Just Watched Movies (2014)

[Fenril]

- The corridor. After a disastrous incident that ended with one woman death and one man sent to an insane asylum, five lifelong friends gather at a cabin in the woods to mourn the passing of one of the men's mother. Alongst the way they stumble into something inexplicable: a luminous area that gives them increased clarity, seemingly enhanced senses and the chance to make their lifelong dreams reality. Unfortunately it also gives them an irresistible psychic connection. And as all sort of resentments and jealousies emerge to the surface their weekend outing soon descends into carnage.

Surprisingly good sci-fi / horror thriller. The low budget is extremely evident and the plot iself has more than a passing resemblance to Stephen King's Dreamcatcher and to the movie Chronicle, but even so the result is fairly original, with earnest acting and a surprisingly nasty (not to mention gory) third act. The snowy locales are a good location choice, and the generally understated soundtrack works wonders.

My only real complain is with the characters. As much as I appreciate the idea of giving all of them serious flaws and lifelong grudges towards each other, there's a point where you start wondering why these sad sacks are even friends, when they don't seem to care for each other at all. Also, the lead, or rather what at first appears to be the lead, is amazingly underdeveloped --for somebody who acts like the "papa wolf" of the group, he sure doesn't seem to have much in common with any of them.

That aside, this is an okay midnight movie, and would make a good double feature with other snowbound horrors (like, say, Ghostkeeper, Fritt vilt, or perhaps even Wendigo).

[slayrrr666]

13 Eerie-Arriving at a remote campsite for a class project, forensics students learn the area was a ground for dumping toxic waste years ago when the patients of a prison experiment found there revive and vicious attack them, forcing them to get out alive. This turned out to be quite an enjoyable and entertaining zombie effort with a lot to like about it. One of the better features is the zombies themselves, which starts off nicely with their introduction as another supposed part of their field trip only for a nasty surprise to await them, also manages to work rather well with them within the film itself. Deformed beyond belief with some rather nasty looking wounds, exposed veins, charred skin and a decomposed look that comes off really well and is truly frightening at times, especially with the way their actions are involved. Managing to incorporate the more ravenous side of their behavior makes for a rather imposing villain here as they relentlessly charge after their victims and don't seem interested in anything other than devouring their prey which makes them formidable enemies in here. As well, this provides the film with plenty of fantastic gore scenes throughout as they initially strike against the group before getting the tables turned, so there's plenty to like from the first attacks out on the lake or in the tangled, twisting cluster of tree-branches that really signals where the film hits its stride in terms of attacks. Surprisingly, this also affords the movie numerous amounts of high-end action scenes as the sleeping shack encounter, command-center ambush and the extended, thrilling high-way escape on the prison bus are all extremely fun and exciting action sequences that are just immensely entertaining and pack more of a punch than expected considering the low-budget that rears it's head from time-to-time. There's a quality running throughout this that really does betray the low-budget roots of this that really sticks out quite noticeably on the devoured bodies that doesn't quite match the rest of the movie and somewhat gives away the film's sources. As well, the opening assignment and getting them out to the area is itself quite dull with the endless time actually setting up the procedures to be conducted rather than having been done beforehand as well as being forced to spend time with the bitter, resentful head of the project who wears thin quite early in the film. Otherwise, there's not a lot wrong with this one.

Red Mist-After inadvertently putting a young man into a coma, a doctor tries to resuscitate him with a powerful new drug being tested at the hospital only for his murderous spirit to possess passers-by and kill them one-by-one for putting him there. This one managed to be quite enjoyable even if nothing really sticks out afterward. The fact that this is based so much on a familiar, over-done plot-point of having the perpetrator seek revenge by body-hopping from one person to another going after the ones who placed him there is a tired, overdone cliche that really seems quite ludicrous the way it's presented here as being done through the tell-tale sign of a bloody nose after-the-fact, which manages to feel quite lame and ludicrous as yo be the overall source of the possession it really feels quite shorthanded. Though it does manage to have a rather credible back-story in the attempt to tie it in with the out-of-body experience from the experimental drug treatment, the fact that it's never explicitly stated how it's possible to do that makes for a really lame-duck explanation. As well, there's very little thought put into the film's final twist in terms of connecting it to explaining how the various crimes were committed, as this one manages to attempt something interesting in the final minutes only to undermine everything that's happened beforehand with the story to wrap everything up in how it played out, so in the end re-writes itself out of it's original storyline and produces a huge gap in logic rather easily. That said, there's still some good stuff here in the brutal deaths doled out which are quite fun and enjoyable in how shocking and nasty they get, as well as the concept of how it does these acts come about. Though it goes for mere shock value instead of playing about with suspense in these cases, it does work on the brutality stakes more than the actual scare factor. As well, the final matter of dealing with the body is quite ingenious and really unique, looking for a new way to actually deal with the threat that's never been done before and manage to work itself into the story rather nicely, in spite of the problems it perceived into the storyline. These made the film watchable and enjoyable, but it does have a few problems.

