Just Watched Movies (2013)

[slayrrr666]

I may be the only one in the world who hates that movie, it was dull, boring and never got my interest with it's thriller/suspense feel rather than straight-up horror tone. Everyone raves about it, I can't stand it.

El Gringo-Arriving in Mexico with the money from a drug deal gone bad, a police officer learns the town he chose to hideout in is the source of the gang-money he took and tries to keep it safe from the hoodlums who want it back. An admittedly enjoyable effort that has some pretty entertaining aspects here within the bundle of cliches that are present, including the double-cross seen coming a mile away, the town who lives in fear but does nothing, the romance with the local and many more predictable efforts found within. None of them, though, count for the film's rather fun and kinetic action scenes, and there's some outstanding sequences here where Adkins gets to both display his martial arts prowess (including several where he takes on those with no knowledge and defeats them with shocking ease the way it should be) and a couple blazing gun-fights that are a lot of fun, and when mixed with a great car chase has a lot going for it. A simple story that doesn't get too bogged down in unnecessary diversions, a touch of humor that's quite appropriate and a real ease of viewing all add together into a pretty enjoyable time.

[slayrrr666]

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter-Learning that a group of vampires have set themselves alongside the South during the Civil War, President Lincoln finds himself forced to use his old hunting skills to eradicate the creatures before they spread throughout the country and take it over. This here turned out to be quite an enjoyable if slightly flawed effort. The biggest flaw to get through here, despite the overlooking of history that this plays with, is the utterly atrocious CGI presented here for all the main action scenes which look so obvious that they're distracting to the overall scene. That this one has so much action as it does is where this one really gets all it's good points at once due to the overwhelming enjoyment they provide as this one has about as intense a collection of action scenes as many traditional genre movies with three stand-out, knock-out sequences that are just a pure blast to sit through. The violence is top-notch and really generates some gruesome moments, and the re-writing of history to suit it's own end is a rather fine notion and makes some sense in the context of the film, as there's not a whole lot of gaping holes to be found in the revisions which is nice, and overall this is quite a bit of fun if only for it's one flaw.

[slayrrr666]

Added an uncut copy of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie to the collection.

[Fenril]

I enjoyed "Abraham Lincoln: vampire hunter" way more than I expected, given that the source book is part of that wave of plagiarized mash-ups of literary classics with pulp horror, jumpstarted by "Pride and prejudice and zombies". The actual movie was a pretty fun experience, reminded me a lot of the tv series "Supernatural" (that might be why the CGI didn't bother me that much).

Meanwhile, I rewatched two of my favorite comedies: "Naked gun: from the files of the Police Squad!" and "High anxiety". Can't really bring up the plot here (in fact I think I already reviewed the latter sometime ago in this forum), just wanted to comment that as much as I love both films, I think the first held up much better on a rewatch. In fact, while I have to admit that Mel Brook's movies are better written and that he put a lot of work on both script and execution, I like the ZAZ team better. I just like absurd, cartoonish humor, I guess.

Well, except that Brooks I think aged better --his "Dracula: dead and loving it" and "Robin Hood: men in thights" might not be classics, but I definitely enjoyed both. "Scary movie 3", not so much.

[slayrrr666]

Strange, I'd put 'Men in Tights' as a classic, while I utterly loved Scary Movie 3. In similar practice with the opposing thought of Ravenous, I seem to be the only one that loved it while everyone else thought it sucked. That's more of the comedy style I prefer.

Vamperifica-Pretty lame effort about an effeminate college student who discovers he has a Vampire King's spirit inside him and tries to withhold the urges to bite his best friends while his cronies try to help him with the transformation. Way too much time on the high-school-esque drama, very little of interest in the first half and the stupid comedy ruins a potentially intriguing second half. While not a true horror the transformation scenes are interesting and somewhat moody and the gore is nice enough, but the main factor in this one is that there's just far too many flaws to overcome.

