Return of the Living SB Movie Experiment: Pontypool

[Deleted]

Since it's been 24 hours since my last suggestion I add Fubar 2. I'm done adding suggestions for a long time now

[Red Impact]

I'm going to add Starcrash, because I don't think anyone here other than me has seen it, and I'm curious to know what someone else thinks of a space opera written by people who don't understand space.

[J is Justice]

Since you're about to review my movie, I'll nominate another:

Lawn Dogs.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

Mar 26, 2014 22:22:50 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

I'm going to add Starcrash, because I don't think anyone here other than me has seen it, and I'm curious to know what someone else thinks of a space opera written by people who don't understand space.

Ahem!

[Deleted]

Since to me it was a decent mindf*** and I saw it for the first time just recently

Jacob's Ladder

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Mar 26, 2014 22:22:50 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

I'm going to add Starcrash, because I don't think anyone here other than me has seen it, and I'm curious to know what someone else thinks of a space opera written by people who don't understand space.

The sci-fi film with terrible special effects and David Hasselhoff's most unfortunate hairstyle choice to date? I've read about that one from a French movie review website dedicated specifically to so-bad-it's-good films but have yet to see it myself and oooh boy that looks like a doozy.

Mar 23, 2014 22:54:29 GMT -5 Strotha said:

Just because I'm forcing Bradley to watch it, The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover. Beautifully made art movie but I'm a sick bastard and find it utterly hilarious.

Think an artsy film about cannibalism will offend me? I sat through all three August Underground* films. Voluntarily. Try me.





* And no, it wasn't worth it. Not because it was unnecessarily gross and vulgar (which it was but, yu know, it's fictional so whatever), but because those are some of the most obnoxious pieces of shit I've seen.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)

Suggested by J is Justice


Well, I need a hug.

So, er, this is actually one I've been meaning to watch for a long time as I have heard a lot of good and a lot of bad about it. Well, now I have and... wow, that's something else.

I'm not sure where to start so I guess I'll just start by summing up the story. This movie takes place in 1944. A little girl named Ofelia goes to a military base with her pregnant mother so they can be with the mother's new husband, the captain Vidal. Vidal... is not a nice person, to say the least, and it only gets worth throughout the story. However, Ofelia copes with her new situation by escaping the cruelty of the real world and the war shaking it in her own imaginary world populated by fantastic creatures. Well okay, it's open to interpretation whether the creatures and their universe are real or not, but to me it seems obvious this is how this little girl makes sense of the inexplicable. After all, isn't it more sensible that the unfair brutality of war and dictatorship is the work of supernatural forces rather than someone thinking this is actually the right thing to do?
Meanwhile, a group of Spanish resistance fighters are settling near the base and helped by people inside the base, planning to raid it and hoping to put an end to Vidal's influence.

I'm not going to delve too deep into the story as I wouldn't want to spoil it and it is very much the kind of story meant to be interpreted (and done right not the "I can't be bothered to come up with an ending so make up your own shit" kind), so instead I will say that this is one of the most beautiful and visually creative films I've seen in a long time, while also not forgetting to show the horrors of war for what they are. And not only does it have style to spare, it actually serves a purpose and helps the narrative. There is of course plenty of symbolism which works wonders for the film's themes. It really does a great job of showing the mind of a child as they try to make sense of a world that has become less logical than the fairy tales she reads about and at times, I felt I had gone back to my own childhood years as well, and the contrast between this fantasy world and the coldness of reality is what gives this movie its identity.

It's really difficult to talk about this film without feeling I'm spoiling it for people who haven't seen it yet so I'll stp there and say: watch it. No matter how you see it, you won't regret it.


Next on the list: Kung Fu Hustle

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Kung Fu (Kung Fu Hustle)

Suggested by Joker


There's something funny about martial arts movies. They're not a genre I really think of as something I'd want to watch yet it seems every time I watch one I end up liking it a lot. And this one sure is no exception. Oh boy, now THAT'S my kind of martial arts. It's goofy, sure, but the reason this film works so well is that there IS a lot of care and detail put in the fight scenes. It has as much ambition as a serious film but it plays it for laughs, and it's something I always appreciate. It is also a wonder that these scenes were even possible because when you consider how difficult it must be to choreograph a normal fight scene, especially with elaborate martial arts, you can imagine how even harder it must be to ALSO make it funny.
Not to mention these scenes aren't just well choreographed, they are gorgeously shot too, with everything done to emphasize the flow and power of the movements as well as the intensity of the battles, no matter how gloriously over-the-top they get.

