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Ambitious Spider posted:Another person that doesn't love the witch! But that's kind of the point? The characters are too quick to believe everything, but that was kind of the culture. Crops are bad? God's punishing you. Weather's bad? You're a sinner. Your child is sick? She must have played with dark arts. It's hard to conceptualize, but mass hysteria was a huge thing. You get a few people who delude themselves into thinking there's a witch amongst them and that fear spreads just like a virus, infecting people with delusions, bending reality to make sense of nothing. Just look at stories like The Dancing Plague of 1518, or The Mad Gasser of Mattoon of the 1930's, or many others. We still don't fully understand the psychology behind it, and it still happens to this day. So in the reality of this family, I think their actions are understandable. They're not educated. Their father's a prideful prick, their mother's a loon, the only son is sexually obsessed with his sister, the two young children are trouble-makers, and now there's a new baby.They are all alone, trapped on a small failing farm together. I don't think they fully know why they are alone. People like to point that blame at anything they possibly can, and when you're in a society that explains tragedy with ideas of a vengeful God or spiritual warfare of a supernatural inclination, far-fetched conclusions will be reached quickly, especially if it points the blame away from themselves. The real question is, what is the Witch? Is she, in this world, real? Satan's follower? Or is she the cruelty of nature incarnate? Is she an indifferent universe, something like a living example of chaos theory? Is she a karmic force? Random Stranger posted:I wanted to like it more. The concept is great; playing the whole thing from a solidly puritan perspective was distinctive. The family drama was more interesting than the supernatural elements to me. But things never gelled right. I feel like if the movie was twenty minutes longer so it could build up to events and have room to establish things more firmly, it could have been much better. The movie gives you just the right amount of information to try and figure things out. Anything left unexplained fuels the story. Why were they banished from the town? The answer, we are told, is pride, which we see, but what was done? How was his pride a reason for excommunication? What are these "strange beliefs" that worry the other villagers? Your own answer fuels the story. If the movie provided any answer to this, it would kills the story-book quality of the story. The story is a folk-tale, and is told as such.
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Oct 12, 2016 13:00
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Franchescanado posted:The movie gives you just the right amount of information to try and figure things out. Anything left unexplained fuels the story. Why were they banished from the town? The answer, we are told, is pride, which we see, but what was done? How was his pride a reason for excommunication? What are these "strange beliefs" that worry the other villagers? Your own answer fuels the story. If the movie provided any answer to this, it would kills the story-book quality of the story. The story is a folk-tale, and is told as such. My answer was it didn't matter why they were banished beyond the stated reason: he taught a different version of the religion than they did. Hence the idea that the heresy makes one vulnerable to the devil.
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Oct 12, 2016 13:19
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18. 2001: A Space Odyssey: This was my first time watching from beginning to end rather than having seen most all of it in segments. The first 40 minutes or so dare to play around with blackednout screen, dead silence, simple background noise, music (classical, no less), only a cou up le minutes of dialogue well into it, and '60s as hell design that manages to hold up well as the geometry of the decade is milked for woderful shots and geometry to keep things...off. I dislike Arthur C. Clarke but love this. The effects show their age but still stand on their own and look as well done as they were. Sound design continues to likely be my favorite of all time. It's very long and feels even longer which is exactly as intended and works beautifully. I also appreciate that destroying HAL is straightforward and accomplished quickly and easily. And that the computer is left running the ship as Dave just pulled the - likely corrupted - higher memory banks until the 9000 unit lost conciousness and was running as a more basic computer. 19. Forbidden Planet: Another first complete viewing having already seen much in bits over the years. A very similar movie on many levels yet fails because of them. It is a totally obsolete film with some neat themes that were poorly explored. I greatly enjoyed it regardless. The opening credits list the composers of the "Electronic Tonalities" which I found cute. Which I guess sums up the movie: dated, yet charming for it.
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Oct 12, 2016 13:29
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I was actually disappointed in the Witch on a visual level, because I'd heard so much about how immersive it was. I wanted more interesting cinematography and lighting than what I got, the setting would have been perfect for some Barry Lyndon style stuff, but they only took advantage of that in a few scenes.
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Oct 12, 2016 15:31
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The VVitch didn't really work for me. I don't think it's a terrible movie now that I've had some time away from my viewing of it, but had it not been so hyped up I probably would have had more reasonable expectations for it. Same thing happened to me with Green Room.
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Oct 12, 2016 15:37
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Basebf555 posted:I was actually disappointed in the Witch on a visual level, because I'd heard so much about how immersive it was. I wanted more interesting cinematography and lighting than what I got, the setting would have been perfect for some Barry Lyndon style stuff, but they only took advantage of that in a few scenes. That's not even fair. Kubrick barely surpassed Barry Lyndon's cinematography. (Fighting words, I know).
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Oct 12, 2016 16:08
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Franchescanado posted:That's not even fair. Kubrick barely surpassed Barry Lyndon's cinematography. (Fighting words, I know). I didn't really mean that I expected it to be as good as Barry Lyndon, but the setting would have been perfect for those same techniques where natural light from candles and lanterns is used to create some really interesting visuals. There was a little bit of that in certain scenes, but overall I found The Witch to be pretty flat and uninteresting in that regard.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:15
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Basebf555 posted:I didn't really mean that I expected it to be as good as Barry Lyndon, but the setting would have been perfect for those same techniques where natural light from candles and lanterns is used to create some really interesting visuals. There was a little bit of that in certain scenes, but overall I found The Witch to be pretty flat and uninteresting in that regard. I gotcha. I thought the visuals were great, and it's what I enjoyed most about the movie. Did you happen to catch The Lobster? While it's undoubtedly a (very) dark comedy, I consider it a horror movie as well, with it's absurd premise, bleak world, sparks of ultraviolence, and two of the people I saw it with had anxiety the entire time. But that movie is such a beautiful movie with natural lighting, no make-up, and a lot of understated and then abrasive classical music. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Oct 12, 2016 |
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Oct 12, 2016 16:27
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Franchescanado posted:I gotcha. I thought the visuals were great, and it's what I enjoyed most about the movie. I'm going to rewatch it soon because I definitely feel in the minority, most people seemed to really praise the look of the movie. It may have just been a situation where I was tired or distracted for some reason, who knows. I haven't seen The Lobster yet but I've read up on it, I'll check it out after October.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:31
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I legit feel bad for anyone who didn't love The Witch as much as I did.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:57
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Spatulater bro! posted:I legit feel bad for anyone who didn't love The Witch as much as I did. Same but with Lords of Salem.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:58
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Spatulater bro! posted:I legit feel bad for anyone who didn't love The Witch as much as I did. Same, but with Ernest Scared Stupid.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:10
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Franchescanado posted:Same, but with Ernest Scared Stupid. You know people who don't like Ernest Scared Stupid? I cut all of those assholes out of my life years ago and never looked back.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:20
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20. Monsters Vs. Aliens: Is still fun. 21. The Revenant: Undead buddy film. I watch it now and then and it doesn't get old. Bonus points for L.A.P.D. lighting up all the wrong people like they're after Dorner all over again.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:17
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I'm probably not going to make the full challenge unless I speed up a lot but I've been to busy and/or sick to really watch that many films. 1. The Invitation Saw this on Netflix and had heard good things so I decided to give it a whirl. It takes some time to get going and quite a lot of it is just a dinner party with a lot of drama. But pretty soon it becomes clear that something is not right and the film has enough twists and turns that for most of it you're not really sure how much of that is real and how much is just the main characters paranoia and bitterness. When things do eventually turn violent things don't get quite as crazy as I was expecting but I was invested enough that I actually spoke to the tv telling the characters not be so dumb to not make drat well sure that Pruitt was actually dead. 2. Maniac Better than I expected. The idea of taking the stalking POV shots you sometimes get in slashers and expanding that to the whole film was pretty drat clever. Always being inside the head of the killer and seeing things with his eyes was pretty uncomfortable and creepy in itself. Elijah Wood did a great job of being creepy as gently caress. He is quite good at that since one of his best roles was in Sin City also playing a homicidal maniac. 3. Donīt Breathe Fede Alvarez is one of the best horror directors working today. Don't Breathe is one of the best films I've seen this year of any genre. Young thieves desperately trying to get out of the dead and decaying carcass of Detroit by robbing houses decide to take a risk and rob a blind veteran who is sitting on thousands of dollars of settlement money after his daughter was killed in a car crash. This of course turns out to be a really bad idea and although he is blind the veteran is still quite proficient in combat and not afraid to use those skills to kill anyone who trespasses in his house. Don't Breathe is so tense that at times it's almost physically taxing. I caught myself actually holding my breath along with the main characters a few times, as if the blind man would hear me if I didn't. The film brilliantly uses sound and silence to build up a tension that it never really lets down once it gets going. Stephen Lang has an insanely strong presence as the Blind Man. Any time he's one screen you can't look away. The other actors are all fine but he blows them all away and as good as this film is I think it wouldn't be half as good if someone else had played the Blind Man. It's also just 88 minutes and I admire any movie that can keep things at 90 minutes or less in this day and age when 2+ hours seems to be the norm. 4. The Fog A very solid horror film but it pales in comparison to most of the other work Carpenter did around the same time. I think the best parts are the early scenes when the fog ghosts are seemingly just loving with random people for no real reason. The look of the ghost captain who is entirely pitch black but has glowing red eyes is pretty drat cool. The images of the fog slowly creeping towards people and places were really ominous and since this is a Carpenter film it was all accompanied by a kickass soundtrack. 