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Finger wagging at the audience isn't exactly sexy either, I hate Kids too, I don't watch horror directors to be lectured at about how horror is bad E: Not that Kids is a horror film, although maybe?
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Apr 1, 2022 15:18
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7. Kôji Shiraishi’s A Record of Sweet Murder vs. 10. (Deb’s Horror Musicals) Trey Parker’s Cannibal! The Musical This was a weird matchup and probably the one I've thought about the most in this bracket so far. A Record of Sweet Murder wasn't something I enjoyed, but I found myself thinking about it. Cannibal! The Musical was the opposite. It was very entertaining, though not very thought provoking. The problem is that the more I thought about it, the less I liked A Record of Sweet Murder. The ending feels wrong. The underlying mystery about the killer's motivation is spoiled too soon. It tries to be smart and dumb at the same time and I don't think it works. I'm voting for Cannibal! The Musical.
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Apr 1, 2022 15:59
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I watched Cannibal a lot once I got the DVD in high school, loved that movie back then. It's charming and you can see how Trey would eventually be the guy that writes book of Mormon. Yet I found myself struggling to work up motivation to rewatch the movie, I looked up several scenes and the snowman song is still my favorite number. I watched A Record of Sweet Murder last year (maybe the year before? It's all a blur) but eagerly rewatched it for this round. I just really dig Koji's style. Similar to Grotesque this one is pretty vulgar and I get that being a reason not to like it. I thought it was fairly tense and Sangjoon's actor does a good job with the character. I loved the ending, Koji showing "God" as a cosmic horror being is cool.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:51
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There is room to say Cannibal is kind of an critique on historical record vs an idea of unwritten “truth”. This is pretty light compared to what the majority of the movie is, a musical broad comedy, but it is still bringing up an actual historical event, a real person accused of cannibalism, and firmly is suggesting that there’s no way of truly knowing if Packer really committed the crimes he was accused of or if he was truly just committing an act of survival. Maybe not as much to contemplate as the other film, but I did always appreciate that layer to the film.
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Apr 1, 2022 20:08
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I should be clear that I'm just taking the metanarrative angle on Record of Sweet Murder as the only one that worked for me, because I didn't think the main story worked all that well. What twernt said about it trying to be smart and stupid at the same time is how I feel about it, because I think that's why it reminded me of Spec Ops: The Line - that, too, is trying to do both things at once; and it seems unsure of its audience in the same way, not so much in making the metanarrative obvious as the game did. And it may even be that this isn't what Shiraishi was intending, but I feel there's something to it. The premise it sets up is that the camera and reporter are there and aren't supposed to stop, and it becomes clear that he's going to show them a murder. He then goes on to say that it's all okay, because at the end, nobody actually dies. Well, that's what a horror movie is. We get the experience of witnessing a murder that we know is not real, but maybe for a moment we can pretend it is and be scared. Or at least shocked by what's happening. As the movie goes on the events are foretold with precision; as the audience, on one level we know this is simply because the script says so, and the continued unfolding without the characters able (or willing) to interrupt it seems only to draw more attention to the artifice of it. Then there's sex thrown in, a frequent element of horror movies generally. Again we're given something shocking, though with a question of whether it's 'really' going to happen, and then we're told as if by a narrator that it is in some way not 'real' (since the information is only delivered to the camera, not those present). Although here it kind of goes back and forth — we might question if she is actually wanting it now that it's happening, only to see later that maybe that was true, or maybe just more sex being thrown in — and that highlights how ineptly the film often tackles this. In the end they also say they will see a movie together, with an implicit happy ending, which again to me shows that the film is keeping this theme of the unreality of the situation at the forefront. This one doesn't seem to really be finger-wagging, it seems to be asking as if it doesn't know the answer to these questions. It's maybe not even sure what question it's asking. Now, that is navel-gazing to some extent and a bit pointless, but it was doing this interrogation of a horror movie in a somewhat different way, and that's what I find intriguing about it. Franchescanado posted:There is room to say Cannibal is kind of an critique on historical record vs an idea of unwritten “truth”. I really would have liked it more if the film had done a little more on screen to acknowledge Packer as likely making it up, instead of sort of coming up with a middle-ground story. Although then again, realizing who made this, maybe that's not that surprising.
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Apr 2, 2022 05:33
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Cannibal! is definitely an excellent effort from first-time filmmakers that can be looked back at with pride. Sure it’s not perfect, a lot of the jokes don’t land, but a lot of them do, and the songs are really catchy. My personal favourite is “That’s all I’m asking for”, definitely whistling this one occasionally. Also notable are the sfx – squibs used to a very satisfying effect, and the confederate cyclops eye juice scene had me howling. Overall, I really enjoyed it. I saw a little goop and I saw a little gore. That’s all I’m asking for! A Record of Sweet Murder – the title set me up for a movie with Giallo-esque sensibilities and that’s what we got in the much discussed rape scene. I’m not a huge fan of sexual violence in movies but in the whole package of the movie it didn’t bother me. I really enjoyed the ending – a better version of the Paranormal Activity one that actually works withing just the context of the movie. It’s set up earlier with talk about It’s a Wonderful Life, the promise of watching a movie with a happy ending together, and then in the end it actually happens. Taking a guess that the movie they ended up seeing was It’s a Wonderful Life. And isn’t the whole movie basically that? Showing what would have happened if the girl had never existed/died? But she lived, so none of the horrible things happened. I’m a sucker for happy endings. Voting for Murder.
