Movie Tab II

Definitely the Ultimate cut. Having the Black Freighter "in" the movie makes it feel more like the comic...it's the true definitive version of Watchmen. And as a fan of the movie I looked forward to owning this version, and it has been worth the wait. Skip the director's cut and get the UC. You will definitely be satisfied.

My guy!! Now we're groovin 'n' grindin in step.
I like this info.
I like this definitive advice.
I shall go with this version then...and I can see the damn thing at last.
Nice one. Thanks.

Drag Me to Hell -

While I couldn't help but think that Ash would pop out at any moment and tackle the demon, Sam Raimi's "return to horror" was entertaining, to say the least. Definitely worth watching, at least once.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

I loved Drag Me To Hell.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951

The special effects obviously haven't aged well, but I found the story and message to be just as simple. The best thing going for this movie, is that it plays the characters over the effects, neither trump the overall winding preaching story.





Bolt 2008

Standard Disney fare with a bit of cleverness and some laughs. The animation gets the job done, without breaching the Pixar heights.





Stranger Than Paradise 1984

Patient, funny, and curious, it drew me in with it's thick-shelled character and kept me by slowly cracking them open. Although the ending is truly abrupt and cuts the story off in a lousy way.





The Wages of Fear 1953

Clearly a paver for all thrillers to come. Everything is set up beautifully, but the core of the movie lies in the adventure. I was not tense or nervous for the majority of the journey, towards the end it really picks up, then another off the wall ending - although a much funnier one at that.

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Are we getting the UC on R2? I've only seen the DC advertised over here

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Not sure....I heard we may be getting the 'UC', even though we did not get the 'DC'.
Something to do with the rights cock up and general crudhola that went on with the Production companies.

The DC is being released in week or so.....

Ace In The Hole, 1951 - This is a Kirk Douglas film from start to finish. He dominates throughout. An interesting look at human motivations and the media business that should be shown in every journalism ethics class. The music score and photography are exactly what you would expect from a Grade A studio and a director like Billy Wilder at the peak of his abilities.

Muriel's Wedding, (Hogan, 1994)- C/C+



So for a comedy, this one is pretty dark. It features a lonely, Abba obsessed girl who finds herself stuck in the same situations over and over again who aspires to get married. She is an interesting character, and might represent the positioning of some people in their own life in a small town. I wasn't too big on this movie but thought it was a pretty average film with few laughs. The acting from Rachel Griffiths was excellent, though. I don't know, just an alright film for me.


Stay, (Forster, 2005)- C-



I thought this movie tried to be a cool mysterious psychological thriller, but I thought it failed for the most part. I could tell all of the directions Marc Forster tried to take with a plot that was a bit of a puzzle and used many camera techniques to make it more “mysterious”. The film tries to create a tremendous build-up but then has kind of a cop-out ending and never really explained everything.
In addition to some plot issues, I thought the acting of Ewan McGregor was weak. I couldn’t really take the dude seriously while he was trying to help out a sucidal patient. Like when he would ask questions, it seemed cheesy and scripted.
Those aspects dragged the movie down a bit for me, but it had some interesting scenes and Gosling was alright, I guess.


Close Encounters of the Third Kind, (1977, Spielberg)- B-



If there is soemthing Spielberg really dominates in his film, it's his special effects. When you think about some of his best movies, the effects are a huge factor, movies like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, and now Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The whole ending sequence is incredible to watch and is really surreal, it made me feel good and to see all of those little guys crowded around was a spectacular sight.

And then you have the actual substance for the film which I thought came off as a little cheesy and fake. These are my original thoughts and I thought this film was missing something that I can't put my finger on at the moment. The early scene with the protagonist driving in his car witnessing the UFO was just not.... real? Not sure, but some of the scenes in this movie kind of took away the overall credibility to the film. I know this is a widely liked film and it won a bunch of awards, but personally, I would rank this among Spielberg's worst. Nonetheless, those are the negative aspects but this film did have some powerful visuals and some scenes that are must-see. So, it gets a decent grade from me.


