What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Equalizer 3 (2023)

Denzel Washington plays retired U.S. Marine and DIA officer Robert McCall for a third and according to the posters, final time as he settles down in the town of Altamonte (Actually Atrani) on Italy's beautiful Amalfi Coast following a gunshot injury. However his recent past comes back to haunt him in the shape of the local mafia and their role in the illegal drug trade and connection to terrorist bombings across the country.

Antoine Fuqua's film is at once a love letter to southern Italy and the gorgeous Amalfi Coast in it's portrayal of idyllic life - outdoor cafes, beach food, watching old movies projected onto buildings, all captured by beautiful cinematography - whilst it's also an incredibly violent, hard as nails thriller in the classic Italian poliziottesco mold.

At times it felt like i was watching a modern day reimagining of Lenzi's Violent Naples but with the ice cool and utterly charming Washington rather than the hot headed Maurizio Merli. An idea given more credence with 70% of the dialogue being subtitled and a cool and at times eerie score from Marcelo Zarvos.

Much of the film is given to characterisation as McCall recovers from his injury and even possibly falls for waitress Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) as well as his more business like relationship with CIA operative Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning playing alongside Denzel Washington for the first time since the excellent Man on Fire twenty years earlier - there's definitely a screen chemistry between the pair just as their was in Tony Scott's Mexican set movie) and it's these well judged characters and layers of story telling that make the action even more hard hitting.

I absolutely loved this. If you enjoy classic Poliziotteschi films then you really shouldn't miss this.

The Postcards from the Amalfi Coast featurette gives a stunning birds eye view of the area The Equalizer 3 was filmed. In HD on a good screen it's worth the price of admission alone and it's only five and a half minutes long.

[MrBarlow]

Infested. 2023.

Tennents in a rundown building end up fighting for their lives when a spider is let loose and spawns a army of a deadly species.

This was a mix of REC with Arachnophobia and thrown in for good measure claustrophobia, there is no holding back with this little French number, right at the start we are thrown in to the film on how the building became infested. Some really good character build up that keeps going throughout the film. The main actors did a real good job with direction and keeping the tension going along with the spiders being, here, there and everywhere. Director Sebastien Vanicek kept the pace going and throwing in some expect the unexpected from the start to the end. This is up for a re-watch.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Appointment in London (1953)

Appointment in London is set in an RAF Bomber Command squadron during 1943 and tells of a wing commander's attempt to reach the milestone of 90 air raids. His superiors remove him from active duty when he reaches 89 but an unfortunate accident as the Lancaster bombers are setting off means that he disobeys his superiors and sets out with his old crew one final time.

What an annoying film this was. The final air raid over Holland was extremely frustrating. It was genuinely quite tense and i imagine realistic but when the bombers are told to aim for the green markers time and time again and we are watching a black and white film where all we see are white spots of anti-aircraft gunfire against essentially a black background, meaning we don't have a hope of knowing what they are supposed to be targeting.

Added to the first hour which is actually remarkably dull as Dirk Bogarde's wing commander mopes about the command centre as the rest of the crew's muck about, it all adds up to a disjointed film of two halves

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Heaven's Prisoners (1996)

A hardened New Orleans cop, Dave Robicheaux, finally tosses in the badge and settles into life on the bayou with his wife. But after saving a young girl from a plane crash in a nearby lagoon his life is turned upside down and he finds himself up to his neck in drug smuggling and murder.

Based on the second of James Lee Burke's excellent Dave Robicheaux series of crime novels, this tale of vengeance in the Bayou manages to keep hold of the novel's sinister and sweaty atmosphere. Alec Baldwin heads a pretty cool cast from the time including Eric Roberts, Kelly Lynch, Mary Stuart Masterson, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Teri Hatcher who has a memorable opening scene.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Chocolat (2000)

A delightful little movie from director Lasse Hallstrom based on the novel from Joanne Harris which stars Juliette Binoche as a mother who arrives in a 1950's French village and brazenly opens up a chocolate shop during Lent, much to the annoyance of conservative Catholic mayor Alfred Molina who disapproves of her wanderlust lifestyle and sets about turning the village against her.

Much to his chagrin the chocolate on sale raises spirits (And more in the case of some) but things become inflamed when a boat of Romani travelers arrive led by Johnny Depp.

Beautifully shot, scripted and acted by all, i always think Chocolat is a delicious treat.

[nicholasrope]

Mute Witness

Whilst in Russia working on a low budget movie, a woman witnesses a Snuff Movie being made and as to avoid the killers but as she is mute, things are more difficult. Other than a couple of scenes, I didn't remember much about this one, it was rather enjoyable with several tense scenes. The ending did seem abrupt however but I did like the not knowing if the KGB guy was a good or bad guy.

Parent Trap

Remake staring Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson each having one of the twins they had (Lindsey Lohan) but after they both send them to the same Summer Camp, the twins switch places in order to get their parents back together again. I'm a sucker for these kind of Films, I always find them enjoyable and Lohan shows why Disney had faith in her.