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Apr 2, 2022 15:41
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 Well its no real surprise but Psycho destroys Sweeney Todd and gets our third shutout of the tourney and the first 100% unanimous victory of the season. And with the big turnout this week it also becomes the highest vote winner topping out Dead & Buried from last week. Hitchcock might have used his biggest gun a little early but its at least netting him the stats and it sends him back into the second round for the first time in two years and brings his overall record to 3-1. Tim Burton on there other hand falls short, evens his record at 2-2, and he and Fran’s Muddled by Mo Cap head to the showers.  On the flip side of things we have what was probably our closest contest of the year as Cannibal! The Musical narrowly beats out A Record of Sweet Murder by a score of 10-7. A lot of people seemed pretty divided on which way to vote and once again this proves, every vote counts. Deb’s Musicals teams dances into the second round an by my math is the FIFTH Deb Team to get there compromising 25% of the field. For Koji Shiraishi its his third straight year of being one and done and he joins teh 0-3 club with Flanagan, Zombie, McKee, Kurosawa, and maybe someone else but I dunno because I got lazy and stopped keeping track. I’ll have to do a big cleanup soon before it becomes too much. But that’s my problem. All you care about is another week coming right now! 2. (Serverot’s Lewton Bus) Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon vs. 15. (Goat’s The Enemies of Horror) Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery  Well hey its Opening Day for baseball this week so what an appropriate time for my favorite team to draw The Battery (for non baseball fans, “the battery” is a term for the relationships between the pitcher and catcher which demands a lot of communication and mutual ground, a clear metaphor for the film’s core relationship). But holy gently caress its drawing dead. We’ll get to that in a minute. Jeremy Gardner’s been drawn once already last year for After Midnight and while it lost to Park Chan Wook’s Lady Vengeance it did seem to entertain folks. The Battery is a bit more of the same, a very character driven focus on a relationship and its struggles that just happens to take place in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. I think its great and I’ve heard a lot of people say the same, so don’t let the “zombie” thing turn you off. Its not a typical zombie flick. But again… its clearly drawing dead. Night of the Demon (or Curse of the Demon as I know it) is a cult classic for good reason and could net Tourneur his first Bracketology win and send the Lewton Bus into the second round. The Enemies of Horror already picked up their first Bracketology win in the Play In round with 12 Hour Shift but they’ve never made it to the second round of the tournament. Can Gardner pull off the upset and get us to finally draw a Benson and Moorehead film from the Benson and Moorhead team? Or do we roll into more of those classics from Val Lewton next round? Only one way to find out. Night of the Demon is on Fandor and Screambox. Its also on Dailymotion and probably other places since its real old. The Battery is on Kanopy, Redbox, and Tubi. 8. (Goat’s Ladies Night XX) Anna Biller’s The Love Witch vs. 9. Lucio Fulci’s The Demonic Womanizer Costante Nicosia, or: Dracula in Brianza  The Love Witch is one of the few holdovers from last year’s Ladies Night team and very much speaks to the theme that team had of not just being films directed by women, but women who had a very unique and stylish touch and flare to their films. The Love Witch is actually somewhat polarizing as its clear some people feel its a little too much style and too little substance. Or that style might not resonate with them. Reveling in a throwback look and feel to sexed up 70s technicolor euro horrors with a more modern feminist spin on things, the Love Witch is at least a unique film and the kind I was going for on my team. But its also up against the real deal of sexed up 70s euro horror from Lucio Fulci and up against an obscure entry of his but one that seems like it may actually be EXACTLY what Anna Biller was responding to with her film. The Demonic Womanizer Costante Nicosia, or: Dracula in Brianza aka Dracula in Provenance aka Young Dracula is so sexed up some people seem to call it erotica? Or a sex comedy? Its hard to say as its another rare film with only a dozen or so reviews for. And it was pretty hard to track down a copy of it but our queen of streaming managed to and if you need it all you need is ask. I considered a redraw here because of availability but I’m glad we found copies because this does seem like a kind of perfect RNG matchup. Fulci’s never not made the second round of Bracketology and Ladies Night went to the Sweet Sixteen last year. So one of them is gonna be disappointed this round. Lets break some hearts. [url=]The Love Witch[/url] is on fuboTV, Kanopy, Popcornflix, Pluto TV, Darkmatter TV, Spectrum On Demand, ARROW, Plex, and IMDB TV. The Demonic Womanizer Costante Nicosia, or: Dracula in Brianza is available upon request, or in Italian here. or a really bad dubbed copy here That’s our week. Seems like a possibly competitive week but when all else fails you can just go ahead and vote against both my teams. A tough to get deep dive, some modern indie films you might have heard about but not gotten to, and a cult classic. A real mixed bag so another week of Bracketology as we head into spring (theoretically, its loving freezing here). Vote or change your vote until 12 noon EST Apr 9th (or when I get to the computer) Next Week! 1. Fran’s Femme Fatale Returns vs 16. Deb’s Bon Appetite! 7. Skywarps Hat’s Team Vampires and Coke vs. 10. Class3KillStorm’s Chucky and His Pals Spreadsheet Letterboxd List STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Apr 3, 2022 |
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Apr 2, 2022 17:03
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 Stream Time!!! Saturday 7pm EST Serverot’s Lewton Bus, Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon Vs. Goat’s The Enemies of Horror, Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery Sunday 7pm EST Goat’s Ladies Night XX, Anna Biller’s The Love Witch Vs. Lucio Fulci’s The Demonic Womanizer Costante Nicosia, or: Dracula in Brianza, or: Young Dracula With pre-streams from Mister Roger's Neighborhood.
