Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

The Evil Dead
1981

Horror classic that gets under your nerves with it's revolting gore and intense sound design, this is a real crazy splatterfest. The score is a highlight, creating much tension with its Bartok like dissonances and atonality. The camera work, although primitive at times, is very creative and effective at instilling a sense of dread.

It must have been quite an experience seeing this film in a theater with an unsuspecting audience back in '81, I imagine there must have been a lot of walkouts from people getting sick or just simply out of pure terror.

It's a classic and well deserving of its respected place in horror circles, but not one I would rewatch very often as it is not actually an enjoyable experience, more an irritating one in fact. It is definitely creative though.
The sequel is better imo, emphasizing the comedy side of things more.

 

Vampire Circus 1971

Hammer very much into it's 70's phase here with plenty of nudity. This is one of those Hammers that doesn't feature any of it's big stars but it did generate quite a bit of iconic imagery, google it and you'll be familiar with the images even if you've not seen the film.
Something else unusual about this is kids getting killed / bitten on-screen. It doesn't look like they had much budget so they've gone all in on the exploitation elements.
Adrienne Corri and Dave Prowse feature, not sure if this was before or after Clockwork Orange .

 

THE BATMAN (2022)

This 2022 offering, which finds Batman early in his career and still figuring out what it means to “be Batman”, continues the trend of trying to make Batman “more realistic”, taking that further than the Nolan movies. A criminal calling himself the Riddler is murdering prominent, powerful Gothamites using elaborate, theatrical and showy set-ups, and leaving cyphers and clues as to his next targets and his motives.

I enjoyed this in theaters and again upon rewatch.As a Batman fan, one thing I loved were the scenes where Batman accompanies Gordon (not yet Commissioner) to crime scenes, something right out of many of the comic books that I don’t think we’ve seen in many (any?) of the movie versions before this. Batman still doesn’t do quite enough detective work for my taste but he does some and his smarts are definitely alluded to. The Riddler is great, creepy and disturbed and disturbing, the Penguin is fantastic (Colin Farrell, unrecognizable under truly amazing, convincing makeup!), and there is a very brief cameo from another of Batman’s rogue gallery that is very well handled. “The Catwoman” - never called that on screen - is pretty good, although they kinda/sorta want to give her altruistic motives and I found her mask a bit goofy (they wanted to suggest “Catwoman” without leaning into it all the way, which to me at least led to her wearing a mask that didn’t accomplish anything - it didn’t hide who she was, nor did it really suggest a cat). Pattinson, as Batman, does a good job, although at times, especially as Bruce Wayne, he is so laconic as to appear almost sleepy (and note - if Bruce Wayne continued to act this weird, he’d definitely be a suspect on the “Who is Batman” list). I liked him best with the mask on.

If you’re a Batman fan, or a superhero fan, definitely worth a look, and I think it’s a pretty solid movie in general.

 

It looks amazing as well.

 

Fools Rush In (1997)

Mediocre rom-com starring the late Matthew Perry (think this was his first mainstream film) and Salma Hayek. You've seen it all before. I was surprised by how restrained the comedic elements were, Perry was in several terrible slapstick comedies after this one (Whole Nine Yards and Ten Yards, Serving Sara, etc) but it's still pretty ho-hum, the two leads have zero chemistry

 

Batteries Not Included (dir. Matthew Robbins, 1987)

The setup: An old apartment building in NYC is being threatened to be cleared, against the wishes of the tenants, who (for some reason) want to continue living there. The tenants are an elderly couple who own a diner, a failed artist guy, and a pregnant Hispanic woman who's waiting for her boyfriend to come back to her. The property developer has hired a gang of small-time criminals to scare the tenants out. Meanwhile, the tenants get help from some small alien drone-like flying robots.

The special effects on the alien robots are pretty well-done, for their time, though by current standards the compositing is pretty wonky throughout. Produced by Spielberg, it was apparently a financial success, and I watched it because my partner wanted to watch it, and it was one of the few '80s sci-fi comedies I hadn't seen yet that I for some reason missed back then. Overall: meh. The comedy doesn't work, and the film's attempts to have "heart" fall flat. Perhaps some of you have fond memories of this from when you were kids; my suggestion is, just let it lie happily in your memory and don't bother revisiting this. Rating: 2 not-included batteries out of 5.

 

I hate to say this as he was funny on Friends, but if Matthew Perry is in a comedy film I usually avoid it.