[slayrrr666]

Apartment 1303-When her sister's death is ruled as a suicide, a woman goes to investigate the apartment where she lived only to find the room is teeming with the ghosts of a couple who don't want to share and try to force her out the way they did her sister. This is a fine if slightly flawed effort that does manage to contain enough good points to be a workable effort. The biggest part of that is the fact that the ghosts are incredibly mysterious and don't really have too much about them that's really known to the characters or the audience. Since it doesn't dwell on the investigation that would've taken up forever in the film's running time to get through a few minor pieces that aren't so creepy or original, the film is able to focus on the fact that they're there and must be dealt with accordingly as the only true amount of discovery comes after-the-fact which is a tad lazy but does the job well enough. That then hinges the film to work on the scares when they appear out of nowhere and begin interacting with the different occupants as this one does tend to feature a couple rather creepy encounters within as the bathroom scare and the closet appearance serve well as two pretty tense scenes that work only through the virtue of the make-up for the ghosts. The quick pace does seem to serve as a rather important factor in keeping this one from really getting too boring or drawn out with the endless possibility of lame subplots, so the lean and tight appearance does help, but it also highlights the first of the film's rather glaring flaws in that it really doesn't do much to keep this interesting if the main plot doesn't entice the viewer. Because the few attempts at subplots go nowhere and don't really serve the film any purpose, doing it this way makes for a rather brief affair with a few scares and little else to really work over, as the storyline for the ghosts is quite laughable and cliche, the lack of explanations offered for them makes them seem less frightening at times and the reliance on the cliched notion of having something pop up out-of-nowhere every time with a loud bang on the soundtrack to indicate a scare is a tired act that gets little help here. With no true on-screen deaths, missed sleaze opportunities and a tame overall feel, it doesn't offer much else for it.

[slayrrr666]

Eight Diagram Pole Fighter-After barely surviving an attack from an evil warlord attempting to wrest away his family's power, a young man enters a rigorous martial arts school and eventually returns to clear his family name and dispel the evil criminal gang. This, in effect, plays out exactly like Liu's earlier effort '36 Chambers of Shaolin' almost in a sense of being a straight-up remake with all the similarities found throughout here. The notion of having to defend family honor from the wrongful accusations of a criminal gang hiding under authority, the grueling and intense training sequences that make up the bulk of the film's running time and the eventual return home to deal with the full-power of the gang are all taken straight from that one and placed here which tend to give this one an overly-familiar feel when it probably wasn't as necessary as it is, but there is one major difference between the two that does separate them. 'Shaolin' is more focused on the training and the lifestyle of the monks so there's a lot more intensity in that one during those sequences that's not here because this one tends to fall more in line with a typical action film of the time so there's not as much time spent in the temple learning the moves as a cut-away subplot concerns a family's members own quest to clear their name along with the training he's undergoing. While doing this, it in effect causes more action and fighting to take place here which is just so much fun and jaw-dropping that this surely ranks up near the top 10 in terms of most dynamic and original choreography on camera. The opening assault that starts it all is a masterpiece of weapon-held combat and the fight to prove his merits and undergo his full revenge is astounding, but the real joy here is the final assault on the attackers in their hideout, which is one of the genre's most impressive scenes ever with all the different levels of the hideout coming into play, the use of coffins for hiding additional combatants is a great touch and the execution of the moves is spot-on, leaving this a masterful sequence that really ends the film on a high note. Otherwise, it's just the same-ness and familiarity that hold this one back.

