The Recommended Movies Thread

[sandman67]

two out of the bag, one new, one older

BIG ASS SPIDER

Scifi Channel stylee B movie comedy thriller about, you guessed it, a house sized mutant spider which escapes from a secret government base and goes on a rampage in LA. Who can save the day? Well.....a waster local bug exterminator and his comedy sidekick Jose the security guard from the hospital the outbreak starts in.

Chuckles rather than belly laughs as it riffs on every scifi B movie cliche in the book, and with a nice little sting in the tail mid end credits. Bubblegum for the eyeballs and brain, but worth a watch when theres nowt else on.

Definitely a watcher, but not a keeper. Gets two cheers for the laughs and smiles. Out and about in DVDRIPs all over the shop.



and

HENRY OF NAVARRE

I love bodice busting historical dramas, and one of my all time faves is the classic French flick LA REINE MARGOT which tells the Dumas penned version of the horrors of the Wars of Religion in France in the late 1500s between the Catholic north and Huguenot realm of Navarre to the south. The wicked scheming dowager Catherine De Medici tried to patch things up by marrying her daughter Marguerite De Valios to Henry king of Navarre, but the wedding went down badly with the Parisian mob, so the horrific riots now known as the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre resulted, 30,000 Huguenots were massacred in the streets, and war broke out again.

LRM tells the tale from the perspective of Marguerite, and does so in a wonderfully lush and tapestry like manner. Its definitely a hot recc and available in torrent form pretty easily.

This film is more a biopic of Henry and his rise to power, his fights and struggles, his eventual success and coronation as king of France, then tragic downfall at the hands of Catholic plotters.

Even though its a made for TV (German/French TV actually) drama, the two parts have been edited into a epic flick. So while the battles are less "cast of thousands" than a full film, they are still done well and the whole thing trots along nicely. Its also more historically accurate than LRM and more a straight biopic history drama.

Well worth a watch, and available on the Toob with proper English subs and in its original French soundtrack at Also out and about in torrents etc in DVDRIP formats.

A solid three cheers keeper all the way.

[Homer]

Trance

Wow.

The inside man in a auction house heist does not follow the plan. He gets severely bonked on the head, but still manages to hide the stolen piece. After coming out of the coma he has no memory of where he hid it. His partners in crime are not amused. They turn to a hypnotherapist.

Critics summarized it better than I could. Some bits from Rotten Tomatoes http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/trance_2013/

- an arty spin on a trashy B-movie, engineered to showcase the director's particular gifts.

- Multi-layered and beautifully-filmed by Oscar winner Danny Boyle, this drama lets viewers into the world of art and hypnosis in a tale that should be talked about long after the credits roll.

- Like any good thriller worth its weight in red herrings, Trance keeps the audience guessing for the vast majority of its running time.

- Dawson walks through this film with majestic confidence while McAvoy is constantly inches from a full breakdown. And Boyle keeps that tension mesmerizing

- A complex, breakneck and stirring modern thriller, superb in both execution and conceptual ideas even if it is a little over-indulgent

About that last quote. I've seen all of director Danny Boyle's work since Trainspotting in 1996, not counting his TV stuff. If Danny wants to indulge, my reaction is 'more, please'.

[Homer]

Bad Milo

Bad movie. Thought it might be so bad it's good but no such luck.

A comedy / horror movie that fails on both counts. Where it shines is in the concept. Duncan, the lead character has more and worse stress heaped on him. His health deteriorates, giving him some spectacular bowel problems. One of which is a resident monster, he names Milo. Milo periodically exits Duncan via the obvious route to kill someone who is stressing Duncan. After each kill he returns, uh, home.

This film was made by people with backgrounds in sketch comedy. Bad Milo might have worked as a 15 minute short. Or maybe they should have stopped after making the trailer.

