Source Code

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First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

When I was 11 I remember coming out of Independence Day and looking up at the sky. There were no spaceships but people couldn't help but check. It's a small thing but sometimes films can effect you like that. I didn't expect to be effected in such a way from this film walking in, but when I came out I just felt better, optimistic and appreciative.

I realise that's really wanky, but that's all I'll say for now, because I'll definitely be going to see this again. Suffice to say I really loved this film.

The Shadow

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic

I'm writing this watching a new episode of 30 Rock. Alec Baldwin is just so great. And so is this film which I haven't seen in a while. I do love those early 90's comic book movies before they became so over saturated. The Phantom, the Rocketeer and The Shadow are all great period comic style adventure films an dI seemed to have blurred some details or them together in my head so now I've sorted some of them out.

For example, I thought Tim Curry was in The Phantom. But then I may have been getting jungle scenes mixed up with Congo. Anyway he's great as usual. Ian McKellen is totally in this too which I forgot, so that was a nice surprise.

Anyway enough about my feeble memory, this film is a lot of fun. The first thing that came back was the awesome score by Jerry Goldsmith. I somehow remember all of that. It's really damn good. The next thing that came back was that evil little dagger.

Alec Baldwin is very happy. He is always laughing. but everyone is so scared of his laugh. Disembodied laugh is kinda menacing I guess. Anyway now I'm just rambling. I really love this film. Great family action adventure, some very funny bits, cool 90's fx damn great score and some period fun. Good times.

Meet The Feebles

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic

My Peter Jackson you've come a long way. I've never seen that trailer before either, I like it.

This is is basically a filthy r-rathed behind the scenes expose of a muppet type show except in a world where there are no humans. It's a very low budget affair and the humour mainly consists of watching puppets in very adult situations. A lot of sex, gore, violence, language and general absurdity. And a hippo with a machine gun.

This will either appeal to you or not. I do rather like it for it's simplistic charm. I don't think anyone has ever described it like that before. It's a cult classic and one I like to visit every now and then, I do get some laughs out of it. Plus it helped create Weta Workshop which is awesome.

Nothing

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic, Zoe

A quirky little cult film. I really like this one although I'm probably a bit biased because I love everything Vincenzo Natali makes. But this is nothing like Cube or Cypher or Splice. This is his idea of a comedy. It's probably far more odd than it is funny though.

There are some great sequences in this, shooting in a white void requires some thought. there are some very creative camera placements and moves and some cool post trickery to keep things interesting.

Natali regulars David Hewlett and Andrew Miller deliver wildly energetic performances, which is good because after the frist 20 minutes it's just them. It's not a long film though it comes to an inevitable conclusion pretty swiftly.

It's visually striking, very odd and pretty funny. There is a small sequence after the credits too, that is kind of ridiculous. But I guess no more so than the rest of the film.

As far as I can tell this never got any kind of release anywhere in the world, I just found it to rent one day. If you happen to see it, give it a watch, it's good fun.

The Cottage

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic

That trailer gives away far too much. Suffice to say it's more fun to go into this movie cold. It starts out as A British heist farce and a very funny one at that, but ends up somewhere closer to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. How can I not love that?

Reece Shearsmith from The League of Gentlemen and Andy Serkis are great. Jennifer Ellisonas the very annoying kidnapping victim is also most enjoyable to watch, especially in the latter half when things are going very wrong.

And while the characters are very funny the gore and horror are just brutal. Think along the lines of that other awesome British comedy horror Severance from a few years before. It's a lot of fun.

The Tempest

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan, Amberly

Julie Taymor makes some strange stuff. Her take on that play by that guy is no exception. It is of course, very theatrical despite the awesome location shooting.

It looks very cool. Bizarre costumes, elizabethan but they have zippers all over them, like a punk rocker or something. Same goes for the music, suitably haunting and mysterious ethnic island sounding and then some off putting outbursts of hard rock.

It has a very good cast, I even really liked Russell Brand. Djimon Hounsou can be hard to understand at times but then I'm not entirely sure everything he is saying is english. But he has awesome make up. Helen Mirren is pretty cool as what used to be the male lead. Her introduction is like something from a 70's horror film though.

