What was the last movie you've seen?

[Luke]

I DID! Seemed cool.

I thought it looked cool for an Aquaman villain, and how does get tattoos and maintain dreadlocks while underwater?

[Stark]

I DID! Seemed cool.

I thought it looked cool for an Aquaman villain, and how does get tattoos and maintain dreadlocks while underwater?

Aren't dreads just matted hair? Seems like that'd only help your hair "dread." That the tats match his armor is pretty neat touch I thought.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Salt water can actually help dreads by making them tighter, so it works.

I'm loving that they're going with a more late 90's bearded Aquaman. I always felt that fit better than the clean cut look he has now, or pre bearded.

[Hobie-wan]

I thought it looked cool for an Aquaman villain, and how does get tattoos and maintain dreadlocks while underwater?

Superglue.

At least that's how a friend described someone eliminating daily liberty spike mohawk maintenance. Apparently this apparently had the side effect of being told they participate in swim team activities for fear of impaling someone.

[Ack]

Don't Go in the House

Well, this is more like it. Don't Go in the House is another of the famed Video Nasties, but this one deserves the title far more than Visiting Hours. DGitH is a Psycho-wannabe, but with the murderer as the lead(though not to the point of Maniac. We hear his hallucinations but never see through his eyes). Dan Grimaldi plays Donny Kohler, who was physically abused by his mother as a child and has grown into a socially awkward man suffering from a mental illness which takes hold upon him returning home and discovering his mother has passed away. As his means of revenging the wrongs of his mother, he begins kidnapping women and murdering them, though he's never completely comfortable with what he has done. But it is hard to feel sympathy for Donny, more so than Psycho's Norman Bates, because Donny was tortured with fire and now uses it as his chosen tool for revenge.

Yep, Donny chains up women in a specially modified room and takes a flamethrower to them. And then he dresses the charred corpses like his mother and leaves them upstairs, where they play tricks on his mind.

You ever see something in a movie and mumble to yourself, "Oh, that's not right"? Because the first time Donny kills, it builds steadily to the horrible conclusion, as his victim stands naked and exposed, screaming at the top of her lungs, while he dumps gasoline on her and then kicks up the fire. Dread and disgust build through the film, as Donny sinks into his madness, tries to escape, and then inevitably falls, all while haunted by the ghosts of the women he killed and his mother. Or at least that's what he thinks, as his hallucinations take hold of his addled mind.

It's an effective piece, with some brutal imagery. There's a dream sequence about midway through where Donny imagines the corpses of his victims pull him into a shallow grave. Accompanied by a piercing score that drills into your brain, it makes both a terrible jump scare and a brilliantly crafted shock sequence. Scenes like this are littered throughout the film. Unfortunately so are scenes where Donny tries to recover, talks to his friend and his priest, and buys a suit. These scenes drag on too long and show us just how he will never fit in with normal society, no matter how he tries. And I really didn't like the Father Gerritty character. The actor just missed the mark for me.

But then there is disco. In a dance club with red lighting, Donny sets fire to the red hair of a woman in a red dress and brings about his ultimate downfall. Donny can't be saved and ultimately loses. But somewhere else, another boy is beaten by his mother, and he begins to hear voices.

If Psycho were seedier, sleazier, more nihilistic, and wanted the world bathed in flames, it would be Don't Go in the House.

[Jrecee]

Could have incorporated more of the orange/green scheme though. Marvel seems to be the best at realizing superhero costumes while keeping somewhat true to the original comic outfits.

X-men has probably been the worst at bringing in any elements from the comics.

[Pulsar_t]

[Ack]

T-Men

Ah, a faux documentary about Treasury agents who have to infiltrate a counterfeiting ring. Unfortunately watching it now, I disliked the documentary aspect of the film but enjoyed the actual movie. It's gorgeous to look at, gritty and action packed, with some surprisingly shocking moments.

