“School of Rock” - love it!
The Demoniacs - Not seen it for 10 years or so, definitely one of Rollin’s best. The print looks fantastic.
Island of Lost Souls - Really enjoyed this, a lot better than I was expecting it to be, I’d only previously sen the Burt Lancaster version.
Hate for Hate - Enjoyable enough Spaghetti Western starring Antonio Sabato. Let’s hope Warner put out some more spaghetti’s in their archive range.
Watched three films the last days - The Mission, Reservoir Dogs and Oldboy.
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The Mission wasn´t as good as i remembered
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Reservoir Dogs was exactly as good as it´s supposed to be
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Oldboy is nearly two hours of stylistic shots and no attempts to capture my interest, and i lost it after some 30-40 minutes. Boring.
SPLIT SECOND - Rutger Hauer is after a satanic predator/alien/rat hybrid that spreads terror in the flooded streets of London. Fun little film from the early 90s with lots of gory effects and a quite sleazy main character played excellently by Hauer. Just saw that director Tony Maylam had also directed the classic video nasty The Burning, got to see if there’s anything else worth checking out from this filmography.
Like you, did not know he did The Burning. Appears not to have done a great deal which interests me besides the two you have already mentioned.
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Groenten uit Balen (2011, Frank van Mechelen)
Well-made comedy-drama from Belgium, set in 1970, about a real-life strike in the village of Balen (in the north of the country), where my wife was born.
She was very young when the events took place, but the strike is one of the highlights in the history of the region, so she knew everything about it.
The film is not that special, the script is merely okay, but good performances and first-rate period detail help a lot.
@ sherpshutter:
What happened during the strike to make it famous?
[quote=“John Welles, post:7407, topic:1923”]@ sherpshutter:
What happened during the strike to make in famous?[/quote]
It was a long strike, it was not recognized by the unions (so the labourers fell without income), the labourers got help from left-wing students from Louvain (those were the days of Marxism-Leninism), foreign newspapers and networks (Dutch, German, French) showed interest in it, and in the end the workers won (even if they didn’t get all they had requested)
Maximum Risk - One of the better Van Damme films from a Hong Kong director.
The Black Panther - Great stuff, really enjoyed this one. The fact that it’s a true story makes it even more disturbing. Sumpter takes on the role of Neilson believably. The BFI disc looks fantastic.
Supermen Against The Orient - Completely ridiculous but good fun, found myself moving about to the cheesy Nico Fidenco score. It appears that the DVD has a scene reinstated by the looks of it. I was surprised to see a young Yuen Biao as one of the bad guys minions.
[size=14pt]Silencio en la nieve[/size] (2011) Gerardo Herrero
Clever Spanish film that deals with an unsual subject for Spanish Cinema, the participation in WW2 (Russian Front) of the Spanish Blue Division alongside their Nazi allies.
I’m saying clever not because it’s a specially good movie, but cause of the thematics, different from the usual ones in our neighbours cinema, even if historical films are a usual thing for Spanish made movies.
Not a very political film taking in consideration its background, more a thriller or a investigation story during a war period. The script goes about a Spanish soldier that is found dead not due to the enemy action, and with a knife made inscription " Have I not see God". In charge of the investigation is a Soldier who used to be a police inspector, there are several suspects to the crime, the masonry, was the soldier a soviet inside agent killed as an exemple, or its just another thing, the true must live in the past in the civil war. The theme is good just not to well transfered into the screen
The main problem of the film its the story, told in a weak way and also predictable. Yes the director had a few shortcomings to overcome, its clear that the lack of budget for this type of production turned the film a bit too more talky than it should be (soldiers not normally have such deep dialogues), but I reckon it was dificult to find the right balance for the story, I just wished the end was less predictable.
To put the viewer in context, you have to understand a little of how the Blue Division was formed, at first the draft was mostly true nationalists (mostly falangistas) who wanted the fight communism like if was a cruzade and volunteer themselves with that spirit, but the Russian front prove to be too much for nationalists only, and the following wave of volunteers (the Division was only made of volunteers), consisted in all type of men, from adventure seekers loking for a fight, to old Republicans who wanted the clean their name, so that they and their familes could have a better life under Franco 's regime. With this in mind the story is more comprehensible.
So not a bad film, it could have been better, but taking in consideration all drawbacks that the director had to deal with, to tell this story, not all a bad film in the end, not different from international mainstream cinema, but different from mainstream Spanish Cinema.
I just wished that in Portugal we could have something in this scale, with the recent colonial war as the main theme, not in the near future I’m afraid, with the lack of money going around.
3 stars
Kick-Ass was viewed tonight. One of those ones I had meant to see for a long time but for whatever reason, didn’t.
Did you enjoy it? I loved it. I’m not a big fan of Cage but he was good in this I thought. I loved the extras as well.
Ring of Bright Water was just on the box. I’d never seen it as a kid, even though I’ve always been a creature sort of person.
Hailing from 1969, when otters were seen as huntable vermin coat material, this gentle film stars Bill Travis as the London based fellah who is drawn to buying an otter from a pet shop, and ends up leaving the rat-race to live in the Scottish Hebridean isles. Here he meets the lovely local doc (Virginia McKenna), and along with her spaniel, they play out their parts against the stunning backdrop of the isles.
Of course the main star is Mij, the otter… and of course I was blarting my eyes out at the end :’( :’(
I’m too soft to be a death metaller!
ALIEN 3 Assembly Cut. Watched the alternate version for the first time. I think I prefer it to the theatrical cut. The only thing that I wouldn’t change would be the final scene where the alien queen bursts out from Ripley’s chest when she falls into the furnace. The alternate cut is something like 30 minutes longer than the theatrical cut, however I felt like they had the same duration.
Cobra - Classic Stallone. I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve seen this film now.
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Savage Sisters - Great fun, not as violent or sleazy as some of the similar films but still a good watch. Not sure all what was extra in this compared to the old U.K. tape but I don’t remember there being a drill with a dildo on the end!
Yes I thought it was great! Funny you should say that about Cage, I agree. He fit the role well.
I love Kick Ass!
Finally got around to watching 13 Assassins. Awesome from Takashi Miike. I guess some people would call it a rip off of seven samurai, but I prefer to call it a homage. There’s a difference between stealing stuff from another movie and paying tribute to another movie. Great performances and character driven plot. Complex, multilayered villain. Good action scenes without fucking fast cutting and shaky cam, and more importantly, the plot narrative actually drives the action scenes and makes them more meaningful. Definitely one of the best samurai films I’ve ever seen. I love the structure of the script, with the first 2 thirds devoted to building plot and characters and the last third being plot driven action.
That’s an incredible tagline! In fact, I’ll probably watch the film one day just because of that!
Not heard of this cut before. May give it a try as always found it a bit hard to get into Alien 3.
Some good things in it, but still the weakest entry imo.
Have heard about this assembly version, but haven’t seen it. Was it released somewhere recently?