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

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Albion

Another kids film for us......Legend of the Guardians.

I was expecting to hate this computer animated tale of owl armies battling each other but to my surprise I liked it. It was like Star Wars and Lord of the rings....with owls.
Dumb all over, a little ugly on the side.

Tiplodocus

KARATE KID with Jackie Chan.

I actually enjoyed this despite the annoying little Will Smith clone running around. A bit too mushy; it should have just stuck to bullies plus kung fu and lost the love interest for the 12 year old leads.

Needless to say that when Chan struts his stuff it is a great scene but it is only ONE scene.  I could also have done with him slapping down the bad sensei even though I guess the point was that he doesn't do Kung Fu to fight.

Oh and the routine with the jacket and it's pay off is inspired.


(Modified to spell Jackie Chan correctly. Jakie Chan would be in an entirely different (but also entertaining movie - The Buckfast Boy)
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Hawkmumbler

I'm a die hard fan of the original so I was a bit hesitant about the remake with Chan. But to my surprise I found it stood by itself as a decent movie. Sadly I can concern that we do live in a world where twelve year olds take there relationships to seriously, but putting that aside it was a dream come the Jackie having a bunch of scummy bullies hit each other. XD Classic Chan.

SmallBlueThing

Hatchet.

What we have here is a man who wishes they still made Friday the 13th films like they used to, teaming up with Kane Hodder- a man who has in the past demonstrated a worrying degree of paternal demand about the character of Jason Voorhees (a character he played multiple times on screen, but notably not in the good ones) and together making what's basically an alt.world F13, where Jason looks as good as he did at the end of part one/ part two (sans bag on head) and goes through the motions of offing the cast in ways the original movies couldnt do.

A decade is a long time in practical effects, and here Hodder gets to wallow in some oldskool non-cgi slaughter, and is clearly having a whale of a time in his full bodysuit of hilarious Joseph Merrick-inspired prosthetics.

It's set on the bayou, and the swamp is as good a location as any if you're trying to recall Camp Crystal Lake and at the same time be a thousand miles away.

Hodder plays Victor Crowley- who is Jason (no more needs to be said) and also Crowley's dad in flashback, which must have pleased him no end. Robert England (Freddy) has a brief cameo at the start, and Tony Todd (Candyman/ Final Destination) pops his head out of a door and mugs for the camera a bit.

Quite a lot of tits are shown, the cast do their best to highlight the script's direct referencing of various Friday movies (I got seven laughs out of this, but my days of being a True Fan are well past), and there's some quality grue. However it's all a bit lighthearted and knowing for my taste, and while it never succumbs too much to parody, it does get close on occasion. If they'd've stuck a mask on Victor, it would have been a far better F13 movie than the boring remake, and i'll be picking up Hatchet 2 this week.

It only cost me £3 from HMV too. Worth it for the special features and the lengths the director went to indulge Hodder when filming. I have noticed the sequel shares the same writer/director, which automatically loses it points as a Friday homage.

SBT
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Professor Bear

Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 11 September, 2011, 10:28:41 PMbut notably not in the good ones

Gonna ask what F13s you rate, as I'm wondering if I'm the only one reckoned Freddy/Jason was a bag of shit.

Hawkmumbler

I would take Fredy vs. Jason over the F13 remake anyday.

SmallBlueThing

Well, that's the question isnt it. When i was 14/15 and had just discovered a nearby newsagent that sold Fangoria, the F13 movies were obviously very important to me. No one ever claimed they were 'good films', but to be honest, being 'good' isnt what they're about. You have to be of a certain mindset to even tolerate them, and even now a damn good way to get chucked out of my house is to sneer at my dvd collection and say 'neuh, you have friday the thirteenth films but i dont see goodfellas/ the godfather/ lord of the rings/ whatever.'

Some are better than others. The original is as close as they came to actually frightening, but time hasnt been kind and it now seems very second-rate. Part 2 is a quickie cash-in with much of what made the first so entertaining taken out. Part 3 is probably the leanest, most oiled-up and ready to rock of them all. Even 'flat', the 3D is hilariously effective and its still the benchmark by which i judge 3D movies. Part 4 is notable because they killed jason off (ha ha) and for the still censored in the uk climactic slide down a machete.

Part 5 tries to be funny, but isnt (not a criticism, none of them are) and does at least try something different within its narrow remit, but only inasmuch as it jettisons the one character people were willing to pay to see.

Jason Lives! is my favourite, and is still the one i watch most- entirely due to its marvellous pre-credits sequence, where it gets all postmodern and sets Jase up as a hero in the mysogenistic Bond mode. Audacious use of a grave, too, as he was 'cremated'- or so we were told last time. Jason Lives! is largely rubbish in all other respects however, but C J Graham's Jason is probably my favourite.

Then it all goes wrong for a while, Part 7 is a mess, adding psychic powers to the mix and giving Jason a typically dreadful John Carl Buechler makeup job. He directs as well, and it's not pretty.