Basically there's a counterfeiting ring operating out of Los Angeles that has access to some high quality paper, and all attempts so far to crack them have come to nothing. To break into the ring, two Treasury agents infiltrate a mob organization running illegal liquor in Detroit, because fake liquor stamps there have been tied back to the ring. So the agents fake their way in, investigate, and worm their way into the ring. But in the counterfeiting game, everyone's suspicious, and they'll kill over a wrong word or a moment of mistaken identity.

The end result is a surprisingly ballsy movie willing to beat up, wound, or kill main characters despite the disinterested documentary narration. In fact the death of one of the heroes is perhaps the greatest moment in the movie, where the tension builds as you hope he isn't caught by the crime ring, and when he is, he knows his death is imminent and feeds information to his partner, who has to watch his pal get killed off without a word. The tension builds again at the end as the survivor must then pretend he is on the level while awaiting the discovery that he believes is inevitable. And the finale ends with a gunfight where heroes and villains take bullets and limp after each other out of pure spite to finish the job.

It's dark, it's dirty, it's great. You just have to look past the narration.



Crossfire

Billed as another film noir, this movie is actually a drama that focuses on antisemitism but makes a larger argument about hating others because they are different. And it hammers in that message with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

The year is 1947, World War 2 is over, and soldiers have returned home but are only slowly getting out of the Army and just aren't sure what to do with themselves. A handful of enlisted men visit a bar and talk with a Jewish man there, who then has them over for drinks. A couple of hours later, that Jewish man is dead, two soldiers are missing, and one soldier is giving his version of the story. Now a detective of Irish descent must investigate what happened and why, and all blame seems to be pointed at a young soldier named Mitch, a sensitive artist in the Army who misses his wife and doesn't know what to do with himself now that the Nazis have been defeated.

There is a malaise to this movie, as enlisted men try to cover for one another and deal with their needs, desires, and prejudices in peacetime immediately after a long war in the face of almost emotionless police force. But it doesn't take long for the pieces to start falling in place. And with a run time of 86 minutes, the film flies at a brisk pace. It's a great film during the first half, as both the police and enlisted soldiers try to figure out what is going on while trying to stymie the other. And then the point of the film hits.

And it hits hard.

Seriously hard.

I don't know, I guess I just didn't think the moral of the story literally required a closeup and a five minute scene where it beats in the point over and over again. Antisemitism is awful. Hating a group just because it is different is awful. We get it. We know. You don't have to keep going. Did it really require that sudden extreme closeup for you to once again say that hating Jews is awful? Now it's referencing the anti-Irish bias in the US during the 1800s.

And then the police end up gunning down the real murderer in the streets. He's unarmed, his back is turned, he's running away, he's scared, and the police smash a window and shoot him in the back. What is this, the NYPD? And they're so nonchalant about it, like it's perfectly fine to just shoot a guy in the street. It's the only time in the film where we see the cop smile. In fact everybody's ok with it. Sure, we know he's the murderer, but it's not like he confessed, he just ran.

The first half of Crossfire is great. The second half is way too blunt with its message and then fouls the whole thing up for me with its sudden ending of happy police brutality. Yeah, it's a product of its time period, and it was a low budget B-movie with some great star talent. But it goes way overboard in the end. Subtle, this film is not.

[Ack]

What, did you think just because Racketboy was down, that I'd quit watching movies?

YOU THOUGHT WRONG!



In the Line of Fire

Clint Eastwood is the last secret service agent still working who was in the service when Kennedy was assassinated. John Malkovich is a crazed assassin from the CIA who has decided he is going to get his government back by assassinating the president. The two must go head to head, as Eastwood tries to capture Malkovich, and Malkovich tries to lead Eastwood on just enough to trip him up.

What follows is perhaps the most predictable action film I've ever seen. A character decides to quit and gets talked out of it; he dies the next day. Eastwood wonders if he can take a bullet for the president; he does. Characters look up at a glass ceiling; a character falls from a great height onto it later. People asks Eastwood if he is fine, and he says he is; he makes a big mistake. It pretty much sets up everything well in advance, so there is never a shocking moment. In fact, I found the film rather dull, even with two leading stars that I enjoy.

