The Recommended Movies Thread

[sandman67]

Well, as I said earlier in the thread a film Ive been waiting for for a while is CAPTAIN AMERICA: FIRST AVENGER and I gotta say it was worth the wait. No matter what you say, Castle Wolfenstein comic book Nazis make the best bad guys.....

Its another of Marvel Film's "Origins" stories, and has lots of slot ins with Iron Man, Thor and the other Marvel stable.....and its done perfectly. Neither too gung ho nor too nationalistic, it tells the story of how milksop shorty Steve Rogers undergoes genetic treatments to become Captain America. Once he does this the Army refuse to use him properly, instead sending him on bond drives and making dumb films. When the Cap learns his best mate's unit is now a prisoner during a USO show he takes matters into his own hands and rescues them all. thus becoming a true war hero with a misson to combat the evil Nazi counter program run by Hugo Weavings Red Skull and his army of Hydra ubersoldat super soldiers.

Great steampunk style WW2 fun all the way, with excellent beer n popcorn whiz boom bang fun and lovely detailed fantasy WW2 sets and plots. Proper comic book stuff and a great addition to the stable.

Out in acceptaby watchable TS format (a bit better than a CAM but not much), but personally Id wait a few weeks for the R5 version to come out. Thrills, spills, chills and a ripping yarn told with utter aplomb from scene 1 all the way to the end of credits link to the next Avengers film. Definitely a three biff bop keeper.





hoorah!

[sandman67]

A bit of a dissapointment is how I would describe YOUR HIGHNESS.

It should have been much better than it is....Danny McBride and James Franco in a stoner comedy taking the mickey out of overblown po faced fantasy epics. Natalie Portman playing a foxy warrior and getting her very pert and peachy bum out (and it is both pert and peachy ). CGI special effects....sort of Conan with cock jokes and mock po faced english accents. A winner you would think....

Constantly overshadowed by the chivalrous actions of his brother Prince Fabious (James Franco), disgruntled scoundrel Thadeous (Danny McBride) vents his frustrations by blundering simple assignments, indulging in too many spirits, and berating his aide Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker). But when Fabious' new bride Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by the evil sorcerer Leezar (Justin Theroux), Thadeous is forced to tag along on his very first quest. Encountering wise wizards, ruthless jungle savages, and the fiercely driven warrior girl Isabel (Natalie Portman), Thadeous must learn to play the role of a valiant knight - and when Fabious is captured by Leezar, the bumbling prince might just become a hero.

.....but the real problem is that the humour just isnt that funny, and at times feels really strained. its like some 10 minute sketch joke idea that James and Danny came up with, and then stretched out into a full length film. Yes there are laugh out loud moments, but after an hour its just one swear word and dick joke too much, the kegger humour gets tiring, and the smiles begin to fade. Its a damn shame, and compared to PINAPPLE EXPRESS its a damp squib...maybe Josh Rogen could have saved it but I doubt it.

Anyway, its worth a watch, but dont get your expectations up too much. If you do drop a version (not the one in the trailer below which is the cleaner version) drop the UNRATED version - more swearing and rudeness and Nats bum is fully out as opposed to the trailer bikini.

Natalies bum is one saving grace mind....

Keeper but only just as Im a McBride / Franco fan. Easy to find online in DVDRIP format

[BaaBaa.]

SuckerPunch just released on DVD in UK. Getting slaughtered by the national rags in reviews.

NOBS.

[richard]

Well I think SP is great but there you go, I'm a weirdo

[migrant]

Just saw Cowboys vs Aliens, lots of fun!!

[sandman67]

BaaBaa

Like I say bro = critics are there to be ignored, media reviews there merely to alert you to the fact a film has been released.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder....

and Sucker Punch rocks

[richard]

Tonight

Crime and Punishment

TV thing. Nowhere near the book but still DEEP

[sandman67]

A bit of a breath of fresh air...well.....stinky drizzly smoggy Sarf Eest London air anyway. And a pleasant surprise Jason Stratham wise as well...its not a Transporter shoot em up or cheeky cockney gangster film.

BLITZ

For once Jason acts outside his usual box and plays DS Tom Brant, an old school copper with a bit of a temper issue, in this police thriller set on the seedy market streets of SE London. Tom is having burn out problems, and the last thing he needs is a serial killer with a taste for executing coppers, especially when they are all his mates. Tom and his copper mates track the killer down as he reaves a red stripe through the staff of the station Tom calls home, and as the killings stack up it looks like a petty crim from Toms past has come back to haunt him.

Its good stuff - more like Prime Suspect than Transporter, and the plot line is great Brit copper drama stuff. The characters are all broken and tainted in some way, and the setting is authentic urban London sprawl. Works well, feels good, and keeps you watching all the way to the end reel.

