blown off with a shotgun.  Also these are actual lines of subtle expositionary dialog from the same fifteen seconds of film:
"So this is the girl from your car shop."  "I'm a registered nurse."  "Teaching high school finally turned you into a bitter old coot."  "Of course I came, I'm your big brother."
The rest is just over-familiar tropes, and I say that as someone who doesn't even watch that many horror films these days, but it's also lacking in the manic energy of the originals, preferring industry-standard nastiness instead of inventive splatter, though we do get time taken to play soppy background music when a character's emo-shun-ul problems are being established, and we know they have emo-shun-al problems because they are wearing a dowdy skirt and drawing pictures in a notebook.
If you thought "well, at least the remake willl never do anything as disappointing as the Evil in the Woods first person camera monster turning out to be one of those gonk faces you moved with your fingers" you were also wrong to an almost hilarious degree - the film has as a central McGuffin that five souls must be collected for the most abominable demon of all to walk the Earth again (instead of just the Evil Dead doing what they do because they are Evil and Dead as described rather succinctly in the title of the film) but when The Abomination shows up it is literally the most unfrightening thing you will ever see, and then it is killed off in less than five minutes by a half-dead one-armed junkie.  There's also a "scary" moment when someone sees themselves in the mirror all demoned-up and rolling their tongue, but their stringy hair and bad skin just made me think of that old lady in Kingpin that Woody Harrelson has to shag (type "kingpin gif" into Google images and it will oblige you).
If you're going to go a different route than the film you're remaking, then I think you really need to have a core idea like "the Lovecraftian elements" or "people turning on each other" or something to act as a backbone for the various other elements of your own outing, but ED has gore gore gore as an end in itself in an attempt to gross you out, which is hard because you've seen things, daddio.  Over the years you've seen lots of gore and splatter in movies like that time in City of the Living Dead when that chick totally puked herself inside out, but ED relies on you not having seen much in order to surprise or shock you, which seems a pretty clear case of the film being made for teens who won't watch older films... which I suppose is fine.  Didn't do much for me, though.
I did like it when it rained blood and how a lot of the gore seemed to be physical effects rather than CGI, but that's about it, really.  Not the most terrible thing in the world, just not very inventive or scary.

[Recrewt]

ED relies on you not having seen much in order to surprise or shock you, which seems a pretty clear case of the film being made for teens who won't watch older films... which I suppose is fine.  Didn't do much for me, though.

^This.  I realised after a while that a lot of these remakes are basically that, aimed at today's teens to go and get shocked at so I no longer bother complaining how poor they often compare to the original.  Plus I guess its always easier to look back on the good stuff, so you remember the better films from the 80s and forget the large amount of rubbish ones that also came out then. 

Does always make me wonder why they bother with the 'remake' though - haunted house in the woods is not that novel a concept so why not just create a new movie with that setup.  I guess the remake gets some of us old 'uns in the cinema too but does it really generate that much more?

[Keef Monkey]

ED relies on you not having seen much in order to surprise or shock you, which seems a pretty clear case of the film being made for teens who won't watch older films... which I suppose is fine.  Didn't do much for me, though.

^This.  I realised after a while that a lot of these remakes are basically that, aimed at today's teens to go and get shocked at so I no longer bother complaining how poor they often compare to the original.  Plus I guess its always easier to look back on the good stuff, so you remember the better films from the 80s and forget the large amount of rubbish ones that also came out then. 

Does always make me wonder why they bother with the 'remake' though - haunted house in the woods is not that novel a concept so why not just create a new movie with that setup.  I guess the remake gets some of us old 'uns in the cinema too but does it really generate that much more?

I think it's down to brand awareness. A younger generation might not watch older movies, but titles like Nightmare On Elm Street or Texas Chainsaw Massacre will resonate with them, they'll have heard those movies mentioned so it will generate a bit more interest. You'd hope it would generate more interest in the originals rather than getting them in to see the shitty remakes but nope.

Just read that the same company who did the awful remake of Day Of The Dead are about to remake...Day Of The Dead. Again.

[Sideshow Bob]

Just read that the same company who did the awful remake of Day Of The Dead are about to remake...Day Of The Dead. Again.

Why on earth would they want to do this ????
Another remake of a poor remake ???....FFS !!

[Recrewt]

Ahhh Day of the Dead.  After saying I don't complain about these 'remakes', this one is particularly annoying!

