Last movie watched...

[TordelBack]

I was surprised when it turned out that Fry was the gay one.

Yeah, nominative determinism alone would have suggested Bender.

[Spaceghost]

Demons 2. The very shittest film I have ever seen. Tragically pathetic in concept, execution, plotting,  direction, script, acting, production, lighting, sound, special effects...even the key grip did a shitty job.

Without doubt, the most laughably shit film I have ever seen.

How has Dario Argento got any kind of reputation making rubbish like this?

[Greg M.]

How has Dario Argento got any kind of reputation making rubbish like this?

Probably because he didn't make it - he's credited as one of the writers, but I expect that mostly involved giving Lamberto Bava the odd suggestion. (And yes, he co-produced it too, but again, it's not really his vision.)  For actual reputation-making Argento, you want Profondo Rosso (Deep Red), one of the finest movies ever.

[Hawkmumbler]

Demons 2. The very shittest film I have ever seen. Tragically pathetic in concept, execution, plotting,  direction, script, acting, production, lighting, sound, special effects...even the key grip did a shitty job.

Without doubt, the most laughably shit film I have ever seen.

How has Dario Argento got any kind of reputation making rubbish like this?

I cant find it in me to hate this film. Its just to damn infantile in its silliness that any criticism I make ultimately feels like a missed the point.

And Argento only produced it, all credit goes to Mario Bavas prodigy on this one.

Argento is a master director and I highly recommend The Bird With the Crystal Plumage.

[Link Prime]

Take Shelter (2011). The trailer for this makes it look like a worthy character drama with Oscar baiting performances from Shannon and Chastaine, but it's actually a cross between a crack-up psycho drama like Repulsion or The Shining, with touches of doomsday thrillers like The Crazies and 28 Days Later, which plays like a smarter version of supernatural guff like Paranormal Activity.

Director Jeff Nicholls made the brilliant Mud and Shotgun Stories too.

By mental coincidence I was handed a lend of 'Mud' by a mate in work, and 'Take Shelter' by my sister yesterday.
Had no idea they were made by the same chap.

Watched Mud last night, and agree that it is absolutely superb.
Keeping Taking Shelter for tomorrow afternoons hangover, but after reading your comments I want to abandon my planned run and stick it on right now.

[Proteus4]

I've had Deep Red and The Bird With The Crystal Plumage lying around for ages but have never watched them.  I think Suspiria is awesome (and i recently saw it with a live soundtrack by the dude that wrote the original).  I'll have to get round to watching them sometime.

Cheers
Dave

ps - last film i saw was Iron Man 3. it was ok but i have no real interest in that franchise.

[Proteus4]

and Take Shelter is great - i loved that

Dave

[Eric Plumrose]

subtle and understated . . . It's either the best made and acted horror film you've never seen or the most entertaining social conscience drama ever made; either way it's an extraordinary film.

'Subtle and understated', I'd say, is also why TAKE SHELTER's ending works [spoiler]despite the risk it runs of undermining all that wonderful stuff beforehand[/spoiler].

[Spikes]

I knew nowt about this film until reading these last couple of posts, but damn - i so wanna watch Take Shelter now.

[Mabs]

I'm watching Wall-E with the kids, for the 15th time probably! 

I love the film and never tire of it. Beautiful animation, beautiful story with an enviromental message thrown in, and beautiful music. There's so many moments in the film I love I can't mention all. But that shot of the spaceship flying off in the background, with Wall-E's cockroach buddy watching on in the foreground. Wow. It encapsulates everything about this film not to mention dreams, the beauty, the awe-inspiring wonder of space and space travel. And Wall-E flying on the back of the ship witnessing all beauty and mystery of space, touching the ice particles from Jupiter's rings which morphs into the milkyway.....it's a breath-taking scene. This is one of Pixar's best films in my opinion, up there with Toy Story. Not only is it a great animated film, but a great science fiction film and belongs in the greatest sci-fi films category.

[pictsy]

Wall-E is definitely one of my favourite Pixar films.  I love the story telling method used in the film.  The ending had me in tears the first time I watched it.  So much heart in a film predominantly about robots.

[Mardroid]

In my mission to work my way through The Planet of the Apes box-set I watched Escape from the Planet of the Apes last night and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes today.

Both were highly enjoyable and kudos for being two films that are rather different from their predecessors and each other.

After the rather good, but rather depressing Beneath..., Escape... is a breath of fresh air. While it also contains death ([spoiler]including an infanticide. Even 18 rated far darker films rarely go there, although I wonder if they would if it had been a human child[/spoiler]), and in keeping with Beneath...  a somewhat [spoiler]downbeat ending[/spoiler], it is much lighter in tone overall and quite funny. And it's nice to see such support characters like Cornelius and Zira take centre stage.

