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Reviews
Prometheus (2012)
The 3rd best Alien movie, and 1st best Prometheus movie
Firstly, don't go into Prometheus like I did expecting a game-changing modern equivalent to the original Alien. Alien still gives me the creeps and jumps today despite me having seen it dozens of times. Prometheus, although very grim, unfortunately doesn't quite reach those heights of terror. Maybe it's too polished, maybe the soundtrack is too heavy-handed, maybe the script was a bit limp in places and the story was too convoluted. For better or worse, Ridley Scott isn't the same director he was in the late 70s. Alien almost seems like a dogme movie in comparison to this film
However, Prometheus is still a solid modern sci-fi horror with some great concepts and some nasty sequences which are more than reminiscent of the first two films, albeit very different.
What I found most interesting about this film is the way that, without undermining anything, Scott & co have re-established the world of Alien through to Alien Resurrection as a mere branch off of a very nasty, nightmarish tree. As a teenager I used to draw my own 'Alien' comics and obsess over the Queen > Egg > Face-Hugger > Chest-Burster chain of events
*MILD SPOILERS* But Prometheus depicts the mysterious Space Jockeys as 'engineers' of what could be described as weaponised DNA which infects/corrupts anything it comes into contact with
. Suddenly everything from the human/egg making scene from Alien: The Directors Cut, to the weird Ripley/Baby monster from Resurrection make a lot more sense. In fact I was very surprised by just how much this film compliments the original and all of it's sequels, even the horrendous AVP instalments.
Don't expect any 'xenomorphs', and yes, this is not the same planet or alien ship seen in the first two films, so therefore anything goes. And yes, the crew of Prometheus have access to much more advanced/sleeker technology as it's Weyland directly funding the mission with, I quote, trillions of dollars. Other tools they use are evidently not so advanced, so yes, a space-born oil refinery filled with grey computers and red buttons could still very much exist in this world, even decades later.
The bottom line is, If you have any interest in these movies, Prometheus is definitely worth your time and money. It might not be as terrifying as Alien or action-packed as Aliens, but it is still much better than anything we've seen from this franchise in 20 years, and more importantly, the scope has now been widened to such a great extent that I hope we see a lot more from it in the years to come.
Skyline (2010)
So bad it's not even funny
I had the misfortune of being dragged along to this movie on the strength of the 'vaguely' cool trailer...I'm a big Sci-Fi fan myself, and can usually stomach pretty much any piece of crap as long as it's got a decent monster/alien/robot/idea in it. But, as others have mentioned, the best parts of the film are actually all in the trailer, and it's down the toilet from there.
If you've ever watched a student movie where the characters are all students because the film-makers don't have any concept of life outside of their campus, this is almost exactly the same thing but made by bunch of smug, rich directors from LA about...a bunch of smug, rich directors from LA, whose luxurious apartment complex suddenly becomes surrounded by a swarm of knock off Matrix monsters...In fact it quickly became very clear to me how much the Strauss Brothers probably owe/look up to the Wachowski brothers, and when that's the level of film-making you're aspiring to? Well, at this point I knew I was f**ked.
But what really gets my goat looking at other reviews here is that people are referring to the 'modest' budget of $10 million as if it gets the film-makers off the hook somehow? Sorry, if that's how much money it takes to make such a hollow, empty piece of crap like this then something is very, very wrong with the movie industry today.
Surely It doesn't cost money to get a better script together than the kind of gratuitous crap I'd write as a 12 year old after watching films like Aliens or Independence Day? Ever disaster movie cliché was here, from "You've got to pull yourself together if we're gonna live through this!" to "Who put you in charge?!"...And as for the 'human' aspects of the story-line, well, If you thought the characters in Cloverfield were 'annoying' or hard to sympathise with then you'll be doing yourself a massive favour by avoiding this abomination.
I usually wouldn't let something like this bother me, but the fact that I wasted 1.5 hours of my life sitting through some simple, narrow-minded film-school jock's vaguely perverted power-fantasy coupled with the fact that people are passively giving this up to 6 out of 10 on the basis that it's a "good popcorn movie" sends me over the edge into a pit of rage...
...I mean, what, did the film make the popcorn taste better? Did the popcorn make the film look and sound better? Are people really happy to spend money on crap movies just for the experience of balancing an extra-sized bucket of popcorn on their pot-bellies in public? Can't these people have this same experience at home watching trashy late night horror channels instead? I don't think people should be pacifying such atrocious film-making by tagging them with such a 'cute' terminology. If you love popcorn you can - and probably will - eat it anytime you want, you certainly don't need to be watching a piece of crap like this to justify it.