 

The Way West. Putting Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark together in a Western is a good way to get my attention (though putting them in a noir would be even better). Unfortunately, the film doesn’t live up to its cast.

Douglas plays a former senator who, after losing his wife, is leading a wagon train to Oregon in hopes of building a utopia. Mitchum is the aging guide he hires. Widmark is a pioneer with wanderlust taking his family on the journey west. As the group faces an array of hardships on the journey (many ultimately traceable to a very young and extremely horny Sally Field), Douglas’s harsh leadership is called into question and he gets into a battle of wills with Widmark. Douglas drives the group hard, with a mania to press on, but his rules are ultimately based around trying to ensure the expedition’s success and protect the settlers from themselves.

It’s a good setup, but the film doesn’t execute it well enough. The tension between Douglas and Widmark is underdeveloped, and Mitchum isn’t given enough to do. Ultimately the film feels like a collection of incidents, wrapped together with the undercooked and uneven plotline about Douglas’s leadership. It lacks focus, so no matter how much incident they put in, it feels pokey and bloated. You could get a good movie out of this story, but this isn’t it.

 

Late Night With the Devil 2023
Great concept; a 70's late night TV show where disaster struck on Halloween is recreated as a found footage horror film. I liked it a lot. It plays out in real time with an absolute shocker of an ending. My only complaint is that the main actor, David Dastmalchian, character actor who usually plays creeps or villains, was not particularly likeable or charismatic in the lead role. You kind of have to be these things to be a late night TV host; at least a little bit. Still highly recommended for horror buffs. Think King of Comedy meets The Exorcist.

 

The Good Guys and the Bad Guys. Now there’s a title that could work for a vast array of films. The film it ended up with is a gently melancholy comedy Western about aging rivals teaming up to show they’ve still got it.

Robert Mitchum is the marshal of a former frontier town now entering the twentieth century. When he finds out his old nemesis, train robber George Kennedy, is back in the area, he tries to get up a posse, but sleazy mayor Martin Balsam, in the middle of a reelection campaign, would rather not alarm the town and sees the whole thing as an impossible fantasy, with Mitchum still living in the past. He fires Mitchum, who goes out and rounds up Kennedy anyway. But Kennedy, abandoned by the gang that likewise sees him as an old relic, bonds with Mitchum over their shared past and the weight of old age. When it comes time to save the town, Kennedy teams up with Mitchum to ride to the rescue.

Nobody at the time seems to have known what to do with the film’s mix of pathos — best seen in the lovely scene where Mitchum and Kennedy reminisce and come to respect each other as men — and comedy, which sneaks along more subtly, mostly concentrated around Balsam’s oily hypocrisy, before exploding in a madcap climax. It’s low-key and a bit slow to start, lacking the gusto of a usual Western or the overt parody of director Burt Kennedy’s Support Your Local Sheriff, which made it hard to read for an audience and critics expecting something more straightforward. But to me, it works. It’s charming, a funny, warm, human film with a tinge of nostalgic sadness. Mitchum and Kennedy are both great and work wonderfully together. It never ascends to the heights of anything special, but it’s a quality film.

 

Rebecca 1940 Rich socialite Maxim de Winter meets and marries a shy young woman in Monte Carlo. When they return to his mansion in Cornwall she finds that none of his staff or friends can shake the presence of Max's first wife, Rebecca, who died in a boating accident the year before. The head housekeeper Mrs Danvers has kept her room and possessions as they all were since she died and she is on a vendetta to drive the new Mrs de Winter mad, even trying to to force her to commit suicide. His new wife feels like she can't compete with the memory of Rebecca, but when a ship crashes on the nearby rocks, the recuse party inadvertently discover Rebecca's sunken boat...... and a body. This turns her whole world and relationship with Max upside down, he reveals to her the real details of his 'perfect' marriage to Rebecca, which now casts him as a murderer. Can Max convince his new wife and the world of his innocence.

I'd forgotten how good this is. Its a masterclass in acting from everyone and a masterclass in suspense from Hitchcock. Its so atmospheric and you never know whats around the corner for the new Mrs de Winter with the psychological games being played by the evil Mrs Danvers. As the film progresses it expertly makes you think that Rebecca could be alive or committed suicide or was murdered. Its genius how the last act plays out. Everyone who loves films has to see this classic.

 

I love the film and have rewatched it at least half a dozen times. I got the dvd free years ago and I keep thinking I should actually purchase a blu-ray version, but there doesn’t appear to be a UK blu-ray available!

 

Went to watch THE UNSUSPECTED and it doesn't appear to be currently available on streaming -- very frustrating! Will have to keep an eye out for it!