Definitely a keeper, and hopefully a sign old Jason has matured his acting and now will start playing a wider scope of roles than the wham bang action-man stereotypes he has been stuck with.

Three guvs keeper all the way. Easy to find in lovely clean DVDRIPs at all the usual places =- oneclickmoviez.com and veehd

[sandman67]

Something a little different, and one to send a chill or two up your spine.

As readers will know I am not really big on horror films - usually because they are as scary as a rice pudding and increasingly an excuse for some sort of snuff porn a like splatter fest. However, I do have a bit of a soft spot for asian horror films as they have a disturbing creepyness about them, particularly Japanese ones. Im also not big on "found footage" shaky cam films either like Cloverfield...the style is annoying most of the time, and when these are horror films they tend to be clones of Blair Witch, which itself wasnt any great shakes.

So NOROI: THE CURSE set out on a bit of an uphill struggle, as its a found footage horror film, albeit one from Japan

The film is a patched together storyline mockumentary concerning a paranormal TV show investigator and his show that initially covers what seem to be a set of separate odd and distrurbing incidents. However, as the film goes on these incidents begin to share a common thread - one connected to a village that was flooded to make a dam, where the villagers used to practice a ritual that was designed to bind a demon entity below the earth. Now the village is flooded there is no more ritual......

Its good stuff, and despite being two hours long keeps you glued to the screen as the odd incidents and disturbing cast of victims slowly knots together. There are a couple of jump incidents, and the use of the documentary style handheld camera is effective. It takes its time, characterises and fills in backstory, and uses a significant cast of characters. The creeps and chills are all suggestive till the end reel but are done well and it has a "something not right" feel about it from the first reel in, which makes the climax all the more effective.

Basically Hollywood wannabes should watch this and see how it is done rather than repeating the tired and crappy Blair Witch formula over and over. The Asians do horror much better so bow your head and learn. That or sod off and make chick flicks because they are much scarier than anything Hollyblood makes.

Well worth a watch, and can be found at VeeHD in DVDRIP format with full subs here:

http://veehd.com/video/4499015_Noroi-Th ... glish-subs

and at StageVu for watcfhing or easy download at the same quality with subs here:

http://stagevu.com/video/zhagdjswftba

[GLCQuantum]

Watched a few good ones recently which I think have been reviewed already...

Priest... Great movie with awesome motorbikes and kick ass action.

Buried... Starring Ryan Reynolds the whole movie takes place in a coffin. He wakes up and finds himself buried alive in Iraq. Using his phone to contact the outside world the movie makes a great attempt at showing the emotions that would be going through you. Quite a tear jerker at the end.

Despicable Me... Absolutely class. If you haven't seen this (and still watch cartoons) get your arse downloading now!

Conviction... A true story about a guy who was wrongly imprisoned in the 80s. His sister who is extremely close to him studies law and becomes a lawyer to learn of ways to prove his innocence. An excellent movie.

13... Had never heard of this one until last night. Starring Jason Stathom and another guy who I forget the name. It's like Rat Race but not so funny . A bunch of stupidly rich guys bet on the winner of a game. The game - Russian Roulette. Worth a watch.

[sandman67]

I seem to be on a found footage flick kick, and again have managed to find a reasonably good one

THE TUNNEL

This is a low budget Aussie flick that takes the found footage format and weaves it into a "mockumentary". Its also a collaborative non commercial effort so you dont have to feel bad about downloading a copy. And its actually done pretty well.

A struggling journalist is investigating the Sydney government and its suddenly abandoned plans to utilise the water that gathers in abandoned underground train tunnels for use as drinking water. Suspicions are further raised by their total block on any explaination as to why. As she digs deeper she find urban legends about the suspicious dissapearances of homeless people who lived in the tunnels, and also a YouTube video showing a graffitti hoodie apparently dragged into the darkness never to return. So she cons a newscrew to follow her down into the tunnels in search of a story...only to find the story comes to them instead.

Its good, building suspense slowly, and in the best form manages to keep much of the horror and shock off screen and suggested, with only brief camera flashes of the nasty used to its best effect. It does, as all such films, eventually become another chase through dark tunnels with stops for breath and gore, but considering its titchy budget its done well and with aplomb. Yes it could have filled in more detail backstory wise, but it leaves a lot to the imagination and that works with these films.

Well worth checking out.....not a keeper but thats down to my hard drive lack of space rather than it being cack.

easy to find in DVDRIP format as it was a free online release anyways.Gets two cheers for effort.

[sandman67]

News from the wonderful world of brain dead Hollywood remake fever....guess what essential bit of film they have decided to remake now. Go on....

Dirty Dancing....yes Dirty fecking Dancing

As though one dose of this mother of all panty wetter pap wasnt bad enough the dickwads in Hollywood, fresh from whining how a lack of money means they cant make good films, come back to revivify this three vindaloo poodle poop from its well deserved exile to the WalMart bargain bucket DVD limbo.