People Under The Stairs

When a boy breaks into a house trying to rob some Gold Coins, he finds that the owners are keeping people and treating them as animals, having not seen this in a very long time, this was another film I couldn't remember. Again it was enjoyable, tense and bloody but it was around 10 minutes too long though.

Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects

Charles Brosnon is a Detective who is determined to bust a Teenage Prostitution Ring and arrest the Ringleaders. After saving the daughter of a Japanese Businessman, however her Father molested Brosnon's Daughter whist on a bus. This is a very enjoyable way to spend an evening if you want a typical Charles Bronson Cannon fare.

Oh, not sure if it's actually possible to make someone eat a watch.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by nicholasrope

Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects

Oh, not sure if it's actually possible to make someone eat a watch.

Well if they can't eat it i'm sure Christopher Walken will be able to give them a tip on where to put it.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Nail Gun Massacre (1985)

It would be far too easy to be critical of Nail Gun Massacre, a low budget indie film about a motorbike helmeted, combat fatigue clad assailant who goes round nailing the population of a small Texan town to death. It's a simple little film, poorly acted and has lapses of continuity that stand out like a sore thumb - particularly in how many nails are fired into victims or clearly rubber nails on bodies that wobble at the slightest touch - and could be seen as a sign of incompetence.

So forget all that, sit back and enjoy Nail Gun Massacre for what it is - a marvelous little slasher film with a simplistic plot and bloody violence that comes across far better than it has any right to.

From the opening seconds Nail Gun Massacre is switched on. Albeit via the red button marked sleazy rape but it's still all go and never lets up until the credits roll. The film makers clearly knew thespianism isn't the films strength so from the off it's a cornucopia of er' nail gun massacring. It's obvious from the first sighting of the killer that it's a woman so the final reveal of the killer as a male is surprising but also a bit bollocks. Again this is also verging on irrelevant as what has come before is so much fun as the killer's rampage claims a gory death every few minutes and it's all done with that 80's air of cheap and nasty thrills aided somewhat by a weird and wonderful soundtrack which screams experimental at you.

Nail Gun Massacre is a cheery bloody rampage of sex and inventive violence - enjoy!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Blastfighter (1984)

A fast and frenetic wilderness action film which sees Michael Sopkiw play an Italian version of John Wick in Deliverance country after a bunch of local hicks, led by George Eastman, kill his baby deer.

Definitely one of Lamberto Bava's better efforts, this is an all out action affair in the First Blood tradition, with tons of trademark blood and guts and some good location photography.

The film was supposed to be a science fiction movie along the lines of Sopkiw's other film 2019, After the Fall of New York and directed by Lucio Fulci, but those crazy Italians and their squabbling, it ended up as this, with Bava contracted to use the original title. Still, at least Bava kept it true to it's title.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE KILLING KIND - Curtis Harrington, director of the wonderful 'Night Tide', still always seems unjustly overlooked. This is his contribution to the post-'Psycho' subgenre about tormented young men who kill under a clunky psychosexual pretext. It pairs Ann Sothern with John Savage as respective overbearing mother and ex-con son; Savage is full of vengeful striving, having just finished two years in the pen for an ambiguously framed beach assault, and turns up at mum's creepy boarding house to plan some comeuppance. The shadowy atmosphere and procession of quirky characters reminded me of Paul Bartel's 'Private Parts', which was made around the same time and shares a level of peephole ambience and dark humour. Both films vibe with the sense of hazy dread common, in my mind, to many California-set horror films of the seventies and early eighties. 'The Killing Kind' dips in and out of melodrama, but the accent is on the oddball menace exuded by the main characters. Sothern and Savage are excellent, Savage in particular radiating a sullen intensity that made me think of a young Clint Eastwood by way of Jim Morrison, but also John Amplas further down the line in 'Martin'; Luana Anders is also great as the psychotic librarian next door, and one of the film's missteps is that we just don't see enough of her (interestingly, the same character appeared in 'The Attic', played by the magnificent Carrie Snodgress. What a small world). 'The Killing Kind' is a great, slightly under sung seventies psychothriller that's well worth your time.

CANNIBAL GIRLS - An early seventies Canadian horror by a young Ivan Reitman, whose Ghostbusting days were a glimmer on the horizon when this was made. It's about an isolated town in a snowy wilderness whose big secret is three cannibal girls and their Svengali; a goofy hippie couple get drawn in and struggle to avoid the menu. 'Cannibal Girls' is quite an odd one. Just tonally, there's a total clash between its attempts at 'horror comedy' - bickering hippies, the little EC-esque nods, shambling 'Igor'-like assistant etc - and the sort of bleak but trippy feel common to a few grindhouse films of the era, the ones with a fondness for fisheye lenses and droney soundtracks. More than that, and in complete contradiction, the film's atmospheric baseline seems to be a wintry melancholy that gets really dour and fills my mind with windswept scenes and the sound of a lone recorder reciting something vaguely 'Greensleeves' -like. Well, I did mention it was Canadian. None of it mixes or works particularly effectively in concert, but in a way that makes it all the more interesting, a jarring mishmash bedecked with HG Lewis style gore. I had fun with it.