The story isn't half bad either. At first it seemed to me like it would be one of these movies with a disjointed series of storylines and subplots that are only tangentially connected, but it eventually all comes together and there's quite a few moments that made me go "Ooooh... I get it now!". It's a very creative film in every way: story, fights, atmosphere, visuals, even the humour, as I did laugh out loud quite a few times and the fact that it doesn't take itself very seriously is a plus to me as the over-dramatic style of some martial arts films tend to put me off.


Next on the list: RoboCop

[kidglov3s]

I'm excited to hear your thoughts on RoboCop! I love that movie.

Tigers are playin... TONITE!

I never misssa game.

[Glitch]

Good review of Kung Fu Hustle(although personally, I think Shaolin soccer was Chow's better work).

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Mar 28, 2014 20:59:40 GMT -5 Glitch said:

Good review of Kung Fu Hustle(although personally, I think Shaolin soccer was Chow's better work).

Never saw Shaolin Soccer although I did see a few clips and they do look good. Although I still think I'd prefer a film that focuses more on the martial arts themselves like Hustle.

[kidglov3s]

Mar 29, 2014 4:31:52 GMT -5 SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman said:

Mar 28, 2014 20:59:40 GMT -5 Glitch said:

Good review of Kung Fu Hustle(although personally, I think Shaolin soccer was Chow's better work).

Never saw Shaolin Soccer although I did see a few clips and they do look good. Although I still think I'd prefer a film that focuses more on the martial arts themselves like Hustle.

I'd be interested to hear your take on Shaolin Soccer. I found it to be a movie that had a really fun idea but then scenes that would normally be like 5-10 minutes just went on, and on, and on, and on. Very unusually structured movie. (not that that's a request). I enjoyed Kung Fu Hustle more, it seemed to have a better grasp on pacing (I would allow that it's been about 11 years since I saw SS and 9 since I saw KFH, and I only saw them once, so it's definitely not an assessment I put a ton of confidence behind). However I am not as big a fan of either as many people.

[bob]

Brazil (1985)

[Glitch]

Mar 29, 2014 4:31:52 GMT -5 SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman said:

Mar 28, 2014 20:59:40 GMT -5 Glitch said:

Good review of Kung Fu Hustle(although personally, I think Shaolin soccer was Chow's better work).

Never saw Shaolin Soccer although I did see a few clips and they do look good. Although I still think I'd prefer a film that focuses more on the martial arts themselves like Hustle.

True.

Also, this doesn't count as another suggestion from me. I'm not saying go see Shaolin soccer. My next one is Hobo with a Shotgun. Very well structured movie when it comes to violence and hilarity. You'll love it.

[bob]

The General (1926)

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Note: if you read the review when I first posted it, you will notice this one is slightly different. This is due to the fact that I stupidly deleted it by accident. As a result, I decided to write a new one to replace it. I hope you enjoy it regardless.



RoboCop

Suggested by Chip


Another one to cross off the Movies bucket list. Well, what can I say about RoboCop that fans haven't already read, heard or said countless times before? I'm not sure but I'll give it a try.

The story takes place in Detroit in the not so distant future next Sunday A.D.. The city is overrun by crime and ruled by greedy megacorps, most importantly OCP, which is basically almighty, especially when it comes to defence as they pretty much own the police. However, their leaders also have a dream of seeing Detroit become safe again. hell, one of them even says that Detroit has a cancer, which made wonder if he was going to inject it with a lethal dose of poison, him and the nWo.

He doesn't so instead, during a board meeting, one employee shows off his latest creation meant to keep the peace, the ED-209. However, it has a slight malfunction which leads to the minor issue of blowing people to smithereens even after they have complied to the machine's request and surrendered. That project is scraped and another member mentions a project of their own they have: RoboCop. It's a robot that's also a cop, in case you were wondering. He is given the green light and conveniently, Agent Murphy, who was recently transferred to the area, is killed in action during a botched attempt to arrest a gang, so they recover his body and use it to build said RoboCop.

At first it works swimmingly. RoboCop patrols the streets, is nigh-indestructible and manages to stop crime without harming innocent citizens, and usually without even killing the criminals themselves. However, things go sour when Murphy's mind comes flowing back despite being supposedly erased. RoboCop/Murphy then goes on a path of revenge as OCP tries to stop him.

It's a pretty good concept and it is very well executed, but what makes this movie work in my opinion is that they really make you believe in this universe. It's futuristic sure but it's not exaggerated so it seems at least plausible. The machines and technology all look cool but their mechanical aesthetic really sells that it's something that might be built.

