Recent viewings

[lester1/2jr]

Zift (2008) - Well this was ...something. A Bulgarian movie, everyone loves those, about a guy who is imprisoned for 20 years who then gets out and is pursued by people relating to the robbery he committed. The tagline is "The night of the man who chewed asphalt. "



It's black and white and kind of has a dystopian sci fi vibe but isn't really sci fi. Very much a late night sort of movie, I watched it after 12 and it worked well there. It's sort of like a Vogue Hommes clothing ad gone horribly wrong: European and somewhat homo erotic but nihilistic and crazy. His hot Bulgarian girlfriend helped win me over. The brutality with the prison and the aformentioned asphault and so forth struck the right notes as far as it, Bulgaria, being (apparently? or was at one time?) a totalitarian communist state is concerned. There are occasionally jokes too. They sound like old ones that you would hear from Eastern European victims of said system, funny in their bleakness and truth.

I really liked it. It had a good hard edge and put the indie and foreign back in the indie foreign category, unlike the loathsome Broken Circle Breakdown

4.5 /5

 

[dean]

Zift (2008) - Well this was ...something. A Bulgarian movie, everyone loves those, about a guy who is imprisoned for 20 years who then gets out and is pursued by people relating to the robbery he committed. The tagline is "The night of the man who chewed asphalt. "



It's black and white and kind of has a dystopian sci fi vibe but isn't really sci fi. Very much a late night sort of movie, I watched it after 12 and it worked well there. It's sort of like a Vogue Hommes clothing ad gone horribly wrong: European and somewhat homo erotic but nihilistic and crazy. His hot Bulgarian girlfriend helped win me over. The brutality with the prison and the aformentioned asphault and so forth struck the right notes as far as it, Bulgaria, being (apparently? or was at one time?) a totalitarian communist state is concerned. There are occasionally jokes too. They sound like old ones that you would hear from Eastern European victims of said system, funny in their bleakness and truth.

I really liked it. It had a good hard edge and put the indie and foreign back in the indie foreign category, unlike the loathsome Broken Circle Breakdown

4.5 /5

 

Man that tattoo is crazy. I should check this out: I seem to have a thing for obscure dystopian films so I better watch it.

[lester1/2jr]

We should have a thread about fake tattoos in movies sometime. I assume they almost all are they're actors after all.

It's a good movie the plot and suspense wasn't quite strong enough to get the full 5/5 which I'm not particularly stingy with

[Rev. Powell]

UNCLE KENT (2011): A 40-year old cartoonist invites a woman he met on Chatroullete to spend the weekend with him. Narcissistic indie that presumes we will like these characters even though they don't DO anything. 1.5/5.

[indianasmith]

I watched THE LAZARUS EFFECT last night.  For all they hype, it just wasn't as good as I thought it would be.
Not bad, just that my expectations were pretty high.  Too many jump scares and not enough plot.

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN: The movie is a confusing but expensive Herc outing where our sleepy hero battles the Queen of Atlantis, who is devoted to Uranus. A fairly average episode, but noteworthy for Gypsy's only appearance in the theater (she lasts about 5 minutes before she excuses herself to go back to running the ship's higher functions). 3.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

THE ESCAPEES (1981): Two young women escape from a mental institution and wander through France; the one with a crippling social phobia develops a neurotic attachment to the more confident and rebellious one, who sees her as a nuisance. This attempt at serious drama shows why Jean Rollin should stick to horror; his work needs a wrapper of strangeness and sleaze to soak up all the dullness. 1.5/5.

[indianasmith]

Last night I watched CHAPPIE; it was really quite good - a damaged police robot becomes the subject of an experiment in true artificial intelligence, but then due to a kidnapping plot winds up being educated by street criminals.  In the end, this film really blurs the lines of what it is that makes us human.  5/5 for CHAPPIE!

[Rev. Powell]

THE APPLE (1980) (rewatch): An innocent pair of Canadian folk singers fall under the influence of a Mephistophelean pop music promoter in this futuristic (set in 1994) musical fantasy. Meet an actual, actual, actual vampire! This disco/psychedelic musical satire is a verified great bad movie. 3/5 for normals, 5/5 for bad movie fans.

[lester1/2jr]

The Zero Theorem (2013) - This is a European (I guess?)  sci fi movie. It looks like an Aqua (Barbie girl) video but darker and weird. The are only a few sets but they are pretty elaborate and somewhat gaudy. It was a little vague about what the point was but if you ever managed to make it through, say, The Book of Revelation, you will probably manage to get what's going on in bits and pieces.