[slayrrr666]

Added uncut copies of Prom Night and Drive-Thru to the collection.

[slayrrr666]

The Expendables 2-After a seemingly-routine extraction mission results in the loss of one of their own, a team of mercenaries and several friends set out to right the wrong and prevent the international arms dealer responsible for the death from stealing nuclear weapons. This was an absolute mastery of action films and wholly represents what I expect and want in the genre. From seemingly-endless scenes of people getting shot to pieces with all manners of weaponry, from small arms to machine guns to airplane-mounted guns to turrets and shotguns, incindiaries and so much more, there's no stopping this one from providing everything that a fan could want from scenes like the opening compound raid, the firefight in the abandoned city and the firefight in the tunnels which provide a heaping amount of action, shootouts, explosions and chases that are just an absolute joy to watch. Of course, nothing can top the sheer fun of the airport assault which would've been jaw-dropping awesome for the actions depicted before realizing who's participating in such a sequence together on camera for the first time ever. That brings in the fact that nearly everyone responsible here has a moment to shine and let their abilities take over, which is no small feat considering who's in this one, and that makes for quite a thrilling and enjoyable effort. Balanced with enough humor and a reasonable running time, it's quite possibly one of the best Action films of the last 20 years, let down slightly by the unnecessary ribbing of each other in the middle when they're hiding out in the hotel, but otherwise there's more than enough here to provide plenty of fun and excitement.

[slayrrr666]

Fast Five-Hiding out in Rio de Janeiro, a group of car-thieves are caught in the middle of a ruthless FBI agent's quest to bring down a corrupt gang leader and must utilize all their skills to finally put an end to the reign of terror he holds over the community. There's so much to enjoy in this one that it's easily the top entry in the series without really trying. It almost doesn't even feel like a franchise effort with the way the action centers on shootouts, more traditional chasing and stunt-work than probably any of them combined, as the assault on their hideout where they need to make a rooftop escape, the lifting of the cars from the moving train and the escape from the church all provide what I really enjoy in my action movies: bullets flying everywhere while tons of objects get blown up nice and good around them. Of course, the chase through the streets anchoring the safe is perhaps one of the finest pieces ever put into an action film and made for a full-on enjoyable experience. That these are due to the dropping of the franchise's penchant for going the racing route instead of chasing is the prime factor here since it has nothing to do with the lifestyle presented earlier and instead goes for a straight-up action film without really doing anything too heavily focused on the one rather excruciating experience in favor of a balls-to-the-wall, crashing, chasing, shoot-'em-up happy action film with crazy stunts and lots of big moments with a stellar cast that really does get a chance to let loose rather nicely and all have their moment to shine. It does get a little heavy on the sentiment which makes it last a little too long in the last half with their relationship squabbles but I'm not going to hold it against this one. Wicked fun all around and it's not even close to a contest, the best in the series by a landslide.

[slayrrr666]

The Dragon Missile-Sent to acquire a valuable cure for a poisoned governor, an emperial Chinese guard protects the valuable resource from a series of well-intentioned hit-men looking to use the cure for their own devices. Surprisingly a rather enjoyable HK kung-fu effort that gets really rowdy at times thanks in part to the guard utilizing the titular weapon at various points throughout the movie, which in effect are boomerangs with a dragon etched on one side and blades on the other that work exactly like the description sounds and effectively makes for a slew of beheadings throughout this one as he fights off the attackers with greater skills than his own and forcing the weapon into giving him an advantage. While this does make for a cheesy good time watching all the rather lame decapitations in here as the obviously fake bodies stand around for ages without doing anything of note and then finally fall down with cheesy blood and lame-looking special effects to accomplish the trick of the act, the fact that it really hinders the martial arts throughout this one is a minor distracting feature. Rather than getting into long, drawn-out duels with his attackers and then forcing the weapon into action as a means of getting through his mission with valor and honor, he whips it around with nary any reason to do so, as if the mere thought of a shadow behind him is grounds for utilizing the weapons and most fights are brought to a screeching halt immediately with their immediate use. That makes the film's rather fun twist halfway through all the more impressive for it's quite a surprise to see it happen and there's a lot of good that comes from it as that actually allows for more traditional hand-to-hand combat than the previous half of the film accomplished and the final brawl is quite fun. That does make for a more enjoyable part of the movie with more action occuring, though it would've been a lot better had there been more consistency in the quality.