[Big Boy]

Thanks for the warning

[sandman67]

GI JOE 2

Now dont get me wrong, I love a meathead action flick as much as the next guy. I even had a passing like of the first outing of the merchandising driven GI JOE franchise. But you know, when your 14 year old gamer geek nephew who is a massive Rock fan warns you that the film is bad bad bad, y should really listen.

How many ways does this film suck....let me count them...nah.....we will be here all night.

Its like gun geek porn sanitised with a saccharine moms apple pie spinwash, given a synthetic steroid and testosterone shot, and dumbed right down to the level of a frickin ADD kids Pokemon cartoon. Not so much a film with a coherent plot as a mashed up bag of barely connected scenes holding a lipstick smeared GI Joe doll in one hand, grinning like John Wayne Gacy on meth, and suggesting firmly you bend over while he does things with the doll no doll should be put through. If you thought the Transformers films were bad, you aint seen nothing yet. Squeeeeeel little piggy.

If there are consolations from this here they are: I can free up a gig on the hard drive, I wont ever watch another GI Joe film, and hopefully after this total crock they wont make any more.

Three thbbbbbbbts coz HHAD doesn't have a emoticon that accurately describes needing a long mental shower with a block of carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush.



Me.... I made the nightmare go away by watching two of my favorite comedians - Terry Thomas and Peter Sellers - in the classic "Ealing" comedy CARLTON-BROWNE OF THE F.O. at http://viooz.co/movies/20444-carlton-br ... -1959.html.

[richard]

Watched a very entertain movie last night. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Well acted, interesting and gripping plot and a wonderful piss take of civil servants, politicians and the press.

Very relaxing. Just the sort of movie for a quiet night in with a glass (or three) of red wine before bedtime

Enjoy

[hhfarang]

^Saw that one a month ago. I enjoyed it too, and I am primarily an "action movie" fan.

[Homer]

Watched a very entertain movie last night. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

+1

[sandman67]

Ok....big bag roundup

RED 2

Our gang of silver snoopers are back in the doo doo when the US intell community decides to clean house and sweep up the dusty cobwebs of an operation from wayback that went south badly. Thing is two of the operatives were Frank and Marvin, so when the paranoid Marvin tries to warn Frank he doesnt listen till cars start exploding and old faces start to come out of hiding. By that time its a one way ticket to crazy chase land with half the worlds top assassins on their tales.

Its a good fun romp like the first one with extra added booms and biffs, dry laughs and exciting CGI enhanced chases. Well worth a drop and watch IMHO, and out and about in lovely crispy DVDRIP formats.



WELCOME TO THE PUNCH

A job obsessed cop with a particular axe to grind and bone on for a high stakes blag gang gets it badly wrong during an operation and ends up shot in the leg by the gang leader. 3 years later he gets his chance for revenge when the same gang boss has to come out of hiding to track down the men who killed his adoptive son. However, as the chase continues the cop and the robber find themselves fast fighting on the same side.....

Great performances from Mark Strong and James McAvoy keep this high adrenaline crime caper revenge flick trotting along nicely from the Oceans stylee big opening blag to the last man standing finale set in the London container yard of the title. Top crime caper stuff and a solid recc for a tasty night in. Out and about in crispy DVDRIPs everywhere.



THE ICEMAN

Scary as hell Michael Shannon brings all that glaring cold eyed intensity to the real life biopic of The Iceman Richard Kuklinski, mob hitter par excellence and supposedly responsible for around 100 cases of fish bait. How close it is to actual events I dont know, but this is a great little mob flick no matter how accurate it is. Richard goes from being second man in a second rate porno outfit in the 70s to a rising star as a mob "franchise" hit man, always dispatching his man to the letter of the instruction in a cold and calculating way. When things go wrong he has to branch out into moonlighting on jobs, and there begins his fall....

Top drawer stuff, grim and gritty with a stellar performance from Shannon. Out and about in DVDRIPS all over the shop.