The thing is, its not really a remake is it?  There is very little similarity between this and the Romero classic.  Perhaps this is why they have decided to have another go - one of the execs accidently caught the original at the weekend and realised their mistake! 

[radiator]

I watched my recently purchased Silence of the Lambs Blu Ray on Saturday night.

Haven't seen it in probably 10+ years, but it holds up astoundingly well - an almost perfect film, and incredibly influential. Funny that so much of the attention around the film goes to Hopkin's Lecter, but it's a movie full of great performances. Buffalo Bill is a far more credible and terrifying creation imo.

[Professor Bear]

Fallout: The Red Star - a fan movie based in the retro-futurist post-apocalyptic America of the Fallout videogame series.  I love Fallout, me, but the worst thing about this is the forced references to it that take you out of the fiction, like the bottlecap stuff and the Super Mutant who looks like the Lou Ferrigno version of the Hulk.  Clumsy staging aside - it is a fan movie after all - it's a decent riff on a couple of post-apocalyptic western tropes (as befitting the central protagonist being from the western-inspired New Vegas) and is free to view on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np531fzqWAY

Sharktopus - more like SHITEOPUS.  I probably watched it too close to Fallout: Red Star, but the difference in quality despite this costing a million dollars more to make and being made by actual professionals and Eric Roberts is quite astonishing.  I read an article recently where the founder of Asylum admitted that it didn't actually matter if no-one ever watched their films because they're produced-to-order based on the demands of retailers, tv channels, or even streaming websites, so all they need is a title, a poster, and that there be a film based on both so that their clients can build up their stock of movies on shelves or playlists - they sell the idea that the product exists more than they sell an actual film, and this is in keeping with the tradition of the b-reel feature being cheap and usually crap and no-one really cares what the film is like as long as the venue is shifting popcorn and soda.  All the same, when actors were holding up prop guns so the tips of the barrels were offscreen and then shaking them like they were shooting, that was when you could tell this is a film with no creative agency or vision.  I could do without the lingering shots of half-naked women shortly before they're torn to peices, too, because there's a lot of that going on - I don't mind exploitation, but I do worry when people try to make violent death look sexy over and over and over again.
Sharktopus is a film that exists.  You need to know no more than that, and that's coming from both the guys who made it and the guy who watched it.

[Goaty]

As many of you recommend Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I just got first season DVD for £3, and the opening scene looks promise, nice to see Lena there!

[Buttonman]

Summer Glau is the best bit of Sarah Connor!

I've busied myself with shitey Dudley Moore comedy Wholly Moses and then some will he, won't he life support action in The Switch.

[JamesC]

Nic Cage slash 'em up Season Of The Witch.

I really enjoyed it - a fun romp. Nic Cage and Ron Pearlman looked like they were having a good time and [spoiler]the Demon[/spoiler] at the end looked really cool - not over-designed as they often are in this type of thing.

[Link Prime]

Fallout: The Red Star - a fan movie based in the retro-futurist post-apocalyptic America of the Fallout videogame series. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np531fzqWAY

Love Fallout too.
Will be watchin this later...

[jossy99]

This is the end

great and hilarious movie

[Professor Bear]

Warm Bodies - the inevitable rom-com spin on zombies*, this is alright if you don't mind the morphic resonance McGuffin and the fact it kind of falls apart in the third act a bit to give a happy ending instead of the usual "wah wah life is pain 4evah" credo typical of a genre supported over the decades by 13 year old goths until it went mainstream because we'd run out of other things to run into the ground.
Like I say, it's two-thirds good, but after this and Last of Us, I think I'm ruined on zombie stories and when I watch the next season of Walking Dead or whatever I'll probably be viewing it the same way SG1 fans viewed Stargate Universe and be like "this would be great 15-20 years ago but man is it tired right now."

*If you ignore Zombieland.  And most did.

[sheldipez]

*If you ignore Zombieland.  And most did.

In which way? It was a big hit for Sony and the most successful mainstream zombie movie up until that point.

[Hawkmumbler]

*If you ignore Zombieland.  And most did.

In which way? It was a big hit for Sony and the most successful mainstream zombie movie up until that point.

I think he ment in a romcom sense. It was a comedy with romance (satirical) eliments, unlike WB which was an open and frank romcom.