Rate the last movie you've seen

[shootemindehead]

'Blood on Her Name' Well scripted, low budget, thriller that borrows some elements from Hitchcock and pieces them together extremely well that opens with a battered woman, a man's body on the ground and bloody wrench and then proceeds to weave the yarn. 'Blood on Her Name' is an example of a well written film that shows that a good script can overcome limits of money and scope and come away with a thoroughly satisfying bit of entertainment. It's also helped by a great central performance by Bethany Anne Lind who carries the audience with her on a series of disastrous events that become more and more desperate as the story plays out. It's conclusion is a bit laboured, I have to admit, but it didn't really impact on the whole thing if I'm honest. 'Blood on her Name' is a taut, well pitched, thriller that keeps the viewer's attention throughout and ends up being a genuine hidden gem. The type of film you might stumble on one night channel surfing and then never forget. 9/10 'Unhinged' A kind of ludicrous, but still gripping story, that uses what its got fairly well to end up with a perfectly ok movie, while not being anything remarkable and, to its credit, it never tries to be. Russel Crowe, bulked up and in a fat suit, plays a psycho called Tom Cooper who decides to treat mother of one and recent divorcee, Rachel Flynn (Caren Pistorius) to an extreme torment to show her what "a really bad day" means. 'Unhinged' is stupid in the way that these kind of over-the-top thrillers usually are. But that doesn't mean that's not entertaining in its own right, which it is, and it's fairly rewarding if you go into it without too much expectation. Crowe exhibits a certain delight as the nutter, in which he channels a former incarnation, Hando, sans the skinhead and Nazi fetish, and his target de jour (Pistorius) represents a heroine that's possible to get behind, while still being something of a disaster zone herself. There area a couple of hiccups here and there with the story, to put it mildly, but if you throw them out the window and just enjoy the ride, you'll be better for it and there's certainly fun to be had. As a genre and B movie fan I can't be too hard on the film, without applying that same hardness to other movies of a similar type that I enjoy as as well. So I suppose if I were to have a list of "mildly enjoyable B movies that I may return to at a later stage", the 'Unhinged' will probably be on it. 6/10 'Tales From the Darkside - The Movie' Often cited as an unofficial follow up to George Romero's Creepshow movies, 'Tales From the Darkside - The Movie' is a feature length anthology effort based on the (awfully mediocre) TV show of the 80's, in which Romero sought to continue the success of 'Creepshow' under a different moniker, due to the fact that he couldn't secure the rights to the name from Warner Bros. But whereas 1982's 'Creepshow' had a certain charm, both the series and the movie of 'Tales From the Darkside' lack that something that made 'Creepshow' work (at least in part). This is particularly evident in the the movie, because of its limited stretch of stories as opposed to the TV series, which spanned over 80 episodes. But it's not all bad, I have to say. Excluding the awfully acted "wraparound" story, the three efforts in 'Tales From the Darkside - The Movie' aren't bad. The problem is that they just aren't that good either and the movies' comedy element lets it down too. Although not half as bad as the terrible Stephen King effort in 'Creepshow' I'll freely admit. The horror element of the movie always remains quite tepid, too, and some of the effects (by KNB) remain disappointingly weak. If I'm honest, I got more joy out of seeing early performances from the likes of Julianne Moore and Steve Buscemi than I did from any of the stories and they appear in the film's most pleasing yarn, 'Lot 249'. The picture's two other efforts 'Cat From Hell' and 'Lover's Vow' have their interesting parts, but they feel somewhat jaded too and the last entry feels insufferably long due to the fact that you can see the payoff from a long way away. 'Tales From the Darkside - The Movie' ends up just being alright and your enjoyment of it will hinge upon how forgiving you are of this type of material, which stays very much in the light horror camp. 5/10

[Mike70]

Kong Skull Island - 3/10. This movie is DREADFUL. The rehashed military stereotypes on display are ridiculous. The whole Vietnam thing just rings hollow and tacky to me. Samuel L. Jackson is one dimensional as usual, the acting strictly by the numbers. A predictable, boring, cheesy movie with every bad action movie cliche.

[shootemindehead]

Kong Skull Island - 3/10. This movie is DREADFUL. The rehashed military stereotypes on display are ridiculous. The whole Vietnam thing just rings hollow and tacky to me. Samuel L. Jackson is one dimensional as usual, the acting strictly by the numbers. A predictable, boring, cheesy movie with every bad action movie cliche. Couldn't agree more. Do you yourself a favour, Mike, and skip King of the Monsters too. Cos it's even worse.

