Rate The Last Movie(s) You Watched

[Darth Marsden]

Casino Royale (1967) - 6/10

God I'd forgotten how completely insane this film was. You can tell it had 5 different directors.

[Noname215]

Silver Linings Playbook 4/10

I can’t watch this movie without falling asleep. It’s kinda lame.

Snitch 7/10

Good action, but poor acting from Dwayne Johnson. Worth it just for Jon Bernthal and Barry Pepper.

The Last Exorcism Part II 3/10

Creepy, yet repetative.

Jack and the Giant Slayer 6/10

Good movie, yet I’m beginning to hate CGI.

Les Miserables 10/10

Good show, bloody good show!

21 And Over 8/10

I didn’t know what the hell was going on in this movie.

[VeronicanPlay]

A Good Day to Die Hard - 9/10

Containing as much action as you would expect a Die Hard movie to have.

[looby]

Paranormal Activity - 8/10
Paranormal Activity 2 - 9/10
Paranormal Activity 3 - 8.5/10
Paranormal Activity 4 - 5/10

I watched them all too close together (the second one on Sunday and the other 3 last night) and I'm now a paranoid wreck. Every creak and shadow is scaring the shit out of me.

I did like them a lot though and enjoyed that I can still be really scared by films.

[Chyron8472]

I like the director's cut of PA1 better than the theatrical or alternate-ending versions.

I'm referring to the version with the cops at the end. You can't buy it on DVD, unfortunately. I bought the DVD and then got the director's cut via torrent.

[Darth Marsden]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Stupid Name - 6/10

The RiffTrax made it much more watchable, but I could say the same of anything, TBH. It's still not very good. There's moments where you see that it COULD work, but it's just so unfocused and unfunny it's hard to care.

[Chyron8472]

I find that I really only enjoy Rifftrax that have Doug Walker in them.

I'm not a NC fanboy. I just got quickly annoyed at others where he was not present.

[Johro]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

I find that I really only enjoy Rifftrax that have Doug Walker in them.

I'm not a NC fanboy. I just got quickly annoyed at others where he was not present.

I liked Jurassic Park with Weird Al.

[StrongBrush1]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

I find that I really only enjoy Rifftrax that have Doug Walker in them.

I'm not a NC fanboy. I just got quickly annoyed at others where he was not present.

Which Limits you to The Lion King and Batman Forever.

I feel bad for you.

[VeronicanPlay]

Parker - 7/10

Great movie, again Jason performs superbly.

[Noname215]

Oz The Great and Powerful 7/10

Entertaining, yet corny as hell. Also, It feels too much like a different version of Army of Darkness, only without the zombies and Necronomicon.

[Secret Fawful]

Originally Posted by Noname215

Oz The Great and Powerful 7/10

Entertaining, yet corny as hell. Also, It feels too much like a different version of Army of Darkness, only without the zombies and Necronomicon.

Gee, could that have anything to do with the fact that they HAVE THE SAME DIRECTOR?

[Noname215]

Originally Posted by Secret Fawful

Gee, could that have anything to do with the fact that they HAVE THE SAME DIRECTOR?

I knew that. The story is just too damn similar. Even Raimi probably figured that out.

[DAISHI]

Don't Watch This Movie: Evil Dead Remake

I would like to quote you some big name sites trying to get you to throw away your cash next week when the Evil Dead remake comes out.

Bloody Disgusting gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
Horror Talk said it was "the most unrelenting and bloody horror film to come out of a major studio in a very long time".
IGN gave it 9 out of 10 stars and said it was "terrifying, exhilarating and relentlessly entertaining new chapter in the Evil Dead story".

So apparently nobody has seen the SAW franchise recently.
First of all, in the last decade, SAW and a few other films and franchises have defined how to make people uncomfortable in their seats. This movie, this iteration of Evil Dead, does nothing new in that regard. Gruesome dismemberment, loss of fingers, scarring of faces, we've seen it all before. Which is fine, as Solomon said 4,00 years ago, there's nothing new under the sun (Quote: The Bible).

