Films you've seen (that were not released in 2016)

[phantom_power]

I finally got round to watching Blue Ruin. For some reason I had high expectations but I was a bit disappointed. It was alright but from about 10 minutes in the course of the film was set and it didn't really deviate from expectation. Well acted and directed but just a bit inconsequential

[Jerzy Bondov]

I've always thought Scott Pilgrim was great. Its failings are greatly overcome by its wonderful editing, attitude and energy. It's that Edgar Wright playfulness. (The comic's shite though.)

What are the rules of Jim Carrey's lies in Liar Liar? Is he able to say things that are not literally true, but poetically true? At one point he accuses a superior of being a "belligerent old fart, a worthless steaming pile of cow dung, figuratively speaking." But he doesn't add "figuratively speaking" to his other metaphorical statements.

A puzzling film.

It is confusing. He is able to lie by omission after he beats himself up in the bathroom (when asked who attacked him he describes himself but doesn't outright say it was him) but at other times he can't do this. Nonsense

[Ignatius_S]

...The American Astronaut - Recommended to me by Blumf in the unusual films thread, it's so good that I feel we kind of have to take his word as gospel when it comes to all further film matters from now on in. It's a really weird mix that shouldn't work but is an enormous amount of fun, and it's the kind of low budget oddity that I wish was made much more often.

Also watch Stingray Sam.

[zomgmouse]

Sunday Bloody Sunday. Really rather good - wistful and melancholy but a bit hopeful and definitely very touching.

icheckmovies

Who are you on icm? Can I add you?

[billtheburger]

Who are you on icm? Can I add you?

Unsurprisingly I'm billtheburger on that one too. Feel free to add me.
I have no friends on there...

[billtheburger]

[thenoise]

I'll  tells thee of a film I've seen and it's not a new one and I'm only the second person on icheckmovies to watch it, so I reckon it would be ridiculous to begin a new thread; Frustration (1971)
A José Bénazéraf erotic masterpiece reminiscent of Polanski's Repulsion. It has a literal Chechov's gun over the fireplace

Spoiler alert

and to live up to its title - is never used.

[close]

Sounds interesting.  I've been meaning to watch some Bénazéraf after seeing the Eurotika! episode on him back in the glory days of 4Later.  Is there an english friendly dvd?

[purlieu]

I don't know about social critique but I think part of the reason for long general threads is because that is how conversation works in real life and people tend to come to forums to have a form of conversation. When talking to friends you don't say "That is enough with talking about Deadpool, let us now discuss The Hateful Eight". Topics flow into each other and that is a more comfortable way of talking. Obviously an internet forum is a different beast but there is still that tendency to digress and shift the conversation.

This is exactly why I've been rather outspoken against closing 'things' threads in the past. As long as people make fleshed out posts rather than literally just lists, the threads can take intriguing and unexpected turns, branching off into all sorts of directions without worrying about them being 'off topic'. I totally get the problem with threads being derailed, which is one of the things that threads such as these are great for: it's very difficult to derail them as they're like a big, flowing group conversation. Too many of them is an issue, but a general one like this in each subforum is quite nice. Another thing I like is it's a lot quicker and easier for me to go through, jot down films that look interesting, and then grab them at a later date - I usually go in knowing or remembering nothing about the film because there are so many, so I have few expectations.

Recently seen, but not recently released, films: Songs from the Second Floor, You, the Living and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch.... Absolutely brilliant. The first is probably my favourite, despite being the bleakest by some way, possibly because it feels the most coherent, with most of the individual scenes adding up to a whole, whilst the other two seem a touch more scattered in places. Pigeon I found the hardest to get my head around (although I think I preferred it to the second), partially because of the

Spoiler alert

King Charles XII scenes, which took the surrealism of the trilogy to another level

[close]

. Also,

Spoiler alert

Jonathan's dream about the slaves being burned for the pleasure of the rich was really utterly disturbing. The idea being their screams turned into music through the horns, I presumed - making it all the more horrific that the music was really quite incredible.

[close]

That scene will stay with me for some time.

[billtheburger]

Sounds interesting.  I've been meaning to watch some Bénazéraf after seeing the Eurotika! episode on him back in the glory days of 4Later.  Is there an english friendly dvd?

Unfortunately there is only the French version that I know of.
I hoped Mondo Macabro would have released an English version after the Eurotika series.

[Dex Sawash]

gonna watch Cop Car today thanks to someone a few pages back[nb]maybe in locked thread[/nb] mentioning it. not sure if it is ok to mention it here once i do watch it.  maybe i will start a thread for it and maybe that thread will be CaB's greatest thread of all time.


