Author Topic: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017  (Read 42389 times)

oldkid

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #110 on: October 08, 2017, 03:01:56 AM »
Cronos

How did no one tell me this was a Del Toro joint?  That was a pleasant surprise right up front.  Although there's some cool makeup, there's no monsters, really, which is disappointing.  I love Del Toro monsters.  But I have never seen a film so much like a Cronenberg body horror with so much charm.

Cronos is a devise made to provide longevity... "eternity!"... by a mad scientist during the early American colonies. It disappeared in a statue of an archangel and showed up again in the 20th century by a man named Jesus Gris and his granddaughter Aurora. As Gris uses this device, he becomes younger and has a growing thirst for blood.

 In this alternative future, people speak Spanish and English back and forth, no matter their accent, people bleed at New Year's parties and rich men use their whining heirs as slaves.  It's just odd and fun and strangely charming. 

3.5/5

Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires

But Cronos isn't nearly as weird as this film.  This should be some kind of horror classic apart from a favored film in the middle of 1SO's massive marathon. I mean:

Peter Cushing!
Ripped bodices!
Dracula!
Spooky steam!
Rubber bats!
Hopping zombies!
Martial arts!
Warrior chick!
Lame British guy!

This movie has it all!  You want more?  What about a magical golden bat?  What about Dracula spidey-sense? I mean, this is just the best!

3.5/5

"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Knocked Out Loaded

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #111 on: October 08, 2017, 08:22:35 AM »
Hannibal (Ridley Scott, 2001)

Mostly plays like an ordinary police thriller. What happens in Italy in the first part of the movie doesn’t gel too well with the developments in the U.S. later on. Hannibal gets atrocious twice. The first strike has a certain Baroque beauty to it, the second is just sickening. As are the pigs. Julianne Moore is badly miscast as ”Clarice”.

- Really Scary

20˚
Extraordinary (81-100˚) | Very good (61-80˚) | Good (41-60˚) | Fair (21-40˚) | Poor (0-20˚)

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #112 on: October 08, 2017, 08:40:50 AM »
Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires

This movie has it all!  You want more?  What about a magical golden bat?  What about Dracula spidey-sense? I mean, this is just the best!

3.5/5
Having watched it I get how your rating is lower than that last sentence would suggest. The film has everything going for it, the best of two genres, and they play well together yet it's still more of a great buffet of foods than a deliciously satisfying meal.


Hannibal (Ridley Scott, 2001)

Mostly plays like an ordinary police thriller. What happens in Italy in the first part of the movie doesn’t gel too well with the developments in the U.S. later on. Hannibal gets atrocious twice. The first strike has a certain Baroque beauty to it, the second is just sickening. As are the pigs. Julianne Moore is badly miscast as ”Clarice”.

20˚
Yes. I agree with all of this. I didn't like the book and I thought Ridley Scott was too faithful in adapting it and giving the audience what he thinks they came to see (minus the return of Jodie Foster). Then I watched the TV show Hannibal tell the story and it was such a great success I started thinking maybe I didn't understand what the book was initially going for.

oldkid

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #113 on: October 08, 2017, 11:26:25 AM »
Yes, my rating reflects my real opinion.  I always enjoy a good B movie, especially when they go for broke.  But the combination of two B-genres is what 7 Golden Vampires really has going for it.  It is over the top silly and Peter Cushing is straight and serious throughout it.  But without some direct humor, it wouldn't be one of my favorites.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #114 on: October 10, 2017, 12:03:26 AM »

Raw (2016)
As a thematic effort, it didn't quite connect with me, though the filmmaking is interesting enough to muddle through anyway.

I was so happy to read that because the motivations that bring the characters from the start to the finish were really unclear to me. Yesterday, I saw mother!, where the characters leave reality behind and take on metaphorical meaning. I tried to apply that here, but what then is Raw really about? Coming of age? Sisters? The treatment of animals? Those scenes at the veterinary college are filmed with fascinating clinical detail, but what does that to do with the lead's cannibalism?