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Apr 2, 2022 17:55
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I really liked The Battery. The pressures of isolation exposing the cracks in a relationship is done really well and while the zombie stuff is definitely more setting than focus, I think it works that way. It has my vote. The Fulci film is new to me, and I probably owe The Love Witch a second viewing. Looking forward to another week of this weird little tournament in our weird little corner of the internet. 
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Apr 2, 2022 18:22
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Can't be mad at the musical team winning even though it wasn't by my vote. I'm almost certainly going to vote against the enemies of horror, not because I dislike the general concept but because it's zombies. The other one is Fulci's to win or lose - Love With is a perfect copy of a style of movie I don't care for.
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Apr 2, 2022 20:43
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Absolutely pumped for an excuse to rewatch Night of the Demon.
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Apr 2, 2022 21:35
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I’m pleased my team drew Night of the Demon. I was really worried I’d pull one of the later Mark Robson movies I was forced to take, which I haven’t seen and can’t vouch for. So now at least I got to program one definitely worthwhile film for people to see. Night of the Demon isn’t produced by Val Lewton but is very Lewtonesque, although for better or worse the director was forced by his producers to show a monster onscreen, a move that Lewton certainly wouldn’t have made and that I think spoils the basic ambiguity of the story a bit. Coincidentally I put on The Battery just last week. I didn’t finish it. Not a fan of mumblecore. Even if it wasn’t going up against my own team I wouldn’t vote for it. I like the idea of The Love Witch more than the finished product. I think it’s about a half an hour too long. But it might get my vote over Fulci. That’s the one film I haven’t already seen and if it’s minor Fulci I’d rather pull for Anna Biller’s idiosyncratic vision, I think.
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Apr 2, 2022 21:40
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I've seen The Battery and The Love Witch quite recently. I loved The Battery and thought The Love Witch was fun, but I am very excited to see their opponents. Might watch The Battery again just because I enjoyed it so much.
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Apr 2, 2022 21:57
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Night of the Demon is not the best Tourneur movie, but it’s very clearly one of his. The unreal atmosphere, the long shadows, the jump scares. It’s unfortunately very talky, and when I watched it I couldn’t really get into that. But when it goes, it goes, especially the ending where I realized that Drag me To Hell is a remake of this. The demon is lovely, and used to great effect juxtaposed with a train – it has the same mechanical movements, steam coming out everywhere, I can believe Tourneur didn’t want it, but he knew how to make it work. And I laughed at the last train jump scare, he got me good. Not perfect, but I had fun. The Battery was really fun until the last act – a sort of chill, horny baseball apocalypse as a counterbalance to the dire Walking Dead zombie stuff that most people have gotten more than sick of. I’m finding myself longing for a positive depiction of a world without people, with lush and wild nature reclaiming whats hers. I got a bit of that from The Battery, along with some very nice soundtrack, but then it ends up with the usual people suck and zombies happen etc. So overall quite disappointing to me, but a solid movie nonetheless. Night of the Demon it is, but once again Enemies of Horror delivers good content. The Love Witch is a perfect recreation of a type of horror I don’t care for. It’s absolutely perfect in that regard, but it is too long. Horny Dracula or whatever was dreadfully boring and didn’t even manage to be offensive. The only vaguely interesting aspect of the dude fearing he’s gay is abandoned almost immediately, and I really couldn’t give a drat about anything that happened throughout the movie. Love Witch wins this.
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Apr 4, 2022 13:21
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The Demonic Womanizer Constante Nicoisa vs. The Love Witch I think The Demonic Womanizer is an experience that really depends on how you engage with the material, which itself depends on what version you watch. I watched the terrible English dub on YouTube, and it was honestly a total hoot. The quality of the dub perfectly matched the MXC vibe for me, and as such all of the jokes that might have been intensely uncomfortable became really funny. There are long-running gags that target women, gay men, and foreigners. If the audience were expected to laugh with the male lead, it would be interminable. However, with the version I watched, all of these jokes boomerang back and mock the titular idiot captain of the toothpaste industry. He's impossible to take as anything other than the butt of the joke. On the other hand the Love Witch was a boring slog that happened to be the shallowest version of feminist. Feminism means holding women accountable for being painfully pathetic as well as men, not excusing it. The aesthetic reminded me of way too many people I couldn't stand in hippie areas of the PNW. I liked what it tried to do but I didn't love the movie. Italian Dracula wins.
