Last film you watched and your rating

more heat than light wrote:Are you sure you watched Cube? Because that review makes it sound like you watched something else.

Definitely. Do you like it for different reasons then? I honestly thought it was so funny. A film that was genuinely so bad it was good, not just the Sharknado kind of bad.

Zilnad wrote:
more heat than light wrote:Are you sure you watched Cube? Because that review makes it sound like you watched something else.

Definitely. Do you like it for different reasons then? I honestly thought it was so funny. A film that was genuinely so bad it was good, not just the Sharknado kind of bad.

I mean, yeah there is a bit of overacting going on. But I think it's a brilliantly original piece of filmmaking, made on a shoestring budget. It's tense, inventive and clever.

And the ending is note perfect.

Vermilion wrote:Twister - 7/10

Fun 90's action, the effects look a bit ropey now, but i still enjoy it.

The effects in Twister are a bit ropey? What has become of you? You've abandoned your morals, been seduced by power and wealth. All you're interested in now is indulging your carnal desires.

Twister is one of nature's perfect creations.

Cube is one of those movies that's important rather than being retrospectively good.

Like, if I were to watch it today, I don't necessarily think I'd think it's great, but at the time it was strawberry floating revolutionary. I still think it's really good, but I can understand how, seeing how every one of its tropes have been adapted and bettered since, you might think it's a bit naff. But in 1997 I genuinely can't think of anything that approached how different it was and how well it was executed.

It's all very well saying 'Saw 2 did it better' but it came out over a decade before even Saw 1, and its contemporaries were the strawberry floating Wishmaster films.

Cube's awesome.

Yeah I love Cube and watch it every few years.

Strangely I never watched the sequels.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas - 7/10

Mixed feelings about this. I read the book years ago, but could barely remember anything about it other than the basic premise. Feels odd how it focuses more on the 'plight' of the nazi boy and family than it does on the Jewish boy. Maybe that was the case in the book as well, but it stood out in the film. Well acted and well done otherwise, but an odd tone.

+1 for Cube love, it's a cult classic for a reason.

Speaking of low-budget indie sci-fi films - I gave Primer another watch recently and whilst it's such a complete head-scratcher for my feeble brain, I just loved how realistic it was in portraying the dangers and confusion of time travel. 8/10

Preezy wrote:Speaking of low-budget indie sci-fi films - I gave Primer another watch recently and whilst it's such a complete head-scratcher for my feeble brain, I just loved how realistic it was in portraying the dangers and confusion of time travel. 8/10

Never seen Primer, but on the subject of time travel movies, one of my faves is Project Almanac.

Watched a couple of completely unrelated films the other day, I have some sort of longer form thoughts about them both

Battleship Potemkin - 9.5/10

The Flying Guillotine - 6.5/10

Old Hong Kong action films admittedly fall quite handily into my comfort zone, though there remain a few important ones I have yet to see. The Flying Guillotine is a fairly typical Shaw Brothers wuxia production of the era it comes from. It has a decidedly entertaining gimmick, which is essentially a ranged decapitation weapon; like a mechanically complex chakram on a chain. Thankfully it isn't overused either; I could imagine in a modern remake the characters would spend their fights kicking around a CGI wheel of death, but here it established at the beginning to be 1. hard to use and 2. horribly violent and dangerous. Everytime its brought out there a geniune fear of death, especially because of how willing this film is to kill off characters; in fact some one dies in like every fight in this film so the threat of the weapon is never diminished. It shows very detailed and violent beheadings where the headless, blood drenched bodies flail around for a few seconds after; iirc this kind of gooseberry fool isn't currently allowed to be shown in chinese cinema, but man is it effective.

My biggest issue with its film is in fact its relation to violence though; the main character is disillusioned by the violence he commits as a royal assassin, and yet he has a higher death toll than any of the villains in the film. No amount of grimacing whenever he kills someone can wash away the sheer disconnect this causes for me.

