What was the last movie you saw?

[hardsciencefanagain]

Thor:The Dark World.
Anthony Hopkins is in it,and a host of other talented actors.Or were they?
"nuff said.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Not of This Earth (1957)

This tale of an alien after human blood to save the inhabitants of his dying planet looks even cheaper than the usual early Roger Corman flick, but darned if its mundane sense of reality doesn't create a genuine feeling of tension. Nice bit part for cult favorite Dick Miller as a beatnik vacuum cleaner salesman.

 

[2DaveWixon]

Thor:The Dark World.
Anthony Hopkins is in it,and a host of other talented actors.Or were they?
"nuff said.

That "'nuff said" makes me suspect that you're a Marvel fan from 'way, 'way back -- am I right?

 

[J Riff]

Angry Birds. They take on the pigs from pig island, and it's all very silly fun.
Ghosts of Mars, not quite so bad as I semi-remembered.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

War of the Satellites (1958)

Another early Roger Corman low-budget science fiction flick. This one was apparently rushed out to cash in on the interest in Sputnik. It must take place some time in the future, since the United Nations has a space program which has sent out ten manned "satellites" (we would say spacecraft), all of which were destroyed by a mysterious something. (You'd think they would have given up by then.) Two smooching young folks in a car (a scene common to these films; it appeared in Not of This Earth, for one) witness something fall out of the sky. It turns out to be a message in Latin (!) warning humanity to stay out of space. Pretty soon it turns into a variation on the common theme of the alien invader who takes the form of a human being; in this case, one of the people in charge of the space program, who is about to go up with some other folks for an eleventh try. One nifty twist: the invader has the ability to create a duplicate of its human form. It looks cheap and portrays a rather odd version of space travel, but I enjoyed the actors. (Dick Miller has a rare leading role as the hero; Susan Cabot is shown as a capable scientist; Richard Devon is quite good as the alien in human form.) Corman himself has a bit part as a ground control guy.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

Jane Campion's Star Bright(2009).
First of all: beware of a measured pace.If you like your flicks fast-paced,don't go and rent/see this one.
Second: beware of large dollops of poetry.The poetry of Keats (recited in voice-overs)is almost like a third leading actor in this movie.
For those who like good acting: Abby Cornish and Ben Whishaw act their socks off,without resorting to Hollywood-style histrionics.
The film is about romantic love,but avoids the usual schmaltzy pitfalls.Remember,this is romance in the Nineteenth century.
When something happens that is(in a restrained,remote sort of way) recognizable from your standard romantic movie,you will be pleasantly surprised.Good timing by the director.
Kudo's for the dialogues in the film,also.
Cinematography: stunning.

Ben's like-o-meter: about 9,55 out of ten for this one.

 

[Droflet]

Good to se you back. Ben.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Jane Campion's Star Bright(2009).
First of all: beware of a measured pace.If you like your flicks fast-paced,don't go and rent/see this one.
Second: beware of large dollops of poetry.The poetry of Keats (recited in voice-overs)is almost like a third leading actor in this movie.

@hardsciencefanagain,

I loved The Piano when I saw it back when it was released but I 've been unable to even think of watching any of Jane Campion's films after suffering the incredibly dreadful In The Cut. I daren't even rewatch the Piano now in case it too is really a pile of pretentious sh*te. Have you seen In the Cut? how does it compare to Star Bright?

 

[JunkMonkey]

deleted double post - nothing see... move on....

 

[J-Sun]

The anally retentive film diary finally comes in handy

You should edit that into manuscript form and shop it around or something. Good stuff.

 

[svalbard]

Just watched 13hrs in Benghazi. Whatever the truth of the situation you have to admire those guys.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Mutiny in Outer Space (1965)

Old-fashioned (more 1950's than 1960's) science fiction flick that's sort of a cross between The Caine Mutiny and The Green Slime. Set in the 1990's, this low budget black-and-white thriller tells of an alien fungus accidentally brought to a space station by a spacecraft carrying samples of water from caves on the Moon. Meanwhile, the commander of the space station is slowly cracking up due to "space rapture" (said to be brought on by an extended amount of time in the low gravity of the space station.) There's some bad science (flaming, noisy rockets in space) and some models that are pretty unconvincing. On the other hand, the story moves along briskly and creates some tension. The two women aboard the space station (both knockouts) are treated as skilled professionals for the most part, despite some heavy flirtation during the first part of the film. Overall it was pretty enjoyable.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Supernatural (1933)

Pre-code chiller starring Carole Lombard. It starts off with an artist facing the death penalty for strangling three of her lovers, apparently all at the same time. (We see a newspaper article saying this happened at a "orgy" at her apartment.) Meanwhile, Lombard's twin brother has died, and a phony spiritualist tries to convince her that he can contact the dead man. Things get complicated when we find out that the spiritualist was the guy who turned the murdered in to the cops, and that there's a not-very-mad scientist around with a theory that the spirit of a dead person can take over the body of a live one. Runs barely over an hour long, with some nice, spooky scenes and a good performance from Lombard.

Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

Gothic shocker starring Boris Karloff, very loosely based on "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P Lovecraft. Our American hero (Nick Adams) arrives in Arkham, England (!) to meet up with his British girlfriend. On the way to the gigantic old mansion in which she lives, he meets the usual villagers who refuse to talk about the place or even let him rent a bicycle. Near the creepy house is a gigantic hole in the ground and a blasted heath. Once in the fog-shrouded place he finds Karloff as the girlfriend's father; her deathly ill mother, hidden behind bed curtains; and a servant who isn't looking too well either. It seems that Karloff's late father practiced some kind of unholy rites, so we've got a scary cellar with a glowing Something in it. Nicely filmed and moody, for the most part, but rather slow-moving. The climax features some pretty unconvincing makeup and special effects. Overall, about the same level as of one of the lesser Corman Poes.