5. The Legend of Hell House Legend of Hell House is a film that should really be in the canon of haunted house films along with The Shining and The Haunting. It's is just dripping with atmosphere with the titular house seemingly constantly shrouded in mist and only really seen from far below making it seem huge and imposing. Quite a lot of the film is shot in extreme close-ups or from weird angles with wide angle lenses to distort the image even further. One memorable example is when a character is running away in terror and the camera follows them only to suddenly start spinning wildly reflecting the disorientation of the character. I also like how psychic and supernatural phenomenon is treated from this very academic and professional viewpoint. Like these are all experts in their field and although they disagree about the exact nature of hauntings no one ever expresses any skepticism that hauntings are a real phenomenon. The ending is a bit on the silly side but it was made in the 1970s so some camp is to be expected. 6. We're Still Here All in all a decent film. I liked the look the ghosts had and a lot of the early scares with them as dark shapes lurking in the background were pretty effective but it felt a bit unfocused and scattershot. Like near the end when the film starts to turn into a siege film with the townspeople attacking the house to sacrifice them but then getting massacred by the ghosts had some cool gore effects but it also felt like they didn't fully commit to the siege angle and probably could've spent a lit more time building up tension before the ghost totally decimted the home invaders. I also felt like they didn't do nearly enough with the "angry gods under the house" aspect the evil force is mentioned a few times but we never get any sense of itīs presence since all of the supernatural stuff seems to be directly the work of the ghosts. 7. The Babadook I had seen this one before but not since it was in theaters a couple of years ago. I absolutely loved it then but was curious if it worked as well on the small screen. I donīt think it was quite as effective but I'm pretty sure that came mostly from me already knowing what would happen. Samuel is a bit annoying but that is absolutely intentional since it made Amelia's conflicted emotions about her son more relatable and I don't know about you but by the time that he uses his homemade weapons against his possessed mother he had totally won me over and gone from annoying to wonderful. I think the parts where Amelia is half asleep and watching the tv and the boundry between dream, reality and tv broadcast get all blurry as the tv starts broadcasting all these creepy images are some of the best. I know the ending didn't gel with a lot of people but I think any other ending would've been inappropriate since the entire point of the Babadook is that you can never ever get rid of it and the more you resist and pretend it isn't there the stronger and meaner it gets. It is of course obviously a metaphor for grief and trauma and if you ignore it and bottle it down inside it will break out in other ways. You can never get rid of the trauma but you can lessen it by dealing with it. Amelia begins to understand that she can't let her trauma control her life and terrorize her but she has to keep facing it on her own terms. Albeit by keeping it in the basement and feeding it worms
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Oct 12, 2016 19:52
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The Fog always struck me as a perfect horror film for children. It's got some good scares, but there's no nudity, very little in the way of blood or gore, and nothing too graphically disturbing. It even features a kid in one of the leading roles.
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Oct 12, 2016 20:13
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I know I'm probably alone on this, but The Fog is my favorite Carpenter film even above Halloween and The Thing. I just love everything about it.
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Oct 12, 2016 20:30
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The horror movies I've watched in October so far: Re-Animator - Gross and hilarious, Combs and David Gale are great. There's a fantastic dead cat puppet. Could've done without the headless rape scene. 4/5 The Others - Awfully boring. Nicole Kidman is asked to do too much. The twists are super obvious. The atmosphere is alright. 2/5 The Stuff - What a weird mess this movie is. I appreciate the ambition, but the execution is mostly lacking. The acting is terrible, even from the good actors like the Law & Order guys and Danny Aiello. This movies totally wastes Danny Aiello by the way. For all it's flaws, it's still pretty entertaining. I actually wouldn't mind seeing a remake. 2.5/5 The People Under the Stairs - Can't say I've ever seen a movie like this before. Everett McGill and Wendy Robie absolutely kill it as a pair of giddy psychopaths. It's a fun movie, but maybe 10 minutes too long. 3/5 Possession - Now this one is loving insane. James Bond tries to raise a family, it totally fails, he won't accept it, SPECTRE sees an opportunity to enact their weirdest plot yet. Grow a demonic monster until it takes the form of Bond, then replace him with it. It seems inappropriate to call a film this emotionally intense "fun", but that's what it is to me. It's a roller-coaster ride. It's great. 4/5 The Babadook - Only re-watch so far. I liked it even more the second time. Essie Davis is just fantastic. The production design is incredible. I still don't know why the monster makes those silly dinosaur noise though. 4/5 Night of the Demon - Neat film. The monster parts and the rest of the movie don't really mesh well, but it all works out fine. I love the villain, a British gentleman who never loses his temper. 3.5/5
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Oct 12, 2016 20:31