The Flying Guillotine-After the invention of a deadly weapon, a government guard grows dissatisfied with the use of the weapon and flees his command, forcing his former comrades into hunting him down for his percieved traitorious acts. This was a fairly enjoyable and oftentimes rather exciting martial arts epic that actually utilizes the famed titular weapon again much like the previous entry where the film takes a similar path in showcasing it’s effectiveness as the same tactic of beheading someone occurs in the same exact manner. There’s not as strong a sense of cheese in this one as the other one when it comes to how the effects are carried out in here which does make for a rather conflicting contrast as this is definitely a cheesy kung-fu movie but the serious tone does make for quite a pronounced difference in tone that makes the film feel like two different movies where the fighting is actually quite good and exciting with plenty of great choreography, fun moves and a great sense of style that really helps this one along tremendously. While the plotline involving the paranoid and deluded general was a nice touch, the fact that it seems shoehorned into the story simply to make the hero honorable and righteous without just cause is a little ridiculous and definitely hurts this one more than helps it along and makes the other guards seem like blind followers and him the more virtuous simply for having a brain. Overall, it’s a lot of fun but has some problems.

[slayrrr666]

No Tell Motel-Getting stranded at a roadside motel, a group of friends find themselves trapped in the area by a gang of ghosts looking to change the fortunes of how they died and must find a way of stopping it from happening. This is an overall run-of-the-mill ghost film that really doesn't offer too much one way or another about providing good parts or bad. The fact that the whole film barely offers up any kind of rational explanation for what's going on really mar this one because it's the one that does the most damage to what's going on here. The brief running time, itself a problem on numerous levels, never gives us a change to get fully invested in anything or even a chance to develop any sort of coherent storyline between what's happening and who these people are that have stumbled onto the secret, haunted location. It's only in the final, closing minutes that something resembling an explanation is offered for why everything's going on and it's tacky, hokey and completely unrealistic in many ways, offering one of the wackiest and most nonsensical explanations ever for what kind of haunting story this really is. The fact that there's so little time to work through things and just spends so much time on them wandering around the hotel itself in their own little groups with their own problems is somewhat boring and infuriating to sit through, and all of these go right back to the film never offering up a lot of explanations about what's going on in here. There's some bright spots, though, with the fact that the opening explanation for why the particular locale is haunted does make some rather chilling moments than what would be expected in such a film as this, and it leads into the explanation rather nicely as it is. As well, there's a few rather intense scares throughout this one as the hauntings come at quite unexpected times and allow for a few chilling surprises to come out. While not entirely flawed, this one does have enough to lower it from it's supposed strengths.

[slayrrr666]

Would You Rather-Guests at a stranger's mansion home must partake in strange tortures and twisted games in order to win money being the last one standing at the end of the night. An absolutely banal and worthless film that has absolutely no redeeming value at all, for it's a childish game that must be undertaken during the night and serves no real focal point at all except to showcase utterly lame tortures that really have nothing in terms of generating fear, suspense or tension. There's nothing to this one, it's a suspense thriller instead of a true horror film and is grossly mismarketed as a lame horror entry to begin with. Utterly terrible on all accounts.

[Fenril]

- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). A mysterious black monolith watches mankind from the dawn of tools and weapons to the arrival of space colonies, to the revolt of artificial inteligence and, perhaps, to an evolution beyond the stars.

Seminal sci-fi film that more or less reinvented the genre. While the concept that this movie made sci-fi "serious" for the first time (a view still held by millions of critics) is completely innacurate, this is nevertheless an impressive movie whose special effects miracolously hold up even today, as we have surpassed the movie's purpoted date.

- Noah (2014). The well-worn biblical tale (plus help from a few apocryphal sources) is given the megabudget treatment in a movie that attempts to re-capture the magic of either version of Cecil B. Demille's "The ten commandaments"...