It's how you do something that matters, and whatever Evil Dead that was fresh almost forty years ago is now business as usual in the horror business. Not only are the gruesome scenes never anything new, especially considering the course of the horror genre over the last few years, but it fails to be truly scary. Now, if you're a gore fiend, I'm sure you'll find plenty to enjoy about the film. There's undoubtedly plenty there for people who like seeing human beings ripped to shreds.

I have a term, a "torture box". It's a movie scene explicitly set up in which a horror movie can do unspeakable things to an individual in order to invoke the maximum pain upon the individual in the scene, in order to produce the maximum discomfort among those in the audience. SAW almost defined this, since people were literally set in rooms where these events would occur. Many horror movies do this, and Evil Dead makes it explicit, by actually locking the doors of the protagonists when they step inside a room. They enter the torture box, gruesome pain is inflicted, audience is grossed out.

Fairly predictable set up. So, how do you distance your film from its peers? How do you make a predictable setup intriguing, or at least worth investing in? For one, good writing would be a start. Evil Dead falls apart at every corner. Some will say it's just trying to follow in the cheesy source film it's based on, but there's a reason that doesn't work, and I'll get to that. Just follow me on this point for a second. The writing is just bad. Characters recite rhymes or poems invoking the coming mayhem and death. It's foreshadowing, but foreshadowing should have some subtlety. In Evil Dead, there is none. It's just laid out, as if to say hey, we're all going to die.

The writing extends to the characters. I'm not sure what era this movie is supposed to be taking place in, but the high school teacher is written and portrayed almost as a hippy. Having once been a high school teacher, I know none that act like this one does. Not that they don't exist, but the writers went for the cheesiest portrayal of a nerdish teacher they could have. Worse than the characterization, the characters all die from stupidty. As people are being scalded alive, carving their faces off, driving needles into one another and carving off their arms, the main protagonist argues this may all be a virus.

Nobody in real life would act like these people do in circumstances like this.

So look, you've got a good setup for continual terror boxes. A cabin in the woods, secluded from the world, partially by an unexplainable flood, but whatever. You can induce your terror boxes in each individual at this point. However, from the outset, the audience knows the protagonist is too stupid to make smart choices. The audience knows every is going to die because of his stupidity. There's no suspense, no surprise, only the gruesome moment when the terror box is activated and somebody is mangled.

Speaking of that high school teacher, it's sad that he's the closest to a real character that we ever actually get in the film. While everyone else is busy being one dimensional, people acted upon rather than acting, the high school teacher actually has diverse sets of loyalties. First he has loyalty to his friend, the girl possessed in the film. He has ongoing tension with the protagonist, who he resents for leaving their circle years before. In the end, his love for said protagonist drives him to do things that aren't in his best interest, despite the repeated stupidity of the protagonist that constantly endangers their lives. Yet in the end, the writers are content to leave these threads dangling, or at best only touch upon them for the briefest instance. That's understandable considering the screenwriters for this film are terrible with dialogue and anything remotely approaching subtlety.

So before I really get into why this film doesn't work as an over-the-top descendent of its predecessor, let's recap. Stupid writing, leading to unnecessary death. Cliched characterization. Obvious setups with no sense of surprise or real tension. That there is no suspense building, sense of surprise or tension owes entirely to the lack of setup. The writers never bother challenging your expectations of what's about to happen, or allowing a scene to unfold in a way that's scary and genuinely disturbing. Just throw as much piss, blood and vomit onto the screen as possible and hope to gross people out.

Okay, so why doesn't it just work out as an over-the-top horror film? Because there's nobody you can like in the movie. The final survivor? Barely a player until the end. The majority of the cast? One note stereotypes that are acted upon by outside forces and that never act. While the whole film is busy going over the top, you never have one guy that really does the same and pulls it altogether. This is where the movie could have used a Bruce Campbell, because they fail to find anyone to remotely root for or enjoy. Without someone to pull the film together, to cheer on, it's just a subpar retreading of the source material, except without any of the shock factor given what we've seen in the last decade, and without any real attempt to build tension or suspense. It's sad, really.