Part 8 (takes manhattan/ does dallas/ on the love boat/ goes to vancouver) is very boring for much of its length, and is (cont)
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SmallBlueThing

(cont) notable only in my house because my wife is apparently in it, but in eleven years of knowing her, we've never checked.

Jason Goes To Hell again plays with the form, trying to be an entirely different movie with Jason possessing people. It doesnt work at all, and its offputting so far into a franchise to change the rules so badly and with little thought. Jason X is massively fun, but is hamstrung by the 'new' Jason and an 80s Dr Who aesthetic. Which brings us to Freddy Vs Jason- a movie that should tick lots of boxes, but misses every one, winking at the audience all the way and never once considering that what they were making was effectively 'scarface vs bob monkhouse'. Freddy had become a cuddly, bumbling gagster by this point, and jason was still an unstoppable killing machine. It was never going to work. And the remake is, as ive said, just boring.

None of them are 'good'. Of the lot, the remake is the most competent and stylish, but it fails dismally because the maniac in the woods ceased to be scary once blair witch showed how it should be done. If they'd've taken that approach, we may have had a genuinely terrifying film. As it is, Jason was shown to be an anachronism; a reminder of more innocent days when we were scared of being away from our parents and home comforts, and people who were 'different' were threatening.

SBT
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Colin Zeal

It's been a long time since I last saw it, but doesn't Jason Takes Manhattan end with him being covered in toxic waste and being somehow changed back into a little boy? How did they get round that in the next film or did they just not bother?

SmallBlueThing

They just didnt bother. I suppose you could argue that many of the Fridays exist in parallel universes- certainly post part four, or five. (six where he wasnt cremated, seven where psychic powers exist, nine where he didnt get turned back into a child, jason x where he didnt go to hell, fvsj where dream demons are real, and the remake where none of the others happened), but you'd have to be mad to do so.

SBT
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Spaceghost

I used to absolutely LOVE the Friday the 13th films. To the extent where I drew my own comic book adaption of Jason Lives. (I only got as far as doing a 4 page comic based on the intro). I've seen all of them and went to the cinema to see Freddy vs Jason, just for old times sake. I enjoyed it on a nostalgic level I suppose but it didn't make me want to see any more.

I haven't seen any of them for a while but the last time I watched one (Part 3, in 3D on Channel 4), I found it very boring.

Just like He-Man, Transformers and Findus crispy pancakes, the Friday the 13th films are an 80's phenomenon that I've simply grown out of. 
Raised in the wild by sarcastic wolves.

Previously known as L*e B*tes. Sshhh, going undercover...

SmallBlueThing

I agree entirely, and i find them a chore to watch beyond a gleeful 'fastforwarding to the effects' evening of gore. That said, in principle i love them intensely, and would happily see the series continue past the point where it stalled at the crap remake. If movies like Hatchet, Baghead and Backwoods Maniac (or whatever its called) can still get made and released, what is thete to stop whoever owns the rights ignoring the last one and making 'the thirteenth friday'? But if they do, i want a credit for that title.

SBT
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Dandontdare

I really don't undferstand this - you say they're not good films and they're a chore to watch and yet you love them intensely - as old scifi robots used to say - DOES NOT COMPUTE. I can understand loving a film that isn't technically good, according to generally accepted film criticism, but only if you enjoy watching it. If it's crap AND not enjoyable to watch, what's to love?

SmallBlueThing

Ahhh, DDD, (leans back on his rocker, takes long drag on dogend, faraway look in his eyes), you had to be there man. The eighties- finding out who was doing the next one, and more importantly who was doing the effects, the advance word in fango, rumours of fx sequences that would 'never make it to the uk', and the films themselves almost unobtainable legally. Clustering round a well-thumbed copy of fango in the common room, grossing the girls out, writing potential sequels in school exercise books, realising that with a camera and some ketchup it was entirely possible to actually make something like it and then doing so (interesting fact: director mark davis, of noel clarke's 4.3.2.1 'fame', made his first movie, with me, in his shed in eastbourne. It was a friday the thirteenth-inspired short, to see if we could do it).
It was the posters, the trailers, the sheer volume of the films- 5, 6, 7, no sign of stopping... when only Bond and Carry On could claim high numbers. But most of all it was the transgressive nature of them. Cinematic excrement to most, we used to giggle at the thought of barry norman reviewing one and exploding, we'd imagine jason interviewed by russell harty or wogan, where his only word was 'bum', or ocassionally 'bumbum'. They were just glorious in abstract- and always, always, disappointing in actuality. But the iconography kept us coming back: the hockey mask, machete and that logo, crazy ralph, kevin bacon with an arrow through his neck, crispin glover, corey feldman in a bald head wig... Ah man, you just had to be there.

SBT
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Albion

Season of the witch. A rather bland knights and witchcraft thing with Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman.
Dumb all over, a little ugly on the side.