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SubG posted:Eh. I'm sure that's true, but if we're going to go there then that's always going to be true. My point is that exploitation film in general doesn't make any attempt to contextualise the violence outside of a narrative framing that's comfortable for the audience (where `comfortable' here means in the sense that we're comfortable in a amusement part haunted house). Whether or not we wish to posit that the director is getting off to it (and whether or not we care about this from a critical standpoint) it's clear that it is going out of its way to avoid packaging the violence in the conventional, easily digestible, way. Yeah, as soon as I said it, I immediately regretted ascribing that particular motive to the writer and director - however, it is an awfully uneasy thing because I readily admit that I'll sit and watch one of these movies (thinking of Martyrs, specifically) if the nastiness is contextualized outside of leering nastiness. I love horror, but I don't seek out films about young women being brutalized because I often find it distasteful in the extreme, MIM being a prime example.
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Jul 6, 2013 12:32
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Man, I didn't like Europa Report at all, and I loved Apollo 18. I just didn't find it scary at all, some of the acting was atrocious and the rest passable and I could see the ''twists'' (or I guess ''misdirections'' is the better word) coming a mile away. I fear I'm the only one who hated this.
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Jul 6, 2013 15:11
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I dunno, I just kind of took Paranormal Activity 1 as a fun movie about a demon.
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Jul 6, 2013 15:28
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Finally got around to watching Ghostwatch (the BBC show) last night. I expected it to be over-hyped but I was pleasantly surprised. The various "sightings" of Pipes (the ghost) were fun. I didn't realize how many of them I missed (or chalked up to something else) until I looked it up this morning. I still say the face in the shaking mirror was the best one (my wife and I both saw it right away and it creeped us out) even if the director claims that it's not one. Will probably watch it again on Halloween night.
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Jul 6, 2013 17:01
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Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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Jul 6, 2013 17:31
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Babe Magnet posted:The use of time skips to keep you out of the loop and unable to get comfortable or prepare for the inevitable is phenomenal. My advice, if you insist on watching the film, is to watch all of it. It's not very long and I think it's always a good idea to have a fully qualified opinion of a movie - after all it is one singular movie. But with that said, the best segments were A, L, N, Q, and X. The bad but watchable segments were: D, O, R, S, T, U, and V. Godawful garbage: B, C, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, M, P, W, Y, Z.
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Jul 6, 2013 17:54
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It occurs to me that people think Night of the Living Dead is a much older film than it is because it's in black and white. 2001 is from the same year.
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Jul 6, 2013 18:18
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Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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Jul 6, 2013 19:13
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Independent film. They couldn't afford enough color film, if I remember correctly.
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Jul 6, 2013 19:15
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Volume posted:I dunno, I just kind of took Paranormal Activity 1 as a fun movie about patriarchy. See? It works!
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Jul 6, 2013 20:34
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caiman posted:My advice, if you insist on watching the film, is to watch all of it. It's not very long and I think it's always a good idea to have a fully qualified opinion of a movie - after all it is one singular movie. You're giving it way too much credit. The only passable ones are D, Q, and T. The rest are irredeemable.
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Jul 6, 2013 21:15
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Was there a thread on ABC's of Death? I think it's hilarious that every time it comes up it just devolves into posting lists of letters and commas with no other commentary.
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Jul 6, 2013 22:12
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There really shouldn't be. As much as I like horror anthologies, it pretty much stinks. They really just strayed too far from "standard" horror. I mean, O is just a bunch of closeups of people moaning and bubbles popping.
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Jul 6, 2013 22:14
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Was there a thread on ABC's of Death? I think it's hilarious that every time it comes up it just devolves into posting lists of letters and commas with no other commentary. Here's my commentary: it sucked.
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Jul 6, 2013 22:15
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Out of 26 shorts, I thought like 3 were any good, and they gave the best one (D for Dogfight) away in the teaser before V/H/S. So yeah, it does suck.
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Jul 6, 2013 22:17
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I didn't hate the concept, or the overall film, but there were maybe a handful of shorts that were good, and maybe another handful that were memorable. I can't remember at least 12 of the shorts, and it's not an anthology I'd recommend anybody must see, especially not over better ones like Creepshow and V/H/S (still need to see V/H/S 2, which I've heard is better than the first).
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Jul 6, 2013 22:36
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Speaking of Creepshow, I saw Creepshow 2 for the first time a few weeks back and it also sucked. They really poisoned it with the lame framing story, which is a shame because the one from the first one was campy and delightful.
