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Recent Viewings, Part 2

Started by Rev. Powell, February 15, 2020, 10:36:26 PM

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Rev. Powell

HAPPINESS (1998): An examination of the lives of three sisters, their extended families, and their neighbors reveals an elaborate network of secrets, sickness, perversion, and chronic unhappiness. The blackest of black comedies, where the few absurd jokes are only meant to highlight the horror of the characters' existence. Not graphic or exploitative, but filled with references to rape and pedophilia, the whole movie is one big trigger warning. 4.5/5.
I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...

RCMerchant

REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936)
The second zombie film! By the same company who gave us the Lugosi classic WHITE ZOMBIE!
Don't hold your breath. This is about as meandering as a retarded, cross-eyed, three legged dog.
Some neat Angkor Wat  backscreens, and Bela Lugosi's eyes flash on screen once in a while-
but the rest is about some voodoo in Cambodia (?) with a fu-manchu guy and Dean Jagger (he played the main bad guy in Bruce Lee's GAME OF DEATH!) using zombies in the very early French/ Vietnam war.
Good for novelty viewing- but bad for anyone looking for a even near watchable movie.

http://youtu.be/4rcK-4NpUcs

Such an exciting trailer! And the movie is slower yet!
Supernatural?...perhaps. Baloney?...Perhaps not!" Bela Lugosi-the BLACK CAT (1934)
Interviewer-"Does Dracula ever end for you?
Lugosi-"No. Dracula-never ends."
Slobber, Drool, Drip!
https://www.tumblr.com/ronmerchant

lester1/2jr

rev - happiness is a mental Texas Chainsaw Massacre. a true milestone in film


BB - I saw Camgirl and this is another movie about camgirls. I really enjoyed it but it has one flaw: the casting of the stalker guy. he just doesn't come across as someone who would be like that and the parts with him don't have the same energy as the other parts. There are a lot of stalker guy cliches too

The girl herself is interesting and authentic and the movie has a "Kids" type energy. It's also interesting how she has a stalker but is herself quasi stalking her ex gf. The general sexual nature does a decent job of drowning out the problems. isn't that what its all about?

http://youtu.be/yeBVUwnMgzQ

4/5

indianasmith

SINISTER (2012) - Ethan Hawke stars as a true crime writer whose one best seller is ten years in the rear view mirror, followed up by two books that didn't do as well, now trying to recapture his glory and financial success by writing about a brutal crime: a family of four, hung from a tree in their own back yard, and their youngest daughter missing.  But this time, he moves into the very house where the murders took place to investigate the crime and write his book. Needless to say, this proves to be a VERY bad idea . . .

One of the scariest movies of the last decade, this one held up very well on a repeat viewing.  5/5
"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"

Rev. Powell

MST3K: BEING FROM ANOTHER PLANET: This experiment is about a mummy who's actually an alien, a twist that the title stupidly gives away (the original title, TIME WALKERS, didn't). The movie feels like one of those Charles Band movies that starts off with almost-cool ideas and then half-asses it's way to the finish line; Crow says "it's like a dramatization of a movie." The invention exchange--"Tragic Moments," figurines to make Grandma cry--is the darkest segment they'd ever done up to this point, maybe the darkest in the series' run. 3/5.
I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...

FatFreddysCat

"Heat" (1986)
A down-on-his-luck tough guy for hire (Burt Reynolds) gets mixed up with Las Vegas mobsters after doing a favor for a friend.  
A slow moving "action" thriller that takes forever to get to the action. Burt seems to be trying his best with the thin material but this flick was not one of his better efforts. Skip it.
Hey, HEY, kids! Check out my way-cool Music and Movie Review blog on HubPages!
http://hubpages.com/@fatfreddyscat

indianasmith

HEREDITARY (2019) -  This was an incredibly creepy occult thriller that held up well for a repeat viewing.  Some of the most genuinely disturbing moments ever captured in any horror film, as well as a terrifying, well-written plotline and brilliant casting make this one of the best horror films of the last decade. 5/5
"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"

lester1/2jr

#862
It follows - not sure why this is on tubi. Its fairly recent and better than decent, as a rapping film critic might say. A guy has sex with a girl. Afterwards he gives her some bad news: no, he doesn't have chlamydia, but he does have an insane STD where a weird zombie doppelganger thing chases you very slowly. Why the f**k does this happen? We don't know.

Could have used some better special effects/ overt horror elements. I get "mental horror" but this isn't Happiness here come on. and what's with not using the awesome Minor Threat song of the same name?

4.5 / 5  

Ice Cage - a bunch of gross polyamory type people go to a sex party only to wake up nude in the woods. They are then subject to a mystery where they have to figure out what happened to a certain woman the night before and how they themselves played a role in her apparent misfortune. It's a Thriller where everyones mostly naked which distinguishes it from a normal thriller. I liked it, but the point it ultimately made was made a little too quietly and there's nothing creepier than Masquerade costumes. Better than I thought it would be though.

