Rate the last movie you've seen

[Neil]

Tales From The Lodge (2019) - A Brit horror comedy which generally is a reasonable watch, until the absolutely most daft and ridiculous ending. 7/10 until the 15 mins. 5/10 from then on...

[MinionZombie]

The Woman Directed by Lucky McKee, this somewhat notorious 2011 film is a bit of a mixed bag but is overall quite good. It's about an outwardly normal semi-rural family whose abusive patriarch captures a feral woman he stumbles across while out hunting. The aim is to "civilise" her, but evidently the family are less civil than the woman (played by Pollyanna Macintosh - who was Anne in TWD). There are a couple of mis-steps with the movie, though. One is the use of music. It's almost all indie rock/garage band type stuff and it's used far too often. Several scenes were made less effective because of the continued use of the music (or you could hardly hear the dialogue because of the iffy mix). Certain scenes would have considerably benefitted from zero music at all and made the whole thing much creepier and haunting for the viewer. Another aspect that kinda jars is the gore. For the most part the movie doesn't get too graphic or has a focus on psychological horror - but then all of a sudden in the final act it turns into a splatter movie, almost.   The gross teenage son gets bisected by a lawnmower blade, and then there's the weird 'human dog' with no eyes living in the barn who comes charging out to eat out the eyeball of the mother, after murdering the teacher with her bare teeth. It's like a Troma movie suddenly invades from out of nowhere. Some gore, sure, would work as you need to escalate the savagery - but it just felt a bit too 'off' tonally the way they went about it. Some scenes also feel like they were written by a teenage boy - e.g. the scene where the teacher and the janitor smoke and talk underneath the bleachers. You've got the inner torment of the eldest daughter character going on, and then we cut over to these two smoking having a chat which is simultaneously concerned about her wellbeing but also from a rather pervy and letchy perspective. So over all it's a pretty decent and fucked up kinda of a flick, but the jarring tonal shifts that occasionally pop up - plus the overuse of ill-fitting music - weaken an otherwise strong movie.

[MinionZombie]

Censor Psychological horror set during the video nasties panic of 1980s Britain, in which a film censor begins to lose her marbles and believes that her missing sister is in fact an actress in one of the horror videos that are flooding into the office to be rated or rejected. Well paced, well written, well directed, and well acted. The eerie atmosphere supports the gradual motion of the story, and anyone who has an interest in the video nasties era will find additional layers of enjoyment. Definitely worth checking out!

[MinionZombie]

Ice Road Liam Neeson turns up for a nice paycheque to play a trucker who drives the ice roads in Canada, who is brought in to haul special equipment to the site of a mine collapse within 30 hours with his wounded veteran brother and an indiginous young lady in-tow. It's all pretty standard stuff with no real sparks of real intrigue or originality, with a cardboard villain who's doing villainous stuff for ... reasons? I was never sure why things were happening that way and what profit would actually come from it. They must have gone to the Underpants Gnomes school of nefarious plans. It bumbles along okay enough for the bulk of it's overlong running time, but come the last section of the movie - with an apparent ticking clock of 45 minutes - the bullshit gets cranked way high. The fight/progress frustration scenes just go on and on and on with too many beats in the whole thing, and people constantly harp on about the lack of time but always find time to dawdle nonetheless. Even more infuriating was, well, I can't really say without spoiling, so...   The brother and the indigenous woman just about manage to cross a collapsing bridge - but rather than use the momentum to KEEP GOING because, hey, the time limit AND her brother is trapped in the mine - she stops a few yards away from the precipice to get out, wander over, and gawp into the abyss where the bridge collapses. Surprisingly enough, a huge heavy truck that was already struggling for grip begins to slide towards them. The brother has to close a gate and gets pinned - killing him. It's such a bullshit scene based on absolute character stupidity and was the cheapest and laziest of cheap and lazy shots in a script that feels like the worst paint-by-numbers horse shit you've seen in a long time. It was intensely frustrating - and the only thing Liam Neeson does to the bad guys who caused all this mess? One punch to the kisser. That's it. He's lost his only brother and one punch? Seriously? Started out as a generic, grunty action/adventure type thing, but the last section is just one 'fuck you' after another that just pissed me off. So - fuck this movie. Don't waste your time with it.

[paranoid101]

A Quiet Place part 2 No spoilers, its really quite excellent as good as the first one probably, its going to be an 9/10 from me.

[Neil]

A Quiet Place part 2 No spoilers, its really quite excellent as good as the first one probably, its going to be an 9/10 from me. Wow!!

