Recent viewings

[Rev. Powell]

THE WAIT (2013): A young woman delays burying her mother after receiving a telephone call from a psychic saying that she will return. Title describes what the audience endures while the writer/director takes his time figuring out what he wants to say in this soapy indie drama with a touch of magical realism. 2/5.

[fulci420]

Does anybody here use letterboxd? I started not too long ago follow me at http://letterboxd.com/fulci420/

Last Temptation of Christ (1988) Hampered by budget cuts and controversy Scorcese's long gestating vision finally made it to the screen in the late 80's. Religion has been part of Scorcese's films since the start but here instead of being the subtext here it's the text. Watching it in 2014 as someone whose church days are in the distant past how does it fare? I have mixed feelings so lets do a pros/cons

Pro
-Right off from the beginning we are hit with an awesome opening credits sequence with an even better score from Peter Gabriel. Gabriel's work here cannot be praised enough and he brings so much more to this work than even the most established film composers of the time would have.
-Willem Dafoe's Jesus is great adeptly expressing the inner conflict that serves as the films theme.
-Some really incredible cinematography here.
-It's been a while since I read the bible, so it was nice seeing some of the greatest hits of that book through Scorcese's eyes (water into wine, Crucifixion etc..).
-The very ending.

Con
-The lowered budget hurts the film. This is a story that needs an epic feel and it doesn't quite come across.
-A lot of the side actors kind of fall flat. I know Scorcese had reasoning behind this but at times it feels like Bad Lieutenant and his friends traveled to the times of Jesus.
-I like how Scorsese mixes religion into his other films (the great Wolf of Wall Street seems to me be a stronger portrayal about the temptation of evil than anything here), but having to deal with it in the forefront he seems too conflicted between sticking to scripture/and transgressing it to make any great point either way.

Overall it was well worth a watch, but its certainly on the lower end on my list of Scorcese favorites.

[Jack]

Growth (2010) - some people go to an island where one of them has inherited some land. They want to fix the place up a bit so they can sell it, but unfortunately, back in the '80s, there was a scientific lab there that was working on creating parasites that would make people smarter and stronger. Something went terribly wrong. Oh and the parasites are still around. This is kind of a minor favorite of mine, nice downbeat atmosphere, well developed characters, and a fairly interesting plot. The CGI parasites are a bit cheesy, but oh well. 4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

POINT OF TERROR (1971): A studly Tom Jones-ish singer hooks up with a busty music mogul who promises to help his career. A trashy music biz melodrama that for some reason was marketed as a horror film. I missed the point. 1/5.

[ChaosTheory]

LA CONFIDENTIAL (re-watch) - adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel about corruption, blackmail and murder in 1950s Hollywood. I could probably watch this movie once a week for the rest of my life, I love it so much. Fantastic cast (possibly Russell Crowe's best performance) and beautifully paced and shot. I don't know wth happened to Curtis Hanson though, the last thing I know of that he directed was that Gerard Butler surfing movie  10/10

JONAH HEX - it's not the worst superhero movie I've ever seen (maybe not even bottom 10) but it is a pretty serious waste of a talented cast. And feels surprisingly generic for a movie written by Neveldine & Taylor. 4/10

WHITE HOUSE DOWN - so, take DIE HARD, subtract the humor, suspense, engaging characters and charismatic actors, add a half-baked political agenda and weirdly cheap-looking (we're talking syfy channel cheap-looking) visuals, and presto. This movie fails so completely that it's almost impressive. Almost. 0/10

GOODFELLAS (re-watch) - Poor Tommy. 9/10

[FatFreddysCat]

"Rock N Roll High School" (1979) The students of Vince Lombardi High (with a little help from the Ramones) rise up against their fascist anti-rock principle in Allan Arkush's classic comedy that I have seen more times than I can count.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Demonic Toys 2" (2010) Disappointing, years-too-late sequel to the 90s Full Moon cult hit gathers a group of antiquities experts at an Italian castle to inspect an ancient doll....which, of course, turns out to be evil and begins picking everyone off with the help of the evil baby doll and jack-in-the-box from the first movie. Pointless, plotless and cheap looking even by Full Moon standards. Avoid.

[Rev. Powell]

TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS (1967): A screenwriter pitches a complicated story about a cocaine smuggling caper to a producer during a train ride, and the audience watches the results play out, revisions and all. Very dry, very French crime spoof with a hint of perversion (the film-inside-the-film protagonist is obsessed with bondage). 3/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"House By the Cemetery" (1981) Italian gore guru Lucio Fulci attempted to jump on the "Amityville" bandwagon with this disjointed tale of a family who moves into a New England mansion with a dark past. The story doesn't make a lick of sense but the impressive splatter effects kept me entertained.

[lester1/2jr]

They Call Me Bruce (1982) - very cheap laughs that occasionally become pretty good in a Mcdonalds hamburger and Miller High Life sort of way. I liked the guy whatever his name is and there were a couple of pretty girls. It had a good attitude even if some of the jokes were like vaudeville level. It's more 70's than 80's.

After a while I also enjoyed how totally impossible the scenerios were and the plot holes and so forth, so it's a bit of a study in that.

3.75 / 5 but pretty well recommended

[Chainsawmidget]

The story doesn't make a lick of sense but the impressive splatter effects kept me entertained.

I'm glad to hear somebody else say that.  I liked the movie, but I always thought there was something I just wasn't getting as far as plot went. 

My favorite bit has to be when they're trying to open the door with an axe and the guy puts the kids head next to it.

[Rev. Powell]

MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004): A college freshman who believes he was abducted by aliens searches for his old Little League teammate, now a male prostitute, thinking he holds the clue to the mysterious events of his childhood. Something like MIDNIGHT COWBOY with a bit of "The X Files" thrown in, this painful and graphic drama explores how similar traumas can produce opposite effects. 5/5.

[tracy]

"I Will Fight No More Forever".....

A 1975 tv movie about the final stand of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce indians,resisting the US Government's attempt to settle them onto a reservation. A very sad but historically signifigant film. I hadn't seen this since it came out but found it on DVD online.

[indianasmith]

Last night I watched a movie called ARMISTICE.  A Royal Marine wakes up in a house he does not recognize, and is attacked by a subhuman beast when he goes downstairs.  He kills it, and spends the day trying to escape . . . but the house has no way out, and the next morning he is attacked again . . . and again . . . and again, day after day. Then he finds the journal of a soldier from World War I who was trapped in the same house nearly a  hundred years before.  Can he find a way to escape, by reading the mad soldier's despairing entries?  Can he ever discover why the monsters attack him every morning?  This was an interesting and thoughtful horror film.  VERY well done!

[FatFreddysCat]

The story doesn't make a lick of sense but the impressive splatter effects kept me entertained.

I'm glad to hear somebody else say that.  I liked the movie, but I always thought there was something I just wasn't getting as far as plot went. 

My favorite bit has to be when they're trying to open the door with an axe and the guy puts the kids head next to it.

There were a bunch of strange/unexplained things goin' on in that movie, I thought for sure that the babysitter was "in on it" the whole time, cuz they seemed to be goin' out of their way to make her seem sinister, but....nope, she was just cannon fodder.

(I also thought it was funny when the Mom comes downstairs to find the babysitter cleaning up a HUGE bloodstain, asks her "what are you doing?" and the girl distracts her by merely saying, "I made coffee.")

Also .... that little boy has got to be one of the most irritating kids in the history of cinema. Was it wrong that fifteen minutes in, I was already hoping for something awful would happen to him? Hahaha.