The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, (Huston, 1948)- A




Great movie here by John Huston. Didn't really see the turn in Bogart's character coming but this movie is a lot of fun. Kind of get a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid vibe from it.


Grave of the Fireflies, (Takahata, 1988)- A+




Best animated film I have ever seen, hands down. It's powerful, emotional, joyous, and very depressing at times. It shows all of the human emotions and the struggle of a brother and sister to deal with tough situations and times of war as they lose their family. Certainly a tearjerker, but this movie is great.


Saving Private Ryan, (Spielberg, 1998)- A



Most realistic war film ever? Spielberg makes it appear as so, and having met someone who was a former Army member who had to pause the movie in the middle because of how realistic the sounds of a bullet hitting humans flesh it tells a lot about the movie. Hanks is terrific (as always) but this is a movie that all war film fans have to love. Sad ending but yet another rewarding film from Spielberg.


The Shining, (Kubrick, 1980)- A+



Best horror film, easily. Another film from Kubrick that proves a point; that horror movies can mean a whole lot more.

Ashanti (1979)

Terrible. Terrible acting, terrible cinematography, terrible plot, terrible effects, terrible soundtrack, terrible dvd transfer and a disc menu that offers two options: Play Movie and Watch Trailer. According to IMDb.com, Michael Caine considers this the the worst project he has ever done and has stated that he did it purely for the money. I've seen only a handful of Caine's films so I have a very limited amount of evidence to draw from, but I can certainly see why he hates it so much. Still, I'll be generous and give it 1.5 popcorns, if only for a few unintentionally funny moments.

I like "Ashanti" for the big budget trash it is.
Solid trashy entertainment. Shame an uncut print is now so hard to find on DVD in the UK.

Nowhere Boy

real good, cant review it yet though

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Undercoverlovers 100 REDUX

The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007)



I don't know. The Mist didn't really cut it with me. I'll admit that I didn't know what to expect, but after an interesting set-up, the film seems to go on autopilot. You get the survivors of a bad storm holed up in a supermarket trying to stay away from an oncoming "mist" and what's inside it. There's a loony lady (Marcia Gay Harden) who somehow connects the military's possible ripping open a hole in space to let Lovecraftian creepy crawlies out with the end of the world in Revelation. You also get the basic hero-type guy (Thomas Jane) who's trying to protect his son while God knows what happened to his wife who was left back at home. Then the monsters show up. This basically recurs three or four times. I didn't care for the setting or the creatures, but I can accept that the film is a legit attempt to revitalize the genre. I wish it just wasn't so long and that the psychology wasn't so obvious. As far as the "shocking" ending goes, it didn't particularly move me one way or the other although I didn't quite understand why a person wouldn't wait until an eminent attack to take such drastic measures.

Tol'able David (Henry King, 1921)



This is a simple, yet still-entertaining silent flick about a teenager who has to come to the aid of his family after some fugitive "relatives" invade their Virginia home and wreak havoc. It's pure melodrama, but fast-paced and believable as David (Richard Barthelmess) has to grow up quickly to right the numerous wrongs being done to his Ma, Pa, older brother, stepsister, dog and cat. Yep, those rotten bums take particular glee in hurting animals. There's nothing unpredictable about the story, but it gets extra mileage by being shot on location, and Barthelmess gives a strong performance which shows how some films which are approaching 90 years of age actually had what we would consider naturalistic acting today.

Zaat (Don Barton, 1975)



This seems to have been filmed by a group of Florida friends and family members who were "inspired" by such classics as my recently-reviewed "It's Alive!" and the Killer Turkey flick Blood Freak. As far as I can tell there is no real plot to Zaat. Some part-time scientist/underachieving bum finds a way to transform himself into a walking catfish with strong swimming powers similar to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He grabs various swimmers and pulls their arms and heads off (no real violence shown though). Eventually he becomes attracted to some young women frequenting the local swimmin' hole and captures them, apparently to change them into similar type creatures so that he can breed a new race to take over the world because he's pissed off about something or other. The film contains little dialogue, no psychology or acting, lots of swimming, a few bottles of window cleaner (what better way to make a mutant?), and no reason for being since it's incapable of even telling the rudiments of a story in both written and cinematic terms. However, if that's your cuppa, have at it. It's not really as fun as it sounds though.

