i haven't seen any of yours this week, rocker. isle of dogs & happy feet are both on my watchlist.
red river (1948) 2 everyone loves this, and ranks this among the best films ever made.
i was bored by every second of it.
almost every moment i watched it, i wished i was doing something else.
i am glad i saw the stampede. i'll give it credit for that scene.
the velvet vampire (1971) just added to shoutfactorytv, so it's free for all the world to stream. i think it looks perhaps sightly better than the version that was on shudder last year, but it's still very fuzzy & indistinct at times.
regardless, this movie is 100% minty freshness, & celeste yarnell as a vampire truly gets my motor running. surely anna biller must have had this influence in her arsenal when she was putting the love witch together in her mind.
the house is black (1963) 5 appropriately stark & unflinching look at an iranian leper colony. ugly, but achieves an undeniable sort of cinematic poetry, if that's not too wankerish a way of putting it.
shutter (2004) 2.5 ok-ish thai supernatural horror. most of the jump scares didn't really make me jump.
lala land (2016) 4 while i'll never deny how well made this film is, it's one that rather stubbornly refuses to remain stuck in my head.
i'm all in favour of the things this film does. there is a sad shortage of directors trying to make a modern umbrellas of cherbourg. but my second viewing confirms that, as much as i admire almost everything in it, this movie never quite makes me feel anything, & as well staged as most of the musical sequences are, the songs themselvesfell out of my head as quickly as they entered.
i'm still giving it a relatively high rating, because i don't think anyone should be too harsh on a film as generous & enjoyable as this one, but it still can't help but disappoint me slightly.
i passed for white (1960) 3.5 a young woman withholds her racial heritage from her new husband. pretty interesting melodrama. quaint in some aspects, & it goes without saying but i'll say anyway that it's dated, but it's a fascinating little watch. people who enjoy sirk, 50s melodrama could do worse things with their time.
in the mouth of madness (1993) 3.5 one of the better post-80s carpenter films i've seen. the story seems to sort of wander off, which is a bit of a shame because it was a fairly intriguing set-up, but there are some really effective set-pieces & nightmarish imagery here, some of the best of his career imo.
uncaged (1991) 2.5 corman production that starts out with a nice bit of trashy pep, but lost its vigor in its second half. could have used more sleaze & nudity.
attenberg (2010) 3.5 23 year old repressed suicide/alan vega fan has a sexual awakening while her father declines with a terminal illness.
features director yorgos lanthimos in an acting role, & shares his sensibilities where awkwardness & discomfort get ratcheted up to levels that make me have to look away and laugh uncomfortably (that's a compliment). it does meander just a bit too much for its own good at times, & felt like it could have used just a bit more venom in its bite & a touch less silliness. absolutely worth a watch for enjoyers of weirdness regardless.
life (2017) 3 it seems like some folks have developed a rather sniffy attitude towards this thing. while i have my complaints, i think this is mostly a pretty solid alien knock-off - better than the actual alien film that came out the same year by my reckoning.
my only major problem is that i think they should have kept the monster tiny - it was much more terrifying when it was a teenie little thing imo. my only other real beef is that at a few points i had a slightly difficult time figuring out which characters were in the station in relation to others & in relation to the monster - i definitely think they could have done a better job of explaining the geography of the station.
but overall, i think this is a fun film - really a b-movie with a few a-list cast members.
the breaker upperers (2018) 3.5 friends run a 'relationship-enders' business. very fun, goofy comedy. at least from what i've seen in my limited exposure, there is a very sweetly silly tone common to new zealand comedies, and this film fits right in with that.
starstruck (1982) 3 slight, thin but hugely enjoyable musical. the songs are mostly not memorable, but there's tons of energy. there were a few lags in the film, a mid-section gap where the music went away for a good while. jo kennedy ought to have been a star.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
mind game (2004) 4 a hopeless failure has a trippy adventure when he meets a member of the japanese mafia while trying to win over his old high school crush. wonderfully trippy animated film that would have been perfect in my eyes if its momentum hadn't slightly stalled somewhere around the 55 minute mark & if it had been just a little bit sleazier. still, it's a terrific mind bending exercise that is also very visually exciting & dynamic, moving from photo-realistic to almost amateurishly crude at times. a great surprise & a really terrific & unexpected find.
primer (2004) 3 decided to give this a re-watch after doing the same with upstream color recently. while i've come to love upstream color after initially being a little resistant to it, i still find my self a bit underwhelmed by primer.
not to be too prickly, as i think caruth deserves all the credit in the world for putting this together as a micro-budget project, but it never quite comes together completely for me, falls apart in the last 20 minutes or so in my books. still many things to enjoy in it, but primer feels like his stint in the minor leagues before he hit a grand slam his first time at the plate with upstream color.
the strangers: prey at night (2018) 3.5 i'd avoided this in the theatres & initially when it popped up on netflix when i saw what seemed to be mainly negative reviews & a sub-par metacritic score.
well, turns out i think this is pretty great. not a true surprise in the way something like don't breathe was, but really good, tough fun, a nice throw-back to classic 80s slashers. not overly bloody or grisly, but it's tightly paced, lean, and pretty suspenseful. add to that some truly smile-inducing soundtrack choices & at least one pretty inventive scene by a swimming pool that looks like it was inspired by showgirls, and i'd say that, by the standards of most modern horror, this is almost a triumph.
wanda (1970) 4 woman leaves behind her shambles of a life and goes on the run with a petty criminal. shambolic in just the right way. cassavetes fans ought to dig it.
female prisoner scorpion: beast stable (1973) 3 starts off with a bang - has a great, truly fun opening credits scene - but slightly meanders aimlessly after that. still mostly enjoyable, but not quite the trashy pleasure the first two films were.
captain america: winter soldier (2014) 4 one of the better marvel films in my books.
from beyond (1986) 3.5 odd tht i've never seen from beyond, being the re-animator fan & general product of the 80s that i am.
not quite re-animator-level great, but absolutely loads of fun & chock-full of prime 80s practical effects.
slither (2006) 3.5 james gunn's best movie by my reckoning. trashy & full of cringe-inducing moments and great low budget effects. also, even though i'm pretty sure she's meant to be a teenager, we get a pretty good unobstructed view of the kylie character's left nipple around the 51:30 mark. is that legal? i guess it must be...it's something i enjoyed, certainly.
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StoneKeeper (21046)
5 years ago
What a mix bag you got this week! Only saw Winter Soldier but I don't think it'S one of the great super-hero films. Just a good one. 7/10
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