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Apr 6, 2022 18:24
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Pretty easy calls for me this week. Night of the Demon is my kind of classic spooky. Yea people will complain about how much of it is just people talking to each other, but with Tourneur you know that even those scenes are going to look good. The investigative aspect is super interesting to me, and then of course when you get to the big happenings those scenes are all-time great. So I guess it's not a 10/10 perfect film, but I'd certainly rather watch Night of the Demon ten more times than watch The Battery once. The Battery is an admirable effort but I can't really say I enjoyed it at all. For one, I'm kinda done with zombies, and even on that level The Battery doesn't really deliver good zombie scenes because it doesn't have the budget for it. But secondly, the core of the movie is basically just two dudes hanging out and that's not what I'm looking for when I fire up a horror movie. There are a few tense moments, but for the most part the direction and cinematography emphasize the long stretches of nothing that these guys are experiencing due to the zombie apocalypse. There are a lot of long takes that for me just add to the tediousness of the whole thing and then of course that gets even worse in the last act when they just sit in a car for like 30 minutes. The Love Witch is another easy vote for me, almost purely for aesthetic reasons. And I'd probably be saying the same thing even if this was a stronger Fulci selection, because while I love Fulci's gore effects and a few of his films have very strong atmosphere, they're also kinda rough around the edges compared to what Anna Biller did with The Love Witch, and this Fulci was no exception. The use of color and the production design in The Love Witch is off the charts, easily enough on it's own to keep me engaged even though the movie probably needed to be a bit shorter. But it was basically a one-woman production by Biller so I can understand why she didn't want to cut it down any more than it already is.
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Apr 7, 2022 14:42
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Its Thursday! Its Opening Day but its raining so my team ain't playing. Boo. That does give me a chance to watch some of the movies I haven't gotten to though. We still got just under 48 hours so I should be able to get the two movies in if I just stop dicking around. Even with baseball coming. But I'm rambling. Doesn't bode well for the 7 reviews I gotta right or the actual work I gotta do. But hey, when am I not rambling? Movies, Bracketology, new week, lots of random rear end horror movies, voting, fun. Vote or change your vote until 12 noon EST Apr 9th (or when I get to the computer)
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Apr 7, 2022 17:18
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Night of the Demon vs. The Battery The Night of the Demon lost major steam by the end. The introductory scenes made me really interested in the characters. They were a really pleasant variety of interesting assholes. But as the third act progressed, I cared exponentially less and less for each of them with each passing frame. Every scene was predictable from go. I liked the demon though, I'd invite him to my birthday party. The Battery is a bros-being-bros movie that just happens to have zombies. If you've ever had a real deep bromance you probably felt just as fond and nostalgic as I did watching this thing. Yeah, I didn't particularly love either character but the way they interacted with each other brought back a lot of really positive memories. The Battery wins this one.
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Apr 7, 2022 18:47
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I will credit Night of the Demon with a framework that set up films like Drag Me to Hell. The skeleton is clearly there. Shame it would take decades to put flesh on those bones.
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Apr 7, 2022 19:34
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Its a really close matchup for me. I love the Battery. I love Gardner and that whole vibe the entire team has, using a horror setting to explore characters and relationships. I don't mind that there's not a lot of zombie stuff because its not really a zombie movie. That's just the setup for things. And I think its just a great piece about the complicated nature of a relationship that is as much out of convenience, necessity, and circumstance as actual friendship. Its the reality that the friends you have are often the ones you just kind of end up with. They went to the same school. They lived on the same street. They're blood. There's millions of other people out there you might click better with but this is who you ended up with for better or worse. I mentioned this in the writeup but "the battery" is the term used to describe the relationship between the pitcher and catcher in baseball. Baseball is largely an individual sport. You bat alone, you field alone. The team has to win and lose together but much is performed individually, way more than other team sports. But the pitcher and the catcher HAVE to work together. They need to prepare for the game, have a plan for every batter, be able to communicate over 90 feet with hand signs that the other team can't decipher. The Yankees just traded away their catcher in part because their star pitcher didn't like working with him. Baseball is introducing a wrist device to make it easier for the battery to communicate. Many of the classic baseball films like Bull Durham and Major League are at their core about a grizzled, cynical catcher mentoring a young, naive pitcher. So I think that all goes to really get at the heart of the movie and the relationship between Ben and Mickey. They try to work together because they have to. Ben feels like he has to wise up Mickey to this world. And if it doesn't work out and they can't get on the same page its probably gonna go to hell for both of them. But I also really love Curse of the Demon. It doesn't feel slow to me at all. Some of those 50s talky movies can drag but this one absolutely does not for me. Its a fun ride as our arrogant cynic main character bounces from believers trying to help him and spooky events supporting that something is happening and just staying obstinate about it. I get why Tournier didn't want to show the demon and keep it more ambiguous but I also think the demon is great and I think the whole thing still works because our protagonist is so drat stubborn and kind of a dick about it. And I think its good people are mentioning Drag Me To Hell or other films because I think this film, Tournier, and this whole team are maybe the best collection of underappreciated influences on horror. It feels like this tourney very usually prefers the new to the old and the students to the teachers, and I can understand that. Sometimes its hard to appreciate the films that shaped the way past their flaws or for the stuff they were innovating that became common later. But I think Tournier's stuff holds up better than just about anyone and I have a hard time voting against this team, even against my own team. And my favorite team. So I keep going back and forth. I'd seen both films before this week and going in I figured I was voting for Tournier. After rewatching the Battery I had such a good time I was leaning its way. Now having just rewatched Demon I'm leaning back to Tournier. So I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm probably gonna be flip flopping down to the wire. But the other contest is no debate. I haven't rewatched The Love Witch yet and it has its flaws but Fulci's film is just boring, unfunny, trash.
