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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 8, 2021 5:38:02 GMT -8
It's possible that the writer/director stutters. Don't judge him. It is given some emphasis given that the title card repeats it twice to present it in red, white and blue. All I remember about Assassination Nation is that the title annoyed me and the first fifteen minutes annoyed me even more, and I kind of stopped watching after that. That's a shame; I didn't expect much and was pleasantly surprised. I can understand it being polarising though, especially as the film actively warns you of its content in the opener and it adopts a deliberately technique-heavy style that frequently calls attention to itself with fourth wall breakages and the like ("We're all just characters in The Sims and none of us know it", "It's all just a movie, right?"). But I loved its audacity, its non-sensational trans casting (I didn't even notice until towards the end), the vibrant colour palette (particularly at the house and school, and the red PVC overcoats), the filtering in of split-screen selfie recordings, and especially some really organic movie references, such as the pedalling kid at the start (The Shining), the lengthy stalker pans across the windows (Halloween) and unbroken tracking shots (Altman, PTA). |
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 8, 2021 13:10:00 GMT -8
I could see myself revisiting it at some point; I'm told it does improve after the opening act. I just remember that the opening "trigger warning" felt very self-indulgent.
Interesting that the director of this movie has since gone on to create the TV show Euphoria. Perhaps a weird career turn, although I suppose there are some parallels in depicting the cavalier behavior of young protagonists.
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Post by guttersnipe on Jan 1, 2022 3:59:44 GMT -8
Oh yeah, so it turns out I kept the pumpkin's candle flame burning 'til the end of the year:
Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City (2021, Johannes Roberts) - 6/10
The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959, Irvin Berwick) - 4/10
Pulgasari (1985, Shin Sang-ok) - 5/10*
Diary of a Madman (1963, Reginald Le Borg) - 5/10**
Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973, Denis Sanders) - 5/10
American Mary (2012, Jen and Sylvia Soska) - 6/10
The Invisible Man (1933, James Whale) - 8/10 [rewatch]
The Mummy's Hand (1940, Christy Cabanne) - 5/10
Revenge of the Creature (1955, Jack Arnold) - 5/10***
The Blood Spattered Bride (1972, Vicente Aranda) - 7/10****
Uncle Sam (1996, William Lustig) - 5/10
Black Magic 2 (1976, Meng Hua Ho) - 6/10
Curse of the Fly (1965, Don Sharp) - 4/10
Anna and the Apocalypse (2017, John McPhail) - 6/10
* It's only a North Korean monster movie made by a kidnapped director!
** Far too much of this picture was taken up with Vincent Price reacting to his own voiceover
*** I'd question why sea creatures always seem to have the hots for human women, but I was more distracted by the very first screen appearance of one Clinton Eastwood Jr
**** This was real hook-or-by-crook stuff, managing to watch a low-grade unsubtitled stream on a random website, whilst reading subs off my phone which were a minute off the runtimes indicated and took sufficient liberties with translation that I occasionally had to rely on my rudimentary Spanish for understanding, but I finally got to see it!
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Post by guttersnipe on Jan 31, 2022 17:29:29 GMT -8
What do you mean, October is a distant memory now? I had pressing engagement, that being to finish off my outliers from Kim Newman and James Marriott's 2010 compendium, Horror!: 333 Films to Scare You to Death.
