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Post by someoldguy on Mar 13, 2020 18:29:32 GMT -5
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 14, 2020 19:24:03 GMT -5
The Dead Don’t Die (2019)
Horror comedy about zombies with the emphasis on comedy but not skimping on the horror either. The comedy is mainly of the more subtle verbal type and sometimes involves references to other movies, mostly zombie ones. The movie is self-referential as well in humorous ways. The horror is full on – corpses clawing out of graves, mass zombie attacks, gory partly eaten corpses, heads blown off or chopped off. A LOT of zombies.
Many old timers - Bill Murray, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Tilda Swinton and cameos by Carol Kane and Iggy Pop as zombies. More current names as well. All deliver. The standouts are Bill Murray as the small-town police chief who does classic Bill Murray, and Tilda Swinton as the Samurai mortician (yes, you read that right) but nobody is off form.
Bottom line: Good fun and good horror all rolled together. Great ride. On Cinemax (Max Go)
Oh, catchy song as well, which is also used to humorous effect.
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 15, 2020 9:15:53 GMT -5
Planet of the Dinosaurs (1977)
Starship explodes, survivors crash land on Planet of the Dinosaurs. Low budget. Acting, dialog, film quality, sound quality all suck. Plot is mostly predictable - trouble with dinosaurs and with each other. Most of the actors had no prior movie experience. A fair amount of the 84 minutes consists of them walking through swamps, forests, rocky terrain etc. The FX are mostly poor - except for the dinosaurs...
The dinosaurs in the movie are nicely detailed well realized stop motion representations of mostly genuine dinosaurs. These are old school tail draggers. Real dinosaurs had stiff tails held horizontally that balanced them when they walked or ran. Dinosaur colors were too muted for my taste. Integration into the live action was fairly good but not great, at least by modern standards. For 1977, I guess it was rather good. But overall the creatures were pretty impressive.
That aside, the movie is quite bad, but not so annoying or insulting that makes you stop watching. Much of the fun I had watching it was imagining what Tom or Crow would be saying.
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Post by silverbullet63 on Mar 15, 2020 10:14:51 GMT -5
Annihilation(2018)
Beautifully shot film, gorgeous visuals.
Dragged at times, but kept me engaged.
Makes me want to finally binge the slate of big budget
sci-fi/space films. That were released in the mid\late 2010's
Only ones I've seen are Cloverfield: Paradox, Alien Convenant
and this one.
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 15, 2020 12:14:52 GMT -5
The Curse of the Komodo (2004) SyFy channel of course. Military sponsors secret project that was supposed to be about increasing food production but is really about creating giant Komodo dragons, like Brontosaurus size (yes Virginia there is a Brontosaurus) with enormous appetites as weapons on an island near Hawaii. Scientist and crew, including sexy daughter who goes topless once, turn on electric fence (remember Forbidden Planet?) to keep the monsters out. But fuel is running low. Casino robbers on Oahu escaping by helicopter get driven by storm to this island. Oh, and contact with the Komodo fluids makes one into a flesh-eating zombie. Not a very tasty stew. The monsters are so-so CGI. Not bad, just no real variety. The plot is all about survival. Guns have unlimited magazine capacity (despite the various semi-auto rifles having California compliant 10 round magazines), there is apparently no recoil or spent cartridges ejected (shot flashes seem to be only FX) and despite the incredible amount of ammo expended the effect on the monsters is essentially zero. But keep shooting anyway. There is a lot of shooting. (BTW all the license plates I saw were California.) The climax is that the Navy firebombs the island with the intent of covering up the operation. But the remaining survivors get away in the helicopter and get to the media before the Military gets to them, blowing the whole operation. Acting, dialog, plot development etc. are as bad as you might expect. Navy aircraft stock footage is nice, though. SyFy once in a while hits one out of the park. But this time it is no more than first base. |
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Post by silverbullet63 on Mar 15, 2020 18:28:58 GMT -5
Life (2017)
Straight forward, generic scfi/horror film.
Well executed and acted, but mostly forgettable.
