What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Frankie Teardrop]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

Is that the M. Night Shyamalan The Village? Because I'd seen his other films and was fairly wise to the twist endings he used, I worked out the twist quite early on and so was bored and a little frustrated.

Yes, the Shyamalan film. I didn't pre-empt the twist, but it seemed underwhelming anyway when it came. But the other aspects of the film got to me more - I found it really poignant and haunting. Inevitably a subjective take on things, and many people I know tend to dis 'The Village'.

[nosferatu42]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

Is that the M. Night Shyamalan The Village? Because I'd seen his other films and was fairly wise to the twist endings he used, I worked out the twist quite early on and so was bored and a little frustrated.

I was the same, seemed pretty obvious to me but no one else i watched it with figured it out.
Was an o.k watch but nothing more in my eyes.

[nosferatu42]

This is kinda going off on a tangient but i've started referring to the director as M. Night Shama-lama-ding-dong.

Ridley Scott's recently become Diddly Squatt in my house too.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by nosferatu42

I was the same, seemed pretty obvious to me but no one else i watched it with figured it out.
Was an o.k watch but nothing more in my eyes.

It is a darn sight better than The Happening (in which nothing happens) and Shyamalan's personal nadir, which is the abomination that is The Lady in the Water.

[nosferatu42]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

It is a darn sight better than The Happening (in which nothing happens) and Shyamalan's personal nadir, which is the abomination that is The Lady in the Water.

Never seen either of those.
I liked 'The sixth sense' but don't rate it as highly as a lot of other people,much prefer 'The Others' from around the same time myself.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by nosferatu42

Never seen either of those.
I liked 'The sixth sense' but don't rate it as highly as a lot of other people,much prefer 'The Others' from around the same time myself.

I think The Sixth Sense is a superb film, as is The Others, which is similar but different if that makes sense! You can tell they are good films because they stand up to repeated viewings when you know how they end and what is really going on.

[InDogWeTrust]

'HOURS'

Starring: Paul Walker, Genesis Rodriguez.

WARING:THIS REVIEW CONTAINs SPOILERS...BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE THIS MOVIE SUCKS!

I checked out Hours tonight.
I caught the trailer for this some time last year and I was intrigued, It looked like an entertaining little flick.

Paul Walker plays a guy who's pregnant wife goes into labor prematurely during Hurricane Katrina. The wife dies during the birth and the child has to be placed in an incubator (Don't worry, No spoilers. This is all in the trailer and first 10 minutes of the film). As the storm gets worse and worse, the hospital is evacuated and of course the incubator isn't portable so Paul Walker is left to look over his baby and keep her safe.

Oh wait, This is a hurricane, There goes the power! So what's next? PW, Quickly rushing around in search of some sort of generator to keep the incubator running to keep his newborn daughter alive. Of course there's a conveniently placed maintenance room, which he mysteriously accesses without a key or breaking in the door...Oh look what's in the room, A windup generator. Oh no! The generator only powers the battery in the incubator for 3 minutes! Now the rest of the movie is basically spent with PW winding this generator every few minutes.

Of course there's a few other things thrown in there, Like having to scavenger for food, Trying various radio's and telephones to try call for help, all of which are useless and some looters towards the end of the film. From the trailer, I was expecting an action packed, fast paced drama where a guy has to fight off gun toting hospital looters while keeping his infant child alive. No, Not like this at all. The film was really slow and mostly boring. Although there were some very short attention capturing scenes, like when the looters do finally come along and when PW finds his wife's lifeless body on the morgue floor, It wasn't enough to make the film enjoyable.

Bad dialogue and just atrocious acting from Paul Walker. Does anyone else feel like Paul Walker just never has any emotion!? This guy should be on an emotional roller coaster, but no he is just in mutual mode throughout basically the whole entire film. This made me not be able to become attached to the character in any way which really just takes away from the whole movie.

Oh and don't even get me started on the flashback scenes! The whole thing is scattered with random flashbacks of how Paul Walker and his now deceased wife (played by Genesis Rodriguez) first met, got married and got pregnant. All of which are so overly stupid, Especially the story of how they came to meet. They both stopped a bank robbery then fell in love? Really!? Come on, Don't do this to me!
All of these flashbacks by the way, have these really awful faded, vignette, out of focus edging filter smacked over the top of them and it looks horrible! Especially considering half the time Paul and Genesis aren't even centered in the frame so they're just out of focus.

This movie is just bad! I like the whole concept and if it was done differently, For example if certain scenes were written differently, It was dramatized a little more, Had a faster pace and had different actors, I think it could have really worked! I mean the overall synopsis of the film "A father struggles to keep his infant daughter alive in the wake of Hurricane Katrina." - IMDB That could be a really good, strong, entertaining movie!
Unfortunately, Hours just didn't work for me.

I don't want to badmouth Paul Walker too much, Since he has now passed away and although he wasn't the greatest actor, It is still a tragedy to lose such a young person. I just wish maybe he could have left us with 1 mind blowing performance before his passing and I feel like this could have been his chance, But it really had nothing.

Overall, 1 out of 5.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

KNOCK KNOCK - Like several of my compadres around here, I spend a scary proportion of my viewing time trawling through a swamp of microbudget releases hoping to find hidden gold. It's not often all that rewarding because, admit it, there's loads of rubbish out there, but occasionally something really outré or even just interesting turns up. 'Knock Knock' isn't really outré and nor will it appear all that interesting to the vast majority of horror fans, but when I saw it the other day, I did come way feeling that it got within spitting distance of being the noughties answer to 'Pieces'. Is that a recommendation or what? I might be wrong, but I'd have to watch it again to find out and frankly I can't be bothered, but I was really charmed by 1) its utter lameness in most departments 2) its fairly high gross out quotient 3) elements of eccentricity and crass bad taste like a learning disabled murder suspect who plays with dolls. I liked all the really broad but seemingly random Italo-American accents. Really, it's a film stranded at that crossroads where incompetence changes over into strangeness. It's set up like a run of the mill latter day slasher, but nothing about it really makes sense, and its narrative wanders in and out of focus. Recommended for shit movie fans everywhere.

I liked Knock Knock as well.

I thought it was a real throw back to the 80's. It attempted to do something a bit different with it's kills and somehow they seemed both inventive and derivative. Love the shower scene - very grim. In the end it did lose a little momentum but its one of the more memorable slashers of the decade.

Did you know there's a sequel?

[Rik]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

I think The Sixth Sense is a superb film, as is The Others, which is similar but different if that makes sense! You can tell they are good films because they stand up to repeated viewings when you know how they end and what is really going on.

I fell asleep in the cinema watching the Others, literally bored me to sleep and I've never bothered with it since

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Devil Inside (2012)

A young woman goes to Italy and becomes embroiled in unauthorized exorcisms as she attempts to find out why her mother, now incarcerated by the Catholic church, murdered three people a decade earlier.

I seem to be on a bit of a run with distinctly average films from all genres at the moment. For the first forty minutes or so i found myself quite enjoying The Devil Inside. I liked it's documentary approach to the subject of exorcisms and found it quite captivating, a feeling also helped by some nice Rome location shooting as its a city i've been to a couple of times.

It all seemed to fall apart when we got to the exorcisms. People strapped to beds arching their back whilst shouting c**t at all and sundry gets a bit boring forty years after the classic film of The Exorcist. The fact it's all done shaky cam style made it even more tedious. Now i look back that's basically it. Half a film of watchable exposition and half a film of unvarying, pedestrian monotony. As for the creepy nun below. Don't blink or you'll miss her.