Now of course the film's main draw is all its symbolism and satire, from the imagery of man being roboticized (is that a word?) to said man inside the machine taking over and retaking control of his individuality and his life, as well as the cautionary tale of what may become of society in a world where capitalism is left unchecked and governments give up too much of their power to private entities. Again, it is very well done and in a believable manner, and it IS pretty funny to see stuff like news reports reduced to a three-minutes mini-show and still being broken up by commercials (which are of course extremely over the top). The messages here are obvious, yet they don't beat you over the head with them.

However, the film is still an action movie and thankfully it doesn't forget to be just that as the chases, gunfights and the likes are extremely cathartic, like when RoboCop tosses a bad guy around while reading him his miranda rights, and the infamous warehouse shootout.

So yes, it is an excellent movie in all aspects BUT, I will say that although there is very little to complain about, there is quite a bit to nitpick about. Now of course, considering my favourite video game of all times is Final Fantasy VIII, I'd be hard pressed to criticize a great but very nitpick-able work, but I just can't ignore some of these oddities. For example, I found Murphy recovering his memories to be rather sudden. I knew it was coming of course but I thought it would be slower, with more foreshadowing, or maybe that it would have been caused by some sort of accident or by getting shot, which would make a nice parallel to his death. Instead it just... kind of happens. And when it did, I just went "oh... guess he's back to being human, now".

But what takes for cake for those in my view is how incredibly stupid the people at OCP are. Sure, let's load our experimental murderbot with live ammunition for a test performance in front of our entire board. It's not finished yet, what could possibly go wrong? No no, no need to give that guy a bulletproof vest or any kind of protection just in case something does go wrong with out murderbot. Trust us, we've got this. By the way, no need to make sure it can climb up or down stairs even though this kind of stuff is basically the only reason you'd want a bipedal machine in the first place, and forget about giving it a mean to get back up should it fall, instead use the money we were going to spend of that to give it a roar module and installing a "flail around impotently like a goddamn turtle should it land on its back" directive.

Also the fact that Murphy gets his memories back suggests that they saved his brain and put it in the machine. Why would they do that when they were going to wipe his memory and give him an AI anyway? Come to think of it, why do they need any body part? They apparently just want a robot that looks human, so what does it need squishy bits for?

But still, like I said, those are details and the film is good enough that you don't really notice those while actually watching it, and it doesn't take away from the fact that it is a very, very satisfying watch.


Next on the list: Massacre at Central High

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Massacre at Central High

Suggested by El Pollo Guerrera


You know, seeing how glowing my reviews of most of the movies suggested so far were I had started to wonder if I had become too lenient. Well, thanks to this movie I can gladly say that it isn't the case and I can still tell the difference between a good movie and a bad one, because this thing sucks. Hard.

The film is set in a high school where bullies run everything and there is apparently no teacher, no headmaster, no police and no common sense. All of those things are what allow the bullies to be your typical absurd movie bullies who are being assholes for the sake of being assholes and get away with it, only up to eleven as they quickly cross the line between regular bully and downright criminal as we see them destroy school property, bring bladed weapons and threaten people with them and even attempt rape, and of course none of it gets reported and we're supposed to buy that they just get away with it. And no, this film is not set in modern day Steubenville.

So a new student arrives, sees all that, even becomes a victim of the bully as he gets his leg broken by them and decides to do something about it, so he notifies his teacher who reports it to the headmaster who in turn has the police investi-HA HA HA no, he kills them. And yeah, I was serious when I said there are no teachers or police because we never see any of them. We don't even see the teens attend classes for that matter. It seems the "students" just show up and hang around the school. Well, we do see the police eventually... when everything is over. Because oh yeah, even though there have been multiple murders and eventually bombings, the school is never closed and there is no investigation until some of the kids get crushed by a giant boulder sent rolling by an explosion and we hear one of the students off-handedly mention the cops naturally assume they were the ones behind the whole thing, which is so stupid that even one of the characters points it out.

But then again, stupidity seems to be a theme in this movie. Aside from the already mentioned absence of any kind of authority figure or investigation in the multiple murders, we are also treated to a guy who goes to the school's pool at night (wait, how is that even possible? Don't they ever close the building?) and not only doesn't notice the pool is empty but once the lights go out, he finds nothing off about that and immediately sets off to jump off the diving board to his death. Look, even if there were water, it would still have been an unbelievably stupid thing to do without any light.

Then there's also the aforementioned near-rape victims who get mad at David, the guy who saved them, because he's "a marked man" for having fought the bullies. Yeah, how dare you save us, asshole. Now the bullies will be even worse and it's not like we can do anything about it because yeah, no teacher, headmaster or police, yadda yadda yadda.