For me this movie represents everything that's wrong with the movie industry, and I almost want to condone illegal downloading if it means studios won't be able to afford the fart out more creative holocausts like this in the future. Honestly, if you love movies, then you really should hate this film and everything it stands for
Lo squartatore di New York (1982)
I don't get some Fulci fans
I watched this, looking for a film as gory and spectacular as something like Argento's TENEBRAE or that other NY-based slasher MANIAC (which I thought was unusually eerie and thought-provoking for a film of it's genre)
I'd heard this was Fulci's sickest film, and that the killer used a Donald duck voice...To me, that sounded just AWESOME.
All I can say is...Wut?
I know Fulci films are SUPPOSED to be sleazy...I've watched - and enjoyed - Zombie Flesh Eaters and The Beyond...
But I just don't get fans who LOVE stuff like THIS - It's trashy, but not in a fun way, It's not art either, in any shape or form - it just stinks...of middle aged men who don't wash...
In Tenebrae, the murder scenes are composed like some macabre tableaux - totally unrealistic but charming in their melodrama and ambitiously OTT gore
In New York Ripper, the murder scenes are crude, unrealistic and filled with this unnatural "sexual" tone...As if Fulci decided that he wanted to make a new style of horror that could have been screened in porn cinemas back in the heydays of the soft-core/exploitation scene...
As I type that I can see I might be making this sound appealing, but really, it isn't - The reality of a porn cinema is a room that stinks of B.O. filled with overweight men in tracksuits, penises-in-hands.
There's a scene in a Cafe where a local harlot (as you get in films like this) is sat at a table being 'seduced' by a gang of Hispanic (?) men...One of them takes his bare foot and slips it up her skirt whilst grunting a load of sleazy lines...It's not sexy, it's not funny, it's just awfully tacky and COMPLETELY random in context of the rest of the film
Not to mention the really slapped together 'whodunnit' twists that are so contrived and overcooked that you can barely muster a laugh for them
For me, films like these can go one of a few ways - You could luck upon a film that has been criminally overlooked for it's originality (Maniac) or ambition (Tenebrae), or you could end up with a slab of stinky toenail cheese like The New York Ripper
To it's credit (Just ONE thing to earn it 1 out of 10) films like this just don't get made today - because today the same emotionally stunted minds have the internet; they can just write their perverse little script, post it on some suspect slash-fic forum and masturbate frantically over the user comments section instead.
Mekagojira no gyakushu (1975)
the darkest godzilla movie ever made
Terror of Mechagodzilla was the last Godzilla film of the first series and the last to be directed by Ishiro Honda, the same director of the first and arguably best Godzilla movie in 1954. Fact: Like every Godzilla movie ever made (perhaps bar the first two), it is ridiculous. Get over that and you have the darkest, and in my opinion best Godzilla movie of them all. In the UK it is the only G-movie to have a 15 certificate--for brief nudity and a violent shoot out--(How typically 70's)--but is also the darkest in tone from the art direction to the brilliant score--and the characters..oh, the characters... Well, TOMG is the only Godzilla movie to feature a femme fatale--which is already an achievment for a mostly juvenile sub-genre. *****SPOILER****** Funky Interpol agent Ichinosi falls deeply in love with Katsura, the cyborg daughter of a mad scientist, after exchanging all of about two cold scentences with her--fantastic! Not to mention his secretary--look closely and im sure she's got a crush on him...A love triangle in a monster movie! And then of course, the monsters are great--no stingy 'waste land' battles--we actually get to see buildings get smashed up in this one (surely the whole point of a G-movie), and the monsters are great too--'good guy' Godzilla's suit still looks cartoony, yet angry in a cute kind of way, and then there's Titanosaurus, who has a great shriek/noise and a tail that can 'fan' buildings away (!). Look out for Godzilla's first appearance which is also particularly fanatstic--and then his second arrival in Tokyo to save a couple of kids getting stamped on--genius. And did i mention Mechagodzilla? He really tears the roof off in this one--two re-makes on and the original Mechagodzilla is still the scariest. All i can say is give this film a chance--it has more ham than a spam factory but is very fast paced and entertaining throughout--right up until the inevitable tragic ending between katsura and ichinosi.
And yes, the ending score as godzilla sails off into he ocean still makes me cry even today.
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)
Get rid of Burr
I'm not sure if I'm cheating here because technically i haven't actually seen this film, but the original 'Godzilla 1954' version instead. Minus the spliced scenes involving Raymond Burr, the film is a bit slow but full of imagination and subtle horror (which lacks in the rest of the 60's/70's 'showa' series). Also of interest are the strong references to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings, which aren't there to offend the western viewer, but perhaps to remind us of how they affected Japan as a nation. Toho is still producing Godzilla movies en masse (4 in the last three years) yet not as a saga, but as stand alone sequels (each seems to be a remake of the last) to this original movie, which shows the longevity of the ideas produced and it's overall legacy in Japanese culture. I would advise that anyone interested in this movie should try to find the original subtitled version to fully appreciate it in it's intended presentation.