Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Jim H]

Love & Monsters - Cute and charming sort of young adult post-apoc romance?  It's pretty fun and entertaining, with a properly set tone that it manages the whole time.  Good creatures.  Michael Rooker has a small but good role.  Worth a watch.  7/10.

Mitchells VS The Machines - Great animation, solid writing, genuinely funny and even pretty good character work.  It's a winner.  9/10.

[Dr. Whom]

Boro in the Box (2011)

A surreal imagined biopic of Walerian Borowczyk (famed in the 80s for making artsy erotica). The central conceit is that Borowczyk is born in/as a small wooden box (hence the title). As a child the box has arms and legs, and as an adult he is human, but with the box for a head. The whole is filmed in black and white, with every trope of the 70s artsy symbolic cinematography in the book. At only 40 minutes it is over before it can really get on your nerves, but it is one the most pretentious movies you'll ever see.

[Jim H]

Cabal - What an atrocious film.  Some amusingly stupid ideas, but just terrible.  Bad acting, poorly shot, some of the worst dialogue, some ideas from the villains that come across as actually offensive in their writing base.  I'll give it credit for a few pretty good actual blood squibs and a couple of legitimately decent martial artists in the fight sequences, otherwise garbage.  2/10.

Fun fact for me though - this script has several similarities to a feature script I wrote in my 20s and shot a day of with some friends.  We also made a prop mask, and it's quite similar to one used in this film.  Obviously a coincidence, just interesting.  Also, my script had better dialogue, which is embarrassing as I write absolutely terrible dialogue.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Flight From Hell" (aka "Last Flight," 2014)
The passengers and crew of a red-eye flight from a Pacific island deals with bad weather and a carnivorous creature that was snuck on board by a passenger. Low budget hilarity (mostly unintentional) ensues.
This hybrid of air disaster flicks and creature features was a Chinese production (with a few non-Asian cast members to help sell the movie outside the Pacific rim)... so the movie is half in English, half in Chinese (with poorly translated sub-titles), so the result is mostly gibberish. It takes forever for the creature action to get going, and when the mysterious mutant-feline "monster" is finally revealed (more than an hour into the movie!), it looks so ridiculous and the CGI so horrendous that I almost spat out my drink laughin'.
Even the worst of The Asylum's catalog looks like the Royal Shakespeare Company compared to this loser. AVOID, AVOID, AVOID.

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: BEYOND ATLANTIS: The debut of the "Gizmoplex" was last night, but I'd seen the raw cut of SANTO AND THE TREASURE OF DRACULA so I caught up on this one. It's the debut episode for new co-host Emily Connor, who has her own Tom and Crow voiced by different actors (from the live touring show). The movie is a Filipino adventure (with Sid Haig as a pimp!) about some criminals who travel to a remote island to steal pearls from the descendants of ancient Atlantis (who have ping pong ball eyes, except for the leads). The movie and riffing are average and it's an adjustment getting used to Crow's new voice (now voiced by a woman, but sounding like a 10-year-old boy), but the host segments are some of the best they've had in a long time, ending with the "Mother Crabber" rap. It's a great start for Emily, though I'm not really sure what the plan is with two separate hosts. 3.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Hostel (2006) - Somehow I had never seen this. It was okay.

I read somewhere once that it was fun to see in a movie theater full of people and I can see how it would be. Going to foreign countries and staying in hostels and smoking weed in Amsterdam and so forth is a long time rite of passage for young people and this is horror movie about all that. Tarantino produces and it has some of his sort of touches. Director Eli Roth has another ambigiously gay character like in Cabin Fever, but nothing as awesomely random as the "pancakes!" kid.

I might watch the second one, I might not. not exactly overflowing with panache and originality but passable. no where near something like "martyrs" as far as your stapled to the wall, s and m sort of horror

3.25 /5

[Dr. Whom]

Paddington 2

Not really my kind of movie, but after The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, I had to see it. Sentimental but very sweet. Hugh Grant is having the time of his life as the villain.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Dirt" (2019)
Netflix's big, loud, dumb adaptation of Motley Crue's big, dumb, bestselling biography tells the story of how four L.A. rockers crawled out of the Hollywood gutter and took over the world, destroying the liquor and cocaine supply everywhere they went and leaving mayhem in their wake. This was never gonna win an Oscar but it is tons of sleazy fun. Turn off your brain and enjoy the ride.