A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING

Simon Pegg plays a children's author who for variety has branched out into writing a series on Victorian murderers for TV. Unfortunately this and the deadline pressure sort of sends him over the edge, and his increasing obsession with the real life criminals starts to send him bug nutty crazy, bringing out all his childhood fears and phobias. As he struggles to complete his masterwork it soon becomes a struggle just to survive modern society.

Trippy and more than a bit surreal, there are some real laugh out loud moments along the descent into total madness caught on camera. Well worth a watch IMHO - sort of Monty Python meets Cuckoos Nest.
Out and about in DVDRIP at the usual suspects.



RIDDICK

Back to original form for the third outing in the Riddick cycle, so back to being set on a hostile world where just about everything is out to kill and eat you - wheras in the first flick it was the dark that brought the bad stuff out, here its the rain. Riddick is marooned there by Necromongers seeking to get rid of him and his unwanted leadership of their cult. After learning to survive and thrive, Riddick find an abandoned station and calls in two teams of bounty hunting mercs knowing damn well he will take at least one of the ships to escape......thing is the rains are coming as well.....so its merc vs merc vs Riddick vs the monsters in a mass last man standing mashdown.

Its better than part 2 but still not as edgy as part 1, despite taking both films and mashing up the influences and story lines. The first third is also a bit of a weird one man and his dog flick that seems at odds with the other two post bounty hunter arrival sections......but hey its a Riddick flick so its right up my boulevard of dreams, and well worth every second IMHO. Out in DVDRIP in all the usual old places.



Finally a word on the new WOLVERINE flick. The copies on line come from a Chinese webDL source so the quality is pretty bad and the film heavily edited SE Asian stylee, and it has annoying hard subs. Wait for a better copy. That said, what I did watch was not exactly inspiring me to come back.....

So there we go my old chinas. More on the way....

chippy doo!

[sandman67]

BYZANTIUM

I hope the makers of the godawful Tweelite franchise sit down and watch this little gothic chiller from the UK and Eire and think......ahhhh nuts! Why didnt ours turn out like that?

Shall I tell you? Because you based your triple tripefest on the sad panty wetter world of teen edgy love angst horror meets 90210, whereas this bases itself on proper gothic chiller foundations like THE HUNGER. Thats why.

This is a tasty little chiller straight from the neo-gothic fridge. Two women drift into a dilapidated seaside town living life apparently from the prostitution money earned by the elder. When a decent john with a guesthouse left him by his deceased mother meets them the two move in and start to settle. But unfortunately they share a secret - they are both vampires over 200 years old, returning to the town they were born in. The younger girl starts attending college where her writing skills bring her into close contact with a young boy dying of cancer. And in the background, following the trail of corpses, follow two very strange and sinister policemen.....

Great story telling and blends comedy, tragedy and drama with a little frisson of blood and effective use of flashbacks via narration. I really liked it, getting slowly hooked in by the way the tale develops. Great little flick out and about in dvdrips at all the usual suspects. A solid three cheers.

[Homer]

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

A spare British thriller about a kidnapping for ransom gone wrong. Three actors is the entire cast: Gemma Arterton, Martin Compston and Eddie Marsan. Their relationships start out clearly defined then things get messy. Riveting in the almost dialog free first act, thrilling in the third act, the middle is where things begin not to go as planned and people not to be as they first seemed.

Critics like it more than audiences. Seems the audiences expected a film described by one critic: Like all top-notch best thrillers, The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a suspense-filled caper flick with enough twists and turns to leave the audience gasping and guessing until its final moments, but got a bigger dose of what another critic described as And unlike many filmmakers who make movies to take pictures, Blakeson is interested in his players. His three principals deliver convincingly messy, ambiguous performances.

I was surprised upon learning that Gemma is an established actor with major screen credits. The role she played is the sort often done by an unknown because established actors reject it out of the fear how it would reflect on them as a person and their image as an actor. Bravo, Gemma.

