16th November 2014, 07:38 PM
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| Cult Addict | | Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Barrow-in-furness | |
Sunday night is Supposed to be anime night but had some technical issues so ended up watching a couple of films. (Really need to get the to watch pile down.)
The cell.
Chirst, I remember going to see this back on the cinema when I was still at uni. Has it been so long!? It got some crappy reviews, the script is fairly poor and most of the characters are fairly one dimensional. Yet I keep returning?
Well, in fairness I just picked up the (region locked) blu-ray (bare bones as well, poor show alliance entertainment) and the film really needs to be seen in the best quality it can be. Mainly this is a film to watch for the visuals.
Chubby Vince Vaughn goes after Vincent D'Onofrio's serial killer, who has a fairly eleborate set up where he slowly drowns his victims in a tank then bleaches the corpse to look like a doll, all so he can suspend himself over the corpse and jack off to the video. A lot of effort to get off if you ask me, but then this was 2000 and internet porn was only just becoming a thing. By the time they catch vinne he's deep in a coma and somewhere out there a woman is slowly drowning. Fortunately there's a device that lets you enter other peoples heads so its down to J-Lo to navigate the sick f**** head. This is where the film actually takes off. director Tarsem Singh can't make a decent narrative film to save his life but the dude can craft his visuals. The scenes in the killers head are well crafted and memorable, and what started as a bad hangover from the 90's obsession with profiling (silence of the lambs I blame YOU!) actually morphs into something more trippy and interesting.
In fairness one could simply buy el-topo and holy mountain and get trippy visuals in much better movies but I like the cell for all its many flaws. I'm not alone it seems as the film got a sequel.
Planet of the vampires.
Reviewing this here feels somewhat like telling a Brony convention that my little pony rules ( it doesn't but if I WAS at a Brony convention I would say that, all the while edging slowly to the exit.)
Nontheless planet of the vampires is great. And region locked. Worth mentioning that.
Basically the crew of the nostomo...
Sorry, a bunch of Euro trash astronauts hear a distress beacon coming from the planet ominous (not it's name though it should be!) They land and a bunch of them get killed. The dead astronauts start reviving and coming after the survivors. In fairness Alien substituted zombies for eggs, so there's that.
Mario bava takes cheesy 60's sci-fi and basically injects surprisingly effective gothic horror into the proceedings and it all works very well thanks to Bavas unique visual style and the fact that is son and alfredo leone didn't cut bits out, throw them away and add stupid stuff in its place (i'm still mad about Rabid dogs)
Kino/Scorpion have really done a service to the picture and it looks magnificent. Heres hoping odeon or Arrow pick it up over here!
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