The Call of Cthulhu (Andrew Leman, 2005)



Here's a low-budget 47-minute flick, filmed as a silent movie with no campiness anywhere in sight. It's extremely faithful to Lovecraft's novella and it uses its budget in a positive way in almost every scene. Some of the film resembles The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the stylized sets and cinematography, but the special effects are really a lot of fun, especially in the way the scenes shot aboard ship in the middle of the ocean are accomplished using "traditional bathtub" effects along with some thoughtful modern (decidedly-un-CGI) tweaking using lenses and distorted perspectives. I don't want to give away too much, but the film is set at about the same time that Lovecraft wrote his story, and besides being probably the best visual presentation of Lovecraft on screen, it's also very cleverly written and carries the viewer back in time through a diary and journal and even ties up everything neatly at the end so the story can move forward even after the film ends. Some of the other movies I was reminded of by watching this mini-wonder are Gunga Din and King Kong (both 1933 and 2005), and it also has a Guy Maddin vibe. I recommend you check this out if you can access it. My brother bought the DVD so that's how I saw it.

The Return of Dracula (Paul Landres, 1958)



This is one of those films my brother and I would watch on weekends on local TV. We grew up on '50s horror and sci-fi flix on TV. This one is still watchable and has a scare or two but eventually peters out because it's just a bit too predictable about where it's headed, almost right from the beginning. This is basically a straight film but there are elements of camp as Count Dracula (Francis Lederer) hightails it out of Transylvania and heads to his American cousins (!!) in California. Rachel (Norma Eberhardt) is quite taken with her cousin Bellac, and this allows the film to have some fun incorporating themes from Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Anyway, people start dying after Bellac shows, and his nemesis turns up from Europe to do battle with him again. The most-eyecatching scene in the film occurs when it temporarily turns from B&W to color during a violent scene. Otherwise, it's not terribly exciting visually but it's competent and a quick 77 minutes.

Fires Were Started aka I Was a Fireman (Humphrey Jennings, 1943) +



Thinking about this film a bit more and the rating I give it, I get the feeling that I'm either very closed-minded, mean or just too damn hesitant to award things which are "too-different" no matter how well-done they are. Fires Were Started is a stirring and almost beautiful celebration of firefighters in England during WWII who had to fight fires caused by German bombing on a daily basis at the height of the war. Director Jennings and his crew capture them in the midst of glory and tragedy and show that the War at Home had a much bigger effect on the people in Great Britain (and Europe for that matter) than it did for us here in the U.S. mainland. Much of the footage is neorealist in nature but even more so borders on impressionistic poetry the way the image is captured, edited together and put to music. So why would I give this film only a borderline recommendation? Maybe I'm certifiable but even too much of a good thing can seem like overkill. I cannot exactly tell you what I'd excise, but it did seem a bit too long, especially compared to all the other, shorter films I watched on the same DVD. On the other hand, if I lived in England, I'd probably shoot the rating up at least one more popcorn box and maybe even more so if I started feeling nostalgic.

On Guard (Phillippe De Broca, 1997)



De Broca has always been one of France's better "commercial" filmmakers in that he can make shimmering entertainments which have plenty of heart and depth. This one seems to almost be a reprise of his Cartouche filmed 35 years earlier. Here, Daniel Auteuil plays a fencer who loves to take on any and everyone he meets, especially if they're nobles. He crosses swords with a Duke (Vincent Perez) who initially disdains him but then befriends him when he needs an assistant for a dangerous journey he has to undertake. The Duke has just learned that he's a father and he goes to marry the mother of his child and become a family man. The problem is that disrupts the machinations of the Duke's cousin and heir (Fabrice Luchini) who now becomes a former heir and tries to stop the Duke. This is only the first third of the movie which is full of swordfights and last-second escapes, as well as plenty of tragedy. But what really separates this story is the way that Auteuil grows as a character and the almost-mysterious pull of romance which gradually infuses the second half of the film. (I'm intentionally omitting an important character in here.) When the film came to its almost magical ending, I said to myself that is such a perfect and wonderful ending but I'm having a difficult time remembering many American films which end in such a manner. Maybe the French really are just more romantic... or are there just more Dirty Old Frenchmen out there?

Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)



I don't know exactly what else there is to say about Paths of Glory except that it's my vote for the Best War film ever made. I suppose I can say that each time I watch it, I'm amazed at how each scene plays out as its own different mini-movie. Although all the scenes build one-upon-the-other, they all seem to be shot and lit in a different manner and on different locations and sets in order to elicit different emotions. Paths of Glory is so on-target in delivering it's War is Hell and Insane message that it doesn't really seem to be stacking the deck all that much. Even in the opening scene, General Mireau (George Macready) tells General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) that an attack upon the strategic Ant Hill is impossible, but when the carrot of another star on his uniform appears, Mireau quickly changes his mind. The way Mireau walks through the trenches and gives "pep talks" to the men who later play such an important part in the film works as masterful storytelling rather than lazy coincidence. Kirk Douglas gives a superb performance as the humanistic lawyer Colonel Dax who's the only officer in the film who seems to truly care about his men, but all the performances are terrific right down to the smallest ones. At the end of the film, I always cry while the future Mrs. Kubrick sings her song in German to all the French soldiers who have one brief respite of normalcy before being sent out to do more unthinkable acts upon their fellow man.

Das Experiment (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2001)



Based on an experiment at Stanford University in 1971, Das Experiment transports things to 2001 Germany and takes the reality of that incident to far-more brutal extremes. Basically a group of men volunteer to be in an experiment for two weeks. They will be paid after the time is up and they can quit at any time, forfeiting their pay. The experiment is that some of the men will become prisoners and some will become guards in a laboratory set up as a real prison. There are some doctors, scientists and technicians behind the scenes, supposedly running the show, but the bottom line is that there is to be no overt violence. Needless to say, things don't turn out as planned. Some of the "prisoners" seem to have ulterior motives for being involved in the experiment, and some of the "guards" turn out to resemble sadistic psychopaths. The claustrophobia of this film worked much better for me than it did in The Mist, but that may be because there is a smaller cast here and their set is also smaller. Then again, maybe it's because the scariest monsters seem to be the ones walking around among us passing themselves off as human.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964)



Looking at the title, you'd probably expect a horror flick, and although it's a psychological suspense thriller, there really doesn't seem to be anything supernatural going on, at least depending on how you interpret the three seances in the film. Kim Stanley is brilliant as psychic Myra who concocts a scheme to become famous by getting her husband Billy (Richard Attenborough) to kidnap the daughter of a rich family. Myra will then volunteer herself to the family and solve the crime. As you can see, Myra isn't exactly all there, and she seems to be getting crazier the more she convinces herself that she's an honest-to-God medium who uses her son (who died at birth) as her contact during her seances. In fact, Myra is now listening to her dead son who says he'd like the little girl to "stay with him", so maybe she'll become famous no matter how the kidnapping turns out. Attenborough has to do most of the heavy lifting as the actual kidnapper and the guy who picks up the ransom while Stanley has the showier part and delivers the goods without going off the deep end. As a nice touch, Patrick Magee shows near the end as a Police Superintendent who fancies himself as an expert on the paranormal and asks Myra to perform one more seance to help him catch the kidnappers.

Son of Sinbad (Ted Tetzlaff, 1955)



Incredibly fake, stilted adventure flick which compensates for its utter ridiculousness by having Vincent Price as a fun Omar Khayyam providing the wooden Son of Sinbad (Dale Robertson) with all his best lines, even if Junior is horrid at reading them. Another BIG bonus is that the cast is made up mostly of gorgeous women, and there are a lot of them. Here in fact, Ali Baba's 40 thieves turn out to be all sexy babes and that one dance, ooh la la.


Brought to you by Howard Hughes who gave you Jean Harlow in Hell's Angels and Jane Russell in The Outlaw.

