Last movie watched...

Buttonman · 29 March, 2015, 01:07:24 PM

Netflix is great - I took out my sub in the US and pay only $7.99 which is about a fiver. If you have a Smart TV it's easy to manually input your DNS to another region to see their content instead of your own. Sites like This One are a great help for research!

Buttonman · 29 March, 2015, 05:57:44 PM

The Monster Club - I had fond memories of this, mostly from an adaptation in an old Hammer House of Horror Magazine. I bought the Blu-Ray in Amazons 5 for £25 deal and it was a mistake. Great cast including Vincent Price and Donald Pleasance but only the first of the three tales was worth the admission and the whole thing was padded out by some terrible BA Robertson songs performed in the titular club to a bunch of extras in terrible masks. I know I'm not overly selling this but if you want the Blu-Ray for a fiver post paid send me a PM!

Magnetica · 29 March, 2015, 08:44:59 PM

Watched Looper last night on BBC2.

The cityscape reminded me a bit of Blade Runner. The "helicopters", or what ever they were, reminded me of the robots gunships in Terminator and the plot, well that reminded me of Terminator as well.

Pretty good film over all.

Famous Mortimer · 30 March, 2015, 07:18:54 AM

Drive

The Mark Dacascos one, not the Ryan Gosling one. Despite it occasionally feeling more like an effects/fighting highlight reel than a movie, it's really good fun.

NapalmKev · 30 March, 2015, 08:35:16 AM

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 30 March, 2015, 07:18:54 AM
Drive

The Mark Dacascos one, not the Ryan Gosling one. Despite it occasionally feeling more like an effects/fighting highlight reel than a movie, it's really good fun.

Great film. I especially like the scene where he [spoiler]removes a pair of boots from one of the bad guy's and then beats them all soundly with them.[/spoiler] Mad stuff!

Cheers

Charlie boy · 30 March, 2015, 08:47:03 AM

Quite a few over recent days...

Skyfall
I remember being excited by the idea of this, what with it being a "real" director doing Bond. As has already been done with him a couple of times too many, it went with a Bond rogue!/Bond washed-up and pretty rubbish! angle. I was genuinely taken aback at just how boring this was. It never seemed to end and everything about it just seemed to drag on and on.

Fright Night
The remake. Like remakes of films you saw young and probably still enjoy a little too much because of it, this didn't seem anywhere near as fun for me and I ended up falling into the trap of thinking "Well this is stupid because that didn't happen in the original..." throughout most of it.
Maybe it does have things going in its favour and I'm being a tad harsh but I didn't take to any of the characters, which doesn't bode well for any film. Colin Farrell seemed to be enjoying himself, however.

Looper
A I'll see it when I get around to it film of mine which I finally got around to and enjoyed enough to think I'd look into the director's previous work. Can't remember his name however so, you know, to Google once I'm done here.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
I put it on last night thinking it would simply be a bad film to waste a couple of hours but a lot of it took to being an enjoyable kind of bad. I think I laughed at pretty much every scene of violence for it either being way over the top and with a good line in it or, at times, seeming to actually be a little nasty and appearing out of place with the rest of the film because of it. There's a line right at the end I liked about a witch not going to be able to have an open casket. I pretty much cheered at that one because of been on a bit of a GTA binge recently and similar is constantly being said when I'm being a dick. Am I recommending this film to you? No. I don't want to run the risk of you feeling I've stolen around two hours of your life.

Hawkmumbler · 30 March, 2015, 08:53:39 AM

Scanners (1980, dir. David Cronenberg): One of the many movies that raises Cronenberg as among my favorite directors. Though I first time around found the general lack of explosive heads misleading, I've grown to appreciate the need for that insane first act and then keeping it low key until the utterly delightfully gross last few moments. Wooden performances throughout from cast members Jennifer O'Neill, Steve Lack, and Patrick McGoohan are bearable thanks to the greasy yet fun to watch Braeden Keller as a corrupt CEO and Michael Ironside being.....Michael Ironside. Dude's fucking messed up. But it was never the acting in Cronenbergs movies that interested me, more the high concept sci-fi and outlandish gore effects granting them more merit than if they had been handled by anyone else.

Not a movie for everyone but a movie many should give a try. Which is more than can be said for...

The Deadly Spawn (1983 dir. Douglas McKeown): ...Is one of the schlock masterpieces of drive in cinema. Definitely not a film for everyone but damn fun if you want a laugh at ATROCIOUS acting contrasted against superb effects. No, really, this movie was produced on a humble $25,000 and yet the effects for the aliens and indeed for the gore are insane for a movie on that budget.

