Movie Recommendations

I tried to watch Inception (2010) - It was so bad that it pissed me off, and I had to turn it off after 28 minutes. Talky, shallow, and psychologically immature, with DiCaprio, in fashion designer suits, trying to be bright. Insufferable.
 
Knygathin said:
I tried to watch Inception (2010) - It was so bad that it pissed me off, and I had to turn it off after 28 minutes. Talky, shallow, and psychologically immature, with DiCaprio, in fashion designer suits, trying to be bright. Insufferable.
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OK, OK, a relative convinced me that I should continue and see the whole film, before I judge it. He agreed that it's not a very good film, but that it is still conceptually interesting. I'll grit my teeth and force my way through it.
 
When I view a movie that resembles something by Kafka or Ligotti, I always think to post a recommendation here, but I seldom do so cuz I'm lazy and unmotivated. However, we watched The Double (2013) starring Jesse Eisenberg, and I had to mention it here.

Apparently it is based on a novella by Dostoevsky, which I have not read, and it was funny, dark and appealed to my inner Ligotti. It is currently streaming for free on Amazon Prime Video and is well worth your time. It also shared elements with AppleTV's Severance, which I really enjoyed. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825157/
 
Knygathin said:
I tried to watch Inception (2010) - It was so bad that it pissed me off, and I had to turn it off after 28 minutes. Talky, shallow, and psychologically immature, with DiCaprio, in fashion designer suits, trying to be bright. Insufferable.
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You're certainly not alone in your assessment. And hearing people drone on about how "amazing" it was (at the time of its release), was as nauseating as the film itself.
 
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Doctor Dugald Eldritch said:
I cannot recommend THE DOUBLE enough, a tense fusion of THE TENANT and BRAZIL; not to mention an always welcome cameo by Chris Morris as a blithely unhelpful official.
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I liked The Double, but I preferred Enemy. They dealt with similar themes and came out at the same time. Enemy is based on José Saramago's novel The Double, which I have not yet read. I would be very surprised if it leaves the same impression as the film. Nightmarish in the extreme. The film was directed by Denis Villeneuve who is building an impressive filmography. His movie Incendies is a powerful film and one that I wished that I had never seen.
 
I watched all the Tiger Cage films. It isn't a continuing story, the first and second film shares some actors but they aren't the same characters. The series is probably best remembered for the second film (?) with Yen and Kwan but the third one is an interesting change; the characters have ridiculous endurance. The whole series is surprisingly violent.

Righting Wrongs is fantastic, those plane stunts demand more respect. The multiple endings aren't that interesting, they mostly stop at different points.

Seen the full version of Salem's Lot for the first time in ages, knowing who more of the actors are changes the experience quite a lot.
I still think those shock zoom shots are a mistake and some of the vampires look like they're wincing with discomfort in the make-up. The vampire who repeatedly says "look at me" seems as if he wants the old man to shag him.
The old house in the last 6th of the film looks very good. Soundtrack might be worth seeking out?
Does anyone know if the Hooper commentary track is worth a listen because he was a notoriously quiet man and 3 hours might be difficult.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfs9x0Yxyw0
Been wanting to see Singapore Sling for a very long time and discovered recently there is a channel with the bulk of Nikos Nikolaidis's filmography in HD (I've heard his son uploaded it all). It's a contender for the strangest film I've ever seen, like a deranged soft porn film set in a neo-noir world. I don't think it's his best known film in Greece but it's the one that got him international attention and it was banned in britain. I maybe admire it more than enjoyed it but it always looks wonderful.
See You In Hell My Darling whooshed over my head even more, it has a lot of similarities to Singapore Sling but I found it harder to get a foothold. What were the multiple scenes of that woman falling in the water all about? I'm having trouble imagining what his more mainstream films might be like.
 
The Painted Veil (1934), with Greta Garbo in a fine performance. Based on the novel by M. Somerset Maugham (also author of The Razor's Edge), the title referring to one of Shelley's poems.

