What was the last movie you saw?

The Shape of Water.
Mesmerizing. A little predictable, especially toward the end, but eminently watchable.

Gee. I had The Wizard of Mars on VHS, and musta put it on ten times since about 1982, but it still sounds fresh and fun when Victorier reviews it. Like, they fool around with a weird pendulum thing? Don't remember that, better watch it again.

Kong: Skull Island. I enjoyed it and a couple of things aroused my curiosity: 1) The use of Monarch and 2) the use of MUTO. So, with my suspicions in place, I did a bit of searching. Lo and behold:
Godzilla vs. Kong Gets Blair Witch Director

Pencilled in for May 22nd 2020 folks

Dunkirk. I know it had rave reviews but I felt kind of meh about it. I do like a good war film though.

The problem for me was I didn't feel a personal connection to the soldiers on screen, I can't even remember their names. I think I will probably enjoy it more the second time round. I think that was a consequence of dumping us straight in the conflict, I didn't feel a sense of rising tension and didn't feel an attachment to the characters.

I think I will follow this up with The Darkest Hour as a lot of people commented they make a good companion film.

I wonder if the success of The Witch has spurred a bunch of witchy movies. Anyway, without really intending to do so, I saw two this last weekend.

Don't Knock Twice (2016)
The "cover art" that the on demand service uses to promote this is awful, making it look like the cheapest of made-for-TV movies. But it was on at a convenient time, so ...

Katie Sackhoff as the mother, Jess; Lucy Boynton as daughter, Chloe. Chloe impulsively knocks on the door of a house in spite of knowing the curse that if you knock twice "she'll come to get you." In spite of having been abandoned by her mother, she goes to Jess for help. Jess has pulled herself together since then, recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction, and truly wants to mend their relationship, but Chloe's insistence that she's cursed takes a toll on her trust, until events confirm it. What works best here is Sackhoff and Boynton as estranged mother and daughter, and while the film focuses on that while introducing the spooky stuff it works very well, with a nice directorial restraint. Towards the end it's all about resolving the plot issues, and that's a weaker stretch though there are some dark fantasy sequences in a forest that are effectively shot. On the whole, a good movie worth watching but not a great movie.


The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
This covers somewhat similar material to Don't Knock Twice but I felt it more seamlessly merged the personal interplay of a father and son with the genuinely creepy story. The movie opens in a house filled with scattered corpses with scattered guns, forensic team and Sheriff Burke surveying the scene. It's an old, abandoned house and he notes how odd it is that they don't look as though they were breaking in but as though they were trying to break out. A call from the basement and he goes down to see another corpse, this buried in the dirt floor, a young woman surprisingly well-preserved.

Ninety-nine percent of this movie is set in a funeral home run by the local medical examiner, Tommy (Brian Cox) and his son Austin (Emile Hirsh). The Sheriff brings the body of the young woman to them to determine what caused her death since there is no external trauma to offer a clue. Austin puts off a date with his girlfriend to stay with his father, who is a rather with-drawn, taciturn man. As they dissect the young woman they find internal evidence of burning and torture and yet no external signs. The radio announces a storm, thunder begins to intrude on the music, lights flicker, and the mystery deepens when they find a bag and a flower in the woman's intestines.

I don't want to spoil this so enough of plot. The claustrophobic setting heightens the creepiness, but also brings out the history of father and son, forcing them to face each other: They haven't been at odds, really, just not candid with each other. Meanwhile traditional signs of haunting, almost cliched, are put to good use. The actors, including a brief turn by Ophelia Lovibond as the girlfriend, are all spot on. And you may never see a more magnetic corpse than Olwen Catherine Kelly. It must have been extremely uncomfortable laying naked on a metal dissecting table probably for hours, and yet between her non-expressions and the director's framing of her dead center to most of the scenes in the dissection room, she makes an impression, becoming more menacing and sad the more we learn of her. I think this might come to be seen as some kind of classic.


Randy M.

Wow! what a wonderful bunch of sci-fi films! I have seen a few of them, never heard of most, though.

Red Light (1949) George Raft is out to avenge his murdered priest-brother, whose dying words make reference to a Gideon's Bible (not the same one as the one in the song about a raccoon, though) . One of my favorite genres, Film Noir, revenge is big-time! But the ending-- Who'd thunk that would happen!

Bullet Head 2017 - bad people who train dogs to fight meet other criminals in an abandoned place... I know, I know... the poor dogs, right. I've been on about the senseless dying dogs in movies recentley, but in this one....
Spoilage: The dog turns on the creepo who trained it, and saves the good-guy criminal. Of course, the dog gets kilt in the end, but at least it's not for naught.

And so it's not bad. ****

I recently saw this one, JR. As you say, not bad.

Face 2 Face (2017) - An excellent story. I recommend you see it... but be ready to feel.

Jumanji at the cinema. It was surprisingly funny and did a lot right.

Just finished Return of the King with the kids...forgot how amazing that trilogy is.

Rango (2011) - An awful and boring animated movie, that features actor Johnny Depp's voice, in a lame western tale. I couldn't get past 45 minutes of this trash.

Bee Movie (2007) - This is probably the worst animated movie ever made. And I thought RANGO was horrendously the worst.


Super (2010) - This movie put me in an awesome mood. Actor Rainn Wilson, portrays the main character, in this outstanding film about a man who becomes a superhero. THAT"S ALL I"M GOING TO SAY. It's a tremendous drama, with a bit of humor mixed in.



RE-WATCHED Favorites:

Hard Target (1993) - For me, one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's best action films.

Star Trek: Generations (1994) - One of my personal favorites from the series.

Run for the Sun (1956); Richard Widmark as a reclusive big-game hunter in another version of The Most Dangerous Game. But this human hunt, has a motive other than just the thrill of hunting a man. It was very entertaining, but did have a few plot elements that I found rather unlikely. Though, I guess that is nothing rare, in films.

SB - Rango was fine here. You have to hang in for the giant snake. Bee Movie was a real honey of a flick. You must have had an off day.
Finished The Last Jedi. Good for SWars fans, otherwise just action with no idea what's going on or why. Darth's kid is very annoying, but never scary. Good space battles!

Yeah, I agree - more than agree, as I thought Rango was great. Generations, on the other hand, not so much. Dunno the rest.

Speaking of Last Jedi (Darth's grandkid, actually), probably the last movie I watched was a rewatch of Rogue One on my shiny new DVD. It kind of misses the big screen but, otherwise, it was even better.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri A tense, sometimes edgy film with wonderful acting and a raw theme. Frances McDormand gets a lot of credit here, but Sam Rockwell deserves an Oscar in my view. Highly recommended.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) - IMDb

I always thought Generations should've been the first movie for TNG.

Inferno (1953)
Robert Ryan, one of the best film actors from the 1940s into the 1970s, stars as a man with a broken leg left in the desert by his wife, Rhonda Fleming, and her lover, William Lundigan. As Ben Mankiewicz mentioned before the movie started, film noir in color and bright daylight. The plot to let Ryan's character die falls apart when he refuses to go easily.

On the whole, this is a pretty good little thriller with a [delayed] coming-of-age story as framework. Near the end there's a confrontation the studio demanded which, like most studio demands of the time, may have weakened the movie, though a confrontation at the very end works well.


Randy M.

Frankenstein Island 1981. "Hi, I'm Sheila Frankenstein". Prior to Sheila entering this movie, the B cliches are already too many to list. John Carradine is in it, so... And girls in Leopard skin bikinis.. on a lost island. There's a dog and a guy who laughs all the time for no reason. Van Helsing is in it. There's a brain, and great dialogue - "These are the most beautiful vegetables I've ever seen!" There's more, and while watching this you may glaze over, and say things like: "Wha-?" " "No!" and "ook!" between grunts of amazement and non-comprehension of how, how such a thing could be made. This movie wasn't released - it escaped.

With a title like Frankenstein Island, you just know its quality entertainment! Where did you see it, J Riff?

youtube has it, but 360 pixels are too few for me.

Oh no, it's perfect at 360 pixels, then it's rubbish at every level. It's still better than, say, Army of Frankensteins.