 

[galanx]

Jurassic World. Cool dinosaurs; everything else godawful crap.

 

[J Riff]

Cell - new Steve King-based zombie swarm flick, featuring cellphones as very bad things. I liked the piles of burning Blackberrys, a lot. )
Parallels - forgot I saw it, a building moves through alternate Earths, sets up a plot, then ends before anything quite makes sense.
Idiocracy - soon to be non-fiction, at a theatre near you, if they can figure out how to run the projector.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Yuma (1971)

Made-for-TV Western starring Clint Walker of Cheyenne fame. The huge, soft-spoken, likable actor plays a new marshal in the town that gives the movie its title. A few minutes in we've got a gunfight in a saloon, and the rest of the film continues to follow the typical pattern. There's even an evil cattle baron. Lots of familiar faces from 1960's/1970's TV. This was a failed pilot for a series. Along for the ride are a Mexican boy and a pretty young woman who runs the local hotel, who apparently would have been the lead's sidekicks, since they don't have much to do here. Things move along pretty quickly, and the story gets fairly complicated. Worth a look for fans of horse operas.

 

[Rodders]

Wasn't this remade relatively recently?

 

[Droflet]

I believe the newer one was a remake of 3.10 to Yuma.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Cypher (2002)

[Spoilers ahead]



- which started out as a stylish interesting piece of SF which playing with some very van Vogtian/ P K Dickian tropes about identity and reality. Our hero is hired to to spy on rival corporation. His real life is slowly submerged by the false identity he assumes. He starts having hallucinations. A mysterious third force helps him see through a fraud being perpetrated on him and then deliver him to the second corporation who use him as a double agent in their bid to turn the tables on their rivals. As things progress, and get more and more complex, our central character is slowly pushed into an impossible situation of not knowing who to trust and he can never be certain who he is supposed to be pretending to be at any one time. So far so good. Mind-bending stuff going on. I like it!

Then the wheels suddenly fell off the show.

It is revealed that the mysterious third force (which had been hired by the second corporation to deliver them a double agent) was headed by a mysterious Mister Big, who was so secretive that no one knows what he looks like.... and yes, you just worked out the final 'shattering' twist. (Well, you have if you have read much van Vogt, P K Dick, or any number of other books in which the hero's identity is rewritten more than once during the course of the story.)

Our amiable beleaguered protagonist turns out to be a murdering arsehole, loses the audience sympathy and flies off in a coda to reveal the MacGuffin. This turns out to be a computer file so secret only one copy was hidden away in a super secret impregnable vault. The file ordered the murder of the hero's girl friend.

Huh?

If the evil corporation wanted her dead why did it go to such lengths to hide the order? and, surely, as soon as they found out it had been stolen the person who wanted her killed could just write out a new one - and then hide it again for some reason...? I'm confused.

I guess it was supposed to redeem the protagonist. He'd gone through all that to (somehow) save his girlfriend's life. But as "all that" included blowing up a whole rooftop full of people, who posed him no immediate threat to him it's hard work. I guess he blew them up because a couple of them had seen his face and now knew who he was. Somehow stealing an easily duplicatable computer file absolves him of mass murder? I don't think so.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Witch's Mirror (El espejo de la bruja, 1962)

Directed by Chano Urueta; written by Alfredo Ruanova and Carlos Enrique Taboada.

Those of us whose exposure to Mexican horror films of the late 1950's and early 1960's is limited to what we've seen on television, in poorly dubbed and edited versions, expect them to be silly and childish. Whether it be a masked wrestler, a clunky robot, a vampire with absurdly long fangs, or the outrageous monster in The Brainiac, there always seems to be some laughable element. It was with some surprise, then, that I found The Witch's Mirror to be an effective Gothic shocker.

The unexpected plot twists which make this film so interesting mean that any full discussion of it is inevitably going to be full of

****MAJOR SPOILERS****

After an irrelevant prologue, with a narrator telling us how evil witches are, while we see some sketches of demonic practices (possibly by Goya), we are quickly introduced to the witch and her mirror. She's a housekeeper of middle years, and staring into the mirror with her is her goddaughter, wife to the master of the house. The enchanted mirror reveals that her husband, a medical doctor, is going to murder her in order to marry another woman. The scenes of the images in the mirror, like all the special effects in this movie, are obviously simple and inexpensive, but usually work quite well. It seems that not even the witch can prevent the young woman's fate, and she accepts the poisoned glass of milk her husband offers her.

The movie becomes a typical tale of a vengeful ghost, as the murdered woman haunts the new wife. Although this part of the film is slow and familiar, it's also moody and often visually interesting. The story speeds up and goes in unexpected ways when the new wife is badly burned when her husband throws a lantern at the ghost, setting the room on fire. Suddenly we are in Eyes Without a Face territory, as the husband goes into full Mad Scientist mode, using the stolen corpses of young women in an attempt to restore his wife's features. There's a particularly gruesome plot twist when the doctor and his assistant break into a coffin, only to find that the woman inside it isn't dead, but only in a cataleptic state. Since she has beautiful hands, and his wife's hands were damaged in the fire, the doctor decides to take her to his secret lab anyway, and cut off her hands while she's still alive. This sequence gets fairly graphic for its time.

There are many more supernatural events to follow, building to a fast-moving climax. There are strange little details that add a touch of surrealism. (Why does the doctor have an owl in his laboratory? Why, near the end of the film, do we suddenly find out that the witch can change herself into a cat?) Although some of the special effects at the finish aren't very convincing, overall The Witch's Mirror is an intriguing chiller.