 

Can You See Us (2022)

Inspired by a true story, a boy is born in a rural Zambian village with albinism. His father immediately casts him and his mother out, and that launches a trajectory of trials and tribulations that the boy is faced with throughout his childhood. It's a deeply moving story; the only drawback for me was the dialogue that comes off very cheesy at times. But it can be forgiven since the film was developed in Zambia to begin with; it features the characters speaking a mixture fluent English as well as their native language.

 

It has a habit of popping up on TCM, if you have cable/satellite.

 

The Fall Guy I have no familiarity with the original show. Charming, pretty light movie starring ridiculously good-looking people about the unsung heroes of a film set with some appropriately entertaining action setpieces. I thought the story was a little thin and there were few moments between the lead couple that made me think they should be together-- they're apart for long sequences.

Monkey Man John Wick... in INDIA!!! Well, kind of. (They literally reference the inspiration in a line of dialog.) I think Dev Patel may be trying to say something about Indian politics, society, and religion.

I Saw the TV Glow Autistic boy bonds with a lesbian (also, maybe-less autistic?) girl over a cheesy 1990s TV show. It gets weird from there.

Spoiler

Obvious trans allegory, but there are other valid interpretations. I think a lot of cis people can relate to the mundanity, loneliness, and emptiness of its portrayal of "real life" and modern society generally.

Fred Durst and Phoebe Bridgers are among the cast, neither of which I was expecting and they didn't seem like the type of people who would be in the same movie. I thought it was very good-- it catered to my Millennial nostalgia, and that's the most important thing. It reminded me a bit of David Lynch, and whaddya know, Twin Peaks was cited by the director as an influence.

 

Plague of the Zombies 1966 Hammer made movie starring Andre Morrell as Professor Forbes, who is called in by his old doctor friend to help with an epidemic in a small village that’s killing young people. When he gets there with his daughter he finds his friends wife’s dead, a mystery that has dead people seen alive near a tin mine and bodies missing from graves. How does this link in with the local squire and his reluctance to allow post mortems and his attempts to keep outsiders from investigating? Can Forbes get to the bottom of the mystery and keep his daughter alive?

This reminded me a lot of the Hammer version of the Hound of the Baskervilles that came out a few years previous to this. Obviously Andre Morrell stars in it too, but it got the same look and colour palette to it, a similar score, a tin mine, sacrificial knives and altars and also the costumes and village all look similar too. It’s not too bad, it’s got a nice element of mystery to it. Clearly it looks dated now, but it’s got all the hallmarks of Hammer when they were a major producer of films in the U.K.

 

Prom Night 4
Yes they made 3 sequels to the decent Jamis Lee Curtis slasher film. This plays out about how you'd think. The killer is an ex-priest who is locked in the basement on a monastery and escapes to kill people. They don't even go to a prom; comon man one thing I demand in my Prom Night sequels is an actual prom.
Arlington Road 1999
After the Prom Night 4 disaster I needed to watch a quality film and this was it. Jeff Bridges is a college professor who teaches about terrorism (he doesn't seem to teach so much as rant about his opinions) and Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack are the neighbors next door. Robbins is secretly a terrorist. Hits a little close to the bone; especially as this was pre 9-11. Very tense thriller. It did make me wonder what in the heck happened to Tim Robbins, who was everywhere in the 90's.

 

A revival showing of "The Flying Deuces" at the Brook Arts Center in Bound Brook, NJ. This 1939 comedy isn't Laurel & Hardy's funniest movie, but it's one of the better ones. After a love affair goes sour, Ollie is ready to commit suicide, with Stan (against his will) along for the ride. But when a passerby suggests he join the Foreign Legion to forget, they decide to enlist. As you might expect, things don't go so well for them. This one has some good supporting work from Reginald Gardner, Charles "Ming the Merciless" Middleton, and the boys' frequent co-star James Finlayson. It also has a couple of their more memorable bits (like their soft shoe to "Shine On Harvest Moon"), and a great closing gag.

 

Laurel & Hardy are the best. I love Flying Deuces. Way Out West is my favorite feature of theirs.

 

When it comes to the features, my favorite is "Sons of the Desert".

 

Sons of the Desert is hilarious, I love that one too. They end up in a movie reel showing them at the convention they aren't supposed to be at and their wives see them on-screen! Too funny.

 

They used to show March of the Wooden Soldiers(Babes in Toyland) on TV in NY every Christmas morning.