On considering when we last saw them in Beneath... it does make me wonder how the chimps had the time to leave planet or why they did it. It's not really a plot hole as we didn't see that third scientist chimp in Beneath... and it was he who fixed Taylor's ship.* No doubt he was beavering away in the background when Brent and Nova ended up in Ape City, and the other two Chimps met up with him later. As to the why, I know that it's explained in this film that the Chimps wanted to escape the Gorrillas' war, but why would you leave the planet to do that? [spoiler]They weren't to know a planet busting weapon would be deployed surely?[/spoiler] (Okay maybe they only intended to fly to another part of the planet but then lost control of the joystick...)

But anyway. Despite my queries to the above... it really doesn't matter. Turning the concept of the first film on it's head (and interestingly the humans are much more welcoming of talking apes than the majority of apes were of talking humans. At least to start with) it's a great film.

I'm also curious that Cornelius and Zira have much more knowledge of their history than they appear to have in the first film. Is this a contradiction, or were they just keeping quiet due to the dictates of the Apes' religion? Dr. Zaius certainly prove he knew a lot more about human history at the end than he let on earlier. Maybe he clued them in somewhere between the first and second films.

Incidentally what was with the duck noise Cornelius makes [spoiler]in his death scene[/spoiler]? Kind of amusing and a little disturbing at once.

Conquest... I'll be briefer on this one. Again, a much darker film but also rather good. Great to see Ricardo Montalban in a longer role, although I would have liked to see more of him. Some might argue this film shows the start of a self fulfilling paradox, except there are already changes in the timeline. In the previous film Zira states that the ape revolution happened three centuries after apes became enslaved (and the name of the Ape who first spoke in that time period was not Caesar) but her it happens in 1993 a mere twenty years after the time period of Escape...!

That's not a criticism by the way. That's the fun thing about time travel stories, you can mix things up a bit.

Roddy McDowall is excellent in this as Caesar. While there are some similarities to  his depiction of this character's father, Cornelius, he portrays a very different character. Not without darkness of his own. This film is certainly the spiritual predecessor to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If that film should be classed as a remake (and I'm not convinced it should) it would be of this film.

On to Battle next. Possibly tonight. I seem to remember finding this one a bit boring in the past, but we'll see.

*I'm not sure how he would do that considering the apes don't even have cars. I suspect their technological state is much to do with the dictates of the Orang Utans and their controlling religion preventing them from making the same mistakes as Man through scientific progress than the actual capabilities of the apes though.

[Professor Bear]

I assume the duck noise was a death rattle.
In Escape, Cornelius and Zira display an encyclopedic knowledge of Earth's past when the third act of PotA established that even the idea of intelligent man was unthinkable to them, so I always assumed that during Beneath, some time had passed after Zaius and Ursus left Ape City to search the Forbidden Zone, and in that time Cornelius and Zira had read the "sacred scrolls" kept from the general populace (Zaius appointed them the keepers of the scrolls in his absence) and discovered the truth about ape and man's history much as Zaius had, then hooked up with Milo after giving themselves permission to visit the Forbidden Zone to find he'd already salvaged Taylor's ship as he was an outcast from Ape City and thus outside Zaius' edicts about the Forbidden Zone and the restrictions on technology imposed by the orangutangs, then they went on his test flight because... erm, they were contrary bastards I guess, and the planet blew up as they were in the upper atmosphere (the Alpha/Omega bomb's purpose being to ignite the atmosphere rather than just explode the planet) and thrown into the past by some quirk of physics*.

If you're interested in PotA continuity, there is a pretty good IDW series - Cataclysm - centering on the early career of Zaius that covers a lot of the mythology, including Zaius' hatred of humanity and a bit about Dr Milo's history, but for the most part I come down on the side of the PotA series being a cyclical predestined paradox with minor variations in each "loop" but the overall cycle itself remains the same, or perhaps whatever attempts to create integration between the two species are made, ultimately the apes that hate humans win out and rewrite their past to suit the preferred narrative of the ruling political elite, including writing Caesar - who could never have succeeded without human aid and actively worked for their better treatment in ape society - out of history entirely, which is why we have a different ape credited as being the first to speak - this would fit the allegorical nature of the Apes films as the Christian bible which shaped western society wasn't written until hundreds of years after the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, and with a political and moral slant in keeping with the sensibilities of its time of writing.


Or it might all be a bunch of films about talking monkeys.  I dunno.



*  See also: magic.

[TordelBack]

This is one of Pixar's best films in my opinion, up there with Toy Story. Not only is it a great animated film, but a great science fiction film and belongs in the greatest sci-fi films category.

Totally agree.  It has extrapolation and allegory and satire and all that good SF stuff, wrapped up in wonder, spectacle and genuine heart.  It's as good as they come.

[JudgeE1M1RT]

Watched Blade Runner last night. One of the versions without the narration. Definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen.