What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

It's one of Cannon's peaks is that one cough.


The Last Match (1990, Larry Ludman)

On paper, it's a winner.
An American football team rescue a wrongly imprisoned girl from a prison where Henry Silva holds sway. But it's all just a tad flat sadly.
Shame. So I stuck on ...


The Abomination (1986)

SOV madness. Imagine a less hinged Deadly Spawn ... if you will. 4K NOW dagnabbit!!!!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Ice Pirates (1984)

Starring Robert Urich as a space pirate searching for that rarest commodity in the universe - water - who shacks up with Mary Crosby's princess in order to save her father who is held prisoner on a planet almost entirely covered in the wet stuff (Wonder which that could be?)

Comedy Star Wars knock off with a ridiculously good cast that mixes sci-fi swashbuckler with smart ass wise cracks and smutty innuendo. Although there's a definite inventiveness at work it's all a bit too silly for my palate.

Anjelica Huston, Ron Perlman, Michael D. Roberts and John Carradine co-star.

[MrBarlow]

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. 1987.

J. Lee Thompson steps into the director's chair with this installment, this time more action and more fast paced. Paul living the happy life with girlfriend Kay Lenz and her daughter Dana Barron who overdoses on coccaine, Paul takes out the dealer and starts a chain of events that he is introduced to John P. Ryan.

Ryan is the rich man who hires Paul not to be a architect but a hitman/vigilante and create a war between two rival drug gangs. The build up of characters in this is set up decently with Ryan doing like the voice over while Paul plans things up. The shootout in the oil field is done decently although a bit quick but gives you the satisfying result then comes the plot twist with corruption and someone's true intentions. Good start to a Sunday morning.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Starring Mia Farrow as a young woman recently moved into a New York apartment who becomes pregnant to hubby John Cassavetes (maybe) and soon begins to suspect the other tenants are a satanic cult who intend to use her new born for occult rituals.

I have a weird relationship with Rosemary's Baby. On one hand i really don't like it. I don't like the characters, especially Ruth Gordon's annoyingly friendly busy body neighbour, other than Farrow who is excellent, but that's also the whole point. You aren't supposed to like them. They are there to creep both Rosemary and the viewer out. Roman Polanski's film is one of paranoia and suspicion and because of these sickly sweet characters inhabiting this plush yet musty building it works beautifully.

On the other hand once you get into the story it becomes riveting viewing. Polanski creates scares and dreadful unease in the most familiar and downright dull daily routines and gives the 'friendly neighbour' concept an edgy sense of anxiety. Worst of all the sense of dread builds to levels of intensity that aren't dissipated by what is a subtle and almost inevitable conclusion.

Look out for the lovely cameo from Victoria Vetri (When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth / Invasion of the Bee Girls) it's the most amusing chink of light in the entire film...until she ends up a bloody pulp on the New York sidewalk.

[MrBarlow]

Death Wish: The Face Of Fear. 1994.

The final Bronson Death Wish with only Menahem Golan from Cannon being a co producer and Allan A. Goldstein taking the directors chair. Set in New York our vigilante is living under a pseudonym (Paul Stewart) and dating fashion designer Leslie Anne Down. Her ex hubby and mobster Michael Perks is trying to cut in on the business and after she is killed, Kersey comes out of retirement.

This one seemed to be hated by critics and fans of the franchise but i got a soft spot for this one, ok it takes upto 40 odd minutes before Kersey has a chit chat with Kenneth Walsh before Kersey begins his cat and mouse game and knock off the bad guys with some creative kills and helps Robert Joy with his dandruff problem. Its not fast paced but not slow either, and has a bit of light humour mixed in and some quote refrences from the previous films.

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[MrBarlow]

The Equalizer. 2014.

Denzel Washington steps in the role that Edward Woodward played in the TV series of the same name. Right from the first 10 mins of the opening you are hooked and slowly learn who Robert McCall is and his near father figure to Chloe Grace Moretz who plays the 17 year old prostitute that he strikes up a conversation with in a cafe. Marton Csokas plays like the Russian sent in to clean up other people's mess and always has a intense look of getting things wrapped up quickly. In this there is no shootouts throughout the film except in the finale but McCall does use creativity to inflict pain on others.

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[MrBarlow]

The Equalizer 2. 2018.

Denzel Washing returns as Robert McCall, moving from working in the Home Depot store to a uber driver. Living the peaceful life until a close friend is murdered and goes full length to find out who was involved.

This was a solid sequel that matches up to its predocessor or more, Right at the start we see Mac doing a rescue mission then see him being himself as a driver then thrusted in quickly to the main plot. Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman return and have a bit more screen time in this and more character story line. Again Mac tries to be a responsible adult to another teen this time played by Ashton Sanders and tries to keep him on the straight and narrow line. There is quite a good build up with the story and a brilliant finale showdown in a storm.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Supervixens (1975)

There's a lot going on in this later Russ Meyer film. As well as the usual domineering women there's Charles Napier as an impotent psycho cop, a farmer with an Austrian mail order bride and a dual role for the gorgeous Shari Eubank who leads Meyer's sexiest female cast in my opinion.

There's tons of rampant cleavage on show from Eubank, Ushi Digard, Christy Hartburg and all, but scene where Napier brutally murders Eubank (in role one) in the bath feels so out of place and actually made for uncomfortable viewing in what is otherwise a fine sex comedy.

Supervixens Oasis is the name of a desert roadside diner and gas station should anyone be interested in the films title.

[Demoncrat]

The Equalizer 3 (2023, Antoine Fuqua)

McCall is back in this third installment.
Finding himself in need of assistance after his last job, he ends up in a small Italian town.
Just as brutal as the last two, yes it's all total nonsense if you sit back and think about it, but when has that ever stopped me?



The Hive (2023, Jared Allmond)

This one. Started reasonably ... couple find their house occupied after returning from a night out ... and the set up did promise something. Sadly cliche and trope strangle this one at birth, even if the ending did make the demon smirk somewhat. Ho hum.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

The Creator

Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war—and mankind itself.

Co-written and directed by Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla, Rogue One), this sci-fi/action film is set in 2070, 15 years after an Artificial Intelligence detonated a nuclear bomb over Los Angeles, killing millions of people. In response, most Western nations outlawed AI and declared war on New Asia, the eastern countries that have embraced AI despite its deadly potential.

Part of this response is to create the North American Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defense (NOMAD), an organisation responsible for Western defence and with a space station of the same name, a ship that can launch precise missile strikes anywhere in the world. With NOMAD in the air, they also need ground intelligence to track down the elusive Nirmala, an AI designer who has apparently designed a weapon that can destroy mankind. This is where Joshua Taylor (John David Washington), a former special forces agent grieving for his wife, comes in.

I went to the cinema with high expectations for this as I thought the trailer did a great job of selling this as a thought-provoking piece of science fiction, and I highly rate Gareth Edwards' previous films. It didn't disappoint and was everything I hoped it would be: cleverly written, usually impressive, and emotionally engaging. I actually went back the next week to watch it again and was just as impressed on the second viewing. As good as John David Washington is, the real star of the show was young actress Madeleine Yuma, an extremely accomplished performer who is utterly convincing as a stimulant, a robot with humanistic qualities.