...and the result is a movie that doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be. There's moments where director Darren Aronosfky seems inspired and even challenging [the best scene finds Noah facing the undoing of his own family by the same faith that supposedly spared them amongst mankind]; there's others when he seems just plain bored. Really, the best you can ultimately say about this evangelical film pretending to be philosophical is "well, at least it's not as deplorable as that Mel Gibson movie".

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Detention of the Dead-Forced into detention together,a widely-varied group of students are forced to come face-to-face with their own insecurities in order to repel a zombie outbreak at the school. This turned out to be quite a fun and rousing mixture of horror and comedy that works surprisingly well considering the high risk of detrimental flaws here. The fact that the whole film rests on fulfilling clichés and then twisting them does tend to fall short at times, because it is doing nothing more than utilizing the same exact tropes and storied characters that have been a part of the genre for years now and then turns them into exactly what you would expect would happen because you have to invert the clichés, resulting in nothing new or groundbreaking despite acting like it is. The low-budget doesn't help matters much either with a rather pedestrian look overall to the zombies who look decent enough but never really pack that special push to really sell them, settling instead on colored contacts and swollen features to sell their zombified state, and that's not entirely convincing throughout. As well, the lower-budget-means are fully viewed on the swarming scenes, which lack the massive size of most normal zombie hordes as well as failing to really exploit the type of blood and gore that come to be expected in such a scenario despite several rather gruesome moments which signal the start of what it does right. The fact that the zombie outbreak is so early on in the film, barely ten minutes in when the first victim turns into the ravenous being, makes for a rather pleasing amount of action in this one with a rapid series of encounters that are fun, exciting and quite thrilling, working the best when utilizing the comedy in the intense situations. Being forced to sneak past a group of zombies gnawing on a corpse without suspicion and doing so successfully only to be rousing by the cheers and congratulations of the rest of the survivors, fending off zombies by hurling library books at them or continually bashing them over the head with baseball bats but always loosing their grip on the bat are just some of the wonderful comedic scenes throughout that are not only hysterically funny and logical in such a situation but do so to make the non-stop action all the more fun. Coupled with some of the great gore gags when they occur and a rousing amount of heart, it's a lot more fun than what it seems like.

As well, never got a chance of mentioning this yesterday, but also managed to see Steel and Terminator: Salvation over the weekend.

Steel wasn't all that bad, despite a lot of problems with the story since it never really gives a lot of motivations for anything that goes on. What we do get is so hackneyed and lame that it's hard to really get as invested in this as it really could've been much better with a little more story given to it. That said, the action isn't bad and it certainly contains enough to really keep this going with some nice chases, a few marvelous shoot-outs and a fun explosion-filled ending. A little too cheesy and corny for the type of movie this tries to be, but it's definitely better than it should've been.

Terminator: Salvation is a bit more of a mess but also better overall. When the film is focusing on action movie mode, it's quite enjoyable in the 'let's see how much we can blow things up' sort of style that really appeals to me personally so the numerous chases, shoot-outs and firefights are quite entertaining as the mechanized creations slam and crash into each other. The problem is what goes on when that's not happening, and it's an unmitigated disaster with a story that's not in the slightest bit interesting, makes no sense and really doesn't even make for a cohesive and logical flow through the rest of the films and really doesn't make me care that much about it one way or another.

[slayrrr666]