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 The ListThe Big Four 16. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) 17. Halloween (1978) 18. Friday the 13th (1980) 19. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) 20. Halloween 2 (1981) 21. Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) 22. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982) 23. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) 24. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) 25. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)  Conceptually, I like it. But there's something about the execution that reads as lazy to me. So, let's assume the first movie takes place the same year at roughly the same time, May 1980. The second movie, in order to facilitate a grown up Jason, skips ahead 5 years in time to presumably 1985 (even though it was released less than a year apart). The third followed up only minutes after the second (ignoring the weird disconnect between the ending of 2 and the start of 3), and the fourth maybe only hours after the third. This makes 2, 3, and 4, the latter released in 1984, all take place in one weekend in 1985, well after their release. This is building up to my point, where by the time they catch up to 1985, and catching up to that weekend, they start the movie with another time skip just so they can facilitate Tommy growing up. God this series is so dumb, it's starting to get dumb in ways only dorks can care about. It's kinda great. As for how the actual film is, it's kinda disappointing. You can tell they wanted to take a great departure from the first four, yet were shackled down by those four films. They tried to stretch beyond the Friday formula, but either didn't go far enough or just went the wrong directions. For example, the new killer is pretty much Jason, except he isn't because we say so. It's gonna be Tommy, because he's the only one who makes sense for this character to be. Except he isn't, Jason's really this other dude whose had no bearing on the plot, because we chickened out and wanted to give a big 'gently caress You' to the audience. And then we're gonna end with another one, where he does become Jason anyways. It doesn't really matter that Tommy becoming Jason in the first place would've fulfilled his character arc, giving the film some sense of satisfying closure. For the most part, all of the films have just been dumb in a fun way that's been unambitious. This one isn't, it aims higher yet is constrained by the promise of what 'Friday the 13th' is. It feels like what a 16-year-old whose read too much TVTropes thinks would be an awesome twist and shake-up of the formula. Add to that a psychiatric retreat that's just a dressed up summer camp, group of teens who pretty much hate each other (and none of them have the charisma of Crispin Glover), and a bunch of deaths that feel like a retread of the previous moves, barring one or two. Then there's the characters, many of whom maybe get one or two scenes before being killed off. It just feels so lazy when the others would set their table in the first act, and pick them off one by one. Hell, there's a couple scenes introducing characters with no payoff. That's poo poo you learn not to do in storytelling 101. The only good addition is the black kid, which feels like a rehash of Tommy, but it's a welcome change of pace. In anycase, this has to be my least liked of all the film's I've watched so far. Next up: Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
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Oct 12, 2016 20:48
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#27. Frankenstein (2015) A married pair of scientists create a human artificially. Then as time moves on, he starts developing sores and tumors, his cells reproducing too quickly, an error of the process. The scientists decide to put him out of his misery, as he's too "young" to even understand real speech, let alone life that way. It...goes badly, resulting in our "monster", Adam, in the outside world, eventually facing much of its cruelties, and ending up living on the streets of LA where a blind man named Eddie takes him in and starts teaching him how to talk and how to live. All Adam wants however, is to be loved... I mostly watched this on the fact that it was directed by Bernard Rose, who did such films as Candyman and Immortal Beloved. He's definitely skilled at making things beautiful, even when they're their most horrid. Which is a touch that Frankenstein needs regardless of the setting it gets put into. Of course, at the end of the day, I've kind of got a very special place in my heart for the material, so I may also be biased. I give Frankenstein  out of Five
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Oct 12, 2016 22:13
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13. Creep: Low key horror-comedy about a man going to do video work for an odd guy. I actually found Josef creepier due to his normalcy and the film's lack of chases or other amped up horror elements: things only technically get "spooky" in the final 25 minutes or so, but it doesn't slow the film down at all, as you have a two-man oddball comedy to keep you interested up to that point. The key to Creep is Duplass, who has to make his character seem slightly threatening but in a way that suggests he's more of a danger to himself; he's the kid you know who is, yes, odd and off but not someone to worry about. There's two moments in particular that stood out to me above the rest of the film as particularly masterful: 1. the "I raped my own wife" story, which uses the found footage aspect to give us total blackness as visuals and only the audio and 2. the killing at the end for putting it completely off-focus and in the distance, making use of the peace of the lake. One part that actually disappointed me was the reveal (last few minutes spoiler) that Josef was actually some very prolific killer with dozens upon dozens of victims, as that seemed to ruin the aspect of reality for the film, that this could straight up be a real "quiet one" who snapped for the first time and murdered someone.  /514. Dead Space: Nothing to do with the video game, this movie is a 1991 Italian production starring Marc Singer and some unknown actor called Bryan Cranston. It's an Alien ripoff with a puppet that can barely move, but with added Star Wars ripoffs like a dogfight and a C-3POesque robot sidekick for the lead. If you're looking for cheese, this is it: there's a softly lit sex scene between the leads that is actually just a dream, everyone wears 80s leftovers like bright spandex, and the hostile exterior of the station is represented by filming in the Italian countryside where they would've shot Leone movies but slapping a blue filter over it, putting some smoke on, and using a fisheye lens. As a bonus, it's barely 70 minutes long, so it's cheese that gets right to the point. .5/515. The Ward: AKA John Carpenter's Identity 2003. Yep, I'm just going to put the plot twist right there, because it pisses over an OK Carpenter film with its total stupidity. Let me just start by saying as I watched the opening 10 minutes, I was into it: the shots of empty, shadow-filled asylum halls and the deafening noise of the building shifting feel like classic Carpenter, as do the credits, the simplicity of the protagonist's intro to us and to the hospital. So far so good. Then the film settles into a pattern of ghost attacks that aren't all that interesting (a ton of rapid cuts, some screams, and later on a hint of video game cutscene CGI for the ghost's rotten face) and some rote 60s Asylum cliches. A bit boring, sure, but there were still a few scenes in there that had some nice mood and I was interested in how Carpenter brought back his anti-establishment critiques, since the first act definitely had some feminist overtones to it. In the last act, which had a few decent, but not great, set pieces (and somehow the ghost makeup gets good? it looked like they did CGI or CGI touch ups for the earlier shots that resembled video game cutscenes pasted into the movie, but the end stuff has an actual actor with a make up job), he totally pisses away the entire movie. If you haven't seen 2003's Identity, it's this: a bunch of characters we've seen throughout a movie are not real, but mental projections of the lead! In this case, it's all the supporting characters murdered by the ghost and the ghost itself, who are all aspects of the protagonist's psyche. That's bad, right? It's delivered in burst of 5 minute long exposition that's barely disguised, making it worse. But it gets worse: Carpenter manages to wreck his own societal critique by having the lead doctor's therapy work. He's known about the personalities all along, and his rough therapy and shock treatment have been to help cure her, and they do in fact manage to off each of the personalities. In 2011, someone made a movie where shock therapy is Actually Very Good. The only way this is getting any points is for those scattered cool classic Carpenter moments. If you don't have a filmography list to check off, avoid this one. .5/5
timeandtide fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Oct 20, 2016 |
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Oct 12, 2016 23:13
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Franchescanado posted:But that's kind of the point? The characters are too quick to believe everything, but that was kind of the culture. Crops are bad? God's punishing you. Weather's bad? You're a sinner. Your child is sick? She must have played with dark arts. It's hard to conceptualize, but mass hysteria was a huge thing. You get a few people who delude themselves into thinking there's a witch amongst them and that fear spreads just like a virus, infecting people with delusions, bending reality to make sense of nothing. Just look at stories like The Dancing Plague of 1518, or The Mad Gasser of Mattoon of the 1930's, or many others. We still don't fully understand the psychology behind it, and it still happens to this day. Yea, I get that, but what doesn't work for me is in the reality of the film, witches and devils are real, and it doesn't do anything with that. Like it's not saying anything about mass hysteria, because in the reality of the film it isn't. They're not hysterical, they're just practical, even if their faith and beliefs are ineffective. Like in the last 5 minutes, you could kind of give it a feminist reading, but she's still divining her power from a man. I dunno. If it were the family just tearing themselves apart, and the reality of the devil and witches was left ambiguous it would have worked better for me. Or of Or if they did more with it all being real. Yea, they're real but maybe the family's weird rear end rituals and paranoia put them on top. Or maybe they're real, but look at what happened to your family. what's really evil in this world? Like I said. they squeeze that in a little bit, at the end, but overall the film seems content to prevent this as a flat puritan folk tale. Which might have worked better if we saw the beginning of their downfall with the community, and what started the downward spiral If I was grading it here, I'd give it 2.5, maybe 3 out of 5. I liked it, just not as much as everybody else.
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Oct 12, 2016 23:47
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timeandtide posted:15. The Ward Truly of one of the worst of all terrible twists, but you didn't mention perhaps the best part of the movie, the extremely great opening credit sequence. Also, electroconvulsive therapy IS a good and helpful treatment, sometimes.
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Oct 13, 2016 00:20
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Ambitious Spider posted:The VVitch talk I guess my question to understand how you read the film is what makes you think the Witch is real?
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Oct 13, 2016 00:20
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Franchescanado posted:I guess my question to understand how you read the film is what makes you think the Witch is real? The sabbath around the fire, woman grinding a baby in mortar and pestle to use as a salve, son spitting up an apple, & c. Ambiguous movies are great, as are psychological ones. It's also okay for the monster to be real now and then.
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Oct 13, 2016 01:07
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Franchescanado posted:I guess my question to understand how you read the film is what makes you think the Witch is real? the film ends and she makes a deal with the devil and then wanders off to join a coven of witches and floats off into the sky with them. I didn't think there was anything in the film to put the reality of what what was portrayed in to doubt. anyway, next film on my list: 18juon:the curse part 2 more of the same (literally for the first half hour!) but otherwise just as good  /5 for the reuse of footage.