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Apr 7, 2022 21:35
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I think The Battery, when it's working, is working extremely well. That's mostly the rambling, walking around and being friends while also being stuck together and occasionally having to deal with life/zombies/etc. I haven't had many opportunities for it lately, but it reminds me of backpacking a bit. But the movie really grinds to a halt hard in the last act. It sort of gets okay at the end, but the car sequence was just interminable. Curse of the Demon has a great premise, and while it has a tough time getting started, it's really executing well by the end. I think by the end the demon that we see actually works excellently as a train/psychological metaphor/actual demon. I guess the moral of the story is to put the part that stops everything for a while near the start, and save the good parts for later. As for the other side, I'm not a fan of Fulci, and The Demonic Womanizer wasn't going to make me one, no matter how long it sucked. It could have been more amusing and almost worked, but I did not enjoy it. However, I haven't had time to see The Love Witch so I'll be abstaining.
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Apr 9, 2022 05:44
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 Jeremy Gardner falls to 0-2 in Bracketology but for the second time he puts up a respectable showing and gets some love before falling decisively. Jacques Tournier’s Night of the Demon doubles up The Battery’s votes and evens Tournier’s record at 1-1. For the Enemies of Horror that’s a 1st round elimination for the second year in a row and back to the bench until I renominate them next year for the next round in Goat’s signature brand of mediocrity. For Serv’s Lewton Bus its a strong defense of their top seed and into the second round for a matchup of very different styles against Deb’s Horror Musicals.  In a rare event one of my teams actually wins as Anna Biller’s Love Witch rolls over Lucio Fulci’s… vampire sex comedy with a dozen long names. I’m tired. For Fulci this was unquestionably a bad draw and the result is his very first elimination in the first round. That sounds awkward. It also evens him at a 3-3 record over all. Still its Fulci so I’m sure he’ll be back next year and he still has plenty of big, gross, Fulci films in his belt. For Love Witch it sends my Ladies Night into the second round for the second time… man, there has to be a better way to say that. Ladies Night made it to the Sweet Sixteen last year before falling to Stuart Gordon so they’ve got a chance to repeat their success or improve on it. But to do so they’ll have to topple another big name in the #1 overall seed Alfred Hitchcock. I’ve been writing all morning so lets get on to our new movies! 1. (Fran’s Femme Fatale Returns) Julia Ducournau’s Titane vs 16. (Deb’s Bon Appetite!) Park Cheol-su’s 301/302  What the gently caress indeed. This is a matchup… well lets be real, this a matchup only Fran and Deb could put together. Two acclaimed but not incredibly well known directors. One the new hotness and one a deep dive from the 90s. Both incredibly wild and heavy content from the sounds of it. Like… Goat is scared levels. Like Goat isn’t too sure about this one levels. For Park Cheol-Su this is his first Bracketology appearance but Bon Appetite comes off a Play In victory with Delicatessen which already knocked off a couple of wild takes (and a Fran team) in Team Rulebreakers and Sion Sono. Femme Fatales makes its first appearance of the tournament but they made the Sweet Sixteen last year. It was however Julia Ducoumau’s Raw that eliminated the team in a tough matchup against Predation and It Follows. So can Ducoumau even up her record and make amends with this recent hit? Can the cannibal team keep rolling with another big win? Wait.. is this a cannibal vs cannibal matchup? loving RNG. loving Fran and Deb. Titane is on Hulu 301/302 is on Youtube 7. (Skywarps Hat’s Team Vampires and Coke) Jimmy Huston’s Final Exam vs. 10. (Class3KillStorm’s Chucky and His Pals) Tom Holland’s Twisted Tales  As best as I can tell there are neither any vampires in this matchup nor Chucky. The RNG giveth and the RNG taketh away. Still, we have two movies and we have two teams and directors making their debut in Bracketology. Tom Holland is a fairly notable name but without a huge filmography of horror movies he didn’t make it into Bracketology until C3KS put together a natural team for him. But while half the team are Chucky films there’s also all the other cherry picking mandates and so we get this random 2014 anthology of questionable quality for the dude we know from the 80s. Weird. And on the flip side SH’s seemingly simple enough Vampires and Cokes theme also falls victim to the cherry picking mandates although I suppose at least Final Exam appears to fit the overall 80s theme? And maybe there’s some coke? Or maybe one of those 9 Holland stories is a vampire one? I mean that’s just good odds. Really I don’t know what to say here. I’m sleep deprived and rushing this, these are obscure films, and neither sounds like its gonna be a huge hit. Still, this Bracketology. An excuse for you to watch low rate films you never would have drawn off the shelf on your own. And isn’t that what us horror films strive for? Final Exam is on Tubi Tom Holland’s Twisted Tales is out there and available upon request That’s our week. Kind of a weird blend… but when is it not. My favorite thing about Bracketology is basically that there’s no way in the world you ever would have chosen to watch these four movies in the same week without it. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe its a bad thing but its Bracketology. Vote or change your vote until 12 noon EST Apr 16th (or when I get to the computer) Next Week! 2. mbd’s Uplifting Austrian Filmmakers vs 15. mbd’s Indonesian Insanity 8. Basebf’s Two Brits and a Kiwi vs. 9. Goat’s The Magical Muppet Wizardry of Jim Henson and Friends Spreadsheet Letterboxd List
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Apr 9, 2022 17:07
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Stream Time!!! Saturday 7pm EST Fran’s Femme Fatale Returns vs Deb’s Bon Appetite! Sunday 7pm EST Skywarps Hat’s Team Vampires and Coke vs. Class3KillStorm’s Chucky and His Pals With pre-streams from Mister Roger's Neighborhood.
