What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Markgway
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by Markgway »

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972!) **
Peculiar attempt to update the Dracula myth sees the fanged one battling Van Helsing's grandson in contemporary London.
Lee is menacing, though given little to do; Cushing is great as always (has this man ever given a bad performance?).
The pot-smoking Chelsea hippies date this more than the title.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Hard Ticket to Hawaii (USA, 1987) [DVD] – 3/5
Ridge Forrester goes against drug dealers in a worthy, but cinematically even more inept trash companion for Samurai Cop and Miami Connection. The action is alright, but the acting and storytelling even worse, more DTV-like than in the fore-mentioned films, and a bit too tong in the cheek as well. The film is mainly cast with Playboy playmates who do a topless scene every 10 minutes or so, and steal too much screen time from the accidentally wonderful Ronn Moss of The Bold and The Beautiful who does karate, had loud sex, kills people in incredible ways (with a couple of downright insane kills), and is just amusing and beautiful to no end. It’s a real shame he didn’t pursue a parallel career in porny b-action films like this because that would’ve been cool beyond belief!

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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) **½
Dracula creates a plague that will wipe out humanity.
Only Van Helsing can stop him!
One of the better 70s Hammer horrors.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Wayne's World (1992) **½
Smart teen comedy is better than any of the SNL-inspired pics it unleashed in the 90s.

Wayne's World 2 (1993) **½
Hurried sequel still has many good laughs and bits of creativity.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by Guro Taku »

The House That Jack Built (Denmark / France / Sweden / Germany / Belgium, 2018) [BD] – 4/5
Von Trier's latest is overlong at 2,5 hours but so goddamn pitch-black funny and filled with top-notch gore that it hardly matters. Make no mistake, von Trier is basically a cinematic troll, just like Gaspar Noé or Michael Haneke, but I find his films much more entertaining than the other two's output. He even goes further up his own ass than he's ever been when, during a discussion of art as a means of exorcising one's violent desires, he shows clips from his own previous films - Dogville, Antichrist, Melancholia and Nymphomanic. Matt Dillon is great as the lead and everyone else gets butchered nicely. Including kids and a duckling. The epiologue in hell, featuring the late, great Bruno Ganz as Virgil, is undiluted eye-candy.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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The Revenant (2015) ***
Visceral, epic story of survival in the wintry wilderness.
Overlong, but overall an impressive piece of cinema.
Leonardo DiCaprio must've really wanted that Oscar!

The Last Jedi (2017) ***
The best of the Star Wars movies; to hell with the fanboys! :P
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Deepwater Horizon (2016) **
Peter Berg knows how to handle kinetic disaster action,
but I could barely make out 50% of the dialogue.
Based on a true story, but not as emotionally engaging as it should be.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Savage Streets (United States, 1984) dvd 4/5
Infamous American exploitation movie from the mid-80’s featuring a very young looking Linnea Quigley (she was 26 at the time) as a deaf-mute younger sister to a too-old-to-be-in-high-school Linda Blair (she was 25 at the time).

A cartoonish looking gang of four expelled teens brutally rape the younger sister and leave her for dead, while Linda Blair tries to figure out who it is.  Holding her back is a regular string of problems at school (fights in the girl's shower!) where she’s reprimanded by the slimy but tough Principal played by John Vernon (Dean Wormer from Animal House).
Eventually, she exacts her revenge on the gang, though it’s not nearly as violent or creative as everything leading up to it.

The hair, the music, the clothes, the bad acting, and even a Linda Blair nude scene highlight this American Exploitation classic that’s still entertaining and watchable.

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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) **½
Tired entry in comedy series gets by on charm and good will.
A masterpiece compared to what followed, however...
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot 2/5
Sam Elliott is always worth watching but this not as fun as the title sounds offering is a bit of a slog. He plays the title character who is called back into action after Bigfoot is found in the wild carrying a lethal virus. Aidan Turner plays the younger Elliott as the film crisscrosses between the past and present.

The Mule 2.5/5
Got to give it to Clint Eastwood, 89 and still starring and directing in box office successes. Modest tale of a ageing man becoming a drug mule for a heavy cartel is an ok watch. Bradley Cooper is the agent on Clint's trail.

