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

[RetroRobot]

Between the two uf us, Helen Slater is getting some play these days.

[RetroRobot]

RAD- 1986

In the 80's every trend and sport needed its own movie, so we got Karate Kid for karate, Breakin' for break dance, Thrashin' for skateboarding, North Shore for surfing, Winners Take All for dirt biking, Youngblood for hockey, Oxford Blues for rowing and... so on. RAD is the BMX movie... and it's dumb as dirt, but with thick 80's cheese, Lori Loughlin, a few cool moves on the bikes and some kickass tunes by John Farnham, it still ends up an enjoyable flick. It's not as good as any of the ones mentioned above, but it provides harmless, feel-good fun and retro vibe, so that's fine.

[luckystars]

Frances Ha 9/10

One of the best films of and about recent times. A future classic no doubt. Some here would hate it, others would think it was merely ok. Brilliant

[Markgway]

Between the two uf us, Helen Slater is getting some play these days.

Yeah, I think Billie Jean is about the best thing I've seen her in.

Once Bitten (1985-USA) **
Mildly amusing vampire comedy starring a young (and restrained) Jim Carrey.
Funniest scene(s) in the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F1umgDMkUs

[Markgway]

Spies Like Us (1985-USA) **½

Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd are the 80s answer to Hope & Crosby in this modestly funny but lackadaisical Cold War spy comedy directed by John Landis.

[HungFist]

Bobo Frituras (Spain, 2013) [Yubari Fanta] – 2/5
Spanish short film tries to be a modern version of The Toxic Avenger. Some fun ideas and gruesome make-up effects, but gore is depressing CGI mess. The film ends before it really starts to irritate, though, leaving a slightly positive aftertaste.

Rush (USA, 2013) [DCP] – 3.5/5
Enjoyable racing drama with good characters, good actors and all-around good technical execution. Racing scenes also well done, without silly over-the-top crashes every five minutes. Also respect for filming the movie in soft R. Toning down language a bit and cutting a few seconds here and there could have made it a pg-13 film easily, but it feels much more natural when frustrated people are allowed to say a few fucks, and fucking people are allowed to be naked for a few seconds without strategically placed furniture.

[Markgway]

Target (1985-USA) **½
Flawed, but mildly engaging spy-kidnap thriller.

[saltysam]

The Island 1/5 Awful adaption of the Peter Benchley book with a woefully miscast Michael Caine as a journalist kidnapped by pirates living on a remote island.

The Hunger Games 2.5/5 The shakey cam style is tiring but generally this isn't a bad big budget effort at bringing the first in the book series to the screen.

Escape Plan 2.5/5 Enjoyable Stallone/Arnie team up,much better than either of the Expendables movies

Insidious 2.5/5 i've seen this before but on a second viewing thought it was an effective little ghost story.

The White Buffalo 2.5/5 Atmospheric Bronson western, well made with some good dialogue but think a bit of a mistake in the end credits to show the ages when Bronson's & Will Sampsons characters died in real life...39 & 38 respectively

[grim_tales]

Didnt you give The Expendables the same rating as Escape Plan? I'd like to see it (Escape Plan) though. Sabotage looks cool as well.

[saltysam]

Didnt you give The Expendables the same rating as Escape Plan? I'd like to see it (Escape Plan) though. Sabotage looks cool as well.

possibly so but i've rewatched Expendables since and it's tbh it's case of if only imo.Escape Plan is not great but it's solid and i think a better made movie than either Expendables.

[Markgway]

Conan the Barbarian (1981-USA) **½

Schwarzenegger became a movie star in this bloody pulp epic; tighter editing, pace and I would've given it the extra half star.

Conan the Destroyer (1984-USA) **

Dumbed-down, episodic sequel; rated PG, but violent enough to warrant an R today.

[Markgway]

Flesh + Blood (1985-USA-Spain-Netherlands) **
Grubby medieval adventure, ugly in almost every sense.
There's something oddly compelling about Paul Verhoeven's worst work, but the misogyny and exploitation is a real turn-off and at odds with the swashbuckling nature of the romantic kidnap/rescue plot.

8mm (1999-USA-Germany) **½
Speaking of ugly... dark, grim detective thriller in which Nic Cage tracks into the porn underworld sick makers of a rich man's snuff movie. The first half is rather absorbing and the decision to empathise with the victims an important plus, but the bad guys are disappointingly comic, the violent confrontations lacking that visceral punch.

[RetroRobot]

I thought Machine was a pretty effective bad guy... a bit cartoonish perhaps, but given the amount of weird fetisches out there, probably not that far fetched.