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Apr 9, 2022 17:14
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Well at least I'm guaranteed a win next week 
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Apr 9, 2022 21:06
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Titane feels like a movie a well established director in their “nobody says no to me anymore” phase would make. But Ducournau made exactly one movie beforehand, the almost perfect Raw, so I can’t help but be unfairly disappointed. There’s good stuff in this, lots of good stuff, but it never reaches the heights of Raw. Its definitely not bad, I’m glad it exists, but it’s a bit of a mess. But what I really think drags down the whole movie is the soundtrack. There’s just nothing in there that compares to what Raw gave us. Shame. 301/302 An evil version of Tampopo, giving the audience food porn and then immediately turning it into food horror. The editing is a bit confusing at times, with flashbacks within flashbacks that don’t really add much in the way they’re presented. Still enjoyed it more than Titane so will be voting for it, also because I really appreciate and fear the concept of Deb’s team.
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Apr 10, 2022 21:36
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STAC Goat posted:As best as I can tell there are neither any vampires in this matchup nor Chucky. The RNG giveth and the RNG taketh away. Still, we have two movies and we have two teams and directors making their debut in Bracketology. Tom Holland is a fairly notable name but without a huge filmography of horror movies he didn’t make it into Bracketology until C3KS put together a natural team for him. But while half the team are Chucky films there’s also all the other cherry picking mandates and so we get this random 2014 anthology of questionable quality for the dude we know from the 80s. Weird. I just wanna point out that the team was originally designed for the last set of rules we used, where we were maxing out at 6 choices, and therefore the joke option was gonna be John Lafia's Man's Best Friend. Or, in other words, I take no responsibility for the choice of Tom Holland No Not That One and his Wacky Stories.
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Apr 10, 2022 22:29
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It’s a tough break but that’s the game. Especially this season where one of the most common themes has been big names being taken down by TV movies.
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Apr 10, 2022 22:48
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Titane vs. 301/302 Titane is what I would call a "complete" film, where every piece has been consciously, carefully chosen for style and effect. There are no B-roll shots, no stock sounds, nothing left to chance. The issue is I can see that the director knew the purpose of each piece, but I wasn't always along for the ride. I loved the color palette, and the movie had a gift for being deeply, excruciatingly uncomfortable. These were major wins. I had a problem though that there wasn't a single human being in the movie. They were human shaped, but not human. Not every movie needs grounded characters, but when you have a narrative this strange I feel it desperately needs a diagetic baseline of believable behavior to provide balance. 301/302 is a fun contrast regarding that. While it isn't nearly as expertly crafted, the nutso-via-ludicrous-trauma women are contrasted with the relatable, comforting, and lovingly rendered act of cooking. Yes, someone gets raped by their father while being forced to butcher a sweet neighborhood child, but then we get to watch someone blanch broccolini. It works so much better for me. I do wish the movie gave them a single reason to continue to hang out with each other: almost every interaction involves histrionic abuse but they just keep meeting up? Titane is certainly the better ~film~, but I liked watching 301/302 a lot more. Besides, it got an insane remake with Heather Graham and Carrie-Anne Moss, and that's always worth extra points. Samfucius fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Apr 12, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 22:17
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Final Exam is pretty middling, but there are some aspects I enjoyed. Slashers had such a boom in popularity because it's target audiences--teenagers and young adults--found themselves represented on the big screen with themes that spoke to them--hanging out with friends, getting inebriated, visiting interesting locations on trips (camping, cabins, the woods) or seeing experiences in familiar locations (the suburbs, schools and colleges), exploring sexuality, and also being exposed to the first time to pain, suffering, the unfair cruelty of Fate, and confronting their own mortality. Final Exam succeeds most in it's first act because it manages a sincere tone of banal college life. Men shaming other men for wanting to date one singular woman instead of being single; toxic masculine games both punishing each other and endearing them to each other. The nerds see the cool kids and envy them but also can't fully embrace their lifestyles. Some of the women are interesting in advancing their status with weaponized sexuality. Toxic traits, to be sure, but familiar ones that are incredibly common (and, honestly, charmingly light compared to things I've seen/heard people endure). The high point is a violent prank--a simulated school shooting crafted by the (football?) team to compromise an exam--which is still shocking and interesting today, but also familiar in bizarre ways. I remember, in middle school, having to sitting out on our school's football lawn for a few hours as police and bomb squad checked the campus because a senior had called in a bomb threat to get out of an exam. (He was subsequently found and arrested after an easy investigation, and was given a felony. He also failed the exam.) It's kind of a shame the film doesn't have more of a creative flourish after the fake shooting. It tries, with some fun expressionistic camera choices and some interesting ideas for set pieces, but ultimately it never gets past that first idea. (Maybe that should have been the movie--a fake school shooting and then very real and horrifying consequences of people trying to kill the "terrorists".) The two biggest inspirations are obviously Halloween and Friday the 13th. Halloween's absurd, blank-slate killer