Which is odd, because In the Line of Fire received a lot of praise when it was released for not being a straightforward thriller, which is exactly what I saw it as. When it was revealed that Malkovich was a CIA superspy, I groaned and put my head in my hands. The movie isn't bad, but I didn't find much that really stood out about it either. If anything, I found it forgettable, which I suppose is why it never comes up when we've had conversations about either Eastwood or Malkovich on here.



The Adventures of Robin Hood

Man, Errol Flynn laughs a lot. He also performed all his own stunts and became quite the capable swordsman over the course of his career. This is perhaps Flynn's best known movie, and he thoroughly excels in it as the leader of a group of happy thieves and guerrillas fighting the Normans and their asshat regent John. He's boisterous, capable, charismatic, and deadly, everything that makes him stand out over the large assortment of actors who have played Robin Hood through the years. In fact he makes so many jokes, the only other Robin Hood I could compare him to would be Cary Elwes; he's that funny.

And his lovable band of rogues does not disappoint either. They kill a lot of people in this movie and humiliate all the people they don't kill. And they eat, laugh, and party while they're doing it, before running right back off to war again. The villains also do a great job of conveying themselves as evil schemers bent on grabbing power through whatever means necessary, and they're a positively nasty bunch displaying all manner of unlikable traits. I loved to hate them.

In truth, there really isn't much about this film one can find wrong. It really is the definitive Robin Hood film. It laughs and never takes itself too seriously, but also never lets the comedy outdo its serious tale of rebellion against an oppressive government. And I think Robin Hood's introduction to the false King John is perhaps the best scene of the film. It's marvelous. Robin beats up a couple of men with a deer carcass. Classy.



The Prowler

It doesn't do much new with the genre, but what it does with the usual, it gets right. Phenomenally so. I thought going in that I would love this movie, and I did. The killer is terrifying, the heroes aren't totally stupid, the ending is suitably shocking, and the movie is nice and dark, with a few touches of sleaze to mess with the audience but not enough to dominate the film.

But onto the star of the show: the prowler! In some slasher films, the villain just seems to be going by the numbers, maiming and murdering just because. Not the prowler. He kicks folks in the face, stabs them with a bayonet and saws into them with it, thrusts and hoists people with a pitchfork, and even pulls out a sawed-off shotgun when necessary. All in silence, offering only a single rose as any sort of outburst. The prowler is creepy as hell up until the reveal of his identity, and he makes a spectacular foe.

But the heroes aren't bad either. The deputy sheriff is still wet behind the ears, but he often makes the right calls: calling in the state police and checking to make sure it isn't a robber believed to be on the run, corralling all the kids in the school dance to keep them safe, arming himself with a weapon whenever he has to investigate, etc. And his girlfriend, Pam, our virginal Final Girl, isn't exactly the most astute when it comes to noticing her surroundings, but she knows how to run and hide like hell, and when push comes to shove, she continues to fight until the end. I liked both of them as leads and genuinely felt bad for the trauma they had to endure.

And then there is the shock ending, as PTSD sets in for our survivors. That final scene is wonderfully handled, with a marvelous sudden shock that is effective and drawn out enough not to appear hammy. What Pam sees is a totally different horror from the rest of the film, and I loved how at odds it is with the type of horror movie it appears in and yet how it works so well. It goes on just long enough and then flashes to the reality of the situation.

[dsheinem]

It really is the definitive Robin Hood film.

It is also a very important early technicolor film, which is part of why it looks so amazing. A lot of marketing played up the fact that it looked like the illustrations in classic Robin Hood storybooks or that it was second only to rainbows themselves in its beauty. I adore the look of this film and it really is a great film on its technical merits alone. Stuff like the deer scene are just icing on the cake