What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

No Retreat, No Surrender. 1985.

Kurt McKinney plays the young Bruce Lee fan who's family relocate after a crime syndicate want to use his father's karate studio for a business front. After being humiliated Jason seeks help with the spirit of Bruce Lee to guide him.

The one movie that helped Van Damme get a career in th films and basically all he had to do was show a one straight face say a couple of lines and fight. What makes me laugh in this is Tim Baker's character Tom, who shows he can fight and run a studio yet can't stand up to a few guys. 80s cheese fest at its best with Tae-Jeong Kim (who doubled for Bruce Lee after his death) to play Lee. The fight scenes are decently choreographed by Corey Yuen who went on to work with some great American and Hong Kong stars and a decent soundtrack.

51Dn6hx597L._AC_SY445_.jpg

[MrBarlow]

No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder. 1987.

Loren Avedon steps in as Scott who travels to Thailand to be with his Thai girlfriend Sulin and meet up with a old friend Mac. When Sulin is kidnapped and Scott is implied in a few deaths, Scott seeks Max help to rescue her.

This isn't a masterpiece to behold but entertaining with Cynthia Rothrock as the cocky mouthed pilot who can bring in a bit of a laugh. Max Thayer plays the old friend who doesn't fight but knows how to use his head. Matthias Hues plays the bad ass Russian who can act but had to learn quickly to fight and thanks to Avedon and Corey Yuen do pull off a decent finale fight. The acting may not be the best but this did keep the Mrs quiet.

images (1).jpeg

[trebor8273]

Bull Pullman and his daughter are hired to find and get rid of ghosts from a manor. The daughter (Christina Ricci ) becomes friends with Casper who's a ghost . While Pullman becomes friends with a trio of ghosts. Apart from the cameos which included the crypt keeper, Clint Eastwood and Dan Akyrohd as a ghostbuster I couldn't remember much of the film 1 hour later. Look at for Devon Sawa in a very early role as the living Casper.




A highly enjoyable and infensive comedy as we following timid banker (Alec Guinness) who dreams of a better life and so comes up with a plan to steal some gold bullion . Watched out for Sid James who's basically playing himself as always .



It's totally bonkers , with its bizarre story of serial killing Sharks with psychic connections to Mrs Brody . The question has to be asked why would any Brody live near a body of water after everything that's happened , me I would be a hundred miles away from the nearest body of water. Micheal Cain is strangely named Hogie who's a pilot and love interest for Mrs Brody as Scheider probably read the script and said screw that. Also why was the shark targeting them was it related or a friend of one of the other sharks?

As bad and bonkers as it is enjoyed it more than 3.

Now watching

[MrBarlow]

No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood brothers. 1990.

Two feuding brothers Will and Casey join forces after their father is killed by a terrorist.

Loren Avedon returns alongside Keith Vitali in a totally different film that the makers must have picked up and slapped the NRNS name for marketing purposes maybe. This has a good build up of the brothers, one a instructor and the other either a policeman or C.I.A, either way he carries a gun. There is decent choreographed fights especially at the end with bad guy Rion Hunter who is noticeably doubled. Plot is a bit daft half way but does get better.

51SHF1EHNGL._AC_SY445_.jpg

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Ghost Stories (2017)

I only discovered i still owned this earlier in the week, i thought i'd got rid of it ages ago, but there it was in a pile waiting to go, still actually with me.

The first time i watched this i absolutely hated it. There didn't seem anything to it much it was all so....

...well actually, it was all so MR James.

Perhaps first time round i wasn't in the mood for what i was about to watch or perhaps the whisky had kicked in and my attention just wandered as the film meandered through Ghost Story for Christmas territory when i was expecting something more akin to modern anthology gore fests.

Written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. It stars Nyman as a man devoted to debunking fraudulent psychics, who is tasked with solving three unexplained paranormal events. Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther and Martin Freeman co-star as the three men at the heart of each event.

It's pacing is languid but there are some scares to be had and there's a realism to characters and events that give the film high levels of authenticity. As with all anthology films the three tales vary in quality but all are above average, however where this differs is in the wrap around tale which has much more substance than the average wrap around, in fact as much is devoted to this as the three stories themselves and the film is all the better for it. but the actual conclusion? I'm not so sure.

It's relationship to MR James and more obviously Lawrence Gordon Clark who adapted them is via the landscapes and settings which, at least for me, evoked Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968) and (2010) and A Warning to the Curious (1972) as well as James use of malevolent supernatural forces which are at the heart of every tale.

As for the dvd. It's now left the 'Get rid of' pile and has a new home on my shelf.

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Ghost Stories (2017)

I only discovered i still owned this earlier in the week, i thought i'd got rid of it ages ago, but there it was in a pile waiting to go, still actually with me.

The first time i watched this i absolutely hated it. There didn't seem anything to it much it was all so....

...well actually, it was all so MR James.

Perhaps first time round i wasn't in the mood for what i was about to watch or perhaps the whisky had kicked in and my attention just wandered as the film meandered through Ghost Story for Christmas territory when i was expecting something more akin to modern anthology gore fests.

Written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. It stars Nyman as a man devoted to debunking fraudulent psychics, who is tasked with solving three unexplained paranormal events. Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther and Martin Freeman co-star as the three men at the heart of each event.