destroying lives for unknowable reasons, and Friday the 13th's hang-out vibe with a colorful cast of teens. As a slasher film, Final Exam doesn't work, because it's missing the elements that make those films interesting. Michael Myers is a blank slate, but he is visually striking, and the film is constantly framing his menace just out of view of the characters. We may not know who is really is or why he wants to kill, but Loomis tells us so much about the nature of Michael's evil that we can project our own fears onto him, invent our own ideas for his motivation. Final Exam's killer is bland--wearing an army green jacket, jeans and a mop of brown hair--and Radish's drunken speech about how people randomly become killers does not give the killer menace or the audience material to engage their imagination with the blank slate. If we ignore Friday the 13th's reveal on who the killer is and the killer's motivation, and instead pretend it has a blank-slate killer as well, it still has the first person perspective kills and Tom Savini's gore effects. Say what you will about Friday the 13th and how it compares to it's sequels or other slashers and horror movies, Savini knows how to work with a DP and director to frame the effects and kills to make them both effective, interesting, dynamic and (hopefully for the audience) scary. Final Exam really fails to deliver in this department. The kills are unceremonious, sloppy, and lame. The pacing doesn't work, the way they're framed isn't considerate to what would be frightening or striking or sickening. There are several sequences where the sets are interesting and dynamic, but the camera, the staging and blocking, and the effects are not. It's quite a shame, because the simulated terrorist shooting is inventive and well done, and the cast of no-name actors are seemingly having a good time and willing to bring things to the film (even if it's mostly a lame sense of humor). I do appreciate it's interest in its characters over trying to deliver a kill at regular intervals, I just wish that it could be more successful at both. Ultimately it's a failure as a slasher film, and the college drama is a bit redundant and boring despite the initial sincere charm. This is not one I would recommend, and it's not one I would care to rewatch outside of the big set piece at the beginning. (Instead, I would recommend the film Silent Madness for a similar no-budget "slasher" film that manages to be entertaining throughout.)
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Apr 12, 2022 14:02
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I didn't like Final Exam. I don't like 80s slashers to begin with so right there we have a problem. I think Final Exam definitely tried to take from Halloween in spending the first hour establishing its characters and setting so that when the slashing got going we'd care. That also means the emphasis is on the victims and not the killer, so just as Carpenter meant for Michael Myers to be a random boogeyman Final Exam seems to lean in on the idea of just random acts of violence. I just don't think it works. I spent an hour with these characters and I don't really feel like I got to know or like them. I just learned they were kind of assholes and probably racists. People say "different time" but really I think its a wrong point of view. The whole thing felt to me like when you're forced to hang out with someone you don't like and they regale you with "cool" stories that are just really kind of hosed up. They don't know they're hosed up. They think they're totally cool story about the time they tied a dude to a tree in his underwear is awesome. Or that time they staged a terrorism attack with assault rifles? The gently caress? Is that a plot point? No. Its defining the characters as... what? Deranged psychos who live charmed lives of no consequences? Is this how you get me to care when they get slashed? And there's a couple of characters who kinda seem to get this is messed up... but not really. And again, that feels like a total misfire on degrees. There's a movie where you have a lovely frat bullying people and some decent people talking about cruelty and the fear of real danger and it all feels like basic peer pressure and adolescent misbehavior. But instead we've got the same final girl talking about how frats drive people to kill themselves and then telling another guy that he's overreacting to the psychotic poo poo the frat is doing. Its weird and all tonally wrong. Complete misfire. Tom Holland's Twisted Tales is a strange beast since its clearly not actually a film but just a bunch of web shorts smushed together. And its unquestionably cheap, bad, and too long. But you know... I enjoyed myself. Part of that is just that I like anthologies in part BECAUSE they make it easier to enjoy the good little stuff like a fun cast or some wacky ideas and the bad execution doesn't have enough time to make it drag. Part of it is that I think I have a bit of nostalgia for that period of the early 2000s where like CGI was possible for everyone but not really good and horror was really kind of peeking through a bad period on places like Fearnet. I dunno. Its a time period of my life I wish I could go back to. But ultimately I just actually really enjoyed the last hour or so of the "film." I thought the premise of a serial killer bleeding on an Ipad and possessing it was hilarious and the actor was just having a ball with it. The Pizza Guy was incredibly stupid but it felt like everyone was having a lot of fun and there was actually a fair bit of clever writing put into it. And then you know... sexy vampires just kind of there. Because why not? So the whole thing ended on a high note for me. Was it worth 2 1/2 hours? No, probably not. But I enjoyed myself. So like... Final Exam is probably objectively the better made film simply by nature of actually being a film but also because its not like really low budget and bad. But I also think its a bad movie and its a bad movie of a genre I don't enjoy. The saving grace for people in it seems to be the actual slasher stuff and like... I just don't care unless you make me care. And Final Exam tried but failed to make me care. And ultimately I just got more out of a bunch of those dumb shorts. I saw Ray Wise and Danielle Harris and Angela Bettis and Atreyu from the Never Ending Story and funny bad effects and crazy ideas and Tom Holland seeming to have a real misunderstanding but curiosity of modern technology. So I had fun. So its getting my vote.