Ben Whishaw, who has usually been my favourite thing in everything he's in plays the androgens spirit Ariel. The way his effects work and his make up is... a little off-putting. Sometimes he has a male chest and sometimes a female. Not my favourite thing in this film.

Oh yeah and it's a musical now. Well maybe that's a bit too far, but there's quite a few bits of text that have been put to music. Ben Whishaw can sing?! Cool.

There are parts of this film that work fine but they are all so disparate, when placed together they don't form a very cohesive whole. Curious.

Tangled

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic

Hooray my bluray arrived. I can't wait to get through all the extras. I wrote my thought about this before here and here and my feelings haven't changed. I still got teary and that lantern scene, I'm such a pussy.

Love this.

Running Scared

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic, Zoe

I love love love this film. It's just insane and so incredibly dark. Like Freeway, it's a modern kind of fairy tail, completely gritty and seedy and gratuitous. The kids in this one go through some serious hell.

I think a lot of people wrote this off as some stupid Paul Walker action movie. I have no strong feeling about him either way, but it is definitely not a stupid action movie. Well it's pretty ridiculous and outrageous at times but I wouldn't call it stupid. A drug deal gone wrong, corrupt cops, child abuse, mob violence, prostitutes and pimps and scariest and most horrifying of all, the pedophiles. Those scenes alone are worth watching for. Elizabeth Mitchell from Lost and V is utterly terrifying. She and the amazing Vera Farmiga going head to head is the greatest thing ever. I wish there was more of that.

I really can't stress that enough. It's one of the sickest, depraved and deliriously gleeful scenes I've seen in a film in a long time. This film relishes this whole dark seedy world and this is the worst of it. It's incredible. And at the centre of it all are these poor kids and Paul Walker trying to get his gun back.

This film flies by at an incredible place. There's a lot of crazy digital camera trickery, flash edits, time reverses and cool transitions. The big finale takes place in black light on an ice rink. John Noble shows up as a Russian mob boss. He's neat. It looks awesome, and the rest of the film is very grimy and oppressive. You'll want a shower after watching this but It's very rewarding.

And the Animated end credits are great and really sell the whole dark fairytale thing. Check this one out!

Flight of the Navigator

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic, Zoe

Another childhood favourite that a lot of others never heard of. I hear Disney is planning a remake. Don't know how I feel about that, but an updated version might be cool.

The whole film is a lot of fun. But the best thing about this one is the set up. It's actually really scary and mysterious especially as a youngster. Kid goes out for a walk but when he gets home someone else is living in his house and his parents are gone. That's freaky for one but then to find your parents living somewhere else and they are 8 years older and thought you were dead is also pretty spooky.

The spaceship in this is awesome. It was one of the first things I would recreate when I figured out how to make reflective surfaces. It's very early cg but it works a charm.

Paul Reubens voices Max the robot in the ship. You can hear his patented Pee Wee Herman laugh. He does get a little annoying when he downloads pop culture sayings and starts talking like a douche kid from the 80's.

But the whole kid on the run form the government thing is something I love in a lot of 80's sci-fi stuff. In this, in D.A.R.Y.L. and of course E.T. I don't think the Explorers had that but It did have some kids and an awesome spaceship. I've been on a bit of an 80's kids film rant these last few weeks haven't I. I'll stop that soon enough, but I do love them.

Check this one out if you've never seen it. Alan Silvestri does the score and it doesn't sound like anything he'd make today, it's 80's-tastic.

Legend

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

What an odd film. I get what they were going for though, it's a very germanic kind of old school fairytale. Tim Curry as the evil dude in that iconic make up is the best. That's a horny devil.

Ridley Scott shoots the hell out of this though, the look of it, the lighting is beautiful. It does look very studio based, but the sets are awesome, it's such a stylised look anyway. There doesn't seem to be a frame of this film where they've coated the atmosphere in something. Dust, smoke, feather, bubbles, petals, snow, rain, glitter? It looks nice but must have been hell to act in.