Evil Dead is a film trapped in the past, trying to be over-the-top when we've already seen all this before. Even the "rape tree" has been imitated, except by barbed-wire things, in the original Silent Hill film. It gives us an uninteresting cast with nobody to root for, a series of expected murders, and little else. It's gruesome, not scary, so take that as you will. If you enjoy true fear, this isn't your film. If you like gore, you might enjoy it. Just know this genre of horror has been beaten to death over the last few years and Evil Dead does nothing new in that regard.

Rating: Don't Watch It!

@JL_TheProfessor
callatimeout.blogspot.com

[Noname215]

Originally Posted by DAISHI

Rating: Don't Watch It!

@JL_TheProfessor
callatimeout.blogspot.com

I can understand that. But nothing is wrong with a shit load of blood in a horror movie. What ruins horror movies for me isn’t blood, but relentless tits and bad acting. This movie looks like it’ll be scary as hell.

[Chyron8472]

STAR WARS - "Despecialized Edition, Remastered v2.1" - 11/10

Better than perfect. Harmy reconstructed and remastered (in HD!) the original 1977 theatrical version of Star Wars (known later as "A New Hope")

It's Star Wars. Without the SE crap. At 720p (AVCHD).

Win.

it's on the spleen if anyone goes looking for it.

[DAISHI]

Originally Posted by Noname215

I can understand that. But nothing is wrong with a shit load of blood in a horror movie. What ruins horror movies for me isn’t blood, but relentless tits and bad acting. This movie looks like it’ll be scary as hell.

It's not. It's predictable and boring,

[Noname215]

Evil Dead (2013) 7/10

Beat that.

[St_Eddie]

Originally Posted by Noname215

Evil Dead (2013) 7/10

Beat that.

I can't wait for this now. Hopefully I'll be able to watch it before the DVD release without having to go to the cinema. *cough*

[StrongBrush1]

Evil Dead

No, no the remake. I'm talking about the original from 1981.

Me and horror movies have sort of an agreement. I don't watch them and they let me sleep peacefully. But with the recent news of Poker Night 2, I figured I might want to get some background info on our Remington-wielding hero.

The film starts off like a typical B-Movie. A group of five teenagers (consisting of the crazy girl who's going to die first, the everyman hero, his girlfriend, the jackass who will get what's coming to him and HIS girlfriend) goes out to vacation at an old cabin in the woods, which is surrounded by Demons attracted to a mysterious creepy book with a face on it. What could possibly go wrong? Short answer: 80% of the cast ends up dead.

As the film begins, it takes a while for the horror of everything to sink in. There are jump scares abound and the required-by-law fake-out that's specifically designed to piss you off, plus the usual horror movie pitfall of characters who are literally too dumb to live. If don't care if it's dark out and you're in the woods, that's no excuse for forgetting how to stand up every five steps you take.

The set-up is simple, but the pay-off, all in all, is pretty impressive. The way that shots are set up, it's not always obvious what's going to happen next, which already puts it ahead of the curve as far as horror movies go.

The characters, for the most part, are pretty well done, even though they tend to border on the obvious side of stereotypical. The only character who really gets to make a lasting impression, however, is the hero, Ashley Williams. He's set up as an everyman, but as the movie goes on he slowly becomes the kicker of deadite ass that we tend to think of him as. I think the reason Ash has become so popular is become people can identify him almost instantly as the badass demon-killer from Evil Dead. Seriously, try to think of another actor who could pass physically AND vocally pass himself off as Bruce Campbell.

The movie is low-budget, but it's a well-done variety of low-budget. Every single prop and model is put to good use, and not a single scene is wasted on padding. My only real problem with the special effects is that I think they went a little overboard in the bloody basement scene. It's like they had a half tank of fake blood left and Sam Raimi said "just pour it all over the floor."

By the time the movie is over, you're left shocked, grossed out, and seriously unable to sleep, all of which are good signs that the movie did its job of scaring the crap out of you.

Overall, the movie is a bloody riot and incredibly enjoyable to watch. Be warned though, this is not a movie for the casual audience.

Final Score: 8/10