No One Lives (2012, Ryuhei Kitamura) - 6/10
Overlord (2018, Julius Avery) - 5/10
King of the Zombies (1941, Jean Yarborough) - 4/10
C.H.U.D. (1984, Douglas Cheek) - 5/10
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019, Dan Gilroy) - 5/10
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman) - 5/10
El Día de la Bestia (1995, Alex de la Iglesia) - 6/10
Siberia (2018, Abel Ferrara) - 6/10*
Horrors of Malformed Men (1969, Teruo Ishii) - 7/10
* Ah yes, that classic dream of a wheelchair-bound naked dwarf lady in a cave. Almost ubiquitous at this stage
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jan 31, 2022 21:08:29 GMT -8
C.H.U.D. (1984, Douglas Cheek) - 5/10 Velvet Buzzsaw (2019, Dan Gilroy) - 5/10 I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman) - 5/10 Wow, three straight pans of cult classics! Merciless. |
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 31, 2022 21:11:25 GMT -8
I've got no problems with extending October into later months. The "Treehouse of Horror" specials ran in November for several years, so that's a good precedent. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman) - 5/10 Is it weird that I feel some vindication in this? I didn't hate the movie, but unlike Kaufman's previous work, it generally left me cold and uninterested. |
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Post by Jay on Feb 1, 2022 12:58:23 GMT -8
It's funny, I really found myself having the same thing happen where I got an intense horror kick during Spooky Month and that just carried on into the rest of the calendar year and beyond. I wasn't terribly fond of C.H.U.D. either, and had to look back to find my comments on it by searching for Daniel Stern, whom it's hilarious to see in a dramatic role, rather than the movie title itself. Proboards doesn't like periods in search terms, methinks. |
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Post by guttersnipe on Feb 1, 2022 14:24:27 GMT -8
Is it weird that I feel some vindication in this? I didn't hate the movie, but unlike Kaufman's previous work, it generally left me cold and uninterested. I wanted to like it given that I'm typically on the Kaufman wavelength, but my overwhelming response was along the lines of a number of recent "art-horrors" where I felt that a leftfield creator was somewhat embarrassed of the genre he's operating in and as such applies an ill-fitting angle to sidestep the sort of conventions you'd expect them to embrace (mother!, The Neon Demon, The Witch, Velvet Buzzsaw immediately beforehand, etc), when ideally I'd like them to De Palma it and readily mix the -brows. These films almost read like an admittance that most people's experience of horror is actually couched in the mundane, so some Bosch is grafted in to make it seem like it's not a film largely about, say, meeting your partner's parents and finding they're uneducated podunks. There's probably some interesting discussion in there about the Roeg-ian collapsing of time signatures, but I was so fatigued by the unsure tone I got past the point of caring. |
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Post by guttersnipe on May 1, 2022 12:35:18 GMT -8
OK, so I have to make my apologies for my absence as life really has been getting in the way, but not in the way of watching (largely rubbish) horror movies! A number of these have come about simply because one domestic TV channel has started screening trios of such on Friday nights, and I'm nothing if not compelled to tune in:
FEBRUARY
The Bloody Judge (1970, Jesus Franco) - 5/10
Dead Heat (1988, Mark Goldblatt) - 6/10
Creepy (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) - 6/10
Mama (2013, Andrés Muschietti) - 5/10
Burnt Offerings (1976, Dan Curtis) - 5/10
Bacurau (2019, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles) - 5/10
Alone in the Dark (1982, Jack Sholder) - 6/10
Leviathan (1989, George Pan Costmatos) - 5/10
MARCH
Gog (1954, Herbert L. Strock) - 4/10
Count Yorga, Vampire (1970, Bob Kelljan) - 5/10
Tales of Terror (1962, Roger Corman) - 6/10
Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952, John Gilling) - 4/10
Await Further Instructions (2018, Johnny Kevorkian) - 6/10
Squirm (1976, Jeff Lieberman) - 5/10
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959, Edward L. Cahn) - 4/10
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972, Curtis Harrington) - 4/10*
Scream Blacula Scream (1973, Bob Kelljan) - 6/10
Eye of the Devil (1966, J. Lee Thompson) - 6/10**
Glass (2019, M. Night Shyamalan) - 5/10
Split (2016, M. Night Shyamalan) - 6/10
APRIL
The Return of Count Yorga (1971, Bob Kelljan) - 5/10
The Man from Planet X (1951, Edgar G. Ulmer) - 5/10
The Thing from Another World (1951, Christian Nyby (and arguably Howard Hawks)) - 5/10 [rewatch]
The Walking Dead (1936, Michael Curtiz) - 7/10***
The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966, Don Weis) - 3/10
I Blame Society (2020, Gillian Wallace Horvat) - 5/10
The Deadly Mantis (1957, Nathan Juran) - 5/10
The Monolith Monsters (1957, John Sherwood) - 5/10
Daughters of Satan (1972, Hollingsworth Morse) - 4/10
Chained for Life (2018, Aaron Schimberg) - 6/10
The Return of Dracula (1958, Paul Landres) - 6/10
* I was warned about Harrington's later films
** Another puzzle piece in the whole tragic Sharon Tate picture
*** Perhaps it's simply because they're overshadowed by his 'respectable' work, but Curtiz never gets enough credit as a horror director
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Post by Jeremy on May 2, 2022 15:25:32 GMT -8
On the one hand, I've been trying to watch a lot of old and old-ish movies lately. On the other hand, I fear that I if I watch too much too fast, I will someday be left with nothing more in terms of fresh material than The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire.