Buttonman · 30 March, 2015, 10:24:08 AM

**Steev** - Thanks for your email about The Monster Club - for some reason Hotmail isn't letting me reply. Please PM me on here - can't find you in the member's list. The extras are :

The extras are

Trailer
Isolated music score audio track (?)
Textless material and promo
Image gallery
Britt Ekland is in it

HdE · 30 March, 2015, 04:03:32 PM

I had a really manic weekend of working on stuff I didn't really want to (mostly dull, real life stuff and not comics, natch) so ended up staying up REALLY late to watch a blu ray I've had on my shelf for ages.

Said blu ray was Mardock Scramble: The First Compression, which is an hour long anime feature. And I like the Japanese pronunciation of it's title much more, so henceforth, it will be referred to a Marudukku Skuranuburru - except it won't, because that's a pain in the ass to type.

I went into it with some trepidation. For one thing, it wears its cyberpunk cred on its sleeve, and this is an easily over-egged genre. Additionally, the subject matter is the sort of stuff that could easily make for uncomfortable viewing (and indeed, it does, but not in the horrible, cheap sense that you might expect). Basically: child prostitute is murdered by one of her regular clients, then resurrected as a cyborg by other parties seeking to bring the guy to justice.

Sounds potentially horrible, yeah?

Actually, this is one of the best animated movies I've seen in a LONG while. YES, there's nastiness shot through the whole movie - especially in the gore-tastic shoot out at the end of the movie. But the story really has a superb grasp of its characters, who are the main hook for the whole thing. The lead character is actually paired with an AI who acts like a guardian of sorts, and takes the form of a glowing yellow mouse. Their interactions are - in contrast to everything else that's going on in the story - really very sweet, and elevate the movie a long way abovewhat I THOUGHT I was going to see.

It really reminded me of a decent William Gibson novel. Loses a few points for a dub that's filled with crappy performances from 2nd tier characters (the leads are all superb) and and ending that just isn't an ending in any sense - it literally just stops. But there are two more movies, and I'm definitely invested enough to go and watch them after this.

Highly recommended.

SmallBlueThing · 30 March, 2015, 06:43:27 PM

Hello Mr Buttons

Did I email you? I thought I'd sent a pm! Thank grud I've got it right this time and not replied publicly or something!

Yes, I'd love it.
Also I really enjoyed our last meeting and the night of passion we shared with big John Burdis and that Pete Wells. Though between you and me, Wellsy left me most unsatisfied due to his amateurish bedroom skills, and as for Burdis- I just wish he wouldn't insist on wearing those shorts and being called "Sergeant Major Sausage".

Anyway, I will PayPal you at the end of the week if that's okay.

Best of love,

Your "widdling winkie". Kiss kiss.

TordelBack · 30 March, 2015, 11:42:55 PM

None of this is news.

Mattofthespurs · 31 March, 2015, 09:26:22 AM

Next Goal Wins - Moving and very emotional documentary about the American Samoa football team who, in their entire history, had conceded 227 goals and never scored one. The doc follows the fortunes of their new dutch coach who takes on the task of trying to get them through their first 3 qualifying matches for the World Cup in Brazil. Superb film, even if you don't like football, because it's about people. The football is a side issue. Highly recommended.

Guardians of the Galaxy - Had this downloaded on my Sky box for a couple of weeks and finally got round to watching it yesterday evening. Jolly good fun with an awesome soundtrack which I bought immediately. Fun, fun, fun. Really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

radiator · 31 March, 2015, 02:38:52 PM

Going Clear, the HBO documentary about Scientology.

Turns out Scientology is a bit sinister, guys.

radiator · 31 March, 2015, 02:41:05 PM

I saw Next Goal Wins last year. I'm not a fan of football but it caught my interest for some reason. I liked it, but as with a lot of docs I felt that it was a little manipulative and a bit cavalier with the 'truth' in favour of crafting a narrative.

Mattofthespurs · 31 March, 2015, 04:04:17 PM

Quote from: radiator on 31 March, 2015, 02:41:05 PM
I saw Next Goal Wins last year. I'm not a fan of football but it caught my interest for some reason. I liked it, but as with a lot of docs I felt that it was a little manipulative and a bit cavalier with the 'truth' in favour of crafting a narrative.

Certain aspects of the film certainly have that feel.