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"Pandorum" has been getting some good reviews. Looks like "The Descent" in space.
Good?



"Ils" ("Them")


A couple is terrorised at home by a gang of hoodies!

Hmm....got rave reviews when it came out, but quite frankly I've seen better French Horror films recently

The main problem is the fact the director seemed reluctant to shout "cut".
Scenes go on for too long, thus mutating the tension initially built up into something approaching tedium.

An effective opening for example loses steam when we spend a good minute with a girl calling out to her missing Mother. On and on she goes...
The same happens with an early driving sequence involving our main woman character.
We know nothing is going to happen to her yet! We all know! The director knows we know as well, surely.
And yet the car is filmed creeping along roads (with a sinister plinky plonky piano score for company) as we wait for her to actually get home and start the film!

The same extended into boredom, where initially we had suspense, problem happens in a sequence where the woman slowly creeps through a (rather bizarre) room hung with dirty plastic sheets. Again, it goes on and on and on.
The couple like to talk, walk and move in slow motion too, as they endlessly gaze into each other's eyes in that cloying and sickly way good looking French couples seem to manage so easily.

And would anyone else like to see a home invasion/avoiding the psychos plot where the house isn't a mansion!?
The terrorised couple have so many rooms, crawl spaces and corridors to creep around in it seems they could live in the same house as the killers and not even meet them!
How about seeing if you can keep the tension and suspense up by setting the film in an average home, made up of a sitting room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom! That would really be clever (and actually far scarier!).

And it goes beyond stupid to think that the couple would do what they do during the final chase as well. Idiots!
And talking of the final chase...where the hell did that gigantic, lit by a few hundred electric lights, underground labyrinth come from!?
It seems to be very close to their house and yet completely unknown to anyone, despite the obviously huge electric bill all those lighted corridors must chalk up.

But there are some effective moments here.
Some of the scare scenes are well done with a nice use of camera angles and sudden reveals.
And the thing that I noticed got the most criticism when the film came out (though the film did not get much and was certainly over-praised) I actually liked.

Many seem to dislike the eventual revealing of who the killers are, as if it makes it an anti-climax. To me though it gave the film it's only real powerful and disturbing aspect.


"Camp Blood II"


Blimey! A large improvement over the first film. Who would have thought?

Not only does the picture quality look much better, especially the colours (Yay! no more yellow people and orange/gold blood) but this time it seems the makers have also added some okay intentional humour (the scuzzy film guys are fun), more action, more nudity (a very nice pair of breasts during the opening of the first film I have to say...but a full frontal shower scene here tops it) and much better and more satisfying deaths and FX.

Though the film still stinks as far as plot and dialogue goes (though the lead actress is doing better here than in the first film, despite still looking shockingly ungainly when running) and you have to wonder how a suspected, judged insane, multiple murderess is allowed out alone, back to the place she supposedly killed, to help make a movie!
But the fact the film shoehorns in lots of verbal plot explanation and footage from the first film at least means you don't actually need to own the crappy first film to watch this. Hooray!

Whereas the deaths in "Camp Blood 1" were nothing but a bit of blood and a machete with a half moon cut out of the blade that was placed over arms and heads, in the sequel we actually have proper FX set-ups.
The deaths are all more violent and gory and even rather nasty.
Sure the effects work is primitive, but it still works, still delivers and it's nice to see some good, on-set, CGI free, old school FX anyway.
Highlights are a messy machete through the mouth/back of the head, a pulpy burnt face, a hacked off hand with spurting stump, a machete through the chest and much general blood spraying.

It's cheap, it's got some bad lines for even worse actors to say, it has a major plot holes, looks cheap (though better) and has many moments of badness that should never have seen the light of day.
And yet i still quite enjoyed it! Unlike the first film.

The sometimes nasty deaths, large body count (also helped by the kills from the first film appearing again), the fun gore FX and an incident packed screenplay were all the positives that the first film never had, and here they help to counteract the many negatives.
Shucks! Give it at least one go, just avoid the first one.



Since I dont have internet yet I've been watching a lot of movies lately

here are some

Messengers 2: The Scarecrow-


State of Play-


Ghost of Girlfriends Past-


How High-


Terminator Salvation-


maybe there are more but I cant remember now
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Welcome to the human race...


Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996) -


After seeing The Royal Tenenbaums, I decided to seek this out. It had Anderson’s distinct feel to it, felt kind of rough compared to his later films, but it was still reasonably entertaining all the way through. It’s safe to say that Owen Wilson steals the show, though.



Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966) -


There’s something about films based on stage productions. This one is probably pitch-perfect and deserves to be rated higher – it’s got just about everything. Great acting, great writing, the cinematography looks excellent. The music felt somewhat redundant, though.