It's pacing is languid but there are some scares to be had and there's a realism to characters and events that give the film high levels of authenticity. As with all anthology films the three tales vary in quality but all are above average, however where this differs is in the wrap around tale which has much more substance than the average wrap around, in fact as much is devoted to this as the three stories themselves and the film is all the better for it. but the actual conclusion? I'm not so sure.

It's relationship to MR James and more obviously Lawrence Gordon Clark who adapted them is via the landscapes and settings which, at least for me, evoked Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968) and (2010) and A Warning to the Curious (1972) as well as James use of malevolent supernatural forces which are at the heart of every tale.

As for the dvd. It's now left the 'Get rid of' pile and has a new home on my shelf.

Oh I'm rather pleased to read this review Dem. I was thoroughly enamoured with Ghost Stories when I first watched and thoroughly surprised you disliked it so. Its amazing how mood and circumstance can change our perspective isn't it.
I'll have to revisit Isolation. A film I bought on your recommendation off the back of a discussion on modern British horror, following your initial review of Ghost Stories. Ironically I thought Isolation was rubbish, however I've held on to it so clearly didn't think it was rubbish enough to get rid of. Think I'll give it another go.

[Frankie Teardrop]

BLIND DATE – Thought I’d give this one another chance as it’s cropped up on The Labs a couple of times recently. It’s up to the director’s usual inane standards. Grating ‘hero’ Mark Bottoms has the charisma of a soiled kipper, although in a way he earns the first thumbs up for being such a lame choice. Basically, he’s some kind of ad agency exec whose main characteristics are that he has both a Walkman and a creepy ex fixation; whilst out stalking one night he bops a tree and ends up blind, at which point science intervenes to restore his sight and set him on the path to solving the mystery of a cab-driving sex killer. ‘Blind Date’ is ridiculous, but I did enjoy it. It’s like a badly woven tapestry of oddness thrown over a collapsing De Palma-esque skeleton, and if you think that simile’s rubbish then at least it’s better than anything in this film. There are so many “why?!” moments that I can’t begin to list them, but the first point of hilarity has to be that we’re meant to, uh, empathise or relate to this lead who’s essentially a predator – Mastorakis seems to be saying “guys, it’s OK to do that whole stalking thing if you’re just watching over her…”, a bizarre sentiment even for 1984. Another aspect that stuck in my mind and just made me gape sounds a bit trivial, but why the whole Walkman thing? Did Mastorakis have a deal with Sony? Bottoms starts out with a Walkman for leisure purposes, but when the docs install his sonar-wave sight modification device, they fashion it in the form of… a Walkman. It’s the sort of inexplicable but mundane recurrence that only would only really happen in a dream. The rest of the film is a blur of eighties fashion nightmares, scenes that look like they were based on boring bits from ‘The Equaliser’, half-baked forays into ‘Tron’ territory, and the occasional sleazy murder sequence. Mastorakis does not invest his film with any intrigue or suspense, but somehow manages to fascinate with an accumulation of bafflement.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE 3 – I was kind of hoping for another horror ‘musical’, but SPM 3 steps away from the bizarreness of ‘Part 2’ and heads towards relative naturalism. This is a last-gasp slasher movie from 1990, so what’s ‘natural’ is young Americans playing volleyball on a beech before hanging out in a house and being murdered. One of the characteristics of the SPM series seems to be a recurring scene in which the women who have gathered for their all-girl sleepover decide to break out into a collective dance as if they’re performing in a strip club. Given what I think I know about the directorial intent behind these films I guess this has to do with some sort of critique of objectification, but it also just looks really weird. Anyway, despite the lack of a rockabilly psycho dream demon with a freaky guitar this time around, the slumber party in question is once again crashed by a crazed killer, another agent of rogue maleness who’s pretty guessable from the start (despite a couple of really obvious red herrings). The drill is back, but I think one of my favourite bits is the one where the slasher grabs a chainsaw and bloodlessly nibbles at some prone guy’s Achilles tendons. I know not every horror flick has the budget necessary for a foot severing even if they can stretch to the drama of having a chainsaw near a foot, but it just looked so random. And so it goes on, with lots of flapping about and modest carnage. I wasn’t as into this one as much as the others (esp the second), but, as well as coming fully charged with that late eighties / early nineties slick-but-clunky feel, SPM 3 intrigues with a staginess that’s hard to place. But I have no idea whether its apparent stiltedness is a manneristic device, or whether it’s just a bit shite.

[peter alex]

is no retreat no surrender 3 the film where there's a fight scene in a aircraft hanger like the one in righting wrongs aka above the law no retreat no surrender 3 is not a bad little film the fights a really good they are better than the 2nd one

[MrBarlow]

Originally Posted by peter alex

is no retreat no surrender 3 the film where there's a fight scene in a aircraft hanger like the one in righting wrongs aka above the law no retreat no surrender 3 is not a bad little film the fights a really good they are better than the 2nd one

Yeah it is for the finale fight scene.

[nicholasrope]

I thought that No Retreat, No Surrender 2 was also a film given the No Retreat, No Surrender name but I heard that Van Damme was going to reprise his role which went to Mattias Hues instead.

In Blood Brothers, a line of dialogue was used in King Of The Kickboxers. A few of the cast was in this too.