4/5

sexual guilt is the theme here I guess. experienced in colorful and entertaining ways for the viewer

FatFreddysCat

"Edge of the Axe" (1988)
An axe wielding nut job is hacking his way through the residents of a sleepy California mountain town, and a pair of computer genius teens try to use technology to discover the killer's identity before he can strike again.
This Spanish-American co-production came along a bit too late in the slasher craze to have much impact, but it was better than I expected -- it's got fairly decent production values, a cool looking killer, and lotsa violent & bloody death scenes. Neat stuff for fans of obscure '80s horrors.

"Cell" (2016)
Boston residents John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson hit the road looking for a rumored "safe zone" when a mysterious cell phone signal turns everyone in the city into homicidal maniacs. Based on Stephen King's novel, this flick started off pretty promising (I read the book years ago and loved the premise) but fell off a cliff pretty quickly due to obvious budget restraints (lots of crappy CGI). Cusack and Jackson make it watchable, but after awhile this turned into just another cheap zombie flick. Disappointing.
Hey, HEY, kids! Check out my way-cool Music and Movie Review blog on HubPages!
http://hubpages.com/@fatfreddyscat

lester1/2jr

Lovely Molly - can't really review this because I watched it late at night and it didn't have CC so i missed a lot of dialogue, but it looked pretty "okay on the surface, problems underneath". Winter's bone, Paranormal activity, and weirdo spiritual thingies (hereditary etc) type stuff put in a blender. If you need to see a horror movie and this is the only one around it will do the trick but definitely does NOT take all its elements to a higher level

Dr. Whom

White Zombie (1932)

Considered to be the first feature length zombie movie, it has the original voodoo kind of zombie: people raised from the dead to become the mindless slaves of the voodoo master. A wealthy plantation owner falls in love with a girl while on the boat the Haiti. She, however, wants to marry someone else, so he calls in the help of voodoo master 'Murder' Legendre who lives in a strangely gothic part of Haiti. This goes about as well as can be expected when you entrust your fate to man named 'Murder'.

Bela Lugosi is easily the best part of this movie. While the rest of the cast tend to lose themselves in wild melodramatic overacting, he remains a figure of quiet menace. It is also very atmospherically shot, although the director of photography clearly loved some shots so much, that he used them twice over. Yet for all the menace that Bela Lugosi projects, overcoming him proves disappointingly easy: a preacher hits him over the head with a book (presumably a bible) and that, basically, takes care of things.

"Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor."

Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

StreamingTodd45

Quote from: Rev. Powell on January 13, 2021, 09:43:42 AM
HAPPINESS (1998): An examination of the lives of three sisters, their extended families, and their neighbors reveals an elaborate network of secrets, sickness, perversion, and chronic unhappiness. The blackest of black comedies, where the few absurd jokes are only meant to highlight the horror of the characters' existence. Not graphic or exploitative, but filled with references to rape and pedophilia, the whole movie is one big trigger warning. 4.5/5.

Saw this some time ago, think it was Showtime or Cinemax, one of them.  Can't find it now on ROKU, I'm guessing Amazon Prime doesn't even want to touch this (because of the subject matter).  I wonder what Todd Solondz (the director) is up to now? 

Rev. Powell

Quote from: StreamingTodd45 on January 19, 2021, 04:52:09 PM
Quote from: Rev. Powell on January 13, 2021, 09:43:42 AM
HAPPINESS (1998): An examination of the lives of three sisters, their extended families, and their neighbors reveals an elaborate network of secrets, sickness, perversion, and chronic unhappiness. The blackest of black comedies, where the few absurd jokes are only meant to highlight the horror of the characters' existence. Not graphic or exploitative, but filled with references to rape and pedophilia, the whole movie is one big trigger warning. 4.5/5.

Saw this some time ago, think it was Showtime or Cinemax, one of them.  Can't find it now on ROKU, I'm guessing Amazon Prime doesn't even want to touch this (because of the subject matter).  I wonder what Todd Solondz (the director) is up to now? 

Wikipedia says he's teaching at NYU and Cambridge. He does have a new project: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6493902/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_1
I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...

lester1/2jr

Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse are classics and I enjoyed Storytelling

Rev. Powell

DA 5 BLOODS (2020): Four Black veterans return to Vietnam 40 years later to recover the body of their squad leader, along with some lost treasure buried by their younger selves. This could have been a great movie instead of just a good one if it had focused on being a TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE update and left the contemporary political commentary implicit. Trust your audience a little more, Spike, you don't have to spell everything out. On Netflix. 3.5/5.
I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...