The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) -


A very solid character study. Makes me want to seek out more of Gene Hackman’s work (or maybe just re-watch The French Connection, haven’t seen that in about 6 or 7 years). Almost gets a little too confusing in parts, but rewards amply. Another film I should probably rate higher.



E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982) -


Yep, I finally got around to giving it a proper re-watching. Granted, there’s still some stuff that annoys me about it (Elliott has one painfully high-pitched voice) but I didn’t reckon it was a piece of crap. Not sure if I’m so fond of all the CGI tweaking that Spielberg’s done (so many walkie-talkies). Also, is it me or does E.T. look like a grown-up version of the baby from Eraserhead?



Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927) -


Granted, the storyline’s very simplistic by today’s standards and it took a while to get going, but I thought it was quite well-done. Felt that the film was quite well-made by ‘20s standards (or maybe I just need to see more), and it was certainly quite interesting, if not exactly something I’d go back to a lot over the years.
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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0



"Nude for Satan"
- (for the pubes)

Give me a break!
There are few things worse on God's green Earth than freeform Jazz. But freeform Jazz in an achingly tedious, pretentious, plodding Euro Trash flick is indeed the very pit of hell.

A barmy plot about a man and a woman who, after a bizarre road accident, go to a strange castle and bump into evil versions of themselves all under the watchful eye of some man in a frock coat who waves a cane about.

Hysterically bad dialogue (spouted by enjoyably bad dubbing artists) annoying electronic chirps and cheeps, Jazz practice soundtrack, slow motion slow motion that moves so slow there is barely any motion at all and seemingly endless scenes of running around corridors and gardens all compete to try the viewers patience.

Laughable (but managing to become so bad they are good) highlight is the woman suffering a sudden plummet into blackness that ends with her crash landing onto a huge spider web, with her breast hanging out, before a spider (that looks like a horse dropping with twigs stuck in it) waddles up her body.

Take notice of that uncovered breast as well, as it will remain on display for the rest of the film.
In a gloriously awful bit of gratuitous Sexploitation goodness the actress now flees from haunting terrors, lies down and cries and sits around trying to work out what's going on with her wayward breast hanging out.
The man with her is no Gentlemen either! No attempting to cover her up, not even a mention of the fact she's popped out. Nothing.
He's not stupid!

We do have some very welcome full nudity of course (I should hope so with a title like this) and it's all very nice and hairy in that 70's Euro way. Lovely.
But sadly these odd moments of wonderment are nearly always played out via slow motion scenes that suck the life out of any erotic hopes the visuals may give us.

And of course inbetween this occasional nudity we have to put up with the worst kind of 'artistic' Euro stodge, non-sensical philosophical plot explanations, camp overload, deadening direction and pacing and sequences of such mind numbing tedium you slowly lose the will to live.
Want to see a man spend 5 minutes running in slow motion around a garden, trying to catch up with a top hat wearing figure who turns out to be himself, all backed by tweeting noises and that hateful freeform Jazz noodling?
Well you'll love this film then.

Everyone else should avoid it, or at worse simply wind through 70 minutes of arse water to get to the nude scenes. But quite frankly I wouldn't bother.
Who says the Devil has all the best tunes.








The Lost Weekend
[rating/]5[\rating]

Oh, how I long for the days when films were well-made! This is a classic. Don is an alcoholic writer and the film is basically his descent over the space of about 5 days. Out of this simple story comes a really poignant tale about addiction. It was the first film to deal with alcoholism seriously and has a wonderfully surreal moment involving a bat (the animal).
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You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never. (The Red Shoes, 1948)






The Lost Weekend


Oh, how I long for the days when films were well-made! This is a classic. Don is an alcoholic writer and the film is basically his descent over the space of about 5 days. Out of this simple story comes a really poignant tale about addiction. It was the first film to deal with alcoholism seriously and has a wonderfully surreal moment involving a bat (the animal).



A Matter of Life and Death


This is a wonderfully crazy war film fantasy romance. Peter Carter, an English soldier is in a burning plane speaking what he thinks are his last words to June, an American phone operator. However he becomes stuck between Earth (shot in colour) and heaven (shot in monochrome). Marius Goring is especially good as Conductor 71, a camp Frenchman who is Peter's (or Pee-tare's) angel guide.




Black Narcissus


If you are looking for a film about sexually repressed nuns, you can do no better than Black Narcissus. Initially it starts off as a nice film (or relatively nice) but then it goes super scary with crazed Sister Ruth. The scene with her putting on red lipstick in front of Sister Clodagh is fantastically symbolic.



i'm SUPER GOOD at Jewel karaoke
Revolutionary Road (2008)



was pretty good. not amaaazing or the best movie of the year or anything, but pretty good. interesting. enjoyable. i'd see it again. kate and leo are good together, honestly. i've never been the hugest fan of Dicaprio, but i like him a lot more than i ever used to, especially when he's coupled up with her.


