What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

The Coffee Table. 2022.

A couple along with their new born baby buy a old coffee table that as the day goes on their lives change.

A film that comes from Spain that dwells on a incident that a main character doesn't tell yet as the film progresses that paranoia and anxiety sets in until he breaks and the consequences are unforseen. Set in one place which is apartment for most of the film, It does leave it to the viewer as to what happened but nothing graphic is shown on screen but what is shown the aftermath of what started it all. The pace of the film is slow but the acting is done decently as you expect someone to flip out or crumble.

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[MrBarlow]

Megalomaniac. 2022.

A small area in Belgium were terrorised by a killer known as "The Butcher" and the killings stopped, Felix and Martha are the children of the killer and both slowly slide down the slope of their father.

I'm not gonna lie but this was a weird film to watch, Two siblings, one trying to bring in a income to support the siblings while living in the family home while the other one who is domineering and living in "daddy's" shadow by going out and killing people while a social worker comes out once a month to inspect the household. The film has it's fair share of brutality and violence mainly towards women and then towards men in a nice revenge twist, but does leave you thinking if this is a case of someone having a split personality. Very amateurish camera work at times, go in with a open mind.

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[SymbioticFunction]

Alien Romulus is a good entry in the Alien franchise. I do have a couple of complaints. There's (quite a lot of) terrible cgi of a dead actor that they've put into the film. Works when you see them on a computer monitor but looks pretty darn bad during the 'in the flesh' scenes. Also the last ten minutes reminds me of Alien Resurrection a bit too much. There's callbacks throughout but they still come up with some new lore (for example, seeing the stage between chestburster and classic xenomorph). There's also a great zero gravity idea and sequence. Would award a solid 7/10, it was a fun horror movie. btw Andy character is awesome.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Frankenfish (2004)

A surprisingly good monster on the loose flick that deals with a genetically engineered killer Snakehead fish tearing things up in the bayou.

It's nothing particularly new but it's superbly photographed and the Alabama swamps make a brilliant and nicely atmospheric setting. It's a film with good characterisation, decent dialogue and reasonable suspense. Think Anaconda but without the 'Look at me' performances and you've got a decent hour and a half's entertainment. Lamberto Bava's 'go-to' guy Tomas Arana is among the cast. The prosthetic Frankenfish itself looks great and seemed more than happy to chomp limbs and heads off everyone in a delightfully bloody fashion in what is a hugely enjoyable romp.

Second time watching this last night and i thoroughly enjoyed it once more. In fact i watched this after Bride of Frankenstein and it's nowhere near as camp or laden with over the top acting as the thirties classic.

[Frankie Teardrop]

SEVEN WOMEN FOR SATAN - French businessman Boris is the descendent of Count Zaroff, a man who liked to hunt women in the grounds of his estate; his servant tries to persuade Boris to reactivate the family tradition (in other words, would you trust your butler if he was played by Howard Vernon?) 'Seven Women For Satan' might actually be close to the very essence of Eurohorror. The constant clash of blunt, cheesy aspects, elegant, refined aspects, moments that seem eerie, moments that seem crass, nudity, boredom, bafflement, style, artlessness and a tonal range that runs from tranquil lakeside scenes through to screwdriver-to-vag, all of these leave you in no doubt you're watching something from the mid-seventies featuring a big castle and bad dubbing or subtitles. Of course there's a slightly haunting la la la soundtrack that seems to segue from breathy jazziness to echoey psychedelia. If it inhabited a sane world it'd play like a neo-gothic take on 'The Most Dangerous Game', but it's more interested in breaking out into random topless dancing and living statues. Good.

WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY 2 - Has this fledgling franchise taken a long hard look at itself and decided to reform as an A24-esque exploration of trauma and grief done in oblique arthouse style? Has it f*ck, but that might've been fun as well. It has the audacity to be trashy and brainless in these slightly too careful times, and in that regard I see 'Blood And Honey' as sharing ground with the 'Terrifier' series; their in-yer-face blood-and-guts crassness feels worthy of applause somehow. As much as I enjoy the abstraction that certain films are pushing towards right now, I also dig the complete opposite - what bores me is the sensible middle. Well, there's not much that is sensible about WTP2, put it that way. Not that it has no issues at all. Behind the window dressing of its exuberant idiocy is a standard slasher narrative that doesn't really do much, leaving Pooh with little to say after it's rolled out the basics. More of a problem, maybe, is the lack of any sustained tension or suspense - it just rolls from one dumb scene to the next. But that dumbness, when it works, shines! I mean, mass slaughter at a fetish rave in what appears to be a hyperreal dreamland version of a small town in the vicinity of Shropshire, come on. There are so many other idiosyncrasies and bizarrenesses, like the Pooh characters now reimagined as slightly Cenobite-like beings from the local genetics lab, and the whole Christopher Robins backstory involving hypnotic regression and a reckoning with the past (ha ha, trauma, grief, you were there all along! But WTP2 toys with that stuff as if it's taking the piss). If it plays like a half-baked joke that's a bit in love with itself, another strength is the tone, pitched somewhere between plastic seriousness and barely supressed hilarity; one liners, like pooh sticks under the bridge with severed limbs, turn up to remind you of exactly where you are. What fails as drama sometimes dazzles as giddy trash that revels in its own pageantry of weird detail - Simon Callow as a sinister B movie janitor, QED.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

SEVEN WOMEN FOR SATAN - French businessman Boris is the descendent of Count Zaroff, a man who liked to hunt women in the grounds of his estate; his servant tries to persuade Boris to reactivate the family tradition (in other words, would you trust your butler if he was played by Howard Vernon?) 'Seven Women For Satan' might actually be close to the very essence of Eurohorror. The constant clash of blunt, cheesy aspects, elegant, refined aspects, moments that seem eerie, moments that seem crass, nudity, boredom, bafflement, style, artlessness and a tonal range that runs from tranquil lakeside scenes through to screwdriver-to-vag, all of these leave you in no doubt you're watching something from the mid-seventies featuring a big castle and bad dubbing or subtitles. Of course there's a slightly haunting la la la soundtrack that seems to segue from breathy jazziness to echoey psychedelia. If it inhabited a sane world it'd play like a neo-gothic take on 'The Most Dangerous Game', but it's more interested in breaking out into random topless dancing and living statues. Good.

WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY 2 - Has this fledgling franchise taken a long hard look at itself and decided to reform as an A24-esque exploration of trauma and grief done in oblique arthouse style? Has it f*ck, but that might've been fun as well. It has the audacity to be trashy and brainless in these slightly too careful times, and in that regard I see 'Blood And Honey' as sharing ground with the 'Terrifier' series; their in-yer-face blood-and-guts crassness feels worthy of applause somehow. As much as I enjoy the abstraction that certain films are pushing towards right now, I also dig the complete opposite - what bores me is the sensible middle. Well, there's not much that is sensible about WTP2, put it that way. Not that it has no issues at all. Behind the window dressing of its exuberant idiocy is a standard slasher narrative that doesn't really do much, leaving Pooh with little to say after it's rolled out the basics. More of a problem, maybe, is the lack of any sustained tension or suspense - it just rolls from one dumb scene to the next. But that dumbness, when it works, shines! I mean, mass slaughter at a fetish rave in what appears to be a hyperreal dreamland version of a small town in the vicinity of Shropshire, come on. There are so many other idiosyncrasies and bizarrenesses, like the Pooh characters now reimagined as slightly Cenobite-like beings from the local genetics lab, and the whole Christopher Robins backstory involving hypnotic regression and a reckoning with the past (ha ha, trauma, grief, you were there all along! But WTP2 toys with that stuff as if it's taking the piss). If it plays like a half-baked joke that's a bit in love with itself, another strength is the tone, pitched somewhere between plastic seriousness and barely supressed hilarity; one liners, like pooh sticks under the bridge with severed limbs, turn up to remind you of exactly where you are. What fails as drama sometimes dazzles as giddy trash that revels in its own pageantry of weird detail - Simon Callow as a sinister B movie janitor, QED.

Sold!

and...

Sold again!!

Will have to dig out the MM dvd of Seven Women for Satan as i haven't watched it for ages. Shouldn't take much digging mind as i had it in my hand the other night when it was a straight choice between it and Girl Slaves of Morgana La Fay.

Loved the first Winnie the Pooh film for the trash it was and this sequel sounds even better.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Comeback (1978)

Pete Walker's film stars Jack Jones as an American singer who who retreats to a remote manor in Surrey to record an album; there, he is followed by a psychopath wearing a hag mask who murdered his ex-wife.

Whilst not top level Pete Walker,The Comeback has odd bits to recommend it. The film has a nice ghostly atmosphere as Jones is haunted as the cries of his dead wife echo round the old mansion, and there are a couple of graphic murder sequences that book end the film.

You can't have Pete Walker without the one dimensional Sheila Keith who co-stars here, in as you can guess, truly sinister mode, along with Bill Owen as her hubby and fellow house keeper.

For a slasher film this is weak seeing there are only two murders during the first seventy minutes of this once again over long film. It's as if Walker was told 'you're supposed to be making a horror film' so had to throw in a couple. There are lengthy sequences where not an awful lot happens other than recording studio chatter meaning The Comeback is hardly exciting viewing for the most part although the murders are nice and grisly when they finally happen.

I've now finished the 88 Films Pete Walker box set. I'll never watch them back to back ever again. In the end it became a chore. I should never have wasted eighty quid on it.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

It's more entertaining listening to David McGillivray dissect the films in the commentaries with Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw than it is actually watching the films in the case of House of Mortal Sin, Schizo and The Comeback.

[SymbioticFunction]

Liked Furiosa a bit more on a second watch (blu-ray this time around). I'm now thinking that it probably deserves a higher score than 3.5/5. I still think the sleek and overpolished cinematography is a big mistake. Not just because it puts it at odds with prior Max films but because it also somehow has a tendancy to make even the practical effects look a bit fake. It reminds me of how people stated that the George Lucas Star Wars prequels used more models than the original trilogy yet that was difficult for audiences to recognise at the time.

btw I should also mention how much Praetorian Jack reminds me of a young Stacy Keach and how Chris Hemsworth gives the performance of his career in this film.

[SymbioticFunction]

Today's Sunday afternoon film was the first Alien vs Predator. Fans of "serious cinema" won't be impressed but I had a lot of fun with it. Of course if I really wanted to upset people, I'd tell them how I enjoy it far more than Alien 3 (which to me has always been an almost total misfire).

I don't mind the first 25 mins or so of Alien 3 (either cut) but after that I find myself watching mostly indistinguishable British shaven head actors running around shouting things like "wanker." Also the superimposed rod puppet xenomorphs have always looked terrible, even at day one in the cinema.

AVP is much more fun, the creature effects look good and the film never outstays it's welcome. I also get to see Trainspotting's Spud (yes I know his real name) in an Alien movie. That's my money's worth right there. AVP is an enjoyable unpretentious film and for me, a good way to spend an afternoon.

btw Afterwards I ordered a cheap bd copy of recent Predator film Prey.