That pixie thing, Blix, freaks me out. When Lili goes evil is awesome though. Meg Mucklebones is pretty funny too, although a little episodic.

The music is really trippy too. I believe there are two scores, Jerry Goldsmith's and Tangerine Dreams. Or a mix or both, I think I have the European Jerry Goldsmith one. I don't know what the difference is but this is the one I've always known. Some of the moods they create are so over the top, like the start where Lili touches the unicorn and a storm comes up and everything goes dark. It's so over the top it's funny. I guess it's just very sincere.

Like I said before, it's an odd film, mainly because of the tone, but it has a beautiful look to it, a very classical fairytale.

Alexandra's Project

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic, Zoe

Rolf de Heer's awesome little film from 2003. A dark suburban drama. I guess you could call it a revenge story. Needless to say the "Project" Alexandra's been cooking up is pretty harsh.

This almost feels like it could be a play. It's pretty economical, mainly taking place in one room with a man and a video tape. Helen Buday is great as Alexandra, she has quite a bit to go through. Gary Sweet has the slightly harder part of reacting to the video. To be honest there are a few times especially towards the beginning where he isn't entirely successful for me, it's actually in the more normal and happier parts. But once things turn sour he's fine.

Watching a person watch a video for 80 minutes doesn't sound all that appealing but it's riveting the whole time. That's because the editing, the filming, the actors and probably most importantly the script are all great.

I don't want to ruin the mystery of what exactly Alexandra's Project is if you haven't seen it because you definitely should seek this one out, so I'll leave it there.

Jumanji

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic, Steve

Jumanji!

I watched this 3 times at the cinema when it came out. I was obsessed with any film with this new CG technology in it, also I loved the film, big nostalgia hit. They had a lot of trouble with hair back then didn't they? Those monkeys never really worked for me, even back then.

But the film is so much fun, all propelled by a good cast and another James Horner fantasy adventure score. It was fun to watch again, I still seem to know every line of dialogue off by heart. I watched this over and over again, but more than that I would watch the making of, watching all the effects wizardry and thinking that now with computers absolutely anything was possible to make. This one has heaps of cool stuff, I love the vines particularly.

Robin Williams and Bonnie Hunt are great together. The kids are cool, there's some silly comedy relief with the cop and aunt but nothing to horrible, or perhaps nostalgia has warped my view.

Joe Johnston has quite the filmography of great family adventure movies, hopefully Captain America will be a step up too, we'll find out in a few months. But this was always a big favourite and an important fx milestone.

Spider

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic

Awesome David Cronenberg film from a few years back, one that seemed to slip under most peoples radar. Most people think it's going to be a creature feature or some kind of horror film but it couldn't be further from that.

Ralph Fiennes hardly says a word throughout except some barley comprehensible mumbling and it's one of the most compelling performances I've seen. All the women in his life keep turing into Miranda Richardson. Not a bad problem to have, but the confusion can lead to some devastating consequences.

This film, better than any other takes you right into the mind of a very sick person, not evil mind you, just someone with a very distorted view of reality. It's a very slow burn, we follow him as he returns back to the town where he grew up and reawakens the memories of his childhood.

It takes quite a while to get into but once you start figuring out how the memories and reality shifts you can start to piece together the events it's riveting and heartbreaking.

This is a great film by a great director and he shoots it brilliantly. It's a smaller film and not as fantastic or loud as some of his others but a definite must for fan's who have missed this along the way.

Brighton Rock

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Walked in clean to this one, I had seen the trailer a while back but forgotten most of what was in it. A dark gangster caper set in 60's era Brighton.

I really liked this. The main characters are all quite shady and ambiguous. Well, maybe not now that I think about it but certainly the romance is intriguingly dry. That's a strange way of describing it, but they keep things objective until the end.

And it's the end that makes the movie. The middle of the film was fine, everything is kept pretty tense as the lies and paranoia start to spiral out of control but I was wondering where it could lead. The protagonist is such a bad guy, if he gets away with his crimes it would be unsatisfying but if he dies it would be disappointing.