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Apr 12, 2022 20:19
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I posted this on the Discord regarding 301/302, and it might be helpful here too. I think it's a discussion of trauma at a uniquely female level. This is a building that's for single women, and these women come together and bond over trauma in a way that women do. When men aren't in the room anymore we tell each other stories of being raped, attacked, abused. There's a line in the film about how we relate to food and how we relate to sex, and that's a common theme throughout the stories. You have the abused child being forced to join the abuse of another, and abstaining from sex/food as an adult. You have the lonely housewife pouring herself into being attractive for her husband, but overeating as a result of depression. Then, at the end, you have them quite literally coming together in a cannibalistic act of union, an expression of their forbidden love asserting itself, like women teaching each other to orgasm. That final freedom of being known intimately and being able to finally share yourself with a partner. It's a disturbing disjointed film to the extent that it's disturbing and disjointed being a woman, and that bonding over pain is a ritual so many of us are unfortunately used to doing.
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Apr 12, 2022 22:03
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Needs More Goop posted:I posted this on the Discord Does most of the discussion happen there? If so I'd love to join. I remember someone saying they couldn't invite new people for some admin reason, but if that's been fixed let me know.
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Apr 13, 2022 02:44
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Samfucius posted:Does most of the discussion happen there? If so I'd love to join. I remember someone saying they couldn't invite new people for some admin reason, but if that's been fixed let me know. All my discussions and participations are happening here. I became so inundated with discords and how much they distract me from being productive on personal projects, that I now peak in every so often and stick to posting here. If you haven't been PM'd a discord code yet, try not to take it personally. There's been multiple times where CineD discords got invaded by goons from other subforums starting poo poo in the wake of forums drama, including spying and cross-posting stuff, so everyone gets pretty cautious about how soon someone gets invited these days. Just be nice and cool and keep posting and I'm sure you'll get an invite one of these days. But I'm personally only gonna be active on the forums because of time management.
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Apr 13, 2022 16:22
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Let me also suggest, and I know you said that you've not really posted in CineD before, but take a look at the general horror thread. There's a lot of general horror discussion there that you can jump into and it's a really cool group of people.
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Apr 13, 2022 16:24
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Basebf555 posted:Let me also suggest, and I know you said that you've not really posted in CineD before, but take a look at the general horror thread. There's a lot of general horror discussion there that you can jump into and it's a really cool group of people. Yeah, this is basically like a spin-off from that thread. And there's crossover. I know I went and posted about The Plumber in the main thread after loving it so much here.
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Apr 13, 2022 16:32
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Franchescanado posted:try not to take it personally. I never would. I noticed that there were always more votes on the poll than posts in this thread regarding the films, so I was wondering if they were posting their takes elsewhere, that's all. I love a good hot take. Good advice with the general horror thread though!
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Apr 13, 2022 17:00
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I often forget to open Discord for weeks at a time but I love the folks in the Discord. I also often vote without posting any thoughts because I have ADHD and writing up my thoughts sometimes feels too much like "work" so I just don't do it. But this is the first thread I check for new posts whenever I open SA, so I'm here in the shadows 
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Apr 13, 2022 20:46
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The Berzerker posted:I often forget to open Discord for weeks at a time but I love the folks in the Discord. I also often vote without posting any thoughts because I have ADHD and writing up my thoughts sometimes feels too much like "work" so I just don't do it. But this is the first thread I check for new posts whenever I open SA, so I'm here in the shadows This describes me too, with a slightly scary amount of accuracy
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Apr 13, 2022 20:54
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The Berzerker posted:I often forget to open Discord for weeks at a time but I love the folks in the Discord. I also often vote without posting any thoughts because I have ADHD and writing up my thoughts sometimes feels too much like "work" so I just don't do it. But this is the first thread I check for new posts whenever I open SA, so I'm here in the shadows I just open Discord for the Scream Stream at this point. I have too much going on to add Discord unless I've specifically time budgeted for it. I also don't post thoughts here even though I regularly vote because I do so many reviews for the May and October Challenges that I'd put myself into a deja vu situation of 'did I review this for a previous challenge or not?'. The rest of my posting's dependent on how busy work is. Case in point, we were prepared for the Sonic 2 insanity, but the mad rush over the two A24 films we've got completely blindsided us.
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Apr 14, 2022 06:17
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As always this is just fun and you should just participate to whatever degree you want. No pressure. Obviously it’s great if we have more conversation about films in here but people should also be comfortable just sharing thoughts without big reviews I think. Conversations instead. But if they don’t happen they don’t happen. Every week is gonna be different. And we still have a little time left on this week. It’s Thursday. Im a little late since whatever a ddos attack is. But that’s ok. We’ve still got about 44 hours or so to get the movies in. I still have to get the big one Titane in but I’m gonna try tonight. But there’s some time. Vote or change your vote until 12 noon EST Apr 16th (or when I get to the computer)
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Apr 14, 2022 21:26
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