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Oct 13, 2016 01:09
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Franchescanado posted:<Talk about The Witch> This is a good post that makes me actually want to see the movie now. High Lane - Some college kids decide to do some rock climbing. Once they get to their destination, they discover the path is closed for repairs, but they journey ahead anyway.. That is literally all I knew about it going into it. As things starting to progress, I was hoping for a monster to show up, or in the best case, turn into a psychological horror. No, it does none of that instead it's a hillbilly . This movie takes from quite a few other movies, while creating nothing new or memorable. Super forgettable, super generic and a stupid too-long climax, and unless someone totally goofed up the translations, the dialog was just absurd. I hated this thing and couldn't wait for it to be over  / 5The Demon (1963) Now this was a treat. I have never heard of it and only randomly picked it from a list of free movies available on YT ( in good quality even!). This movie deals with a troubled woman and the town against her. Is she a witch, possessed or just love stricken? The exorcism scene is creepy and definitely an influence on The Exorcist. Was there an exorcism in a movie, previous to this one? /5
Dr.Caligari fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Oct 13, 2016 |
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Oct 13, 2016 01:11
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Franchescanado posted:I guess my question to understand how you read the film is what makes you think the Witch is real? Not much of a spoiler since the Witch appears in the first ten minutes of the movie, in scenes separate from any witness that would give the sequence an ambiguous perspective. We are getting the objective eye's view almost immediately that there is a witch in the woods. In the context of the film, the witch is real, the devil is out there luring women into midnight nude dances, and the only thing that can protect you from it is being a good Christian. You know, of all the controversial opinions I have on bits of pop culture, "I didn't care for The Witch" is pretty much the one I'd expect least likely to stir things up. Day 12 - I'm almost to the end of my planned viewing for the month so I thought I'd flip through a streaming service and see if there was something that jumped out at me and there it was: I Saw the Devil. "Wait, isn't that kind of an action/thriller?" I said to myself, suspecting that Amazon had miscategorized another movie. A quick google check told me that plenty of people consider it horror so that's good enough for me to jump into it. A serial killer abducts a woman from the side of the road and dismembers her. Unfortunately for him, her husband is a cop and he sets out for revenge. Through some extremely dubious detective work, the cop finds the killer and then sets into motion a plan to torment the killer. So here's the thing, I can't call this a horror film. I think the reason that some people categorize it that was has to do with how gruesome some of the violence gets, but spurting arteries isn't enough for me to consider a film to be "horror". I Saw the Devil just doesn't have the tone of a horror movie to me. Part of the context of I Saw the Devil is that the detective is supposed to be morally failing as he pursues his revenge, but in my view, he was off the deep end of morality right from the start. He's given a list of four people who the police think might have raped people but don't have any evidence. So the cop goes around breaking into their homes and beating them into the hospital until he finds the one that did it. But even if I felt that theme didn't work, it was still a pretty good revenge flick. The action is cool, the way the story escalates works well, and in the fight scenes the cinematography and editing are pretty good.
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Oct 13, 2016 02:10
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Horror is the genre I've watched the least of, so I'm using this month to catch up on a lot of classics I've been sitting on for a while. I don't have a lot to say about a lot of these as everything that can be said has been many times before, but a few things nonetheless. Carnival of Souls: I love the moment at the end where Mary goes to the pavilion and sees the dead dancing. She's just sitting there and they seem to be paying her no mind. They only become interested in her and chase her once she screams and runs. I can't help but wonder what they'd do if she just kinda...sat there. It's not often that the horror movies I watch leave me wondering like scene did. On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know why Friday the 13th was released as Tuesday the 13th in Argentina? I work at a place that auctions movie posters and Argentina is the only Spanish speaking country that uses Tuesday instead of Friday as far as I can tell from the posters I've seen.
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Oct 13, 2016 02:17
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#11.) Jennifer's Body (2009) Well, this could have been a lot better. It was nice seeing Amanda Seyfried in something other than Saving Silverman (along with a painfully under-used Cynthia Stevenson and Amy Sedaris), and the premise (popular high school girl gets turned into an off-brand succubus, with an emphasis on cannibalism) could have been taken to interesting places. But once the basics were established, the script seemed to just run out of steam, and limped to the conclusion.  There were some nice shots, though they kind of seemed to be done to a music video mind-set, and a few moments that made me laugh (like the coach loudly announcing to the world that he would be nailing the killer's nut-sack to his door). On the other hand, the strained Whedon-y dialogue, the squeamishness about actually showing the violence (in contrast with a couple of lovingly-rendered projectile-CGI-vomiting scenes), and the cheap short-cut to a happy ending all made the movie feel like it was trying to fast-talk its way through being a movie.  / 5 
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Oct 13, 2016 02:43
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Doctor Teeth posted:Horror is the genre I've watched the least of, so I'm using this month to catch up on a lot of classics I've been sitting on for a while. I don't have a lot to say about a lot of these as everything that can be said has been many times before, but a few things nonetheless. Tuesdays are the "bad luck" day in a lot of Latin America, and I think also Greece. I've heard it's because the day (martes) is named after Mars, who is associated with war and bloodshed, but I dunno if that's the real reason or if it's just one of those things someone came up with after the fact to try to explain some random folk belief. There is a folk saying in Chile (and other places I'm sure) that says you shouldn't get married or go on a voyage on Tuesdays. As for why it's only Argentina that did that, I have no idea. Pretty interesting. edit: Now I wonder if it was marketed as "Friday the 17th" in Italy for the same reason. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Oct 13, 2016 |
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Oct 13, 2016 03:04
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K. Waste posted:Day 11 Day 12 Seriously good double feature, one courtesy of iTunes, another courtesy of a GenChat post by Anonymous Robot. Murder Party is Jeremy Saulnier's first film, a collaborative effort, and is probably also the best thing he's done. I really liked it a lot. Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees was the perfect chaser of the bizarro, avant-garde sci-fi.