<anxiously puts disc back in sleeve, unwatched, and posts it back to netflix>

[Onken]

Barely four weeks ago. Steven came along and ruined it from greatness.

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=51802.0

[steveh]

Watched Pink Floyd's The Wall over the weekend for the first time in thirty years. It has some terrifically realised segments like the Education song and the fascist rally, which exudes a real danger like they were close to completely losing control of the extras. Overall though it's a sprawling mess, Bob Geldof doesn't seem to have much idea of what he's doing there and after a while the self pity starts to make you wish Sid Vicious would appear with a machine gun. Director Alan Parker allegedly described it as "the world's most expensive student film" and I'd go along with that assessment. It still has an 8.0 on IMDB so I guess there's a lot of old Floyd fans with fond memories of it from their youth.

(Last saw this one afternoon around '85 in a series of 70mm 6-track Dolby Stereo rock films at the Dominion Tottenham Court Road, back when it was still owned by Odeon and they used to run short film seasons between theatrical productions. There were four of us in an auditorium that seats 2,000 and midway a caretaker came in and started doing repair work on one of the exits. You couldn't really hear the hammering above the sound system though.)

[zomgmouse]

The Perfume of the Lady in Black. This needs to be more seen. Disturbing, odd giallo that has everything from hallucinations to the occult to

Spoiler alert

SURPRISE CANNIBALISM

[close]

. The ending was phenomenal.

HealtH. Widely unavailable Robert Altman film that is superb. A real blast. One of his funniest I think. Covers nutrition fads and political canoodlings.

Stone (1974). Fans of Australian cinema will devour this one. It's fantastic. Less of a pulpy action revenge exploitation film despite the plot of "undercover cop rides with bikie gang to find out who's been killing their members". It's truly fascinating and is really more of a sociological study than an action film.

Something Weird. I'm torn. This is so awful. But it's a masterpiece. Simultaneously one and five stars. High trash art.

[zomgmouse]

Been doing a marathon of films about witches, as begun in my last post with Something Weird. Continued this with:

- Häxan: probably the best of the bunch. Totally vivid and engrossing visuals, utterly beautiful.
- Poison for the Fairies. Intriguing Mexican film that is not a horror but plays and feels like a horror. A little girl convinces her friend that she's a witch. Has a really shocking climax and there's a great technique used in the film where none of the adults are shown face-on so it's just the children's world.
- Simon, King of the Witches. Interesting in the way that it balances camp and psychedelia with an actual portrayal of occult practices, but it's ultimately fairly dull.
- Curse of the Crimson Altar. Lots of fun even though it's not perhaps that good. Should have seen this when I did my Barbara Steele marathon but didn't. She's not in it for very long but she is very cool in it. Kind of like a swinging sixties version of The Wicker Man; a guy comes looking for his brother and uncovers a weird cult thing going on. Christopher Lee is in this and so is Boris Karloff!
- The Witch's Mirror. Another Mexican one. Started off as a kind of standard gothic horror thing but turned into something absolutely mad when the witch plot started leading into a face-grafting plot. Really remarkable. Coincidentally this was co-written by the writer-director of Poison for the Fairies.

Also finally saw A Nightmare on Elm Street. Loved it. After the swathe of shitty Craven films it was nice to see him on form. Some bits don't hold up but overall it's to be praised. The nightmare sequences especially are awesome.

And just yesterday I went to the cinema for a double feature of Cool Hand Luke (which I'd seen and it's still as brilliant as ever) and Gun Crazy (which I'd not seen). Gun Crazy was really good, transforms the short story into something absolutely electric and exhilarating. One of the great romances. You can see the influence on things like Bonnie and Clyde and Natural Born Killers. Amazing sequences and tension.

[zomgmouse]

So I saw They Live. One of those I'd been meaning to see for years and years.
It was not nearly as good as I had hoped. The meat of the film took a bit too long to get to and once it did it was all pretty clunky and the message was way too unsubtle.
I mean I liked it, there was some great stuff and a few wonderful lines, but overall it was rather disappointing. I even saw it on the big screen.
Maybe I'd have liked it when I was 17 and just getting into mass media criticism? I'm not sure.

[Glebe]

It was not nearly as good as I had hoped. The meat of the film took a bit too long to get to and once it did it was all pretty clunky and the message was way too unsubtle.

It was the 1980's, though.

[Blumf]

The pacing of They Live is far too slow. It's a great idea, and lots of amazing bits, but they're all too spaced out, it could have been much more punchy.

Have you seen Society (1989) yet? Similar concept but different treatment.