A story that encourages perseverance and staying power through the mundane struggles of marriage, instead of giving in to destructive easy temptations.
 
Terrifier 2 (2022): more clown carnage in a slightly disappointing follow-up to 2016's sprightly yet sinister indie bloodbath. Needlessly overlong and overplotted in comparison to its predecessor's gleefully pointless pagan revelling in chaotic cruelty and nonsense, but intermittently amusing enough to reward the discerning viewer's persistence more than most current titles I could name. With any luck (and just a little more ingenuity) this frolicking ghoul-painted jester's antics could yet birth the franchise that kills off the misbegotten fad of movie franchises forever.

All said, one of the better horror titles in at least a decade, perhaps surpassed only by the darkly glistering Machenesque saturnalia that is Cats (2019).
 
I watched the trailer for Terrifier 2. That ghoulish clown is revolting, looks absolutely disgusting. But the handiwork and acting comes across as rather materialistic. I may see it, but am afraid it will be filled with the cynical kind of "torture porn" which seems to be the fashion these days.

I love the atmosphere of older horror films, from the early 1980s and backwards. But I stopped watching horror films in the 1990s when Scream came, which I refused to see, because I didn't like the chic irony and cynicism of the new times.

Which are the very best horror films between 2000 and 2022?
 
cnpappas said:
I think "Toad Road," was an excellent horror film, and "Lake Mungo," was crazy good.
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Lake Mungo is highly underrated. A low budget film that's way scarier than most any big budget film I've ever seen. But I'm a pretty big "found footage" fan, so my opinion may be a bit biased.
 
Gotta go with [REC] (2007), I think. A more brutally efficient use of a mere 70 minute running time I don't think I've witnessed in a horror movie. Just remember to avoid the sequels. And the remakes. And the sequels of the remakes. And the remakes of the sequels. Etc.

The Wailing (2016), on the other hand, runs nearly two hours and never feels overlong or padded, even on multiple viewings. As rich and strange a horror story as I've seen in years.

Romero's Diary of the Dead (2007) should have been a late-career masterpiece, bringing timely ideas like social networking, "citizen journalism" and vlogging into play in his apocalyptic vision, but something went amiss. Whether it was hampered by budget or schedule restrictions, or by a crew not quite up to the task, I have no idea, but too much of it feels sloppy and undercooked. Nevertheless, I'm fond of it.

Otherwise, most of my favorite horror movies from this century are unlikely to appear on any major lists, and I'll be the first to admit most of them are somewhat lacking in terms of production values, to put it mildly. Some of this comes down to the fact that a good number of them are found-footage, such as Hell House LLC (2015), Evidence (2012), and the Zombie Diaries "duology" (2006/2011). Almost all of them can be watched for free (with occasional ad breaks, alas) on the streaming service Tubi, but be warned, some of the more graphic horror material on there knocks all that tepid sludge like the "Saw" franchise (and the rest of the so-called torture porn movies that followed closely in its wake) straight into a cocked hat.

(One caveat regarding Tubi: for various reasons, my movie-watching has been way down for most of this year, and I recently had to re-login to Tubi after not using it for some months, only to find that my enormous saved to-be-watched list had vanished completely. Whether this was due to some software glitch in the app or because of some severe downgrade of the service, I have no idea and I haven't yet bothered to check. But it's entirely possible that their library is no longer as extensive and eclectic as I remember it.)
 
Like them or not, Saw and Hostel came from a truly bygone age of the film industry. I never saw those films but it really is stunning just how much the cinema landscape has died since then.

With some help from that Rolling Stone list (which has a lot of mediocrity on it), here's what I can remember, but probably still forgetting things...

Tale Of Tales, November, The VVitch, American Psycho, Mandy, Amer, Berberian Sound Studio, Under The Skin, Let The Right One In.
I have some real fondness for parts of Martyrs but ultimately I've cooled on it.
 
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