Recently Watched Films

Gritty and a bit nasty, but a gripping watch. This sparks a few memories of the era, but obviously my life wasn't as hard as this.

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

I´m still not a big fan, as I think the premise is a bit ridiculous, but at least they tap right into primal human nature. We are such a destructive (and self-destructive) race...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2975578/

More big guns and policing outside the rules. I remember seeing this as a kid, and I now wonder about how many parental boundaries I actually had!

As entertaining as the original in most ways, but this mostly shot for shot colour remake of the 1930's film is perhaps a little pointless and the female lead doesn't sing the iconic song 'The Boys in the Back Room'. Overall not bad, but I'd sooner re-watch the Jimmy Stewart version. 

Meh. Picks up where the iconic original left off, then Charlton Heston buggers off for most of the movie and the ending is a major downer. 

Watched this one quite a few times now. At some point I should also re-watch the remake, to see how they compare. 

Good French film from 1943. Had me guessing all the way through. 

Not bad, but messily structured. 

Wrong Turn gets rebooted into something unrecognisable, but hey, it's a better film than the last few from the original series. It's biggest problem is probably that it feels very 2020s in terms of ticking the diversity boxes yet still manages to also use the usual negative tropes associated with those characters, such as killing a character of colour first (who's also gay, just to double whammy it). Mind you, he probably does have the best 'oh shit I'm dead and I know it' moment I've seen in a horror film for a while. I expect this may go some way to explain the division between critics and audiences on this one. Personally I don't care for the idea of such tropes because it makes it sound like minorities should be instead considered untouchable in works of fiction, which is unrealistic and problematic for a budding writer like myself, but this film probably could have done more to be less obvious about it. 

Love this movie. 

Yeah I've seen How I Live Now. Good film. Only seen it once though. 

Color Out of Space (2019)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5073642/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Lovecraft horror. It was alright...

Sean Connery sci-fi film I confused with Zardoz many years ago. Don't confuse it with Zardoz...

Anyway, a couple of glaring scientific mistakes aside (gravity, the surface of Io), this is a really convincing looking movie set on a Jovian mining station. Unfortunately, it's just not particularly exciting. There's some cool explosive decompression special effects, and Frances Sternhagen as Dr. Lazarus is a bit of a scene stealer, but Connery seems to be on auto-pilot.

According to Wikipedia: A song based on Outland called "High Moon" was written by Star One (a side project of Ayreon composer Arjen Lucassen) for the Space Metal album. Not familiar myself. The High Moon title is a reference to the film being called "High Noon in space."

Amusing enough comedy horror/fantasy. The genres have been blended better than this though. 

It's watchable enough I guess. A strong cast. But I probably need to stop watching disaster movies. They just do little for me and ones like this that are based on actual tragic events are even worse. To me, this is documentary subject matters tried to be turned into a media that for me should be above all else about entertainment. I just don't equate the two to being on the same page. 

This one was really good. Great cast. Feels a bit Scorsese-like.

Re-watches now:

Ever rewatchable. 

Possibly Argento's last really great movie, though I did enjoy Opera as well. Certainly my most watched of his, though I expect Deep Red will overtake it over time. Utterly foul on a level far above other films I've seen of his, but the genre mix and soundtrack are awesome.