[DukeDeMondo]

...it could have been much more punchy.

https://youtu.be/4-MVMbm6c0k

How much more punchin do you need??

[Glebe]

Have you seen Society (1989) yet? Similar concept but different treatment.

I've been meaning to watch that again, not seen it in years but it's top stuff. Like Beverly Hills 90210 being invaded by total horror grossness (to the tune of 'Eton Boating Song').

[mothman]

They Live has always been not as good as you think it's going to be. I first saw it when it was just a couple of years old and it's not improved with age. It has its cult reputation merely for the director's name.

[DukeDeMondo]

It has its cult reputation merely for the director's name.

I don't think that's fair. No comparable cult has sprung up around, say, Prince of Darkness.

I reckon the followin factors are far more important far as its cult status goes: The System Is A Aliens!; the soundtrack sounds like somethin out Twin Peaks; that bit of punchin fuck out other next the bins is brilliant; the aliens look amazin; OBEY! CONSUME! GO BACK TO BED AMERICA!; so on and so forth.

Oh, and the sunglasses, obvs.

David Icke loves it, of course: https://youtu.be/aw1wSKqqdIw

[zomgmouse]

They Live's cult success can probably entirely be ascribed to the "WAKE UP SHEEPLE" message in it. It's just so shabby though.

Just saw Inferno. Starts off smashing but then slowly just dwindles into embarrassing averageness. Great soundtrack, great visuals in a lot of the sections (apparently Mario Bava did a lot of this).

[Glebe]

David Icke loves it, of course: https://youtu.be/aw1wSKqqdIw

"That's not happening in a galaxy far, far, away, come on George, please."

Riiiiiiiiiight.

[zomgmouse]

Next in my witch hunt is The Blood on Satan's Claw. Truly nasty. Liked this a lot. Really unpleasant and earthy, great stuff.

[lazarou]

Next in my witch hunt is The Blood on Satan's Claw. Truly nasty. Liked this a lot. Really unpleasant and earthy, great stuff.

If you can, track down the version with the bonus commentary by Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson, it's fucking great.

[zomgmouse]

If you can, track down the version with the bonus commentary by Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson, it's fucking great.

The disc I watched had a commentary with Linda Hayden who played Angel Blake, screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons and director Piers Haggard. Really insightful. Also because of the number of times they say "Dick Bush".
I'm not surprised those chaps are fans of the film though.

[neveragain]

The Lookout. A good little film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a brain-damaged bank janitor (living with the blind Jeff Daniels) who gets drawn into a robbery. The villains weren't overplayed and the whole thing chugged along nicely.

[zomgmouse]

The local cinémathèque has begun again, the opening night was Heaven Can Wait which I believe I posted about earlier.

The first retrospective is on Visconti, which is great cause the only films of his I'd seen were The Leopard and Death in Venice. Their first Visconti week was actually The Leopard, which I skipped to go see A Nightmare on Elm Street instead. The second week I did go to, however, and that included Obsession and Bellissima.

Obsession is interesting, it's basically an adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice, and it does a pretty good job, it's definitely very lustful and moody. But I don't think it quite gets the paranoia of the book, and it feels a bit overlong sometimes. Still good.

Bellissima is a stunning film. It's set around Cinnecità which is quite cool in and of itself; the story is about a competition that the studio holds to find a little girl to cast in their films. Absolutely hilarious and does good social commentary. Plus Anna Magnani gives a brilliant performance.

[DangledTeeth]

This cunt

Admittedly, I saw the last 20 minutes or so (which isn't bad considering how inept, soporific and stiff this was). The film wasn't even laughably poor. It didn't have the clarity or feel of an actual film; it can essentially be summed up as a student-level film project hosted on YouTube but on DVD instead. The chase scenes weren't fast-paced like you'd expect when a murderous nutcock is pursuing his or her victim, nothing but tentative jogging. One bit had a rising shot with a few dust/dirt particles stuck to the lens (the sort that seems like a sheet of perspex is an inch or so in front) made obtrusive by the daytime sky. Not to mention a wooden performance by the antagonist, which was apt seeing as it's mainly set in a forest.

Speaking of student-level film project hosted on YouTube - The Trailer

''MUST NOT BE MISSED'' - 28 Day Slater
''BEST FUCKING FIML EVER, MATE!'' - horrormoviezdotcom

[Steven]

Not to mention a wooden performance by the antagonist, which was apt seeing as it's mainly set in a forest

Big Stevie's very dainty picking up his murdering implements isn't he? No grabbing or grasping one fast up into your clutches, a nice slow smooth retrieval for the camera to linger on then straight into some wanker student's ribcage, lovely stuff.