[MinionZombie]

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn): Well, this was a mixed bag. On the one hand there's various parts that are an awful lot of fun (e.g. HQ's raid on the police station, the fun park battle, the early portion where HQ is 'getting over' Joker etc), but on the other hand I get the impression that it doesn't do a good job with some of the other 'new to film' DC characters. I'm not familiar with the comics myself, but have read that certain characters (such as Cassandra Cain) are kind of botched here. It's quite colourful and generally has a sparky energy, but good grief, the film could definitely do with at least 50% less 'all men are bastards' sexism. Had you made a film in which all the female characters were written like the male characters were in this movie, you'd totally get called out for rampant sexism at best and full blown misogyny at worst. Every single male in this movie is one or more of the following things: a psycho, a rapist, an abuser, a manipulator, an asshole who takes credit for the actions of others (i.e. the female cop), a serial killer, a murderer, a sadist, a turncoat, a weakling, or a pervert. Harley Quinn works well in this movie (moments like her lusting after a greasy breakfast sandwich injected a lot of entertainment into the flick), as does Huntress (I enjoyed the juxtaposition between the projected image and the more awkward 'practice in front of a mirror' reality), but beyond that I didn't really connect with anyone. Hell, I connected more with the rarely seen Bruce The Hyena than I did with some of the supporting players. The violence could have gone further. I mean, if you're gonna go for an R-rating, you've gotta do much more than make a few legs bend backwards and say "fuck" all the time. There were a few moments, but the movie did feel a bit trapped by its own scattered tone. You've got glitter grenades over here, and then over there you've got a rather shocking scene of Black Mask forcing a crying woman to dance on a table as her male friend is made to cut her dress off with a knife in front of a club full of horrified partygoers. The Honest Trailer did point out the inconsistency, too - e.g. HQ proudly says she refuses to pay taxes, having lectured Cain, but one of the "grievances" against her is that she "voted for Bernie" (in itself a lame gag that'll age like milk). It suggests not enough thought was put into certain things, something which haunts the movie throughout, popping up randomly to spoil the fun. In terms of the Birds of Prey taking down all manner of physically stronger goons, generally it works pretty well - e.g. Huntress is a highly trained assassin, Harley Quinn uses her acrobatic abilities to run circles around folks and wisely uses weapons to even the odds - but sometimes the movie does stoop to "she's just brilliant, the end" with no real arc or justification ... you know, the goons will also be well trained, yeah? So yeah, a very mixed bag. There's a whole lot of fun to be had with it, but the film also continually hobbles itself with scattergun sexism (I'm surprised there wasn't a scene on a subway train where HQ smashes the balls of a 'manspreader', or knocks the teeth out of a 'mansplainer'). Had the latter been considerably reduced and focused on the villain (rather than every male in the entire movie), and had the character development been more thoughtful for the supporting players (the cop lady is no shrinking violet, but just allows her male coworkers steal credit for her work with no retribution or justice brought?!), then the movie would have really worked consistently ... unfortunately, it's too much of a mixed bag, trying to gel comic book movie entertainment with the echo chamber sexual politics of Twitter.

[Mike70]

Superman 1978 - 8.5/10. This movie rocks! If you haven't watched it in awhile, do yourself a favor and watch it again. Some of the dialogue is a bit cheesy but overall, a truly entertaining movie. It had been about 20 years or more since I watched this all the way through. I'm not gonna break down the plot or anything like that, it's a Superman origin story with Lex Luthor as the villian. You can take it from there. Definitely worth a look! - - - Updated - - - Couldn't agree more. Do you yourself a favour, Mike, and skip King of the Monsters too. Cos it's even worse. I watched about 10 mins of that. That was enough. Garbage that's not even good for killing a Saturday afternoon when it's freezing out.

[shootemindehead]

'One Cut of the Dead' A great little Japanese film, and that's all I can really say about it without wrecking it in some way. 8/10

[paranoid101]

'One Cut of the Dead' A great little Japanese film, and that's all I can really say about it without wrecking it in some way. 8/10 Its so good, great film from such a small budget.

[Mike70]

Werewolves on Wheels 19whatever 1.0000000000000000239867574847/10 First I must inhale...then...BWWHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, brothers and sisters, check this shit out: Bikers stop at a mission style building in the American SW. They get drunk as fook. One of their female members is lured into the cult sanctuary in order to be a sacrifice. She gets butt naked and dances on the altar - this, my very good an' dear friends, is the highlight of this film. Her bare ass is as deep as this film gets, on any level. By far the most interesting scene in the film. OK. Biker gang realizes chick is missing, breaks in, busts up the altarplace, beats the shit out of said Satanist, and books. (See me for translation of "books"). Later at a road side stop, everyone in the bike club, save two horny fucks who chase each other through the bush, begin to dance around campfire. They turn into werewolves and kill the two horny, stoned fucks previously mentioned. The gang goes on to have werewolf fun on the road and hijinxs galore. FUCK ME. I watched this after a long session with some micrographs of charcoal. Charcoal is hard to ID. I got stoned as hell after my successful ID of black maple and hickory, watched this piece in my home office and wondered if it was the weed I just smoked. NO. This movie has to be seen to be believed. i watched it on PlutoTV (highly recommended) and strangely, don't regret a second of it. Watch it if you dare!

