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Thread: Introducing my son to various films...

  1. #61
    Team Rick MinionZombie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bassman View Post
    Interesting, it’s kind of the opposite for me. I’ve grown to like They Live more and more over the years. Not that I’m blind to it’s faults, it’s just so much fun.
    Mmm ... my opinion only dropped down a smidge, so perhaps it was partly just this particular time viewing it.

    First time I saw The Fog I was really disappointed by it, but the second time around I loved it and that opinion has remained intact since.

  2. #62
    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MinionZombie View Post
    I re-watched it recently what with the new Blu-Rays coming out. You can see a little softness creeping into his work, but only a little, as I still think it's a very strong movie. The one thing I'm not so keen on now is the undercurrent of slow, plodding guitar that lurks in the background of so many scenes - it slows the pace too much, so it feels. Now, compare that to the score that runs through most of Prince of Darkness - where the tempo is a bit faster and thus energises the entire film. Watching Prince of Darkness for a second time my opinion on it really escalated, whereas my opinion of They Live softened a touch - but not too much - as They Live is still a rather fun romp with Carpenters sense of style and efficiency behind the camera still quite evident.
    So do I need to watch Prince of Darkness again? Hardly even remember it now!
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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  3. #63
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    Hated 'They Live' and 'Big Trouble in Little China' for years and one day they clicked. Get great fun out of them these days.

    But, always liked 'Prince of Darkness', despite its own flaws. Love the idea of the church being responsible for keeping Satan locked up in a basement.

    Carpenter, though, I love the guy and all - which isn't something I'd ever say about any film maker or "celeb" - but his output can be frustrating. He really did have zeniths and nadirs in his career. From the heights of 'The Thing' to the lows of 'Escape from L.A.'...


    ...which, I actually watched yesterday...and...I sorta enjoyed?
    I'm runnin' this monkey farm now Frankenstein.....

  4. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    So do I need to watch Prince of Darkness again? Hardly even remember it now!
    All the more reason to re-watch it, then!

    The main thing that disappoints with PoD, for me, is that the cast of characters feel kinda 'surface' and don't have much depth to them. We've seen better ensembles in previous JC flicks - like The Thing - where each character had their own vibe and they really worked together as an ensemble. PoD doesn't have that, but he does find little ways to give at least some of them a bit of character (e.g. the guy who tells shite jokes, or the other guy who does the mouth trumpet thing) ... however, PoD really succeeds on its atmosphere and its ideas (very complex ideas), and its sense of style of course. It's a stripped-back kinda story in some ways, and very complex in other ways. There's this great sense of doom that lays across the whole film, which really gives credence to the danger of Satan himself being on the brink of escaping ... the whole 'anti-matter' theory, the mirror realm and so on. Good stuff. I enjoyed it far more the second time around.

    Quote Originally Posted by shootemindehead View Post
    Hated 'They Live' and 'Big Trouble in Little China' for years and one day they clicked. Get great fun out of them these days.

    But, always liked 'Prince of Darkness', despite its own flaws. Love the idea of the church being responsible for keeping Satan locked up in a basement.

    Carpenter, though, I love the guy and all - which isn't something I'd ever say about any film maker or "celeb" - but his output can be frustrating. He really did have zeniths and nadirs in his career. From the heights of 'The Thing' to the lows of 'Escape from L.A.'...


    ...which, I actually watched yesterday...and...I sorta enjoyed?
    First time I saw Big Trouble In Little China I liked it, but wasn't too fussed ... I didn't gel with the Jack Burton character (I kinda expected more of a macho hero rather than a comedy hero, at the time), but then the second and third time around I really got the vibe of it and have enjoyed that film a lot. It's a really fun romp, big ballsy 1980s spectacle kinda stuff.

    Escape From L.A. - probably because the majority of it is just repeating the original, so by that logic then the sequel is inherently fun because it's just doing the same thing again. But because it's doing the same thing again it's a damn shame ... and boy, those CGI effects ... good effin' God they're bad! They were dodgy at the time, now they're just woeful. It's bizarre that they just repeated the same movie all over again, practically beat-for-beat, just repeating scenes and even some characters in many ways (e.g. the basketball court challenge). But yeah, despite it's many, many flaws, Escape From L.A. is a good bit of fun (great end credits music track, too).

    Vampires is another one that has its flaws, but it's also a pretty damn effects 'vampire western' action horror flick. My reaction to it has kinda bumped up and down over the years (the opening section with the whole team working together to take down a vampire lair is superb).

  5. #65
    through another dimension bassman's Avatar
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    I’d almost forgotten about Vampires entirely! I definitely need to find it and give it another spin, I seem to remember really liking it 20 years ago....

    And the main girl is Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks?? This just climbed my to do list....
    Last edited by bassman; 11-Dec-2018 at 11:10 AM. Reason: .

  6. #66
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    It's a weird thing about Carpenter. I can watch all of his films, bad ones and all (well, except 'Dark Star'). I can't say that about many other directors. There's always something to his movies.

    As for 'Escape from L.A.', I just can't understand what happened there. A 50 mil budget too? WTF? Gas when you think that 'Jurassic Park' was made for around 63 million.
    I'm runnin' this monkey farm now Frankenstein.....

  7. #67
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    Quote Originally Posted by bassman View Post
    I’d almost forgotten about Vampires entirely! I definitely need to find it and give it another spin, I seem to remember really liking it 20 years ago....

    And the main girl is Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks?? This just climbed my to do list....
    hehe, the first time I saw Vampires I hadn't seen Twin Peaks, but I had by the time I gave Vampires a second spin and all of a sudden I was like "Woah! It's Laura Palmer!" It's fun re-watching flicks and discovering something you were oblivious about the first time around.

    Quote Originally Posted by shootemindehead View Post
    It's a weird thing about Carpenter. I can watch all of his films, bad ones and all (well, except 'Dark Star'). I can't say that about many other directors. There's always something to his movies.

    As for 'Escape from L.A.', I just can't understand what happened there. A 50 mil budget too? WTF? Gas when you think that 'Jurassic Park' was made for around 63 million.
    $50 million?!?!?! For Escape From L.A.?!?!?! You're pulling my chain, surely? They spunked $50m on that? The original movie only cost $3m, for crying out loud! Hmmm ... perhaps a lot of people were getting nicely paid, eh?

  8. #68
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    Quote Originally Posted by shootemindehead View Post
    As for 'Escape from L.A.', I just can't understand what happened there. A 50 mil budget too? WTF?
    What? Some of it looks really poorly lit/filmed too!
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

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