[Markgway]

I thought Machine was a pretty effective bad guy... a bit cartoonish perhaps, but given the amount of weird fetisches out there, probably not that far fetched.

The gimp mask is inherently sinister; it's just that something didn't quite hit the mark with those later scenes. It's hard to put my finger on it. Peter Stormare was typically hammy, which didn't help.

[Markgway]

The Devil's Rain (1975-USA) *½
Beware any movie which features Ernest Borgnine as a Satanist! But most especially one as lame-o as this bloodless trash. The film concludes with (almost) the entire cast melting into puddles of wax - if only it had started that way.

[Markgway]

Gotcha! (1985-USA) **
Lame teen spy thriller; not terribly likeable or thrilling.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

Mississippi (1935: A. Edward Sutherland)

Have you ever watched a movie and found a particular aspect of the film which you were not expecting to be superb? Some of the cinematography in this film is fantastic. There is some deep focus tracking shots, some fascinating use of mirror reflections and some beautiful compositions. While Charles Lang (Peter Ibbetson, The Uninvited) is credited with the cinematography (no slouch himself), I speculate that some of the more difficult shots are done uncredited by Karl Struss who is known to have worked on this film. I am not sure of why he was not credited though I am suspecting it has to do with scheduling conflicts with Struss having to work on Goin’ to Town.

This is the only film with both Bing Crosby and W.C. Fields. This movie is not as well-known as several of either actor’s films, but they do work nicely together. Crosby is slightly miscast as “The Singing Killer”, though I still enjoyed his performance (I’ll have a better opinion on has performance after a rewatch.) His voice is superb as he sings several Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart songs. This is available on the R1 Backlot Universal Series: The Bing Crosby Collection.

The card game where Fields keeps getting a fifth ace is a classic (shown below.) I have seen this previously in a documentary on Fields and I am finally glad to get to see this movie in its entirety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK_d-Vg495c

[Markgway]

Fistful of Dollars (1964-Italy) **½
Good Spaghetti Western remake of Yojimbo made Clint Eastwood an international star; a bit saggy in the second half, though.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

College Humor (1933: Wesley Ruggles)

False advertising is certainly nothing new. Here we have Bing Crosby top billed though he is actually a supporting character to over-aged college goofball Freshmen Barney Shirrel (Jack Oakie at the tender age of 29 in this) whose family is in the butter business. Luckily Barney is as good with the pigskin as his sister (Mary Carlisle) is with the guys as she plays the field with both the Professor (Bing), you would think that he would be smart enough not to date a student so openly, and Mondrake (Richard Arlen at the college age of 33-34; Criterion fans will recognize him in Island of Lost Souls) a star football player for the school who is jealous and a bit of an ass.

George Burns and Gracie Allen are barely in it though they have one hilarious scene as caterers and one additional small scene toward the end of the film. I was hoping more for a Crosby, Burns and Allen film, but that was not the case here.

If you are a fan of Crosby you get to see him perform “Down the Old Ox Road”, “Learn to Croon”, “Moon Struck”, and “Play Ball.” The first two were repeated a few too many times and I wonder if that was to increase sales of those particular songs. This is not a particularly well made film. The college students are generally too old (well at least the guys were), the plot has some misleading superfluous scenes and ends up leaving out a couple of crucial points at the end. Plus the direction is basic. There are a couple of interesting sociopolitical points that might increase the interest in the film: this is a pre-code film with a few scenes and dialog that would not have been allowed later, college itself was more of an upper class institution during the time of the depression and also college football was one of the most popular American sports during this time. There are several films that combine college and football that are better including The Freshman (1925) and Horse Feathers (1932).

This is available only on the R1 Set The Bing Crosby Collection (College Humor / We're Not Dressing / Here Is My Heart / Mississippi / Sing You Sinners / Welcome Stranger) which is less than 11 dollars on Amazon right now.

[Markgway]

Head Office (1986-USA) *½
Misfired corporate satire; loud, frantic and insincere.

Moving Violations (1985-USA) **½
The writers of Police Academy try to reproduce that success in a traffic school setting.
Silly and patchy, but there are some genuine laughs, which make it worth a look.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

I have seen a couple of Boris Karloff supporting roles the past week. First with the original The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947: Norman Z. McLeod) and the following. It was not be design, but a luckily coincidence since I am a big fan. The latter which I will be discussing was the more interesting role for him as well as a better constructed movie.