[Fenril]

I thought "Scary movie 3" was a vast improvement over the previous one, and the use of ZAZ humor (not to mention Leslie Nielsen) was certainly welcome --subtler jokes such as "President Ford" or the Engineer looking up complex terms in a theasaurus. What didn't work for me was the use of the scatological humor that the first two movies had already overplayed [for the record I actually liked "Scary movie" for what it was, but never cared for the sequel] --this felt like the directors dumbing down whatever script they had for their target audience. The other problem I had was with lead Cindy's rants --I get what they were going for, but frankly Anna Farris is just not that great at deadpan comedy. Consider the scene where she tells her nephew how he came to live with her --it's supposed to be so outrageous we have to laugh, like the "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" bit from "Airplane!", but somehow the way it's delivered just felt sadistic and more like what you'd see in a Seth MacFarlane production.

I also enjoyed "Robin Hood: Men in thights" (actually, I liked "Dracula: dead and loving it" better); what I meant is that they aren't regarded among Mel Brook's best efforts on the ground that each is based on a very specific movie (whereas "Young Frankenstein" actually mixed elements from several Frankenstein movies, the original book, and even the cultural perception of the original story).

On a similar note, I saw:

- Ghostbusters. The 1984 movie that became a minor pop-culture phenomenom, having to do with a quartet of paranormal investigators turned big-time ghost hunters who accidentally stumble upon a plot from an ancient Sumerian god who intends to destroy our world. By taking the most nighmarish form it could muster --a giant marshmallow man!

Though I was familiar with the sequel and at least two of the cartoon spinoffs, I had never seen the original movie in it's entirety until now and... well, it's a great spooky comedy, but I have to say it seemed very dated to me --not the special effects, which I thought actually held up very well, but the typically 80's straddling the line between pg-13 shenanigans and r-rated frights. There's lots of talk of sex in the movie, but somehow everything is kept chaste between couples, and all nudity is striclty off-screen. There's gruesome monsters on display everywhere, but nobody ever gets hurt. And there's this weird reactionary politics wherein everything bad is the fault of a cartoonishly incompetent EPA agent, while things are set right by a major who caves in to peer pressure.

Great soundtrack, through.

And for something quite different:

- Pontypool. A dee-jay and two of his colleagues working the morning shift in the news radio of a small Canadian town start receiving all sorts of disturbing accounts of a massive riot breaking nearby. It seems there's yet another zombie invasion on the front --but this time, it doesn't come from an airborne virus or radioactive bites but from *language* itself. Certain words will take hold of a person's brain until they obliterate all personality and trigger a rabid-like state. But how can you fight an infection that seeps through by comprehension?

Clever suspenser that's rather innapropiately touted as a zombie movie --technically there are "zombies" in this movie, as in hordes of bloodthirsty, infected people menacing our characters. There is one (and only one) burst of bloody violence on screen, when we find out what happens if an infected just doesn't find anyone else to infect in turn. There is the usual presence of authority figures (a doctor, a military convoy), who only make things worse for everyone.
But this movie isn't interested in chases and fights, and in fact highlights how traumatizing such a thing would be in real-life. Rather, this movie is interested in what happens when the symbols we use to communicate with each other start to degrade. Once it becomes clear that the entire English language has become an actual danger, the few survivors try all sort of desperate solutions such as switching to French (this being a Canadian production, after all), repeating a given word until it loses all meaning or even reassigning a given word's meaning (intentional cognitive dissonance such as "Kill is kiss!") --all doomed to fail because, like in most zombie / contagion movies, everybody's first instict is to flee or fight, rather than try to understand their situation.

[slayrrr666]

I'll give you the point on Faris (I've always thought she was better at physical comedy than anything else, whereas as a straight-woman she's pretty dreadful which is why I always thought those speeches were pretty lame) but some of that scatological humor was great, at least when compared to the utterly pointless and stupid versions in the fourth one.

I've never cared for Pontypool either for that one reason you mentioned (it's a suspense film with zombies instead of a zombie film) as well as one of the lamest reasons for the zombie invasion ever. The virus is done in by words that we've been using for centuries, it should've happened by now.