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Oct 13, 2016 03:19
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:edit: Now I wonder if it was marketed as "Friday the 17th" in Italy for the same reason. It was. 17 is Italy's equivalent to the unlucky number 13. Supposedly it's because you can rearrange the Latin numerals XVII into VIXI, which translates to "I lived", implying that your life is over.
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Oct 13, 2016 03:39
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The List The Big Four 16. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) 17. Halloween (1978) 18. Friday the 13th (1980) 19. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) 20. Halloween 2 (1981) 21. Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) 22. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982) 23. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) 24. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) 25. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) 26. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)  So, that was gay as poo poo. Fun too. Though it sits kinda weird in the cannon, considering the way that we culturally perceive Nightmare on Elm Street films. It shifts away from the unstoppable boogyman, a powerful god playing in his domain, terrorizing a cast of teens. Instead, it focuses on one teenager, and the weird body horror of losing yourself to a powerful force who want's you to do evil. *cough*Gay urges in the 80's*cough* And it's the 'playing in his domain' part that has embodied the series in pop-culture. It's thing young kids lay awake thinking about when they try to/avoid falling asleep. It does make use of that body horror, especially in the Alien-esq Freddy-popping-out-of-a-body scene. But the body horror doesn't have that playfulness that defined both Freddy, and the franchise. Which I do think it's fine, but as a reflection on these films, it's an important thing to note. Like how Friday the 13th didn't feature the Hulking Jason that would come to star, or that Halloween 3 was about a conspiracy by an evil toy company ran by a witch (warlock?). And Nightmare on Elm Street without those iconic 'Welcome to prime time, bitch.' scenes is as big of a departure as those too. Still liked it though. It was gross and unnerving, and it did continue that theme of the parent/child disconnect, as well as a nihilistic dread over the upcoming loss and carnage. Though there is a weird disconnect with the first film that's hard to pinpoint. I think it might be a difference in reality, where the first one felt very honest about the experience (despite the dreamscape serial killer). Meanwhile this one has a kind of hyper reality, where it rings true but doesn't feel as honest as the first one did. Not to say that the acting wasn't good, the lead I thought did a great job with his role, hell it's perhaps up there with Jamie Lee Curtis and Heather Langencamp. Maybe it was the way Freddy distorted reality in a way unlike the other films. Or perhaps the cartoonish depiction of latter day teenaged life. The only other real thing to note is again, Freddy isn't so much felt as a character in this film as a force. And that's a little disappointing considering the amount of character the first one promised in comparison to Friday the 13th and Halloween. He's certainly more present in the film compared to the first, and feels more like he's driving the plot this time around. In any case, this one's a fun one to watch, and with some gore that got a serious reaction out of me. Next up: Friday the 13 part 6: Jason Lives
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Oct 13, 2016 08:21
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(1. nightmare on elm street.) Watched 2. You're Next For some reason I thought this would be a really unique film, but it wasn't really. Just home invasion + fighting back, with a bit of a twist that wasn't terribly shocking. It was fine, just not really memorable. 3. The Descent Great claustrophobic feel. Some excellent scenes rising from the pool of blood(though the cg is a bit aged on some other scenes). Ending was pretty brutal. 4. The Borderlands This was awesome; interesting characters and their dialog carried the beginning. I loved how the mannerisms the characters had, and how the whole deal was presented as "probably a hoax"...all the way until the ending.