[MinionZombie]

Bill & Ted Face The Music To sum it up in a meme... Belated sequels are so exceptionally hard to get right. It doesn't trash the franchise, but they really should have just left it at Bogus Journey, which had a perfect ending. There's some good gags throughout, but the frequently terrible green screen is quite distracting, while the plot is quite messy and feels like a bunch of dislocated parts flailing in their own directions. Meanwhile, the movie is kind of a poke in the eye to the title characters as their daughters - well acted though they may be - end up stealing away some of B&T's agency. B&T kinda just end up being tagalongs to their own destiny. There's other ways they could have gone with this, even though the conceit of '25 years later B&T still haven't written the song they were prophesised to do and are struggling under the responsibility' has some weight. While it was fun to see B&T again, and the actors playing their daughters did a great job of 'being their father's daughters', I can't really see myself re-watching this. The first two? I've already seen them multiple times and will continue to re-watch them in the years to come.

[paranoid101]

Freaky It's from the same director of of The Happy Death day movies, so if you have seen them you pretty much know what's coming from this, its fun and Vince Vaughn plays a high school kid too well lol Its not going to win any Oscars etc, but as I said its fun and enjoyable. 7/10

[paranoid101]

This film comes in two parts, watch the trailer above and that pretty much covers the first 10 to 15 minutes at the beginning, look pretty good right, I just with the film had stuck to the WW2 stuff and not gone to the present day. So first 10ish minutes gets a solid 7/10, plenty of gore and action, looks the part with the uniforms , weapons etc. Now for the rest of the movie set in present day, its slow, talky as their try to pad out the run time, the main star has the charisma of dry cream cracker, the acting is poor , I swear theres suppose to be an American Rangers General in it but for some unknown reason has a Scottish accent. Its just the run of the mill Zombie movie, It does have a better budget then most and the gore is kept practical atleast, so just for that the rest of the movie gets a 2/10. Its on UK Netflix now, so give it a watch and maybe stop after the World War 2 stuff lol. Overall 4/10 or 3 lol

[Neil]

Jolt (2021) - Kate Beckinsale in a sort of mild up beat action flick. 6.5/10. Hang on... Kate Beckinsale... 7.5/10

[MinionZombie]

Jolt (2021) - Kate Beckinsale in a sort of mild up beat action flick. 6.5/10. Hang on... Kate Beckinsale... 7.5/10 I saw that's on Prime, but wasn't sure if I'd bother. What I did bother with the other day, though, was: Guns Akimbo Tons of fun! I'd forgot it even existed (came out in 2019 originally IIRC). A videogame coder, who spends his miserable free time trolling assholes online, clumsily trolls the wrong people - the operators of an underground online game where real people try to kill each other - and winds up having to guns mechanically/surgically attached to both his hands before having the #1 player sent after him. It's a very energetic and stylishly colourful film with loads of funny moments punctuating the carnage. Definitely worth checking out!

[Neil]

I saw that's on Prime, but wasn't sure if I'd bother. What I did bother with the other day, though, was: Guns Akimbo Tons of fun! I'd forgot it even existed (came out in 2019 originally IIRC). A videogame coder, who spends his miserable free time trolling assholes online, clumsily trolls the wrong people - the operators of an underground online game where real people try to kill each other - and winds up having to guns mechanically/surgically attached to both his hands before having the #1 player sent after him. It's a very energetic and stylishly colourful film with loads of funny moments punctuating the carnage. Definitely worth checking out! Watching Guns Akimbo at the moment. If you enjoy that, you'll generally enjoy Jolt I suspect.

[MinionZombie]

Watching Guns Akimbo at the moment. If you enjoy that, you'll generally enjoy Jolt I suspect. Might give it a squiz, then. I've made a start on "The Outpost" now. Only about 20 minutes in so far. Will resume it later today.

[Neil]

Might give it a squiz, then. ...incase it helps in your squiz... Kate f***ing Beckinsale!

[MinionZombie]

I recently rewatched both Machete movies, having been inspired to do so while reading Tom Savini's autobiography. Machete - there's a little bit of bloat in there, but it still works quite well overall and delivers. Despite feeling about 10 minutes too long, there's a generally clear vision of what the movie is about, and it's packed with awesome sequences. Machete Kills - double the budget of the first, but brought in less than half the box office of the first movie. The CGI is frequently awful (e.g. CGI blood spurts as opposed to the practical blood explosions in the first movie, dreadful helicopter related effects, etc), the use of green screen is painfully obvious, and the story and script are a total mess of celebrity cameos clogging up the runtime with too many needless diversions that don't feel like they truly lead anywhere. The lack of focus is painful, and the switch to cheesy sci-fi elements in the back half just doesn't work. For one, it looks as cheap as a 1970s episode of Dr Who (or even a current day episode, come to think of it), but it also just feels far too silly even on its own terms. Sure, the trailer for the yet-to-happen 3rd movie looks kinda fun, but it should probably just stay as that. There's a smattering of great and fun ideas thrown about (and Trejo as Machete is always a win), but the film is too often consumed with filler, shoddy CGI, writing in desperate need of focus, and distracting celebrity cameos. ...incase it helps in your squiz... Kate f***ing Beckinsale! I take it you're a fan.