Beast from Haunted Cave-After making a getaway from the authorities with a ransom of gold, a group of thieves' plan to use an accident at a ski resort unwittingly releases a giant spider-like creature that puts a halt on their escape plans as it hunts them down one-by-one. This was a decent but enjoyable effort that really works a lot better than it should, despite some noticeable flaws. The main part is the haphazardly-edited finale, which is so chaotic and confusing that there's no way to tell what's going on in any of the scenes and the method of killing the creature gets lost in the fray due to this, it's all done so fast. At times the creature looks way too cheesy and doesn't really seem a part of the scene at all with the way it's imposed onto the image, and the only time you see it in full is at the end which is quite confusing. That leaves a large portion of time on useless features where the cast is forced to go through their different storylines which just aren't that interesting or enjoyable with the heist or the group's distrust of each other really making for some lame times. That said, the suspense of the attacks works well with a few creepy moments, the film is never really all that slow so it's got a nice pace to it and the overall design of the monster creates quite an impression. Those are enough to make up for some of the flaws.

[Fenril]

Jun 4, 2013 11:06:26 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

I'll give you the point on Faris (I've always thought she was better at physical comedy than anything else, whereas as a straight-woman she's pretty dreadful which is why I always thought those speeches were pretty lame) but some of that scatological humor was great, at least when compared to the utterly pointless and stupid versions in the fourth one.

Agreed, I did find her funny enough on the first "Scary movie", but for what they wanted to do in "Scary movie 3" I think they should have just recast her character or, I dunno, give the starring role to Brenda (Regina Hall) instead.

I haven't seen "Scary movie 4", the previews looked dreadful!

- The mummy's ghost. A high priest is sent to retrieve Kharis, the sorcerer doomed to walk as a Mummy for all eternity. In the process they run into Amina, an Egyptian girl who seems to be the latest reincarnation of Ananka, Kharis' doomed love. Yousef is merely supposed to take both back to Egypt and end their curse once and for all. But perhaps he has other plans in hearth...

Loose sequel to "The mummy's tomb", and one of three movies that Universal pictures did with Lon Chaney Jr. in the title role. In general, I think the sequels to the Universal classic with Boris Karloff pale in comparison, but this one is still worth a look. It's quite fast-paced and atmospheric, and boasting a surprising twist ending to booth.

[slayrrr666]

I don't think you'd like it, so I'd stay clear if I was you.

I personally prefer the Mummy sequels to the original, mostly because I never cared for it to begin with since after that one scene, there wasn't anything really impressive with it. I liked those that followed much better, and felt Universal really got the Mummy franchise right after the original. After all, Mummy's Hand is the one that contains all the cliches of the genre, not the one with Karloff and most don't realize that fact.

Added an uncut copy of My Bloody Valentine to the collection.

[Fenril]

Jun 5, 2013 10:44:36 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

I personally prefer the Mummy sequels to the original, mostly because I never cared for it to begin with since after that one scene, there wasn't anything really impressive with it. I liked those that followed much better, and felt Universal really got the Mummy franchise right after the original. After all, Mummy's Hand is the one that contains all the cliches of the genre, not the one with Karloff and most don't realize that fact.

If I remember correctly, the first Hammer version borrowed more from the sequels than from the original movie (for instance, the swamp scene in "The mummy's ghost").
One thing I did like about the first version (and that I don't recall appearing that often even now) is the idea that the whole thing was solved with Egyptian mythology: Ananka, the reincarnated princess, solves everything by appealing to Isis and using an Ankh --the modern characters can't really do anything.

[slayrrr666]

Well, that's what I was referring to, that the Universal sequels are the ones that have all the elements that were exploited by the genre to become the cliches we know and love about them. That's exactly what I mean there.

Based on encouragement from our discussions here, gave Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights re-watches to see which was the better second-tier Mel Brooks effort. Spaceballs aged a lot better than I remember, mostly because several of the gags are still extremely funny despite being played out far too often, and probably would've benefitted a little more had it been released closer in time to the original trilogy as some of the material falls flat due to the lay-off between this one and when they were released. That said, Robin Hood has very few really laugh-out-loud moments but contains a lot more of a steady stream of jokes that don't feel as blatantly one-dimension as Spaceballs did and has a more traditional element to them that's really funny. Because they're not as reliant on making jokes that poke fun at one individual target and more on getting laughs in general from the familiar material, this is highly enjoyable and definitely worthwhile.

It's close, but I got to say Robin Hood by a quiver wins it.

