none of yours for me this week, rocker.
my week:
i walked with a zombie (1943) 3.5 a nurse turnes to voodoo to try to cure a patient. very neat early horror that works its spare, unsettling atmosphere very effectively.
contagion (2011) 3 i wanted to like this. it's a neat, chilly, brutally efficient film.
but it kept bothering me, partly because it was so self-serious at times with hollywood actors reciting technical & medical jargon, and it climaxed wtih a fucking u2 song.
instant family (2018) 4 absolutely funny & sweet. just a bit too sitcomish in its humor at times, but you'd have to be a bit of an inhuman monster not to be touched by it, no? heart solidly in the proper place.
space babes from outer space (2017) 3 fun sex comedy. cute girls, lots of boobs.
saturday the 14th (1981) 1.5 i didn't laugh once.
if a comedy never makes me laugh, i can't really say i enjoyed it, can i?
hunt for the wilderpeople (2016) 5 movies just don't get more lovable than this. like if rambo & crocodile had a very cute, shambolic kiwi baby.
run bitch run! (2009) 3 at around the 30 minute point, a hooker forces a catholic schoolgirl to go down on her at gunpoint, at which point i realized the couch in this film is identical to the one my parents had in their living room when i was growing up. kinda killed my mood.
this is incredibly sleazy, even by my standards. but fun. very 'i spit on your grave'-ish, & captures a 70s trash sensibility reasonably well.
they killed the cutest girl far too quickly though.
justice league (2017) 1.5 it's pretty weird of me to watch a movie as bad as this three times.
this is an astonishingly ugly film. dark & dreary & cheap looking, even though they apparently spent all manner of money on it.
the shooting (1966) 3.5 odd, very languid, borderline pokey western with jack nicholson & warren oates. while i'm not really sure i understood who these people were & why they did what they did, i very much enjoyed its spacey, weird pace, though i'm glad it wasn't a minute longer than its fairly brief running time.
american mary (2012) 4 why isn't every movie a katherine isabelle starring body modification rape-revenge horror? if you can do that why would you do anything else?
the only thing wrong with this film is that they take the very foxy tristan risk & make her ugly.
otherwise this is a very fun, weird low budget horror that i like more each time i see it.
demons (1985) 3 cute girls, fun gore. a bit repetitive, but overall a trashy good time.
demons 2 (1986) 3.5 improvement on the first one. still gets a bit dull & repetitive by the end, but it's got lots of gore & fun, silly looking monsters & a pretty hip soundtrack.
in the shadow of the moon (2019) 3 time travel/mystery. underwhelms a bit when you find out where it's going - if you've seen time travel films, you'll have a good idea of what's to come - and i think it could have used some tidying up plotwise, but...this clears the low bar set for straight to netflix films pretty easily. decent production values, reasonably paced & fairly involving.
x (2011) 3 hookers get mixed up with a drug deal gone wrong. enjoyably sleazy trash. could have been sleazier, but it was sleazy enough to make me happy. attractive women reasonably tight pace.
take out (2004) 3.5 early sean baker film about an chinese illegal alien in new york trying to pay off his trafficking debt. plods a bit in its middle section - you watch a lot of the same things over & over again - but it mines the same humanistic vein that you'll know if you've seen sean baker's more recent films. and it ends in a very understated but powerful way. definitely worth seeking out if you loved florida project & tangerine.
senna (2010) 4.5 i know nothing about formula 1, couldn't really care less about such things. i don't even drive, & have never owned a car in my life.
but i was interested in this film all the way through, & ultimately found it powerful & really quite moving.
if a movie can make you care & feel about something you think you have zero interest in, then it's done its job.
revenge (2017) 4 my admiration for this film has only grown on a re-watch. it's brutal & tough & looks fantastic.
black mountain side (2014) low budget canadian horror. one of my little beefs with films that take place in the north is when they don't properly depict just how bloody cold it can get. this definitely fails on that count. there are several references made early in the film to it being freezing out, but it's perfectly clear that it's not that cold, & none of the actors look uncomfortable, and aren't even that bundled up.
that out of the way, this is ok. it's really promising in the early going, has a good, creepy claustrophobic vibe that made me & will probably make you think of the thing. it doesn't quite fulfill that early promise, but it's still mostly fine & absolutely worth a watch for those like me that are always on the lookout for well made low-budget horror.
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StoneKeeper (21186)
5 years ago
Contagion is a good movie with a great ending. 7.5/10
Instant family: 7/10
Hunt for the wilderpeople: Skux life 9/10
Justice League: 7.5/10 Don't judge me! (I hate BVS though)
Revenge: Oh yeah! 8/10
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[deleted]
5 years ago
stonekeeper said:
Don't judge me!
haha, you've seen the trash i watch, right? i'm the last person who ought to be judging anyone's preferences.
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