Seen and not seen's, recommendations and queries on top films in general.

aububs · May 06, 2018, 10:52:40 AM

Quote from: absurdexposition on May 06, 2018, 07:35:34 AM
Pearls is worth it for this scene alone: https://youtu.be/Qb2yWpj_3Ss

jesus christ

aububs · May 06, 2018, 09:15:03 PM

that's the worst thing i've ever seen

bitewerksMTB · May 06, 2018, 09:29:13 PM

I think it was Pearls I watched with Slogun & Sickness, and, yeah, it's bloody fucking awful.

Last night was the Arrow bd release of Basket Case. Name another movie restored by The Museum of Modern Art with a necrophilia rape by an ugly little monster! The film looks great but still looks pretty grimy. In the extras, there's a short film from 1972 (or '76?) called "The Slash of the Knife" directed by F.H. & starring some of the B.C. cast that is pretty entertaining & is not what the title suggests but has some things in common with B.C. Funny n' weird.

DSOL · May 07, 2018, 03:51:17 PM

Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell

just as terrible as you will think

ConcreteMascara · May 07, 2018, 05:05:37 PM

So my girlfriend had a deprived childhood and as a result I'm often showing her essential and not so essential movies which she missed. Amazingly she has never seen any of the Alien franchise, which admittedly contains as many duds as classics but is pretty mandatory nonetheless. So last year we saw Alien: Covenant in theaters which got her started in true ass-backwards fashion.

Fast forward a year and yesterday we watched Aliens (1986) and Prometheus (2012). She still hasn't seen the original Alien but the plot of Aliens isn't so complex that you can't figure out what's happening.

Anyway I was surprised by how well Aliens has held up since I hadn't watched it myself in 10 years. All of the marines pretty much kill it and the little girl wasn't quite as annoying as I remembered. I will never tire of watching aliens come out of the walls and burst out of chests. Never.

Prometheus, on the other hand, is something I basically can't enjoy now. When I saw it in the IMAX mega overload movie theater when it came out I thought it was great, with some iffy writing; now it just seems like a steaming pile of dog shit with pretty visuals. The writing is really just so fucking terrible. I'm sure there could have been a good movie with believable and sensible characters that still had all sorts of alien horror, but they just took ever shortcut possible instead. Except for the caesarean section scene which is great. Plus the viewing experience started negatively when my blu-ray player told me it wasn't hi-def enough to play the blu-ray. Apparently I need to have some top of the line 4k shit to watch a fucking movie I paid for? Lame.

DSOL · May 07, 2018, 05:58:45 PM

I agree with your take on Prometheus, when I first seen I was super into it and had hope for the next installment of movies. but, when revisited it was trash. the storyline idea was good but the actually execution was pretty bad and it took away what could have been a pretty interesting place in the Aliens mythology

Alien: Covenant - went in with hoping that this would film would kind of maybe redeem what was lost with Prometheus and nope, I thought it sucked terribly. haven't even purchased the Blu Ray to maybe revisited in the future I thought it was that bad

Andrew McIntosh · May 08, 2018, 04:07:44 AM

Prometheus did nothing for me. Not even sure what it was they were trying to communicate. Too much spiritualist bullchuck. Aliens (the second of the original series) starts slowly but by the time they're back on the alien planet the whole movie picks up pace and works really well, for the most part. One criticism, though - I don't understand why the character of Burke starts off being sympathetic (even helping Ripley save the surviving marines from the massacre) and ends up a bad guy, and visa-versa for Gorman. I get the impression there was a script change somewhere along the line.

But nothing's going to top that first film. That was just a combination of the right elements at the right time that just worked. Mind, I've read that one original concept for the end of that film was that the alien kills Ripley in the escape pod then mimics her voice, sending a message to Earth that she's on her way. That would have been great.

DSOL · May 08, 2018, 03:24:38 PM

that ending would have been incredible, would have been interested to see where they would have taken a 2nd film if they were even going to make a 2nd one after that.

Andrew McIntosh · May 08, 2018, 07:16:40 PM

There'd be no need, and that's the problem as far as the industry is concerned. Once, they made movies. Now, they make franchises.

david lloyd jones · May 08, 2018, 07:37:47 PM

Quote from: Andrew McIntosh on May 08, 2018, 04:07:44 AM
Prometheus did nothing for me. Not even sure what it was they were trying to communicate. Too much spiritualist bullchuck. Aliens (the second of the original series) starts slowly but by the time they're back on the alien planet the whole movie picks up pace and works really well, for the most part. One criticism, though - I don't understand why the character of Burke starts off being sympathetic (even helping Ripley save the surviving marines from the massacre) and ends up a bad guy, and visa-versa for Gorman. I get the impression there was a script change somewhere along the line.