[slayrrr666]

Scared to Death-Absolutely banal and risible effort about a dead woman narrating how she came to die from an autopsy room, which has very few good parts about it. The main factor here is the seemingly endless series of plot holes, all of which set-up with a line denoting they'll explain later but never does and in the end leaves more questions than it answers, making this to be quite a confusing and illogical effort. Add to that the fact that the cause of her death is supposed to be the main reason for what's supposed to be figured out by the characters, yet is given away by the title itself so there's very little reason to keep this going. Add to this a shortened running time that still feels overlong, a clumsy and scattered script that looks a lot like filmed improv and wasted roles for the two main stars in this, it's quite weak overall.

[slayrrr666]

Hitman-Struggling to understand his connection to a government cover-up, a hit man tries to protect himself from the agents on his trail and solve the reason why he was framed with a woman with ties to the affair. Far more enjoyable than it should've been considering the myriad twists and turns present that don't make any sense whatsoever because it focused on the action more often than not. This is blessed with several outstanding shootouts that are brilliantly choreographed and deliver nicely with an insane amount of flying bullets, destroyed sets and shot-up henchmen, and when it goes into hand-to-hand combat there's some fun to be had there as well as none of it is really all that accomplished and sticks more to a grounded form of fighting. Gets too cliche-happy at times but overall not so bad.

[slayrrr666]

Tai Chi Master-When a man finds his lifelong friend on opposite sides of a deadly rebellion against a cruel governor, he must put his martial arts training to the highest test in order to help the rebels overcome the greater enemy. An immensely enjoyable and entertaining Jet Li effort that really has a lot going for it and might be one of his best efforts. While the storyline is nothing new and really doesn't have anything all that original or creative about it, the fact that it sets up an excuse to fight almost every five minutes is the main selling point here which allows this to have such a stand-out pace that there's a lot to like based on just that factor alone. That the fights are nothing short of jaw-dropping is another big factor, and the wire-fu used here becomes all the more spectacular after all the flips, spins and jumps performed within, and when mixed with the speed and ferocity of the maneuvers is nothing short of breath-taking. That's just the hand-to-hand fighting, as there's a plethora of weapons and gang-fighting as well, including one of the most impressive fights ever where a gang of several dozen take on the hand-full of rebels and nearly manage to overcome the odds as people go flying all over the arena of combat. Some of it looks a little silly, and as mentioned there's some problems with the story but this is one of Jet's better HK films.

[Fenril]

Jun 10, 2013 10:34:00 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

Based on encouragement from our discussions here, gave Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights re-watches to see which was the better second-tier Mel Brooks effort. Spaceballs aged a lot better than I remember, mostly because several of the gags are still extremely funny despite being played out far too often, and probably would've benefitted a little more had it been released closer in time to the original trilogy as some of the material falls flat due to the lay-off between this one and when they were released. That said, Robin Hood has very few really laugh-out-loud moments but contains a lot more of a steady stream of jokes that don't feel as blatantly one-dimension as Spaceballs did and has a more traditional element to them that's really funny. Because they're not as reliant on making jokes that poke fun at one individual target and more on getting laughs in general from the familiar material, this is highly enjoyable and definitely worthwhile.

It's close, but I got to say Robin Hood by a quiver wins it.

Agreed, in general Men in thights has a more... playful mood, I guess is the word, and just feels consistently funny. Spaceballs is very good, but as you say some of it instantly dated --through there were several impressively thought-out jokes, like the sand-combing bit.

Saw:

- The great Gastby. The latest adaptation of the perennial FitzGerald novel about the roaring 20's and the monstruosity behind the glamorous facade of the flapper lifestyle, framed as a deceptive love story.

Baz Luhrmann's stile is something you either like or you don't --I rather enjoy his sense of spectacle, and if it's true that most of what he does is all flash and no substance, this one I felt actually captured the book's subversive qualities just fine. The use of anachronic songs irked more than a few people, but Luhrmann always does that sort of thing. It's simply another way to emphazise how artificial everything we are seeing is --and that's intentional, it's a stilized world that could only exist on a movie screen. The cast was pretty good; in particular Carey Mulligan was perfectly cast as Daisy, capturing both the näive innocence and the savage materialism required for the character. Tobey Maguire gave narrator Nick Carraway a vaguely gay vibe, wether intentional or not --which went pretty well with the tone, too.