Once upon a time I was stuck on a Glasgow to London National Express bus (thats like a Greyhound for our US chums) and bribed the attendant a tenner to switch the crap off and put something else on instead ...Waterloo was the replacement film. A geezer sitting in the seat in front, on my return, asked what Id done, and on finding out gave me a fiver to split the cost he was so chuffed Id taken initiative. I actually tried to buy the vid tape and so destroy it but the attendant said hed get in doo doo if he sold it to me.

So, if like me you have been wondering why Red Sonjia has ben shelved, and At The Mountains Of Madness is in production limbo now you know why....so we can have another dose of fecking teen panty wetters rubbing each other off on their partners legs to a crappy soundtrack.

THIS is the only good thing that ever came as a result of Dirty Dancing....a Trailer Park Boys running joke about how one of the main characters Julian dresses like Pat Swaysie.



sorry for the bitter tone but Im stiull trying to remove the forks from my eyes after having to watch the latest serving of Jim Carey excremental tripe Mr Poppers Penguins for a work assignment. If you do think of watching that I recommend you take your dick and stick it in a blender....it will be equally as painful and pointless as sitting through the flick.

[sateeb]

Classic Conkey and Bubbles stuff Sandman

[sandman67]

As I said up there re Captain America theres no villain quite like a Nazi, be they space Nazis, zombie Nazis, vampire Nazis or, as in this little chiller, demon posessed Nazis.

THE DEVILS ROCK

On the eve of D Day two Kiwi commandos are dispatched to take out a gun emplacement and bunker on one of the small Channel Islands Nazi outposts. When they land on the beach, then infiltrate the gun position they find lots of Nazis....but all of them are ripped to shreds or have shot themselves. A screaming womans voice calls them deeper into the bunker, only to find exactly why the garrison are all dead...because they are in fact a team of Hitlers black magic research division, and the succubus the have unleashed is out of control.

Its a teeny budget film, so the special effects are bottom o the barrel, but it is the interplay between the demon. the commando and the garrison commander that is the key to this film, pitched more as a psychological chiller than a straight horror. Its not any great shakes, but it has a nice gothic Dennis Wheatley Hammer film cheezy feel about it and its an amusing watch. I also liked the sly in script nods to Raiders, Hellboy and other Nazi occult films like The Bunker, Outpost and Dead Snow.

Worth checking out .... not a real keeper but still worth a watch.

Out on the net in lovely clean DVDRIP format all over the place so easy to find.

Gets two cheers for effort on a titchy budget.

[sandman67]

It seems to have been found footage film week here in Sandmans Castle, and Ive actually found one that isnt a horror flick per se, and is also a cracker. No surprise its not Hollywood or US made, like the classic proper scary Spanish found footage horror flick REC, (which Hollydud then remade in a much more dumbed down single digits IQ jock friendly version called QUARANTINE - NB their excersise backfired when REC2 went with the demonic posession potential ending rather than the one Hollydud chose - terrorists - and now they are proper stuffed as REC3 Apocalypse is due out and they cant copy that one either). This flick did win awards at the Sundance Festival and elsewhere, and you can see why as its a fine example of how the genre should be done properly.

THE TROLL HUNTER

This great little slice of Norwegian madness concerns the found footage of a University student film crew, as usual "posted anonymously" to the film company. The crew set out to investigate a spate of bear attacks on farm animals, and from the team of bear hunters learn of a mysterious character they assume is a poacher. The crew catch up with Hans, only to find out he isnt a poacher at all. He is a Troll Hunter, employed by a shadowy wing of the Norwegian government to track down and kill rogue trolls who have escaped from the troll reservation up in the mountains. So the crew follow Hans on his treks....

Its really good fun, and the shaky cam found footage genre really is used to its best effect here. You could even buy into the plotline if you could believe the trolls caught on camera are real. The effects are top notch stuff, so the big nastys are big and nasty, and there is some very black humour thrown in for good measure such as the way the government covers the incidents up and what happens to the dead troll remains.

Definitely recommended watching, although it can be a swine to find online as being an award winner the anti-pirate scuffers appear to be hot on the trail of posts. Its relatively easy to find watchable online versions tho - do a google search on "The Troll Hunter"+"watch online". If like me you are a sneaky sod with a flash film capture add on (DownloadHelper) in your Firefox you can capture the source and use FlashGet to download the FLV file. Oneclickmoviez.com has a good DVDRIP but you will need to use a smaller hoster like 2Shared to get the download as its a whopping 1.3 gig file. Torrents are everywhere.

Gets a solid three cheers and a place on the hard drive for making the thriller found footage genre fun and adding a distinctly top marks Norwegian spin on it.