list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

Kong: Skull Island

With a high-energy pace and lines like "Is that a monkey?", Kong:Skull Island is not another remake of the 1933 classic.   Nothing has nor will ever outdo the original and even this dynamic version doesn't come close to the magic of that silver masterpiece, but not trying is why it works.   Sam Jackson looks tired and bored but John C. Riley picks it up as a nutty castaway and John Goodman is fine as the malevolent monster-hunter searching for the giant ape at any cost.   Pure escapism but with some intelligence behind the nonsense, this King Kong reminds us of what Jurassic Park would've been had it not been made for toddlers.

Despicable Me 3

Dunkirk

Chris Nolan brings his unique sense of the visual and the physical to the evacuation of Dunkirk in late May/early June of 1940 and with the help of photographer Hoyte van Hoytema and another riveting score from Hans Zimmer, Nolan gives us the best WWII drama since Saving Private Ryan nearly twenty years ago.   In fact, in many ways it is a better, more elegant, quieter film with a minimum of dialog and the most accurate aerial combat footage I've seen in cinema (due in no small part to another nuanced performance from Tom Hardy and cameraman van Hoytema's magnificent appreciation of what flying an old prop-plane while shooting at another old prop plane is really like).   Destined for an Oscar or two and well worth catching if you're not a dialog or plot-junkie.

A Bucket of Blood

Though never one for Roger Corman, I must admit 1959's A Bucket of Blood is his brand of low-grade schlock at its best as a disturbed sculptor finds success by murdering his subjects before covering them in plaster and impressing the local beats with his uncanny reproductions.   Peppered with ratty tenements, spoken word poetry jams, stream of consciousness dialog, wicked humor and an eye for human pathology, ABoB is one of the strangest and funniest black comedies in American film.




Edited by Atavachron - August 06 2017 at 01:46

The Dinner

Ceaselessly talky and bad-spirited human drama about the families of two entitled brothers ~ one a politician, one a bitter cynic ~ the crime their sons commit, and how they deal with it.

Atavachron wrote: The Car In one of the most underrated drive-in schlock horror pictures of the 1970s, James Brolin leads a Mayberry-like small town against a homicidal and seemingly driver-less Lincoln Continental as it blasts down desert highways, runs over hitchhikers, plows into women & children and plagues a community with Biblical retribution.   Sometimes called 'Jaws on the road', The Car is much more than just a shark with wheels and features great stunts, innovative driving, and, in hindsight, is one of the scariest B-movies of the era.

Split (2016 Directed by M Night Shyamalan)



For once, the studio's vaunted description of a movie inspired by one of psychiatry's most controversial diagnoses (dissociative identify disorder) is quite apt re 'psychological horror-thriller.'  Glaswegian James McAvoy was brilliant in the adaptation of Irvine Welsh's Filth and he is equally brilliant here. Shame however, that his talents are squandered on a plot that slowly descends from a fascinating opening premise to reach it's nadir as Martyrs v the Incredible Hulk.  How to explain why one body can alter its chemical composition between purported multiple personalities? e.g. one is right handed the other left handed, one has allergies the other does not, one needs corrected vision the other does not etc. These are interesting phenomena certainly but the film never really goes after any serious investigation of the answers. Despite these reservations I enjoyed this but someone please bitch slap the director for 1 - creating a Hitchcock cameo for himself as a security guard and 2 - shoehorning Bruce Willis into the final scene as a clumsy link to Unbreakable and inveigling a sequel.


Edited by ExittheLemming - September 16 2017 at 02:58

Atavachron wrote: A Bucket of Blood Though never one for Roger Corman, I must admit 1959's A Bucket of Blood is his brand of low-grade schlock at its best as a disturbed sculptor finds success by murdering his subjects before covering them in plaster and impressing the local beats with his uncanny reproductions.   Peppered with ratty tenements, spoken word poetry jams, stream of consciousness dialog, wicked humor and an eye for human pathology, ABoB is one of the strangest and funniest black comedies in American film.

Jean and I love old horror movies. today's so-called "horror movies" are actually what we call "terror movies". The difference is: Horror is what creeps up your back, terror is what jumps you in the face.

We recently re-watched "House on Haunted Hill" from 1959 starring the great Vincent Price. Wonderful movie combining horror and humour.

Modern US movies are mostly crap. There are of course exceptions, but 99% of what comes out of the United States is pure schlock. The European, Asian and African movie scenes are much more interesting.

But why would one NOT watch these old movies? Do prog lovers not listen to these old recordings as well?

Atavachron wrote: Maybe--  all I know is very few people I talk to are interested in old films.   Unless of course they're old.