A guy in the future works at a computer company doing code of some sort for a project. As he does this he is perpetually waiting for a phone call that is going to tell him what the purpose of his life is. The guy is a total introvert who refers to himself as "we", he goes to a party and meets an extremely attractive girl who he starts a quasi relationship with: it's virtual and weird and involves no actual touching as you've seen in other sci fi movies.

While it's a little vague about what it all means, it does go from A to B to C in a way that's easy enough to follow. The love interest is very attractive and I really liked the intern kid who helps him with the project and tries to encourage him to come out of his shell. Overall not easily accessible, a little weird, many shots of an awkward looking bald guy and pink computers and odd colors but pretty cool and different nonetheless. reviews are very mixed I would put myself clearly on the side of "it's good".
4/5

[indianasmith]

I watched a bizarre slasher movie called GINGERCLOWN tonight.  It is one of those "What the heck did I just watch?" kind of films.  A geeky kid is bullied into entering an abandoned amusement park by some idiot football players; one of the girls can't stand the way he is being treated and goes in with him  Once there, they are tormented and frightened by a large number of ghoulish monsters - all animatronic, no CGI at all! - and then one of the foot ball players comes in after them.

Kinda has an edgy but still made for TV sort of vibe; I liked it more than I thought I would.  4/5

[BakuryuuTyranno]

I somewhat recently watched Ghosthouse (Ghostlight). It was about some guy spending the night in a haunted theater where every so often, someone would kill a couple and then themselves, mirroring a similar murder... kinda. Tht one involved the husband killing his own wife and her lover though. So although it sometimes seemed to not be going you'd expect, the guy's wife turns up at the theater eventually and... yeah. The characters were defined well and there some other oddities, including the couple's dead daughter's ghost being around the whole time, long before the haunted theater came into their lives.

[Jack]

The Haunted Sea (1997) - watched this again. Some people on a cargo ship discover another ship drifting on the sea. A few people go aboard and find some ancient Aztec relics which do something to one of the guys and he turns into a rather comical looking monster and chases everybody else around. If things get dull you can always count on a random gratuitous breast shot to brighten things up. I enjoyed this, just pure dumb B movie fun with two hot babes in the lead. 4/5.

[indianasmith]

3:35 AM (2015)  Yuck.  This is the second film I have watched from this production company (Sector 5 Films) that has been an absolute, crashing bore.  A man named Giovanni (John) is released from prison for drug dealing and sent to a halfway house full of incredibly nutty individuals.  His room faces across a small courtyard onto a dead tree and the upstairs window of a neighboring house.  Every night at 3:33 AM, bright flashing lights from that window wake him up - and then people start dying.  So John begins talking to everyone about it.  And talking. And talking.  And drinking.  And sitting at his window to see if the pretty lights will flash again.  And talking.  And talking.  Some of the most insipid dialogue imaginable, terrible acting, no blood, no nudity, no action, no killings onscreen.  This movie kept putting me to sleep.  It is one of the worst films I have ever seen, not even "so bad it's good."  Just so bad you need oxygen when you're one watching it.  According to IMDB, its budget was $10,000 dollars.  For that kind of money, they could have come up with a much better movie.  It looks like a $5 production with an all-volunteer cast. 1/5.  Avoid at all costs.

[lester1/2jr]

Indiana - that sounds like a great one!

Body Melt (1993) - There's something about watching movies late at night. I don't know why but for some reason I'm more open to really weird movies then. Maybe it's because I'm more relaxed and nothing is going on outside. I've been out of work for a while, I think I'm going to start just staying up all night. why not

I thought this was going to be more serious based on the trailer and kind of wish it had been. The humor wasn't so much bad as just kind of the more marginal aspect and it could have used more action and/ or drama. For some reason, a bunch of people at this random resort looking facility are injecting guests with this serum that makes their bodies not just melt, but weird stuff spring out of it and all sorts of bizarre special effects heavy stuff. Its kind of like a junior junior version of Bad Taste or something.

There are no subtitles and the people speak Australian so it's a little hard to follow in places. For example, I have no idea who the one brunette who sleeps with the two weightlifter guys (separately) is. She's somebody at the place I guess. There's also a random thing where these two guys go to a ranch where there are these inbred looking weirdos who do all this weird stuff and have an extremely ugly and horny sister. Do they live near the place where they make the serum? There is some relationship implied but who can tell. Andrew reviewed this he grasped the plot and details more than I did.

bottom line: most of the people in the movie end up Body melting in some way or other so check it out despite it being from Australia and, thus, not American.

4/5