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Jul 6, 2013 22:39
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Megan is Missing reminded me of this film, again I am still on this South American and Mexico horror kick and just finished: We are what We Are (2010, directed by Jorge Michel Grau) Be warned if you go searching for this film, you will get spoilers. It really is best to just go into this completely cold and not ruin it for you. Really go into this blind, it's fantastic. Also it's incredibly bleak and gory. Spoiler Free Synopsis : A family living in Mexico tries to carry on family rituals and survive after the sudden death of their father. Spoiler-ed Synopsis: The movie is about a family of cannibals who, after the death of the father, try to continue a ritualistic tradition of kidnapping and eating other humans Again just go into it blind, this was referred to as basically Mexico's "Let the Right One In". It's gore sits a lot closer to the Evil Dead 2 (recent) scale of things, so it is pretty gory at certain points ,but I didn't think ludicrously extreme and overboard. Plus it's pretty sparse but it is there.. I really recommend it a lot. Think more in tone of Deadgirl. It's really good but can be alienating of the audience Also, expect the remake later on this year, it is being remade for American Audiences. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 23:26
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It kinda bugs me that the complaint against The ABCs of Death is that half of them aren't horror. Half of them weren't supposed to be horror. Okay, so obviously the film is advertised as such, but still, I think they should surely be judged for what they are, not what they're not? I dunno, I guess I defend it because I enjoyed it on the whole though. It was a lot of fun and an interesting experiment, the hit and miss nature makes it better for me, and has directed me towards some really interesting directors. Most of them have at least something going for them, even if the execution leaves something to be desired. There are some lovely ones, there are some great ones. The only one that is offensively bad is Ti West's entry. That pissed me off. You get given five minutes and $5000 to make a short film, and he wasted it on one of the cheapest, dumbest pieces of poo poo I've seen. Still, guess he made a nice profit from it.
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Jul 7, 2013 00:13
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i can agree with not judging the ahorts for not being entirely horror. Hell, some of the ones played for laughs (N and Q) were my favorites. My criticism isn't that it wasn't really a horror film, so much of how badly most of them sucked. Which is a shame because the premise of the anthology was great. It's just that the directors who participated just couldn't deliver on what the anthology should have been.
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Jul 7, 2013 01:36
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Good lord you guys weren't kidding, Ti West's segment on ABCs of Death was awful (letter spoiler only) M. Was he even trying?
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Jul 7, 2013 02:44
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RightClickSaveAs posted:Good lord you guys weren't kidding, Ti West's segment on ABCs of Death was awful (letter spoiler only) M. Was he even trying? His segment isn't just bad because it's bad, it's bad because his name attached to the movie was a big reason I and many others even knew about the film. His segment is just... nothing.
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Jul 7, 2013 02:46
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Silly Hippie posted:Thanks for all the new suggestions! Romero's films are kind of interesting because Night -> Dawn -> Day kind of elevate the role of women slowly to leadership. The remake of Night has a much more proactive Barbara (at Ben's expense, I think). She's kind of one of the casualties of the era, though I find it counterbalanced by baldie's wife. quote:I was genuinely unsure of whether the idea of zombies infecting other people through bites was something that originated with this film, or came way before it, or after. So when they introduced the sick child I had no idea whether she would might die and come back a zombie, or turn into one suddenly, or what. It made the whole movie that much more tense and I can't help but wonder if people who didn't have that concept that zombies=infection at least party ingrained in them saw this back in the day and were totally blindsided by the kid eating her dad. I know it startled me, regardless. I also didn't expect her to STAB her mom, wow. That did in fact originate with this film.
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Jul 7, 2013 02:54
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A lot of people will scream at you when you talk of NotLD being "the first zombie movie" by yapping about the likes of I Walked with a Zombie and White Zombie (both excellent movies, for the record). But in a very real, practical way - in most of the ways we think of the classic traits of the zombie movie - Night of the Living Dead is the first zombie movie. Slow, lumbering automatons - check. Craving of human flesh - check. Bites cause victim to become zombies - check. Group of survivors holed up in some structure while being attacked by the horde - check. It's the loving blueprint.
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Jul 7, 2013 03:17
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Where did the eating brains thing come from/go? I feel like the "braaaaaaains" thing is still strongly associated with zombies, despite it not really being a thing in any recent movies.
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Jul 7, 2013 03:35
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User-Friendly posted:Where did the eating brains thing come from/go? I feel like the "braaaaaaains" thing is still strongly associated with zombies, despite it not really being a thing in any recent movies. Return of the Living Dead, which is an absolute riot if you haven't seen it.