Stan & Ollie 3/5
John C Reilly gives a towering performance as Oliver Hardy in this biopic featuring their final tour of the UK in the 50's. Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel is also very good but Reilly is astonishing. The film itself is very good but probably not something i'd rush to revisit.

Dominique 2/5
Atmospheric but rather plodding 70's british ghost story has a great cast (Cliff Robertson, Jean Simmons, Ron Moody,Simon Ward, Jenny Agutter, Judy Geeson, Ron Moody,Simon Ward) Robertson plots to drive his wife Simmons mad so he can inherit her money, he succeeds but...
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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The Big Lebowski (1998): 4/5

Surprised how much I enjoyed this :) There are some hilarious lines and surreal scenes as well.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Tag (2018) *½
Dreadful alleged comedy in which a group of men-children play a kid's game.
Even dumber than it sounds.

A Shot in the Dark (1964) ***
Fine French farce; second in Inspector Clouseau series.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) **½
Fourth Clouseau film has many memorable set pieces - so many in fact that they had to cut twenty mins of footage from the release cut, most of which later made it into the patchwork Trail of the Pink Panther - but is very, very silly.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Mom and Dad (2018) *½
Black comedy horror is more distasteful than funny.
An odd misfire, though Cage fans will be pleased to know he dials it up to 11 here.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Having read IMDB's synopsis, sounds like the opposite of The Children (2008)
Edit: Hold up, just noticed all our posts have been reset, WTH? :?
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by HungFist »

grim_tales wrote: 03 Apr 2019, 13:32 Edit: Hold up, just noticed all our posts have been reset, WTH? :?
I wasn't me!

I think Lourdes updated/upgraded the forum software and the stats got reset as a side effect.

I found some button in the options and pressed it... I think it fixed it. Not 100% sure if the counts are correct, but at least we got some big numbers back.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Thanks Hung :)
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Markgway
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Double Date (2017) **
British horror comedy in which two sisters target a ginger virgin for sacrifice to resurrect their father's corpse.
Tolerable, if you can get past the off-putting brutality of the opening scene.
The beautiful Kelly Wenham makes an impression as the crazier elder sister.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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A Quiet Place (2018) **½
Takes quite a while to get going, but third act is tense and suspenseful.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Rapid Fire (1992) **½
Brandon Lee shines in standard action vehicle; good fight sequences.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Enemy of the State - Extended Edition (1998): 4/5

Entertaining political/paranoia thriller with Will Smith.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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grim_tales wrote: 06 Apr 2019, 01:11 Enemy of the State - Extended Edition (1998): 4/5

Entertaining political/paranoia thriller with Will Smith.
I always enjoyed this movie a great deal. Will Smith as a movie star is the real deal, especially at this point in his career and pairing him with one of the greatest ever, Gene Hackman, is just gold. A lot of big names in smaller roles in this and not so big names in smaller roles.

And I always remember the HBO making of special on this where they said 'all of the devices used in this movie were actual things our government uses, just that - they're all over 10 years old...'
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Get Out (United States, 2017) Inflight movie 4/5
You may think this is as much a horror/thriller as it is an interesting take on inter-race relations in current society, but it’s not. It’s a horror/thriller in every sense - that other aspect of it is just a clever subtext that actually helps shape it into something more... sinister.

White Boy Rick (United States, 2018) inflight movie 2.5/5
I wanted to like this, as the preview made it seem fun. Maybe the ‘loser-who-makes-big money- breaking-the-law-before getting- caught-based on a true story-movies' have run their course.
Whatever it is, this never seems to hit its stride, despite a good cast and some decent, albeit predictable performances.
Richie Merrit plays a 15-year-old Detroit kid growing up in urban poverty who gets used by his dad (Matthew McConaughey), the drug dealers and the FBI and ends up in the worse end of it all.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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I don't think the extended version adds much, the theatrical version is very good :)
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Hotel Artemis (2018) **½
Criminals are holed up in a private hospital during L.A riots.
Good premise, good cast, so-so execution.

Girls' Trip (2017) *½
Raucous comedy might be viewed as a black Bridesmaids with bogus girl power message and stereotypes galore.
If you took out all the f-words, vulgar sex references, and racial epithets the script would be a page long.
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