I Just Watched (Films)

[Animalmother]

Probably only in the US

[Achtung Englander]

Blue Story

Pretty good but not as compelling as Top Boy TV show. The story did the opposite of what I expected.

6/10

Death Wish (1974)

Right now I am reading Movies of the 70s by Jürgen Müller and this was one of the recommendations for 1974. Knowing it was a Michael Winner film, I watched it trepedation but you know what, its actually good. The acting is a bit ropey and the storyline is a bit hmmm, but I was never bored. Then again the 70s is my favourite decade for film, so I am pretty forgiving.

7/10

[Animalmother]

The Death Wish films are interesting alright, they do get progressively worse as they go on. The director has an unfortunate rape fixation which is very uncomfortable to watch these days. Death Wish 5: Crackdown is hilarious though and worth a watch.


Reminds me of the Robocop drug bust

[Wrathbone]

Death Wish 3 is one of the greatest bad action films ever made. I’ll never forget Ruthless Reviews’ tagline for it: “Paul Kelsey returns to New York; thousands are butchered.”

Anyway, went to see Top Gun: Maverick this afternoon. I’d say it’s (probably) exactly what you think it’s going to be, with all the callbacks and repetition you’d expect from a modern sequel to a classic film. It’s fine, it’s fun, and if you go in expecting nothing more than that then it’s worth seeing at the cinema.

Truth be told, it really made me want to see the original Top Gun at the cinema more than anything else. There’s something about the roar of the engines rumbling through your seat that you just don’t get at home.

[Raid]

You just need a massive subwoofer. I occasionally have to turn my volume down because I can feel the vibration in my backside, and I don't want to annoy my neighbour.

[Raid]

Le Mans' 66

I don't know an awful lot about Le Mans or this period in motorsport history, but that didn't really detract from a film celebrating both. I echo Wrath's review from a few months back in that it's probably Christian Bale's most entertaining performance. The racing footage, effects and all, is pretty stunning, and I adored the soundtrack. It doesn't lean too much into the Americanism of it all, which was always going to be a concern given the subject matter. The scene with Henry Ford II in tears after being driven in his race car just had me grinning from ear to ear.

It's a fantastic film that I imagine will appeal to non-motorsport fans.

[Wrathbone]

It’s a cracking film - more than any other other it’s one that I want to give a second watch.

[Sly Boots]

Studio 666

The Foo Fighters try to record an album in a haunted house. It's pretty fun, and gory, with a B-movie quality where no-one is really taking it all that seriously. Grohl is a natural and the obvious highlight on show, and the banter between the band is often highly amusing. The acting from the rest of the band is of variable quality, but is mostly fine. Worth a watch if you're in the mood for something a bit schlocky.

[Raid]

Alien: Resurrection

There's no denying that this is a bad film, but it really feels like that's intentional. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it feels like when the producers were given a choice, they deliberately picked the one that would make the film worse. It's full of terrible body horror, the set design looks fantastically expensive but the model work looks like it's from a VHS copy of one of those dreadful 80s sci-fi films that bought all of their special effects from another film, and the characters yell 80% of their dialogue to ensure they can be heard over the music and environmental sound.

It's an awful finale to the Alien Quadrilogy, but I had a sort of nervous grin on my face throughout the entire second half just waiting for the next bad choice to appear, and marvelling at the amount of effort that seemed to be put into it. It's really consistent, arguably well-directed and produced if you assume this is the effect they were going for. Even the much-maligned Newborn, the fantastically ugly new alien creature, has a similarly unsettling effect that the original xenomorph design did, it's just for all the wrong reasons.

It's one of those films that's thoroughly enjoyable if you go into it expecting it to be terrible, and maybe have some booze to hand.

[Alan]

It’s a total Doom 3 monster. Amazingly for how bad it is, it’s still better than Prometheus and Covenant!

[Solitaire]

Alien: Resurrection could have been redemptive, after Alien 3. It fell completely flat, for your reasons and many more. Things I can say that I liked about it: The fact that they call the onboard AI "Father" - remembering that in Alien it was "Mother." I thought that was a nice touch, especially with the cathedral-like spaces in some areas of the ship.

Hmm. That's about it. That's the only thing I liked about it. The human/alien hybrid was such a horribly bad idea, ugh. I'll never forgive them for that awfulness.

[Animalmother]

Ron Perlman was probably the best thing about it and the under water bit.

[Raid]

I was actually a bit disappointed with Perlman; I remembered him being good in it too, but he's nowhere near as Perlman-y as he is in later films. I did find it funny that one of the generic marine types was the guy that played Tuco Salamanca, and has some of the same energy (just without the menace). It adds something to what would otherwise be an utterly forgettable character.

I think the Newborn is the perfect example of why this film just doesn't feel like an Alien film. In Alien, we see the entire Xenomorph lifecycle (with the exception of the egg laying), and it's horrifying because there is something just deeply unsettling about the imagery of what happens to the host. Some see it as a rape analogy; the facehugger strangles you and shoves something down your throat, and then something grows inside you. There's something primal about it. What Alien: Resurrection sees is just the bit after that, the gory chestbursty bit, and the Newborn is designed around that. It's just a mound of flesh with a recognisably human skull. It's surface-level imagery; gross but without understanding the psychology of it all.

I really wish I could watch Alien for the first time again, preferably back in 1979. I did watch the film when I was fairly young, but that would have probably been in the mid to late nineties, after it had been absorbed by pop-culture, and I'd doubtless seen at least one parody before the real thing. I would have loved to have been as surprised as most of the cast were (most of them famously didn't know what was going to happen when they shot the chestburster scene, those reactions are real).

[ManBearSquid]

The only good bit of that movie is Sigourney's legitimately amazing basketball shot. I hated that movie.

On the other hand, I really like Alien 3 (the extended one). It's not without its issues - some woeful early CGI that should've been left out - and you can tell it wasn't a smooth creation process, but I just really like what they went for overall. It's very bleak and I thought it rounded of Ripley's story in a poignant way.

Cue Resurrection...Urgh.

[Raid]

Yeah, Alien 3 is a good film, it's just not as good as the original. The CGI for the Xenomorph is dreadful, yes, but then I don't think they'd have been able to realistically show it running on all fours without it. Granted, if they'd just made it another biped, maybe the creators of Resurrection wouldn't have used the DNA transference gimmick, as the quadrupedal xeno that had used a dog as a host is probably where that idea originated.