There's a little bit of a deux ex machina but it's set up to be as such, there's a lot of talk of religion throughout and it plays into that. And it's such a cool ending that makes the journey very satisfying indeed.

It's a very cool cast. Sam Riley is the lead and I haven't seen him before except for a small part in Franklyn. He is neat. So is the cinematography. And the hundreds of period motorbikes. Cool film.

Hell Comes to Frogtown

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Steve, Dominic

Baaaahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha

The Black Hole

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Steve, A.J.

Wow, that's the worst trailer ever.

Fun Disney Space adventure! Right? Umm, not quite. Although it starts out pretty much along those lines. A crew of great classically trained actors and a philosophy spouting floating robot sidekick come across a massive craft poised on the edge of a black hole and investigate. They find is filled with robots and one power mad scientist.

John Barry provides a cool theme tune, but it gets repetitive very quick. There's some cutesy stuff with the robots their lazer firing competition being the most annoyingly superfluous. The good robot, Vincent, is voiced by Roddy McDowall who, even though he is uncredited, I instantly recognised having just watched through all the extras on the Planet of the Apes bluray set which he narrates. What's really bizarre is the Robot has E.S.P. and can telepathically communicate with one of the crew members. That is some trippy stuff right there. But that's just the beginning.

So you have your whole film slowly plodding along, you get some expected sci-fi stuff, the scientist wants to fly through the black hole and his robot minions were once the human crew members, he's clearly crazy. They try to escape and have to fight the robots. The action is a little clunky but fine for what they were working with. All the miniature work on the space craft is awesome.

But then they get pulled into the black hole and things go from disney kids film to far out 2001 Space Odyssey biblical epic mind trip for a few brief minutes and then credits. It's a huge shift and such a crazy end to what happens before it, completely esoteric and a very strange place to go in supposedly family friendly disney film.

It must be seen to be believed. I hear Joseph Kosinski was planning this as his next Disney Remake after Tron last year. I wonder if they will keep the ending...

The War of the Worlds

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Steve, A.J.

When I first saw this as the age of 3, it gave me nightmares for years after. It also started my fascination with science fiction. I read up on everything War of the Worlds, other H.G. Wells novels, which lead to Jules Verne and other sci-fi adventure stuff. Good times.

What got me, I think, is the idea of being completely powerless against a superior malevolent intelligence. That and the noises those periscope things made. They still freak me out to this day. The Farmhouse scene with the probe and then the creature was always a pretty tense moment too.

The Old School effects are fun to watch now, on my new dvd you can see all the strings that were't visible on VHS. Some cool miniature stuff and an iconic ship design that I was surprised to find pop up elsewhere earlier this year.

You can see Speilberg's love for this film. Not only did he remake it, but there are a lot of references to it in his other film, mainly the alien design of E.T. which is pretty much just these aliens but with more of a face. I actually really love his version of the film to, I should give that a watch again.

This version is really heavy on the religious angle but even so, it's one of my all time favourite sci-fi classics.

Phantom of the Paradise

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Dominic, Steve, A.J.

This one has cult written all over it. Brian De Palma's gothic rock horror extravaganza, beats out the Rocky Horror film by a year although it's nowhere near as popular or well know. It's basically a rock Phantom of the opera with a dash of the ol' Faust and maybe Dorian Grey in there too.

I had only seen this once before and it was just as eclectic, strange and wonderful this time. Brian De Palma has some of his usual long takes and some split screen usage, and the production design of "The Paradise" is pretty cool, the Phantom costume, especially the head piece is nice and freaky as well as being very theatrical, like most everything else in the film.

Apparently Jessica Harper was cast in Suspiria based on this film, they are similar kinds of characters I guess but that was the film I mainly new her from so it was nice to see her up there singing and dancing around. I'm not really much of a fan of the kind of music in the film, it's a little folksy for my taste but the voice distortion on the Phantom after his disfigurement is awesome. It sounds a lot like the Darleks from Dr. Who. which means instantly terrifying to me.

This is a film that just kind of happens in front of you and you either go with it or you don't. I like it for the most part. Especially Gerrit Graham as Beef.