Lured (1947: Douglas Sirk)

This is a well done and good looking murder mystery from Douglas Sirk. You can see some typical Sirk touches including posh scenery and cinematography (having cinematographer William H. Daniels definitely helps with the chiaroscuro) a sublime use of mirrors which I seem to find in all the films I have seen of his. There is short mirror sequence with Karloff as he stares at a mirror directly to the camera while delivering a few taut and tantalizing lines. Karloff is excellent in his short and succinct role. The DVD cover and his billing make me think he was going to have a bigger role, but he does not. Expect about five minutes at the most.

Lucille Ball stars as Sandra Carpenter, a dance hall girl who catches the eyes of a socialite Robert Fleming (George Sanders). But she also catches the eye of the police as she is talked into helping them in trying to find what is happening to several young women, including a friend of hers, who have disappeared after disturbed poetry is sent to the police. Sander’s stands out well here in what seems to me a typical role for him as the urbane, flamboyant aristocrat (either untitled or titled) full of quick witticisms. My favorite performance of his was Lord Henry Wotton of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Though Ball’s character does well playing against his persona with her own been-around personality. I found it interesting that Ball is talked about having red hair a few times which really does not stand out in the black and white. Apparently she died her hair for the first time in 1944’s DuBarry Was a Lady and it was almost a trademark by the time of this film.

I was not satisfied with who the actual killer was. The killer’s performance was fine; it just did not match several events and situations earlier on. I cannot go into it without giving away spoilers, though one of the message boards at IMDB goes into this.

This is a remake of 1939 French film Pièges directed by Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Criss Cross). Unfortunately it does not have a DVD release or much on Youtube. I am quite interested in the Erich von Stroheim performance (Boris Karloff plays the analogous character in this film) and the director from Siodmak though Maurice Chevalier sounds miscast.

Valaida Snow from Pieges

[RetroRobot]

Don't Torture a Duckling- 1972

Excellent giallo from Lucio Fulci full of weirdos, voodoo dolls, child murder, tits, violence and a hint of pedophelia. To me, this is Fulci's most solid effort. It's not high on jump scares or blood, but it has an unsettling vibe throughout, good performances, atmospheric setting in rural Italy and one of my favorite scenes ever.

That being the graveyard beating of Florinda Bolkan. Not that I particularly enjoy seeing a defenseless woman being beaten with chains and clubs, but it is probably one of the most effective scenes of brutal violence I have ever seen. The men casually gather around Bolkan while their car radio plays random pop music, and Bolkan seems almost resigned to the fact that she is in for the beating of a lifetime. The gore effects are perhaps a bit crude by today's standards but dammit does it look painful nonetheless. You feel Bolkan's pain, and when she crawls to the side of the road, bloody and battered, trying to get some help, and all the people just drive right by, it makes me downright sad. Sure she's an epileptic, voodoo practicing wacko, but it's just such a heartbreaking scene all together, and will perhaps make you think about that old tired clichee´of man's inhumanity to man.... it always does to me.

[HungFist]

Don't Torture a Duckling- 1972

Excellent giallo from Lucio Fulci full of weirdos, voodoo dolls, child murder, tits, violence and a hint of pedophelia. To me, this is Fulci's most solid effort. It's not high on jump scares or blood, but it has an unsettling vibe throughout, good performances, atmospheric setting in rural Italy and one of my favorite scenes ever.

That being the graveyard beating of Florinda Bolkan. Not that I particularly enjoy seeing a defenseless woman being beaten with chains and clubs, but it is probably one of the most effective scenes of brutal violence I have ever seen. The men casually gather around Bolkan while their car radio plays random pop music, and Bolkan seems almost resigned to the fact that she is in for the beating of a lifetime. The gore effects are perhaps a bit crude by today's standards but dammit does it look painful nonetheless. You feel Bolkan's pain, and when she crawls to the side of the road, bloody and battered, trying to get some help, and all the people just drive right by, it makes me downright sad. Sure she's an epileptic, voodoo practicing wacko, but it's just such a heartbreaking scene all together, and will perhaps make you think about that old tired clichee´of man's inhumanity to man.... it always does to me.

Bought the UK disc last year, haven't watched the film yet. It has the IT audio, too ; I heard the (kid's) English dubbing is unbearable...

[RetroRobot]

I usually don't mind the dubs for old Italo flicks, though I prefer original language. But you're right, this one is not great. And yes, thankfully Shameless included the Italian audio. Let me know what you thought, when you've watched it.

[Markgway]

Return of the Living Dead (1984-USA) **
What begins as an amusing parody of Romero's Zombie classic turns into little more than a depressing rip-off.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975-UK-USA) *
Staggeringly awful... I watched this out of sheer curiosity and it was worse than I expected.
The original cult movie, but I wouldn't want to meet any of its fans on a dark night!