Thread: What film have you just watched?

Sorry i missed Hellraiser. Moving is a bitch but i almost have it all sorted out.
Granted, i have seen Hellraiser so i can just jump in on the 2nd.

I just watched The Crow and while I am not big on movies, I must say, that one is very good. I know it is considered kind of a cult classic now but it deserved more praise when it was new. I guess the death of Brandon Lee kind of turned it upside down.

I watched Venom with a few of my buddies yesterday. I used to read Venom a lot as a kid so I was down to check it out despite the negative press and its...pretty damn good actually. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I like this more than most of the MCU movies because, since it's not tied to the MCU universe, it can actually branch out and do it's own thing and I think it's better for it. I've seen some people who lambaste it for not being dark enough or gory enough but you know what? Certain comics did portray Venom as being a bit goofy. In fact, Venom's personality in this movie reminded me a little bit of the way Venom was portrayed in the PS1 Spider-Man game (Anything that brings back memories of that splendid game is A-OK in my books). My only real complaints is that it does have some tired elements (I.E. The main hero fights an evil, superpowered version of himself) and I found the voice Tom Hardy used as Eddie Brock to be kind of goofy. Still, those are just kind of nitpicky. I had a great time with this movie and I consider it to be one of the better comic book flicks to come out in awhile.

I just finished watching Alexander this afternoon, the one that stars Colin Farrell and Jared Leto, it's one film I haven't watched yet and after watching it, I'm very disappointed. There's more gay shit in it than action scenes. If not for Angelina Jolie I wouldn't have finished it.

Mantis and I watched The Strangers as sort of a late Halloween celebration flick. Basically masked folks who have borderline supernatural stealth skills to the point where I'm convinced that they trained with The League of Shadows from Batman Begins terrorize a couple in a secluded area. It's actually pretty decent horror. Not great but it's better than some of the horror movies that have come out in the past few years. It does a great job of building tension and while it does use jump scares (A pet peeve of mine when it comes to modern horror)it's never used to the point where it becomes obnoxious. It does suffer from some typical horror cliches (Characters in horror movies for some reason can't keep their balance when running) so it does somewhat take away from the experience. It's not gonna rock your world but if you want a tense home invasion movie, this will probably do the trick.

Just watched Battle: Los Angeles with my dad. I really wanted to enjoy it, but holy shit it was boring. Just another alien invasion film with only some passable special effects going for it.

Most recently I watched Toy Story 4 with my Girlfriend on Valentine's day. While it may not have been the best entry from the series it was still a good addition. Actually made me tear up.

I watched Kairo (sometimes released under the English translation "Pulse") with my sister when she came to visit and see my new house.

It's a lot like One Missed Call or Fear.com if you need a Western reference point. In fact there was an awful Western remake called Pulse as well.
The movie came out in 2000 I think, just as the internet was really picking up steam. The film's largest strength AND weakness is that the curse/ghost/whatever is very poorly defined. People who connect to the internet apparently just have a 1/1,000,000 chance of getting cursed and killing themselves. There's also something to do with red tape? I don't know, even the characters were confused. It's from that period just after Ring and Ju-On when J-horror was really hitting it's stride and it has most of the trappings of that era. A poorly defined ghost/curse that sort of kills people at random. I like it, but it's not for everybody. Apparently, the afterlife has filled up so that causes ghosts to flow into the world of the living via the Internet??? Another character explains the situation by saying that humans are lonely by nature, thus our ghosts must also be lonely. They are killing people to bring them to the other side because they are lonely. They never settle on which interpretation is correct.

What I appreciated a lot about it was how muted it was. There were maybe...10 extras in the whole movie? Despite taking place in a Japanese city where there should be 100,000's of people, the city felt barren, empty, and quiet. As someone who lived there for a while that was creepy to see. It's worth checking out sometime if you like the original Japanese One Missed Call, Dark Water, Ring, Ju-On (The Grudge), or other J-horror from the late 90's/early 2000's. However, there is far less action in Kairo than any of those titles. It has a floaty dreamlike quality to it.

BACK. TO. BACK. MOVIE. WATCHING. CHAMPION.

Seriously, is my movie watching outpacing the rest of y'all?

On Saturday night my sister visited me and brought a 5-film BluRay box sex of Scream. Now normally I wouldn't give a damn, but I was "Scream" (actually ghostface) for Halloween for 5 years straight as a kid because I love the design. Oddly, I had never seen any of the films. We watched Scream 1 & 2 back-to-back. Neither of them were any good.