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"Tooth and Nail" -

Hmmm....
A barmy post-apocalyptic plot that has all civilisation virtually destroyed in no time at all because the electricity has run out.
This sudden lack of lack of twinkly lights, PC's, DVD players and HBO is so bad that many humans turn to cannibalism (despite there being rather a lot of animals in the world) and as the survivors try to stay survivors...these cannibal sorts roam around picking them off one by one.

After an effective enough start the tiny budget starts to show, the silly script starts to scream at you about how silly it is and the few good bits in the film start to drown in the rising boredom and general ho humness now swamping all before it.

Despite Michael Madsen playing one of the cannibals he actually appears in only 2 scenes and then without the other cannibals.
Vinnie Jones also appears in only 4 or so scenes and again, he is either alone or with only one other cannibal chum.
Obviously this was because the budget only stretched to having these guys there for one day or so.
Jones is hammy rubbish, Madsen is...er...Madsen again and is soon dispatched in a crappy way.

The fact the cannibals (to keep the meat fresh!) only kill one person at a time adds a certain sadism to the proceedings as those left at the end of a particular grocery trip know they will have to go through it all again the next night when the ribs have all been eaten.
But this methodical way of doing things also means that a dull repetitiveness sets in, not helped by some bad acting and small scale of the set-pieces as it's almost all set in a few deserted rooms and corridors with only 2 or 3 people on ever on screen.

Gore wise it starts off very well with a nasty throat slicing and an exceedingly sadistic axe attack (with Madsen enjoying himself!), but after that there is very little gore and little real bloodshed.

A late twist is also ineffective as quite frankly it seemed blindingly obvious ages ago, so the film is playing catch-up to its audience which is never good.
A weak finale rounds things off badly.

Could have been okay...ended up not.



"The Invisible Man" (1933) -

Universal's groovy, pretty faithful, adaptation of HG Wells' story of the same name still holds up on many levels.

The FX are still damn good and effective, with no wires on show for the many moving objects, and the clever (and damn hard) invisible man effects are also fine...with the Black and White cinematography ensuring that the ancient matte work looks great thanks to none of those typically awful colour problems.
Hell , look at the truly dire matted Alien FX (a green hued blob on a wall more like) in "Alien 3" to see how even decades later colour problems could ruin many a matte shot.

Away from the great FX we have a fast pace, some great sets, a brilliant support cast of whacked out and theatrical local yokels (with the great Una O'Connor in top camped up form as the shrieking landlady and a top 'comedy cop' performance by E.E. Clive) and a wonderfully mixed brew of slapstick comedy, black comedy and out and out nastiness.

And it is Claude Rains who superbly utilises this mix of horror and humour.
Wrapped in bandages or quite simply not there at all Rains has only his commanding voice to make an impression. And he does.
His psychotic rants, mad cackling and comic singing as he causes mayhem all help to essay one of the most whacked out and downright nasty characters in any film ever.
Something I think people tend to forget.

Today, we mostly think of an invisible man as a purely comical creation or a good guy figure.
Add this to the fact that a man you simply can't see is somehow not as scary or visually impressive as a werewolf, vampire or man-made monster and the character has been rather pushed aside when we talk about great screen villains and threats.
But in reality...The Invisible Man is by far the most deadly figure in any 'Universal' horror film!
A couple of dead yokels or local wenches? Small fry!
Dracula, The Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster are novices in death dealing!
The Invisible Man racks up a body count of...wait for it...122!
By the time he has bashed in heads, rung necks, pushed people of cliffs, sent a man (who screams in a genuinely unsettling way) crashing to his death in a runaway car as well as derailed a damn train...he's bumped of 122 human beings!
As such there is real sadism in the film, as the laughing killer routinely kills people with psychotic glee.

A few plot hiccups (a guy is murdered and next we see that the national press is reporting the murder in blazing newspaper headlines and yet the scene of the body being carried out of the room comes after this press coverage! Must have started to smell a bit!) fail to hurt the film to any degree and in fact the great dialogue given to the Invisible Man is so memorable it bulldozes everything else out of the way.

