What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

No Escape (2015)

Don't let the fact Owen Wilson stars in this movie put you off. The opening hour is one hell of a thrill ride culminating in a rooftop scene that's beyond intense.

Second time i've watched this now and it was just as spine tingling as the first.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Boogey Man (1980)

A decent if derivative exploiter from Ulli Lommel which mashes the slasher and supernatural horror genres.

Beginning as a study of an adolescent murderer before the storyline veers into the supernatural with a haunted mirror, of which pieces cause gory murders before ending as a poor man's Exorcist rip off as a priest battles all hell being let loose.

It's incoherent and nonsensical but oddly compelling and the fact i've seen this several times probably says more about it than any words i can come up with.

[trebor8273]

Enjoyable enough but it really has nothing to do with the games , apart from its set on mars and it's the same corporation, no demons or hell , it's more resident evil on mars . In some ways it reminded me of those Corman alien rip off movies from the 80s. 6/10



A man ( Ray Millard) whom had been afraid his entire life of being buried alive goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure it doesn't happen this has the effect of alienating his wife and friends , of course he is proven right and goes on a glorious unhinged killing spree. 7/10


Now watching




After that probably watch this.

[Dave Boy]

It was shown in cinemas so I think this goes here!

Another showing for me of this awesome show at The Royal Albert Hall for the 25th Anniversary.
I remember way back when the show first began I went in a store in London. Might have been the soundtrack shop Dress Circle. Downstairs they had the blueprints for the different stages as an exhibition. I had a t-shirt with the Phantom mask on the front which glowed in the dark. I think I got that from Her Majesty's Theatre. I took my mum to see the show a few years ago and like many others in the theatre got quite emotional at the end Phantom scenes.

Fracking awesome!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Was Michael Crawford in that version, Dave?

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Was Michael Crawford in that version, Dave?

If it's the one I'm thinking of, then yes he was, but not really as a singer or performer

At the end of the show, Andrew Lloyd Webber came out for his curtain call and bows. He then brought out the Royal Albert Hall creative team, the original creative team, as well as the original leads from both the London and Broadway productions, including Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman.

Sarah sang 'The Phantom of the Opera', accompanied by four actors who had played the lead role - Colm Wilkinson (from the original workshop and the Canadian production), Anthony Warlow (from the Australian production), Peter Joback, (who was the Phantom in the West End, Broadway, and Sweden) and John Owen-Jones (from the London and 25th Anniversary Tour productions).

The performance concluded when the (then) current Phantom Ramin Karimloo joins the other four Phantoms to sing 'The Music of the Night', along with the entire cast and creative teams including Michael Crawford!

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Maverick (1994) ★★½

Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them. He needs an additional three thousand dollars in order to enter a Winner Take All poker game that begins in a few days. He tries to win some, tries to collect a few debts, and recover a little loot for the reward. He joins forces with a woman gambler with a marvelous southern accent as the two both try and enter the game.

With Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner, Alfred Molina and James Coburn in major roles, this has a great cast. In Richard Donner, it has an accomplished and capable director. William Goldman was one of the finest screenwriters who ever lived.

With all that in mind, I'm not sure why this isn't a better film. It's occasionally funny, intense, and entertaining, but it is probably a film which would be better if it was 15 or so minutes shorter and if Jodie Foster had a stronger and more interesting character.

I haven't seen the TV show on which it's based so don't know how James Garner's Bret Maverick compares to the character played here by Mel Gibson or if the story works better in episode form then as a feature film, but it's something I'm now curious to find out.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Jackie (2016) ★★★★½

An account of the days of First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, in the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

This is a film in which Natalie Portman gives a performance for the ages. She is not someone just playing a role, but playing a role in which she is also playing multiple different roles, with Jackie being a multifaceted character – present and past – and rarely showing her true self to us.

The cinematography, make-up, costuming and production design are exquisite and I'm amazed it didn't do better at the Oscars and other industry awards that year.

I saw this at the cinema when it was first released and thought it was a mesmerising film with the tense relationship between Portman's Jackie Kennedy and Billy Crudup's unnamed journalist at the centre of the film. I was also fascinated by Jackie's relationship with her brother-in-law, Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard) and the way she struggled with her faith, something brought out with warmth in the interactions with a priest (John Hurt).

The film makes clear that Jackie Kennedy wasn't a one-dimensional character, but the First Lady, a grieving wife, grieving mother, and someone resigned to knowing her spouse was not faithful, but also worrying about what will be written about them in the history books. It's to Natalie Portman's credit that she is able to portray all these facets with equal conviction and make them completely convincing.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Mr. Turner (2014) ★★★★½

Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.

I didn't know anything about JMW Turner when I saw this at the cinema five or so years ago and, as this isn't a biopic in the way that some will aim to tell the subject's entire life story, it doesn't tell you about his early life or rise to fame. What it does is – typically for a Mike Leigh film – to humanise the legend of one of Britain's greatest artists, someone who has so well regarded that he is buried in St Paul's Cathedral and, with The Fighting Temeraire, is on the new £20 note.

This is all about his relationships with his father, estranged daughters, housekeeper, Sophia Booth, and his contemporaries, particularly John Constable. More importantly, it looks at the relationship between Turner and his work, the remarkable lengths he would go to study his subjects (including going out to sea and being tied to the top of the mast during a storm).

This is a film in which Timothy Spall shows what an extraordinary talent he is, commanding the viewer's attention and is every ounce the artist, looking as if he is wrestling with some unseen force whilst working on his sketches and paintings. There is a great ensemble cast, so Spall is wonderfully supported by such actors as Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Leslie Mandeville, and Marion Bailey.

Befitting a film about painting, Dick Pope's cinematography is beautiful in the exterior shots and quite intimate the scenes in Turner's house and there are many moments where you could pause the film and consider the image on screen to be a work of art. Gary Yershon's score is a great complement to the visuals, a beautifully balanced piece of music with delicate, understated moments and others which fill the room with sound, working perfectly with the sound effects and visuals to create an immersive AV experience.

It's a wonderful film and it is clear that Mike Leigh understands the creative process and creative people enough to make them in their work interesting to people who aren't aficionados of Romantic painters.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

The Thing from Another World (1951) ★★★★

Scientists and U.S. Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while at a remote arctic outpost.

Justifiably recognised as a classic piece of sci-fi/horror, this collaboration between (at least in the credits) director Christian Nyby and producer Howard Hawks has dated a lot in the last seven decades and, in my opinion, been surpassed by another film adaptation of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s short story 'Who Goes There?'

It doesn't help that there are references to the titular being as similar to a carrot so it would be easy to treat this as an MST3K movie and make cutting remarks about some budgetary shortcomings, stilted dialogue, and its gender politics but, by looking at it as a film of the early 1950s, it's easy to see why it is so influential and highly regarded .

The sense of tension between the main characters is probable, the budgetary constraints create, rather than detract from, a sense of claustrophobia and lack of resources against what seems to be have a being which is completely set on survival, no matter what it has to kill to fulfil that purpose. With the various members of the North Pole crew having different agendas, the tensions and frustrations bubbling below the surface or clear to see.

Compared to John Carpenter's adaptation of the novella, which doesn't have an obvious 'monster', just sinking into beings which it inhabits and whichsno one can easily tell are the host, having this as a 'monster movie' is different, but not necessarily inferior. It's a very watchable and engaging film, helped by taut direction and believable dialogue and characters.

It's strange that the Premium Collection Blu-ray release doesn't have the commentary from Universal Pictures DVD, so I'm glad I have both!