I asked Bondo about comparing this to In My Skin where a woman becomes fascinated by self-mutilation. That's not an easy idea to put across either, but the film does it, gathering the audience in close while the lead takes the knife to her own flesh. The lead here - and she shows a lot of potential - has an increased desire for meat, a kind of hunger for flesh, and none of it feels natural. Without an understanding of the character the film is just about the button-pushing gross out moments.
Rating: * *

- Disturbing



Lights Out (2016)

Sometimes all a good horror movie needs is a single idea. This one has that idea - a villain that can only exist in total darkness - but needed a whole lot more to sustain it. The evolving backstory on the creature and it's connection to this one family is teased out, when in reality the mother would've warned her family and taken action long ago. As for the parade of scares, the limited character can only surprise you in one way. The rest is just the sound mixers cranking up the volume at the right time.
Rating: * *

- Slightly Scary


Prevenge (2016)
Mark Kermode got me curious about the mystery of what would drive a pregnant woman to kill, believing it's because her unborn child is somehow guiding her hand. The actual film is ragged as hell, built out of numerous endless scenes that aim for Mike Leigh or Andrea Arnold but drift around never really coming to life. I also got the feeling from some of the staging that this is also playing the horror for laughs. I can't be sure, the film is unformed clay, not a solid sculpture.
Rating: * ½

- Slightly Bloody
« Last Edit: October 10, 2017, 11:17:35 AM by 1SO »

oldkid

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #115 on: October 10, 2017, 02:24:54 AM »
Honeymoon

The cabin in the woods is a natural spot for a horror film, especially for urban folks who are just nervous not having the distant sounds of a freeway lull us to sleep.  The honeymoon context is also good, because a joyous time is slowly turned bad and then the worst.  I love the creeping dread that this film presents and the thriller-like mystery it proposes.  If only the climax of the mystery were as compelling as the result of the dread.  Small production, worth the time and effort to make.

3.5/5

- A couple scenes are quite disturbing
« Last Edit: October 10, 2017, 10:14:33 AM by oldkid »
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #116 on: October 10, 2017, 07:24:41 AM »
Carrie
Brian De Palma (1976)

I have never been sure if somehow the entirety of the pop culture producing industry decided at some point in the sixties to convey the same distorted, and honestly terrifying, image of American high schools or if there is something inherently CINECAST!ed up about the educational system of the entire country. Carrie is but one entry in a long list of movies that make non-Americans shake their heads in horror at the things American teenagers supposedly do to each other. This is not how people are supposed to behave, even adolescents, who are technically not people.

So right off the bat I've got to wonder if this is going to be one of those cases of me spending the entire film hating everyone and wondering just how sheltered was I for not going to a high school where people humiliated each other in the showers? Thankfully that proved to not be the case. That is partly because Carrie allows its characters more humanity than I would have guessed at first. Between the MVP PE teacher, the repentant girl and the guy who turned out to be genuinely nice, its cast of characters escapes the cliché of the purely sociopathic bullies and indifferent teachers.

The main character also becomes surprisingly likeable despite her first scenes. It must have been difficult to write a girl who remained convincingly a victim of her crackpot Christian upbringing (another particularity of America that one cannot help but recoil at) while coming out of her shell and standing up to her mother. Carrie is in fact a pretty sweet normal kid.

The pacing of the movie is a plus as it doesn't linger for more than half its running time before getting to the prom. Here is where De Palma shows off his eye the most. There are some great shots but perhaps none so much as the dancing scene. We see the culmination of the story coming from a mile away but it remains entertaining, even though I wish the movie had gotten more into it. The deaths happen virtually entirely off screen and Carrie moves remarkably little as she unleashes devastation. I might have liked some close shots of some of her victims, especially at the car crash.

For that reason, the film remains somewhat unfulfilling, if fun.

7/10
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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #117 on: October 10, 2017, 11:16:48 AM »
Honeymoon

Small production, worth the time and effort to make.

3.5/5
And worth the time to watch too. I watched this last year because of Rose Leslie, but it's a good little movie.



I like Carrie too, though there are enough flaws that it could be improved. (I love DePalma so much it frustrates me how wrong he goes at times.) I haven't seen the two efforts to improve on the original and one day I might, but while I like Carrie a lot, I feel the definitive version still hasn't been made.

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #118 on: October 10, 2017, 11:25:07 AM »
I watched 15 minutes of Destroy All Monsters, and it was depressing me. 14 years and 8 Kaiju after Godzilla and the sub-genre has steered completely into kiddie fare. That might be fine taken on its own terms, but I can't do it. Not after the serious first two Godzilla films and the more serious tone of recent Godzilla and King Kong movies and Pacific Rim. I don't want to watch these magnificent giant beasts reduced to a bunch of overgrown teletubbies. Sad.

MartinTeller

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #119 on: October 10, 2017, 11:39:47 AM »
Sounds right. When I was a kid, DAM was the ultimate giant monster movie because it had all your favorites. I watched it again when I was like 30 and came away thinking it was pretty dumb.

 

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