Recommended.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/disappe ... ice_creed/

[Homer]

Ender's Game

In theaters now. No review, as I've read and reread too many of the Ender stories to be objective. Instead, a few words about the author and his critics.

Orson Scott Card is the only author to win the two highest science fiction writing awards in back to back years. They were for Ender's Game and it's sequel. The man can write. He's also the great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, one of the early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, AKA the Mormons. Any number of literary, social and film critics can't get past their intolerance for his religious beliefs. Some have called for a boycott of his written work, some say they've stopped reading his work. A few have justified their decision to either review or not review his movie. It's not a stretch to imagine someone would, because of his personal beliefs, intentionally write a bad review.

[sandman67]

THE WOLVERINE

Not so much as a follow on to the first "origins" backstory outing for the beclawed bad tempered Logan, more a follow on to the third and apocalyptic X-Men flick.

After the climactic battle that devastated San Francisco and saw the end of the X-Men Logan has returned to his nomadic existence living on the margins of society. There he is found by a Japanese mutant who has come to deliver the dying request of her sensei master - a Japanese soldier Logan saved from the hell of Nagasaki. Logan finds his old friend is now a mega powerful industrialist whose exposure back on 45 has resulted in crippling cancer. He has an offer that the world weary Logan finds interesting - he can transfer Logans mutant abilities of healing and regeneration, thus giving Logan the one thing he seeks - a true death. However, in the background is a dynastic struggle to take over the company, and when the industrialists grand daughter is kidnapped, Logan is fast drawn into a complicated web of intrigue and conspiracies.

Its full of high end CGI and high octane chase and biff ups and amuses for the two hour running time, but the end third is a little underwhelming and fails to build on the foundations laid in the first two reels. It just feels a little effort free - sort of a superhero flick by numbers, full of old stale cliches and fizzle pops instead of bangs. Not bad, just not outstanding.

Out and about in DVDRIPs at all the usual suspects. Two cheers.

PS: the inevitable "Easter egg" extra scene is mid credits now - at the end of the fancy animated end credits and before the standard black and white end credits. It sets up a sequel and reboot for the X-Men franchise so try and make sure to see it if you are a fan.

Me.... I find these scenes really frickin annoying, and this latest ploy to stop people just flicking right to the end of the credits is even worse.

[richard]

I was given a pile (450 in total) of movies downloaded by a friend and have been weeding through separating the wheat from the chaff. 40% were US teen crap or how the USA won the war. The remainder contained some very good movies I'd never heard of but one I was impressed with was Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

[sandman67]

PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS

As I said with the first installment of this new wunderkid discovers he is magic franchise the hardest thing to ignore when reviewing them is the whopping great big grey big nosed pachyderm in the middle of the room sitting next to a large pile of steaming fresh poo...... its god damn Harry Potter with a fresh coat of paint! And that is a damn shame, because these are goo fun romps full of biffs, bangs, dastardly villains, CGI terrors, and a passing whiff of teen angsty love..... BUT ITS STILL A DAMN HARRY POTTER RIP OFF! Aaaaarrrrrrgh!

Anyways, our second visit to Hogwarts, sorry Camp Olympus For Demigods and other illegitimate sprogs of Greek deities, sees young Percy with a new half-brother who turns out to be a Cyclops, and a new quest to face - this time finding the Golden Fleece deep in the Bermuda Triangle/Sea Of Monsters to rescue the guardian tree from early death after Mercury Jnr, the bad lad from the last flick, poisons it. So Percy and his chums set off on anther point to point romp facing down Mercury Jnr and his pack of thug mates, and a pile of other vaguely Greek ish monsters and villains.

Potterisms aside its a good fun romp with some wry humor thrown in amongst the CGI spectacular and well worth a watch. Not as much fun as the first IMHO, nor a keeper IMHO but well worth it especially for kids old and young.....out and about in DVDRIP formats at the usual suspects. Two cheers for effort.