[MinionZombie]

Wheels Of Fire A 1985 film by Cirio H. Santiago (who directed Silk), which is basically a massive Road Warrior rip off, like many European post apocalyptic movies of the 1980s. There's a Mad Max-alike roaming about in a car with a rocket booster on the back that gets used, like, once in the whole movie (and that's at the very beginning!) and then never again ... anyway, he meets up with his sister and her boyfriend, they get into some trouble over a bet, flee, then get into more trouble when Scourge and his gang of rape-crazy pillagers storm into the fray. The boyfriend blubbers away, says they can have his girlfriend if they'll let him join, they say okay - but only if he goes through initiation (which seems to be a whole lot of male rape) - naturally, he's not keen on that and ends up dead. Meanwhile, Mad Max-alike catches up, finds the boyfriend dead and his sister gone. Mad Max-alike ends up getting into various mini side quests with a chick with a mullet, a waif who's psychic, and a dwarf General who nobody can understand (his dubbed dialogue is literally all "oola boola" type gibberish). What's crazy is, between the adventures with Mad Max-alike (including a brief underground visit to some Morlock-esque sand people), we keep cutting back to his sister at Scourge's base where she has either just been raped or is about to get raped yet again (the actress spends much of the movie with her wabs out). Eventually, Mad Max-alike figures he'd better go rescue his sister and take down Scourge at the same time, and action aplenty happens. Indeed, the whole movie is action aplenty. It rarely lets up. Car chases, explosions, vehicles flipping over, fights - it's all pretty good stuff. When it comes to characterisation and plot, well, there's barely any at all to speak of, but as a cheap and dirty Road Warrior rip off it's actually surprisingly entertaining - sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons. It's just a crazy Euro sleaze flick. I saw it on Amazon Prime, so have a gander of it there. Exterminators of the Year 3000 In the year 3000 (which looks an awful lot like 1983), there's almost no water to speak of. Nuclear war has buggered the planet etc etc (usual post apocalypse movie stuff) and now no rain ever falls. There's so little water that nobody even knows what bathing is ... christ ... they must stink! Why would you wear leather in the heat? Their fun zones must be an unkempt soup of ball sweat! Anyway, there's some secret location (which has the flimsiest fence you've ever seen protecting it) that has a supply of water. There's another Mad Max-alike (this one a particularly unlikeable and selfish prick), a woman with fantastic 1980s hair, a little boy with a hamster, and an old man who's good at tech stuff who fixes the boy's biomechanical arm and turns him into a stuff-throwing machine. There's some good bits of action tossed in, the usual villainous gang chasing the protagonists about, and a fairly sombre tone. However, it's not a patch on Wheels Of Fire. There's action, but nowhere near enough to really boost the film along for the running time, nor is there one single glimpse of nudity in the whole thing, but on the other hand there is a delicious model shot explosion towards the end. The hamster boy gets drunk on beer at one point, too. Nothing more than "okay", and kinda missable. Also on Amazon Prime.

[Neil]

'One Cut of the Dead' A great little Japanese film, and that's all I can really say about it without wrecking it in some way. 8/10 OK. This is on my list now

[paranoid101]

The Wolf of Snow Hollow 6/10 its good but something seemed off, it felt like it should have been better movie, hard to explain really. The Final Girls 6/10 I enjoyed this but it felt hobbled by the PG13 rating, should have gone R rated and put the fun gore in.

[MinionZombie]

The Final Girls 6/10 I enjoyed this but it felt hobbled by the PG13 rating, should have gone R rated and put the fun gore in. I really enjoyed that movie. The American ratings are spread out too weirdly - the UK 15 rating (which is what it got over here) allows for quite a lot, so this ended up being a very tame 15 (but it'd be just too much for a 12A rating in the UK). I can understand them not wanting to get too violent because it's ultimately a mother/daughter drama wrapped up in a horror comedy, but considering it's sending up the slasher movie, to not see gory deaths and bewbage is a bit odd and occasionally hampers it. However, it is a lot of fun.

[shootemindehead]

OK. This is on my list now Well, a word of possible caution. It's not the film you might think it is. Just try and clear your head of any notions before you watch.

[Neil]

Well, a word of possible caution. It's not the film you might think it is. Just try and clear your head of any notions before you watch. I'm suspect I'm pretty much ahead already on the "clear head" front....

[paranoid101]

I really enjoyed that movie. The American ratings are spread out too weirdly - the UK 15 rating (which is what it got over here) allows for quite a lot, so this ended up being a very tame 15 (but it'd be just too much for a 12A rating in the UK). I can understand them not wanting to get too violent because it's ultimately a mother/daughter drama wrapped up in a horror comedy, but considering it's sending up the slasher movie, to not see gory deaths and bewbage is a bit odd and occasionally hampers it. However, it is a lot of fun. It was a shame really still its a good movie, but just think of how much better it would have been with the Babysitter's movies level of gore.