The embracing of the violence and mass death that is constantly on occurring, when added to the great FX, wonderful cast and generally effective black comic styling, ensures that "The Invisible Man" has dated less than many other 'Universal' horror films and still retains a genuinely horrific edge.

Charro! ( Charles Marquis Warren, 1969 ) - This was intended as a totally different kind of role for Elvis. It's the only movie in which he does not sing at all (the theme song is played over the main titles). Unfortunately, the film doesn't really get off the ground. Not far off the ground, anyway. It's a real pity, too, because Elvis could have been superb and the movie a modern classic. Now it's just an interesting departure in a property sabotaged by substandard production values and script.

The material shortchanged the man's potential. The movie's poster promised "a different kind of role...a different kind of man," and it was a valiant effort.

"Rosemary's Baby" -

Hack about 10 minutes out of this and things would improve in leaps 'n' bounds.

There are too many repetitive scenes and events and the whole Satanic plot (if it exists...but I think by the end we are meant to realise it is indeed real)seems rather flawed and long winded in execution.
The plan of the all powerful Lord of Hell has to rely on the complete consumption of a chocolate mousse?

And although I like John Cassavetes he is never, ever, anything other than rather unlikeable and suspicious. With his endless forced smirks and bursts of rage you never, not once, feel this is a trustworthy guy and innocent Husband. He seems to be on the wrong path (indeed the left hand path! LOL!) from the start.
It would indeed have been far more effective (and fascinating) if the clean cut, likable, Robert Redford (who was originally up for the Husband role) had taken the part.
As quite frankly to have had a "Barefoot in the Park" style Redford be exposed as pimping out his young wife to Satan would have been a real shocker...and completely unexpected to a virginal 60's audience.
With Cassavetes though, you think he's up to something as soon as he appears!

This aside though, Polanski has delivered a surprisingly engaging Satanic slow burner that has some engaging characters and a nice air of sinister mystery and dark conspiracy.
Mia Farrow is just the right side of twee and does a great job later on as her character's natural shrewishness valiantly tries to fight back against the all powerful witches plotting against her.

I have to wonder why this still rates an '18' in the UK though. A nicely bloody body aside (and I'm still not sure why and how this character died either...her existence in the plot seems rather strange and unexplained) we have nothing else at all except some mild nudity, Halloween costume Devil claws and the most sedate rape ever filmed.
This is '15' material.

I still refuse to see this as a real classic in 2009 and I put it far behind "The Omen", but it does hold the attention for the most part, is well made and directed and delivers a stonking finale.

If I'm missing something, just ignore this post.



When you talk about the bloody corpse, I assume you mean the neighbor Terry whom Rosemary briefly met in the laundry room and who died from falling out the window. Whether she jumped (after conceiving the spawn of Satan) or was pushed for being somehow else uncooperative, she died because she wouldn't go along with the coven's plan to be the first mommy of Satan Jr. (even the Ruth Gordon character says that). The fact that for the most part the Devil only has a bunch of Old Farts on his side and has to blindside a young, fertile woman (with the help of her grasping husband) is part of what I find amusing and entertaining about the film. Your rating is fine with me, even if I give it a full-on 4/5, but that may be because I think it's the Best Hitchcock film that Hitch didn't direct, and I think I like Hitch better than you do.

I wanted to like The Mist, but the religious angle/woman really grated on me (almost to the point of turning it off), and the ending was complete rubbish. I liked the premise a lot though (even if it is derivative of Carpenter's The Fog, and Gordon's From Beyond) and agree it was a noble attempt to revitalise the monster movie genre. Shame.

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Yeah, that's her.
I must have missed Ruth Gordon saying that.

I DID assume she was the 'first attempt' given the fact of the necklace, but then wondered why Mia was there then.

Did they decide then and there she was not working out?
If so, why was Mia already there?

Or did they decide a while before? If so...why not kill her before Mia got there?
Seems better than having her witness the event and spot the necklace!

This just seemed badly plotted aspect to me, almost forgotten in the edit process.