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Jul 7, 2013 03:36
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I followed up on a few names that had been tossed around in this thread and watched The Frankenstein Theory and YellowBrickRoad, which turned out to be unusually apt for a double feature. Frankenstein was more uniform in quality, though perhaps the more plodding of the two. I wish it made more of its "Frankenstein was a cipher for a real person" setup, because it never quite factors into stuff in any meaningful way. I mean, if the filmmakers felt confident enough to field some Young Frankenstein jokes they could have just set the movie in a world where Frankenstein was a real but semi-legendary figure, rather than someone apparently only Mary Shelley knew and felt compelled to write a roman a clef about. Apart from that angle that never seems to go anywhere, though, I liked the film's implication that instead of the gentle, misunderstood giant of the popular imagination, and the eloquent Miltonic figure of Shelley's novel, Frankenstein's creature is animalistic and defensive. Venkenheim's hubris becomes an issue not because of his audacity to create life, then, but his assumption that all forms of life can be figured into his scientific, liberal humanist (anthropocentric?) viewpoint. If humans were to create life, why should we assume it would be in any way "like" us? YellowBrickRoad was honestly my favorite of the two films, which I know probably puts me on some folks' lists for lovely opinions. I skimmed over previous discussion in this thread and found that Craig Spradlin and I had pretty similar takes on it. The film does a wonderful job of having characters respond to an absolutely absurd situation with playful irony, and then lets us watch as that irony breaks down into murderous insanity. It also walks a fine line between natural and supernatural horror, letting those elements complement and reinforce one another until "being lost in the woods" becomes essentially equivalent to "being in the grips of a disembodied evil force." Some of the attempts at more elaborate effects looked really drat goofy, but maybe my biggest problem was actually something that stood out more because I'd just watched The Frankenstein Theory -- the main character here is also portrayed as being overly ambitious. My problem with Teddy in this movie is that I have no loving clue why he's ambitious, because the film very heavy-handedly saying "This guy, right here? He is ambitious." As I recall, it was never clearly stated what he and his wife and their psychologist friend had accomplished previously (the YellowBrickRoad project is suggested to be a follow-up, "another book"), or why he had any drive at all to carry out this project in particular. Spradlin compared this to Spoorloos, which I think is a good insight, except even there it's a personal connection of "What happened to my wife?" I'm not sure why Teddy wants to know what he wants to know, and even if you accentuate the film's Lovecraftian elements, he's not exactly that sort of over-curious antiquary. But in the end, that still gets us to the final scene, which up until we get to see the goofy CGI hell dimension, feels a lot like something cribbed from The Shining by way of David Lynch. Other random thoughts: The incredible sense of dread throughout the film leading to such an insane and cheap-looking ending reminded me a lot of Occult. Also, though the effect is pretty ridiculous and the reasoning behind including the detail it is unclear I think the brother cartographer somehow severing his sister's leg with a rock is supposed to foreshadow how they find her corpse later strung up like the Scarecrow from Oz -- there's a scene where he (the Scarecrow, that is) gets pulled apart by (I think) the Flying Monkeys. H.P. Shivcraft fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 03:39
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Is Land of the Dead worth a watch? I liked Night, Dawn and even Day (to a lesser degree) but I've heard mixed things about any of Romero's films after those 3.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:04
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Jeff Wiiver posted:Is Land of the Dead worth a watch? I liked Night, Dawn and even Day (to a lesser degree) but I've heard mixed things about any of Romero's films after those 3. I say yes. It's a Romero zombie movie and it's got Dennis Hopper acting zany. I liked it.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:10
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penismightier posted:Return of the Living Dead, which is an absolute riot if you haven't seen it. Send more paramedics. I loving love Avengers. I watch it at least once a week. If you don't love Avengers you read too my comic books and you will never get the movie that lives up to your very specific vision of how it should be. Sorry.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:15
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caiman posted:A lot of people will scream at you when you talk of NotLD being "the first zombie movie" by yapping about the likes of I Walked with a Zombie and White Zombie (both excellent movies, for the record). If you actually do ever interact with people who allow this fact to legitimately affect them emotionally and either your or their careers are not film related, please slap them repeatedly until they stop because WHO EVEN GIVES A gently caress? Also, the best ABCs of Death was clearly X is for XXL because not a single other one of the shorts was even remotely scary. As a person who's been dealing with issues pertaining to this segment all my adult life... holy God. Every other one operated under one of these basic principles: A) I hate my letter and I don't know what to do with it B) I had this plot in my head already and I'm gonna make it fit somehow or C) "Huh huh... hey. Hey, guys? Yeah. Huh huh. 'Feces,' am I right?"