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 16, 2020 17:18:57 GMT -5
Life (2017) Straight forward, generic scfi/horror film. Well executed and acted, but mostly forgettable. I saw that on cable a while back. I agree that technically it was well done. But it just did not engage me. Not sure why. |
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 16, 2020 18:52:26 GMT -5
I Bury the Living (1958) Low budget B+W B movie but not bad. I remembered seeing this on TV one Sunday evening in the early 1960s. I noticed Prime had it and decided to revisit it to try to understand the ending. New person in charge of a cemetery (Richard Boone) discovers that when he accidentally (or later intentionally) puts a black pin instead of a white pin in a plot in the map of the cemetery, the person dies. White means the plot is purchased, black means it is occupied. Slow descent into madness ensues, portrayed nicely by Boone. And when he replaces some black pins with white ones ... No gore, jump scares or the like, just psychological terror. Fairly decent even though only Richard Boone and Theodore Bikel as the old caretaker do any noticeable acting. But they do enough. Most key scenes being done in that dark shed helps the atmosphere. The ending... I have decided is ambiguous. Was it really just the caretaker getting revenge by murdering people? Or was he being forced to kill (and dig up some graves) by the pins. If it was just revenge, why dig up the white pin graves? Also the man in France ruse does not make sense. How does that flush out the caretaker? |
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Post by silverbullet63 on Mar 16, 2020 19:34:05 GMT -5
Life (2017) Straight forward, generic scfi/horror film. Well executed and acted, but mostly forgettable. I saw that on cable a while back. I agree that technically it was well done. But it just did not engage me. Not sure why. Lacking originality, derivative of superior sci-fi films like Alien. |
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 16, 2020 21:05:15 GMT -5
Babes With Blades
Space fantasy about cruel dictator, a destroyed world, a healing flower and of course babes with blades. Acting and dialog are pretty bad and/or so over the top as to be annoying. Plot is simple and resolved well. The 'secret' is fairly obvious from early on but so what. Picture is cheap quality and camera work issometimes vertigo inducing. FX are cheap. But in the end it is all about the fight scenes, a mixture of swordplay and martial arts. Not recommended except as mindless entertainment on a par with professional wrestling.
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 17, 2020 13:25:33 GMT -5
Fang (2015) aka Prairie Dog Not to be confused with Fang (2018) which is an extremely bad movie in every way possible. Let’s put it this way, they seemed to have blown most of their budget on fake blood and black eye makeup. Everything else suffered. IMO 0/10 Prairie Dog is a mixed bag. Very good cinematography and other production values, good acting here and there, moments of genuine suspense, amplified by back and forth editing. Dialog is so so. Story is not even that. FX? See below. Acting: Kudos to little Ashlin Malik who plays the very young daughter of the Sheriff and who is remarkably good. Happily, they give her a lot to do. Her older brother, played by Liam McMahon, is pretty good when he is interacting with her, which is almost always. Kathy Zaborksky is quite good as the environmental scientist. John Bowers is OK when interacting with her (or with his daughter) but otherwise less so. Everyone else … not so much. Plot: Some kind of monster kills some people and makes others into murderous psychos. There is also some kind of gook coming out of trees. The phones do not work anymore. Does the fracking have anything to do with this? And this is really spoiler territory. There are three kinds of creatures. Green ones that look like Kermit on crystal meth and who turn out to be the killers, the people who got scratched/bitten (not sure) and go psycho, and big black furballs with fangs who may or may not be hurting anyone. It does seem that the psychos were attacked by a black one, not a green one.
There is no explanation for the phones or the trees, no resolution on the fracking issue, and no explanation for or resolution of the monster things. Except for the psychos, who get killed, the other monsters are apparently there to stay. |
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Post by silverbullet63 on Mar 17, 2020 15:38:42 GMT -5
Leviathan (1989)
Robocop Weller and his Crew at an Underwater Geological Station fight a mutant creature.
This one came out around the same time as Deep Star Six.
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 17, 2020 15:57:40 GMT -5
Leviathan (1989) Robocop Weller and his Crew at an Underwater Geological Station fight a mutant creature. This one came out around the same time as Deep Star Six. Saw Leviathan years back. I recall that I was unimpressed. No surprises, no real engagement with the characters. Never watched Deep Star Six, since the reviews were all bad. |
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 17, 2020 20:57:55 GMT -5
Annihilation(2018) Beautifully shot film, gorgeous visuals. Dragged at times, but kept me engaged. When I saw that Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh were in Annihilation, I had to give it a try. I liked it very much. Thanks again for the tip!  |
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Post by someoldguy on Mar 18, 2020 11:53:19 GMT -5
Monster Party (2019) Posing as caterers for a dinner party, young thieves intend to rob a luxurious mansion. Too bad the guests are a support group for recovering serial killers. Clues are dropped slowly. Once it gets rolling, gore and craziness are plentiful and continue to escalate. Some horror movie logic applies. Like who gets it first. Oh come on you know. And who has to make it to the end. Plus a new slant on “it ain’t over”. On Shudder, BTW |
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Le Loup-Garou Qui Rit