But nothing's going to top that first film. That was just a combination of the right elements at the right time that just worked. Mind, I've read that one original concept for the end of that film was that the alien kills Ripley in the escape pod then mimics her voice, sending a message to Earth that she's on her way. That would have been great.

Alien Ripley going back to earth is implicit in the 4th film's ending.
Her cloning, superhuman strength, ambivalence all imply this.
This saves the prior ending of Brady duriff's other mother alien nonsense.

THE RITA HN · May 08, 2018, 07:42:39 PM

QuoteBut nothing's going to top that first film. That was just a combination of the right elements at the right time that just worked.

I think the main problem with the ALIEN prequels, etc. is that Scott forgot that ALIEN is simply a horror movie. It's lineage lies in IT! THE TERROR BEYOND SPACE and PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, but featuring more complex design, etc. As usual, key things never should have been explained and therefore just remained strange, a mystery and creepy like when they come across the space jockey (which i'll always maintain is completely rotted / skeletal, the 'space suits' in PROMETHEUS being an insane oversight).
Scott should have saved all his tedious ideas for BLADE RUNNER.

bitewerksMTB · May 09, 2018, 02:09:14 AM

All this Aussie talk & no one mentioned Wake in Fright, which, I haven't seen but I'm going to order it very soon. The U.S. release is OOP.

I received The Slasher is a Sex Maniac Blu-ray today (released by Code Red). I love the title! It also known as So Sweet, So Dead. Screen Archives is having a 30% off sale of Code Red releases:

http://screenarchives.com/

It ends tomorrow...

online prowler · May 09, 2018, 03:45:59 AM

Been on a Herzog and Kinski binge.

- Well binge and binge... Watched again Werner Herzog's stilized 'Nosferatu - the vampyre' anno 1979 with Klaus Kinshi in the lead, and today enjoyed Joe D'Amato's 'Death Smiles on a Murderer' (1973) via youtube - thank you internet. Nosferatu still holds up I have to say quite nicely and the beach sequence with the wife and her inlaws is suberbly and most beautiful shot. Just love the grain, lightning as well as the metallic sheen of the colors in that scene. Perfect merger. Next up is Amicus Productions 'The House That Dripped Blood' from '71 - a UK gothic horror and Lynne Ramsay's 'You Were Never Really Here' (2017). Her film 'Ratcatcher' is a stone cold classic. Also want to revisit Hitchcock's Psycho one of these days after seeing the documentary 78/52 - supposedly a study of the aforementioned classic (but mostly an okay circle jerk with interesting scattered points). Good news to those of you whom checked out the trailer for 'The Endless' which I mentioned previously. Arrow Video has picked up the title for a July release. And oh yea, 'The Larry Sanders Show' in its entirety - all six seasons - kills; and 'Wake in Fright' plus 'Alien' are mandatory gems. Kind of strange reading about someone that for some reasons haven't seen the latter movie after all these years. This is by no means meant as a critique, maybe more a personal note that one of popular culture's film cornerstones now also function (more) as a cultural reference than a must-go-to experience.

Andrew McIntosh · May 09, 2018, 04:52:09 AM

Quote from: THE RITA HN on May 08, 2018, 07:42:39 PM
As usual, key things never should have been explained and therefore just remained strange, a mystery and creepy -

Same thing ruined Hellraiser. One of the great things about the first movie for me was that there was no indication what the cenobites actually were. They just showed up and tortured you. I was very disappointed when Barker decided they were demons from hell. But it seems that audiences love having everything handed to them these days, especially fans.

"The Scarlet Gospels" is a well written but boring book, nowhere as good as "The Hellbound Heart" (in which "pinhead" is just a side character anyway). Even in that it doesn't matter what they are, even their intentions aren't made clear. They just show up and torture.

absurdexposition · May 09, 2018, 05:19:49 AM

Quote from: bitewerksMTB on May 09, 2018, 02:09:14 AM
I received The Slasher is a Sex Maniac Blu-ray today (released by Code Red). I love the title! It also known as So Sweet, So Dead. Screen Archives is having a 30% off sale of Code Red releases:

http://screenarchives.com/

It ends tomorrow...

It's a good one, watched recently. I should take advantage of the sale and grab that and Cut-Throats Nine. Shipping costs to Canada are quite reasonable.