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Oct 13, 2016 08:34
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Day 1, the Cloverfields: Cloverfield: 8.5; 10 Cloverfield Lane: 9.5 Day 2, the Not As They Seem: The Thing: 10; They Live: 8.5 Day 3, the Rest of the Trilogy: Prince of Darkness: 7.5; In the Mouth of Madness: 8 Day 4, the Big Planners: From Beyond: 9; The Lords of Salem: 6 Day 5, the Obvious: Hellraiser: 9; Hellraiser II: Hellbound: 7 Day 6, the Not Quite Human: Beyond the Black Rainbow: 9.5; Under the Skin: 10 Day 7, the Hotels of Horror: The Shining (extended cut): 10; 140:8 Day 8, the Hauntings: Noroi: 8; Housebound: 9.5 Day 9, the Reruns: Triangle: 9; White: 4.5 Day 10, Humanoids in Space: Alien (Director's Cut): 9; Pandorum: 7.5 Day 11, Humanoids on Earth: The Descent: 9; Splice: 5.5 12.1: Shin Godzilla is basically an Eva movie (even having "we must gather the resources of the entire 12.2: I can really respect how instead of going full chaos all the time The Bay managed to stay subdued enough that when it does go for the horrific moments, it really packs a punch, and the whole thing has a really sad pall over it since you have an idea from the start about how things went. Good use of the premise both in the direct grossness of the main issue and in the different kinds of sad situations that indirectly arise as things fall apart. Interesting use of the format with the several intertwined long-running narratives and then the various one-shot clips that really give a sense of the scale of things. Only complaints are that the main character is pretty flat in her narration (which made some sense at first, but there was never a real emotional payoff to the idea of her reliving this horrible experience) and it seemed to break the found-footage format a couple times at the end for no real reason? All in all it's a solid, strangely plausible environmental horror. 7.5/10 VROOM VROOM fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Oct 14, 2016 |
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Oct 13, 2016 09:50
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#28. Eyeball (1975) A tour bus going through Spain suddenly faces terror when a killer in a red raincoat starts slowly picking people off, with it seemingly clear that the perpetrator is part of the tour. This killer sadistically removes the left eyeball from all of their victims. Suddenly every member of the bus seems suspicious. This was a fun little giallo. In the halls of Italian Horror History, Umberto Lenzi gets a bad rap, mostly because he stuck to cheap films, and kept his head down, not trying to break real ground. That said, I think the guy does pretty good often for what he manages. In this case, he pulls a pretty good whodunnit, Ten Little Indians style, leaving us guessing as to the culprit, with plenty or red herrings. He even has a lesbian POC as one of the main characters with no focus or "punishment" for these factors, which is remarkably forward thinking in the world of horror. That said, this is still a very middle of the road film. If you like mysteries or gialli, I'd definitely say this is a good enjoyable lazy afternoon film to watch. Also, it has some pretty great poster art if you look for it. I give Eyeball  out of Five
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Oct 13, 2016 12:55
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22. Etraordinary Tales: one of you mentioned the interstitial bit with the raven and statue being lame. You were correct though the animation was rather neat. The rest was worth watching for Poe fans with solid narrators and an excellent score that I would love to have heard more of. The animation for the house of Usher and Masque of the Red Death were likely my favorite. While Lee, Lugosi, and Del Toro a leave me struggling to pick a favorite. Can say the I loved the interpretation of Masque of the Red Death and it was my favorite of the shorts. Now to grab the soundtrack.
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Oct 13, 2016 13:42
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#29. Whistle and I'll Come To You (1968) A quiet, anti-social professor goes on an off-season vacation to Eastern shores. He's very shy and very likely would be diagnosed with autism in this day and age, even displaying palilalia. One day while exploring a centuries old graveyard, he discovers a flute sticking out of the ground, and translates the writing on it to "Who is this who is coming?" and blows on it on a lark. Afterwards, more and more he starts becoming haunted by something that may or may not be in his head... Okay, on this one, I am truly befuddled. I have seen in many places for many years people lauding this as one of the creepiest things to come out of Britain. It's compared in hushed tones with works such as The Stone Tape. So I was very excited to finally watch it, thinking I'd have something to stick with me the rest of my years. And I well...wasn't. I won't fault the story for actually making a sheet ghost, the oldest of stereotypes. But I will fault the film for being very dull and uneventful, and just not scary. Of the just under an hour running time, there are more scenes of our man eating than there are of spooky goings on. Like, we just kind of see him plodding around for the majority of the run time. It's very nicely shot, with very inviting camera closeups and wide angle shots, sometimes rather effectively showing off the man's distance from others emotionally, but terrifying it is anything but. I feel like I'm missing something because of how much people have raved about this, and how little I got out of it. Is it because I'm an American nearly fifty years on? Is it because of a rather daring early portrayal of a protagonist on the Spectrum? I just don't see what the hooplah is about here. I give Whistle and I'll Come To You  out of Five
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Oct 13, 2016 15:58
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#12.) Kristy (2014) Urgh. Worst one I've watched so far this month. I have to admit that I basically stopped paying attention an hour in, when the protagonist decided it would be better to crash the only functional car left on campus in order to kill just one of her half-dozen attackers instead of escaping, though I'd already been primed for it by the pivotal scene in which she didn't know how to pass a stopped car on an otherwise empty road. Imagine you took a basic slasher and jumped to the final girl section, then stretched that out for a full movie without writing in anything more to give her personality. Throw in some bland villains which draw from both the 'Satanic cult' and 'internet people are scary' columns without being creative with either aspect, aside from an unexplained (magical?) ability to interrupt telecom services. That's pretty much it, leading to an ending where a cult which operates across the nation is brought down by the survivor having one of her attackers' phones. Positives: The score was decent, the people handling the camera did some good work, and the security guards were sympathetic. / 5
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Oct 13, 2016 17:49
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