So um, trying to pace myself...
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Post by guttersnipe on May 6, 2022 10:23:16 GMT -8
I think in an era of multivarious streaming platforms, burgeoning cinema releases from practically every country on earth and continued DVD labels dedicated to outré titles and gap-filling on prolific directors, you needn't worry about ever running out of films.
In other words, there will never be a situation in which you're obligated to watch The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. And that's just as well, because I spent both of those films feeling sorry for Karloff and Lugosi respectively, especially as the farmer's mercurial career (soon featuring the extraordinary Targets) contrasts sharply with the latter's obscurity, penury and addiction. I watch this crap so you don't have to.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on May 6, 2022 14:28:43 GMT -8
I think in an era of multivarious streaming platforms, burgeoning cinema releases from practically every country on earth and continued DVD labels dedicated to outré titles and gap-filling on prolific directors, you needn't worry about ever running out of films. In other words, there will never be a situation in which you're obligated to watch The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. And that's just as well, because I spent both of those films feeling sorry for Karloff and Lugosi respectively, especially as the farmer's mercurial career (soon featuring the extraordinary Targets) contrasts sharply with the latter's obscurity, penury and addiction. I watch this crap so you don't have to. Ha, I brought this up earlier. Even if the film and tv industry ceased to exist, I'd still never catch up on all the books, films, tv shows (Western and anime) that I want to. |
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Post by Jeremy on May 6, 2022 14:41:33 GMT -8
Yeah, I'll probably never quite run out of things worth watching. Plus, I can't say I'm particularly interested in lot of old horror shlock, unless it comes with a snarky commentary track. A lot of these films are less fun to watch than they are to see other people watch and talk about. I watch this crap so you don't have to. Now there's an all-time great philosophy. It's actually quite similar to my own goal for several years, where I tried to watch every animated movie released by Hollywood, no matter how boring or cringeworthy. This meant that I made myself sit through everything from Foodfight! and The Emoji Movie to Space Chimps and Duck Duck Goose, all as a means of gaining the broadest possible perspective on American animation. I have lately begun to finally outgrow this impulse, though there may be a relapse in the coming years. |
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Post by Incandescence 112 on May 6, 2022 14:52:39 GMT -8
Yeah, I'll probably never quite run out of things worth watching. Plus, I can't say I'm particularly interested in lot of old horror shlock, unless it comes with a snarky commentary track. A lot of these films are less fun to watch than they are to see other people watch and talk about. I watch this crap so you don't have to. Now there's an all-time great philosophy. It's actually quite similar to my own goal for several years, where I tried to watch every animated movie released by Hollywood, no matter how boring or cringeworthy. This meant that I made myself sit through everything from Foodfight! and The Emoji Movie to Space Chimps and Duck Duck Goose, all as a means of gaining the broadest possible perspective on American animation. I have lately begun to finally outgrow this impulse, though there may be a relapse in the coming years. Oh dear. Scraping the bottom of the barrel of the animation industry doesn't seem like a great idea for your term longevity. But you gotta do what you gotta do. |
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Post by guttersnipe on May 8, 2022 7:00:35 GMT -8
It's actually quite similar to my own goal for several years, where I tried to watch every animated movie released by Hollywood, no matter how boring or cringeworthy. This meant that I made myself sit through everything from Foodfight! and The Emoji Movie to Space Chimps and Duck Duck Goose, all as a means of gaining the broadest possible perspective on American animation. I have lately begun to finally outgrow this impulse, though there may be a relapse in the coming years. This conversation (and a concurrent private chat with Bosc) reminds me of a few years back when unkinhead was asking me for recommendations and I felt the need to ask for his 'angle' on the journey, because whilst I totally understand the desire to try to stick to "good" (approved?) titles, I've been more inclined towards encyclopaedic knowledge, and that can't really happen without warts 'n' all exposure. So to use this (decidedly-elongated) October Challenge as an example, the likes of Psycho and Peeping Tom gain a particular relevancy beyond their formal brilliance when contrasted against the mostly-dreadful horror run of the previous decade, and act as harbingers of a period of civil unrest, occult murders, unpopular wars and political assassinations. Incidentally, maintenance of this whole thing is only really happening because a couple of domestic channels started making regular slots for Z-grade obscurities, and what am I but compelled to tune in? |
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