I have a couple more criticisms I want to highlight. It is interesting exactly how comically evil the Qing emperor is shown to be; while this is understanable and probably not far from reality, there's an undertone of racism wherein at the beginning of the movie that dynasty is explicitly described as mongol. Additionally, the two female roles in this film are pretty dumb; the first one introduced is good at illustrating the necessary point she is written in for, but is instantly reduced to being a sex object. The second one is largely pointless and imo the film would be better without her; she's basically just a damsel in distress who exists as the love interest and general collalteral to prevent the main character from running away his entire life. It's generic and out of place in film that concerns itself with themes of brotherhood and male conflict. Obviously I expect less than nothing when it comes to women's roles in old martial arts films, but I found this one particularly egrigious.

Good film but I'd recommend other movies in the same vein over it.

The Secret Garden (2020 version with Julie Walters and Colin Firth): 8/10

A lovely adaptation of a classic story, beautifully filmed, and with some top notch performances.

Half watched Gonijiam; Haunted Asylum on a recommendation based on there being one really effective scene. It's found footage so I knew it was going to be lots of nothing happening, and it's done in the style of YouTuber 'Haunted House Investigation' style stuff which meant I also knew the reaction to nothing happening was going to be lots of very over the top reactions, but it all just got too much for me to stomach.

I don't know whether it was just that the screaming at the slightest strawberry floating mouse's fart was met with such obnoxiously grating screams, or that none of the characters were particularly engaging, but I just couldn't bear it.

I ended up skipping forward to the '1 good scare' that the movie is apparently good for and it was admittedly quite effective (it was a slowed down and much more effective version of one of my least favourite movie tropes where some cockwomble uses their camera's flash to light up an empty room and then, of course, gets screamed at by Vera Duckworth), but it was pretty gooseberry fool otherwise.

Look for it on WatchMojos Top Ten 'Best Scares in Movies You Haven't Seen' but don't fooled that the rest of the movie might justify it.

Tried to watch Unhinged and it’s relentlessly dumb.

Sometimes in a fun way, sometimes not, but it’s not clever enough to stave off thoughts of ‘this is strawberry floating stupid, why is no one doing anything sensible’. It’s a bit like Falling Down, except Falling Down was clever enough to make you so focused on him as a character that you could forgive how implausible everything everything is because he’s so compelling to watch you just wanna see him rant about how silly it is to stop serving McMuffins at 10:30am.

It’s also a bit like Duel or The Hitcher because that game of cat and mouse is interesting to watch ON THE strawberry floating INTERSTATES because it’s plausible there might be vast stretches of desolate land where there’s no one to help. But that same dynamic being played out in the strawberry floating suburbs is just dumb, and the rest of the movie isn’t clever enough to make you ignore it.

Oh that was the end.

That was gooseberry fool.

Not Another Teen Movie

Brilliantly stupid, and one of the best of the parody genre, great fun.

Vermilion wrote:Not Another Teen Movie

Brilliantly stupid, and one of the best of the parody genre, great fun.

Such a deep, abyssal well of a genre.

I miss the proper spoof genre, like the naked gun, hot shots etc, where every single shot was packed with little gags and that was the funny part. The modern ones seem to be recreations of entire scenes from other films, as if somehow that's funny.

Preezy wrote:
Vermilion wrote:Not Another Teen Movie

Brilliantly stupid, and one of the best of the parody genre, great fun.

Such a deep, abyssal well of a genre.

Yep, there is definitely a lot of crap out there, but this one was genuinely very funny, and i've always enjoyed it a great deal.

Vermilion wrote:
Preezy wrote:
Vermilion wrote:Not Another Teen Movie

Brilliantly stupid, and one of the best of the parody genre, great fun.

Such a deep, abyssal well of a genre.

Yep, there is definitely a lot of crap out there, but this one was genuinely very funny, and i've always enjoyed it a great deal.

Yeah I've always enjoyed it. It's stupid but makes me laugh whenever I see it.

Speaking of dumb movies, I watched Eurotrip for millionth time the other day. A classic.

SandyCoin wrote:Speaking of dumb movies, I watched Eurotrip for millionth time the other day. A classic.

I have to admit also, that i love one of the absolute dumbest movies from that era; Dude, where's my car?

Last film you watched and your rating

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