And then at the end there's a dance because yeah, the best thing to do when there is a serial killer on the loose and the place has been bombed multiple times by now is to hold an event where many people will be in an enclosed space (oh silly me, it was obviously the kids who died earlier and who crushed themselves with that boulder and they're dead so there's no need for any precaution). Long story short, the killer removes a bomb he had planted because he realizes the girl he's in love with would be killed too and blows himself up outside the school with it. When the people inside hear the explosion, they rush out, but since they see nothing but flames as the bomb apparently disintegrated every single part of his body, blood included, they decide that "it's just a fire" (actual goddamn quote from the goddamn movie!) and are about to go back to dance until the police FINALLY shows up, now inexplicably fast too as they couldn't even have been warned in such a short amount of time, let alone get on the scene, and THAT is when they finally realize that uwaaah?! That explosion at the same place that has been blown up multiple times was suspicious?! And fires aren't harmless and don't just spontaneously appear?!

And you can add to these few examples the many smaller cases of stupidity like the students' surprisingly restrained reactions to the killings, even when the victims were supposedly friends of theirs. It's like a Final Destination sequel in here except somehow even worse and stupider. Oh and then once the bullies are all dead they suddenly start becoming dicks themselves and turning on one-another for virtually no reason. So I guess the moral of the story is that the bullies did keep them in check, huh?

And yeah, let's talk about that morale as I've made a quick Google search and found a surprisingly high amount of people praising the film's "socio-political satire", one of them even comparing it to Animal Farm of all things (!). Okay first, people really need to stop declaring a movie to automatically be good if it has, or even claims to have, a social message. Birth of a Nation had a social message and you don't hear anyone sane praising it. Second, your message doesn't work if it requires your characters' personalities suddenly doing a 180 for the parallel to even be there. Third, what's the message here? That people should surrender to fascism because anarchy might be worse as if those were the only two options available? Fourth, I don't want to be lectured on social interaction and politics by a movie that opens by and then spends a sizeable amount of its time trying to make me feel sorry for a neo-nazi, as indeed the film starts with the bullies telling a student to wash off a swastika he had painted and sure, he may be sympathizing with the worst genocide ever committed in history, but they were being pushy! WHO'S THE REAL MONSTER?!! Remember that this was the first thing we see the bullies do so at this point, I thought for sure they were going to be the good guys. And if you add to this the fact that the cast is 100% Caucasian... well, like I said, I don't feel comfortable having this movie giving anyone lessons on politics and society. And yeah after RoboCop, it's one Hell of a drop in the quality of social satire in the movies I've seen.

On top of that, the film has quite a few technical problems too as the editing is really awkward, with very sudden cuts from scene to scene, no establishment of time passed (apparently several days if not weeks were supposed to have passed at a point when I thought only one day had gone by) and various other problems. I'll skip discussing the awful, unnatural dialogue because I feel I've ranted enough about this thing already. In conclusion, this is something the Cinema Snob should be making fun of.

AND IT MADE ME ACCIDENTALLY DELETE MY REVIEW OF ROBOCOP! THIS MOVIE IS EVIL! EVIL I TELL YOU!!


Next on the list: The Imposter

[bob]

The Killing (1956)

[El Pollo Guerrera]

... perhaps a little harsh, but I understand your criticisms. The pool death was poorly done (as was the hang gliding scene). The acting was pretty bad (apparently several of the cast improvised their lines). It was poorly edited. It is a 70's drive-in schlocky B-movie in every sense.

But I still love this movie. I love that when pushed too far, the hero snaps and becomes the villain. I love that it goes beyond the simple 'good guy wins' where most other movies would end and shows what happens after that, and the chaos that ensues (power corrupts, the pursuit of power is just as bad). And I love that there are no adults present during the bulk of the movie, because it does remind me of my own high school days, where the bullies were 'angels' and 'class leaders' when the teachers were around but well, bullies when there was no authority around.

I guess I cut the movie more slack because I identified with it more than you did.

(PS - it was also the first movie I saw boobs in)










I'm sorry about your RoboCop review, it was a good'r.










Am I barred from recommending movies again? 'Cause I have another one in mind (that you may have actually seen before, but let's see...).

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Mar 31, 2014 23:08:51 GMT -5 El Pollo Guerrera said:

Am I barred from recommending movies again? 'Cause I have another one in mind (that you may have actually seen before, but let's see...).

Of course not. I wouldn't have made this thread if I expected to only see stuff I like. It's part of the experience!