Jug Face-Pregnant with her brother's child, an ostracized teen in a backwoods religious community tries to prevent her impending sacrifice to a strange pit in the forest by her fellow peers. This is a decidedly overblown and problematic effort that really does offer up a fair share of problems that it can't overcome. One of the biggest problems in this one is the fact that the whole storyline is never played out in any shape, manner or form that indicates this is supposed to be a horror film, with the general tone, appearance and lay-out of this is based far too heavily on drama than anything else. Since it relies far too much on the concept of hiding the titular object that denotes who's going to be next to be sacrificed in the community, this fact is never explored to ensure why we should really care that she's enacting the ruse of not knowing what's going on and hiding her fate beyond the fact that she's pregnant and doesn't want to kill her child. There's hardly anything to this one about the community as a whole, why this should be undertaken or what kind of community they actually are because this one decides that never knowing anything is going to be good and creepy when all that goes on in here is actually elements that requires explanations for their actions. As it stands, this lack of information makes the story just an utterly incoherent mess that never makes any sense or really tries to offer up anything as to what's going on with the community and really just turns the whole thing into a huge bore with nothing to really know about this one. As well, this lack of information also causes the film to really wander around aimlessly without any straight story since it really seems to boil down to a repeated series of escapes, chases, captures and then sets off on the path again because she's hiding the secret to her fate the entire movie and causing all the undue stress on everyone that works through the lame story offered, and the repetitious nature of it all as well as a lack of anything really creepy, chilling or tense during the rest of the film's running time is where this falls considerably. It really does nothing other than one measly sacrifice in the middle of the film until her repeated escapes which offer up the only original part of the whole film with their unique main story and rather original premise that really could've been something, but overall there's just way too much wrong here that does more harm than good.

[slayrrr666]

Frankenstein's Army-Moving into a small border-town, Russian soldiers looking for Nazis find the area home to a mad doctor recreating the experiments of Dr. Frankenstein on the villagers and try to get out alive. This was a decidedly interesting and enjoyable creature feature that really only has one thing really wrong with it. The fact that this is yet another found-footage effort really undermines this whole film by not only making it impossible to see anything that happens in here during the moments you really need it to but also renders a lot of problematic points into the movie to justify the gimmick. The entire section at the end where he's captured and shown around the lab of the doctor is so out-of-tone with the rest of the film that it really does take a lot of the fear out of the creatures seeing them wandering around aimlessly in the section doing nothing but following his orders, seeing him dissect other prisoners and cobble together a brand new monster in the process does take much out of what's gone on so far and this series of lighthearted scenes clashes completely with the darker attacks and more overt brutality found in the rest of the movie, all simply to feature the found-footage aspect of the film makes this quite hard to get through. As well, the series of attacks filmed in here makes so much use of the shaking camera that there's a huge sense of disorientation and dizziness during the times when you want to see the film clearly. This does happen quite frequently so the fact that there's plenty of encounters with the creatures does make this quite exciting with a rousing series of chases, shoot-outs and firefights with the creatures throughout here and it gets pretty entertaining. That also highlights the film's best quality, the spectacular design-work on the creatures throughout this one as it gets to show off several outstanding monster designs quite clearly which makes them all the more frightening and terrifying when they not only look scary and dangerous but act the way they do which is to unleash as much torture and pain on their target as possible, resulting in some pretty nifty gore scenes as well. These elements do make up enough that this becomes really entertaining as it is, but had it dropped that earlier problematic element to it this would've been a lot more entertaining.

[slayrrr666]

Passenger 57-When a renowned terrorist hijacks a passenger plane and tries to escape to freedom, an airline-security expert secretly on-board tries to save everyone before it's too late. This isn't all that much of an action film and really comes away with a lot of flaws that really, really hurt this one. The main gist of the storyline is so underwhelming and stupid that it just screams as being totally unbelievable and simply reeks of trying to cash in on a formula without making any attempt to explore what could've happened in such a situation. On top of that, the fact that the whole reason for undertaking the film in the first place is such a glaringly obvious plot-hole that smacks of ludicrousness simply for the sake of getting to the action later on truly takes this out of the realm of believability and nearly undermines the situations at hand before it even has a chance to get going and is utterly maddening at how lame and ridiculous it comes off. Not that there's much it can do in that situation as the central story doesn't even offer up the slightest bit of traditional action fare in terms of chases, shootouts or explosions for the whole film takes place more-on-less in the plane until the final minutes, which results in some wonderfully-underwhelming and piss-poor fight choreography that really makes you wonder why Snipes was considered an Action hero in the first place it's so wooden and blocky, which considering the locations providing the fighting I'm almost willing to forgive somewhat as the belly of a plane isn't the place for spectacular wire-fu fighting to take place. Still, the whole film is so rushed it makes for whirlwind story that doesn't allow time to sink in what's going on, a rushed ending that's over before anything can happen, and way too much time spent outside the Action arena that it results in a bundle of plot holes, rushed energy and underwhelming action that makes this a truly underwhelming effort.