Little Woman (1933)



it was good, but i'll never love any version of that film more than the newer one.



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Semper Fooey
#11378

Victor Jory got to play a romantic lead? I like Jory, the best actor ever to star in a serial, the best movie Shadow, and great in a guest appearance on The Rockford Files.



Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (2009) ... took my niece to see this and we had a ball... very original and funny. Did the Mayor resemble Bill Clinton to anyone else?

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AiSv Nv wa do hi ya do...
(Walk in Peace)






Stray Dog 1949

A Kurosawa noir picture that never hooked me and never felt right. For the most part is looks great (aside from the massive amount of transitions) , the mono soundtrack can be very obnoxious at times however - instances where the music is much too loud and just sounds awful. A long grueling scene where Murakami (Mifune) is searching for a gun dealer , continues to fade out , fade in , fade out , fade in .... after awhile it concludes and felt like a complete waste of time.

I'm still willing to give all of Kurosawa's films a chance , but compared to Seven Samurai , Yojimbo , Sanjuro - I haven't enjoyed the others (Ran , Rashomon , Dreams , Red Beard , The Hidden Fortress , Ikuru) nearly as much.





Vanilla Sky 2001

A big let down , the opening of film promises a fast paced complex surreal mind bender and Vanilla Sky really turns out to be a slow , simple story with a couple twists - some which are nothing but plot-hole fillers. It's an incomplete story that turns to science-fiction to complete it , a hilariously cheap move.

It's not all bad though , Cruise , Cruz , Jason Lee , Kurt Russel , all give outstanding performances and there are a couple of very well done scenes (the empty Time Square scene).





Open Your Eyes 1997

The lower budgeted Spanish film which Vanilla Sky is almost a complete replica of , is even worse than the remake. The few things that brought a bit of soul to the film are absent here and all of the production values are much lower.

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Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (2009) ... took my niece to see this and we had a ball... very original and funny. Did the Mayor resemble Bill Clinton to anyone else?


May take our Daughter to see this, in 3D.
It's been getting some very good reviews and sounds delightfully mad.



Okay, here we go, short opinions for now:

12 Monkeys, (1995, Gilliam)- B



I was a little confused a few times when Willis was going from the time periods. Pretty good film, but I need to re-watch this one soon so I can get a better understanding.

A Few Good Men, (1992, Reiner)- A



The first time I've watched this movie in full, but a great one for sure. Nicholson was brilliant, and this movie is an impressive court room mystery.

Wall-E, (2008, Stanton)- A-/A



Another Pixar film that is imaginative and creative that provides a lot of entertainment.

Rear Window, (1954, Hitchcock)- A+



Incredible movie that masters the different film techniques. I got chills when Thorwald looked directly in the telescope. So far my favorite Hitchcock film, and now really high on my favorites list.

Vertigo, (1958, Hitchcock)- A+



And this is also an excellent film. Great camera work, plot twists, and acting make this one brilliant.



Kenny, don't paint your sister.
Mr. Lucky (1943)

Quite different than Grant's usual work, I rather enjoyed Mr. Lucky. He's a pleasure to watch as always, and I really liked Lariane Day's performance. Fun dialouge and a pretty original story line. Surprisingly, this film even had something of a plot twist. I thought I was certainly going to hate the ending, but it surprised me.




Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)

Excellent drama with a great cast. This may be Anthony Quinn's best performance and Jackie Gleason is terrific. The supporting actors and dialouge are both very good. A lot is suspense toward the end, and I liked the musical score as well. It went by very quickly.




Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

This movie was just okay. I didn't quite like it from the start when the main character proved to be an idiot already. The rest of characters sort of followed suit. However, the one I liked met a sad ending. Can't say a whole lot more without giving things away. While it entertained me, I just thought there was a better way to spend the time. Like clipping my fingernails or something.




The War (1994)

This touching drama had me in tears. Kevin Costner gives a great performance, and I've probably never seen better child acting. Elijah Wood is terrific for his age. It has a compelling message and the plot really had me thinking about what I would do in the characters' positions. Highly recommended especially for drama fans.

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Classicqueen13




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Shutter (2004)



where did i first hear about this? i feel like someone must have recommended it to me, since i don't normally seek out movies like this on my own, only because i don't really trust that they'd be any good. anyway, this one i actually really enjoyed. yeah, when it comes to asian horror, it isn't original, creative, or really distinctly different. granted, you've got your typical straggly-haired, freaky faced asian girl skulking around at every corner, blipping in and out of your television set and in the corner of the screen, ala Ringu. this movie just works, though. it genuinely gets pretty darn creepy at times. i won't say i was pissing myself or anything, but there was a definite creeped out feeling going on here. and well, i found the ending to be especially satisfying.