[Rev. Powell]

FATAL PULSE: How to explain... basically, a member of the Illuminati experiences alternate realities in 1991 while his brother-in-law and Julia Roberts alternate crashing on his couch. Or something like that: Damon Packard's "yuppie fear thriller" is kind of like a Robert Anton Wilson story told by an experimental B-movie filmmaker obsessed with pop culture references from the late VHS era. Hard to categorize, hard to rate, and a bit too long for its own craziness. 2.5/5.

[Alex]

Prisoners of the Ghostland.

Nic Cage is wired up to an explosive suit by Bill Mosely and sent into a radioactive hellhole to rescue his escaped sex slave/adopted granddaughter while confronting the ghosts of his criminal past. It is a lot weirder than I've made it sound. There is a lot going on in this movie. How much you get out of it very much depends on if you find it a bit out there, or merely pretentious. I found it interesting enough to give a second watch.

It is the strangest thing I've seen Nic Cage in.

[indianasmith]

A WEREWOLF IN ENGLAND (2020)
This one was low budget but fun - a carriage conveying a magistrate and a prisoner to trial is stranded at a lonely inn due to a storm, and they quickly discover that the innkeeper and her brother have made a bargain with the bloodthirsty werewolves of the local forest - they will provide them victims in exchange for being spared themselves.  Guess who is on the menu?  Cheesy, low budget, goofy werewolf costumes, but I laughed in a couple of scenes and cringed in others.  This is the kind of movie this forum was made for!

[Jim H]

The Wolf of Snow Hollow - Jim Cumming's follow up to Thunder Road follows some quite similar character material, but mixes in werewolf type horror elements...  But none of it gels as well.  The stuff I found a bit off in Thunder Road is worse in this one.  Jim Cumming does a good job, but his character is just TOO unbearable now.  The mystery plot is alright, but doesn't fully gel.  Robert Forester, in his final role, is pretty good but doesn't get enough to do - he left more of an impression in El Camino.  It's still decent made with some good supporting turns, and I don't regret the watch, just was hoping for more after Thunder Road.  6/10.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988)
Set in a 1940s Hollywood where cartoon characters co-exist with human beings, a down on his luck private eye (Bob Hoskins) gets mixed up with a cartoon rabbit who's been accused of murder. As they try to clear the bunny's name, the mismatched pair learn that it's all part of a massive conspiracy that will affect both humans and 'toons unless they can stop it.
Robert Zemeckis' classic 1988 fantasy/mystery features cameos by most of the biggies from Walt Disney's and Warner Bros' cartoon stables (as well as Betty Boop, Droopy, and more) and the integration between animation and live action is still amazing to watch. I have lost count of how many times Ive seen this movie over the years, it's still one of my all time favorites.

[Trevor]

Prisoners of the Ghostland.

Nic Cage is wired up to an explosive suit by Bill Mosely and sent into a radioactive hellhole to rescue his escaped sex slave/adopted granddaughter while confronting the ghosts of his criminal past. It is a lot weirder than I've made it sound. There is a lot going on in this movie. How much you get out of it very much depends on if you find it a bit out there, or merely pretentious. I found it interesting enough to give a second watch.

It is the strangest thing I've seen Nic Cage in.

Have you seen Color Out of Space, Alex?

[Alex]

Prisoners of the Ghostland.

Nic Cage is wired up to an explosive suit by Bill Mosely and sent into a radioactive hellhole to rescue his escaped sex slave/adopted granddaughter while confronting the ghosts of his criminal past. It is a lot weirder than I've made it sound. There is a lot going on in this movie. How much you get out of it very much depends on if you find it a bit out there, or merely pretentious. I found it interesting enough to give a second watch.

It is the strangest thing I've seen Nic Cage in.

Have you seen Color Out of Space, Alex?

Yes.