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Jul 7, 2013 04:40
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schwenz posted:I loving love Avengers. I watch it at least once a week. If you don't love Avengers you read too my comic books and you will never get the movie that lives up to your very specific vision of how it should be. Sorry. All I remember is giant CGI bees and Sean Connery being vaguely menacing? Maybe?
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Jul 7, 2013 04:45
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OK Octopus posted:If you actually do ever interact with people who allow this fact to legitimately affect them emotionally and either your or their careers are not film related, please slap them repeatedly until they stop because WHO EVEN GIVES A gently caress? I didn't care much for X is for XXL if only because it was this music video except worse in pretty much every way. I just watched it and man, it's almost impressive how lackluster it is. The best segments were merely ok and the worst ones were embarrassing (the fact that it got worse than F just disturbs me). Oddly enough I think my favorite was "O". It was abstract as hell, but whatever. I thought it was well made and used the medium well. It wasn't amazing but I liked it. There were a handful of others I liked but it's just amazing how badly they hosed this up. Like, who the gently caress were these people that they gave money to to make these films? I recognized a few names and they disappointed but some of these were just so bad that I can't imagine how they'd attract the producer's attention. And yes, I don't have a camera right now but if I did I could probably have made Ti West's segment.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:48
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Jeff Wiiver posted:Is Land of the Dead worth a watch? I liked Night, Dawn and even Day (to a lesser degree) but I've heard mixed things about any of Romero's films after those 3. Land of the Dead is indeed worth a watch. Also, if you haven't seen Return, see Return of the Living Dead as well.
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Jul 7, 2013 05:11
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Jeff Wiiver posted:Is Land of the Dead worth a watch? I liked Night, Dawn and even Day (to a lesser degree) but I've heard mixed things about any of Romero's films after those 3. I enjoy Land of the Dead even if it is nowhere near the level of Night/Dawn/Day. It's fun even though there are some really dumb moments.
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Jul 7, 2013 05:15
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Sweeney Tom posted:Land of the Dead is indeed worth a watch. Also, if you haven't seen Return, see Return of the Living Dead as well.
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Jul 7, 2013 05:26
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Land of the Dead builds on a lot of the themes and ideas presented in Day and for that, I appreciate it. It just falls incredibly short in a lot of aspects, it's just pretty okay and that wasn't good enough for that series at that point at all. Edit: Speaking of Romero, Creepshow gets brought up a fair amount around here (and rightfully so), but I'd just like to throw in some love for his segment in Two Evil Eyes, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar". I make the Creepshow reference because it feels like the slightly too long kid brother segment that would more or less fit in right alongside Leslie Nielsen losing his poo poo or killer Artic crate yeti-monkey. Always had a soft spot for it. Glamorama26 fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 06:07
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How many people here enjoy the film Alucarda has anyone else seen it before? It's got a really famous cover/ poster or at least a often used image poster. I just rewatched it on a actual decent DVD transfer and it's pretty fantastic. If you haven't seen it you probably should. I had forgotten how great it was. It's from the late 70s and deals with demonic possession, and I guess could be put in the same category as The Exorcist kind of films of the 70s. Also, even though it is a Mexican film. All the dialogue was spoken on camera as English then dubbed Spanish, which is strange but it also makes it so English dubs of the film match well and you don't have to go the subtitle route at all. Oh and it's got orgies, lesbians, bleeding nuns, exploding nuns, naked women covered in blood, goth chicks, satan worshipping, gypsies, more naked women, gallons of blood,and a scraggly old priest. Pretty much everything you would expect in a Mexican Demonic possession Exploitation film set in a convent. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 06:13
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ABCs of Death is Spike TV"s 1000 Ways to Die. Like, almost literally the same thing and just as lovely.
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Jul 7, 2013 07:47
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Just finished up Amber Alert, The Skin I Live In, Eden Lake and Europa Report. Amber Alert is pretty slow and most of the film is two people just screaming at each other, but well acted enough to keep you interested. The Skin I Live In and Eden Lake are all sorts of twisted and hosed up, definitely recommended, the latter will beat you to poo poo. Europa Report is a fantastic sci-fi film along the lines of Apollo 18 but isn't really horror like Apollo 18 is, it's more of a drama/thriller. Well shot, great sets and CGI sell the package well.
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Jul 7, 2013 08:08
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