Pure popcorn action/horror. Was expecting a silly Nazi-sploitation horror flick in the same vein as 2013's "Frankenstein's Army" or 2009's "Dead Snow"... you know, lots of splatter, but not much story. It ended up being more of a war-time thriller, with the horror aspects mostly contained in the second half. Lots of spectacle, just don't go in expecting any kind of historical accuracy or anything intellectually challenging.
Compared to most action-adventure stories, it's pretty average. But compared to other video-game movies, this is definitely one of the better game adaptations. It borrows more heavily from the more recent Tomb Raider games than the older '90s games most people are probably more familiar with (particularly Lara's use of bow-and-arrow instead of her trademark twin pistols). It's less tongue-in-cheek than the two Angelina Jolie films (which also fits with the darker tone of the recent games), but still manages to be a fun time.
It was alright... not great, but not terrible either. I think what throws people off is the humor, and I think some Batman fans get annoyed seeing their favorite crime-fighter do anything that isn't 100% dead-serious. (That being said, I grew up with the Adam West version of Batman, and often pine for the days when we could take our cape-wearing protagonists a little less seriously.)
Perhaps if this were animated in a style that was distinct enough from the old '90s Batman: the Animated Series style (which was a more serious take on the character than previous animated shows had been, coming off the popularity of the Tim Burton films), it might not have rubbed so many people the wrong way.
My favorite part was the brief cameo by Swamp Thing at the end, though the entire sequence in the costumed-henchmen bar was pretty fun as well, as it reminded me of something you'd see in an episode of The Venture Bros. (which is itself a satire of super-hero cartoons).
Really glad I saw this with no pre-conceived notions about what this film was about... I didn't see any trailers for it, and had only heard through word-of-mouth that it was a decent thriller. From what I can tell from others, a lot of people were expecting a typical horror film, which did not work in its favor. I've seen this happen with other movies as well (2006's Bug and 2014's The Babadook both immediately come to mind, as neither one could really be considered "traditional" horror films, yet were largely advertised as such and suffered with larger audiences for it).
Very well-crafted and haunting, it's almost meditative in the ways it plays with themes of paranoia and the break-down of society and family in times of desperation. It reminded me at times of 2015's Maggie, which had a similar contemplative and slow pace to it, though that one was more focused on themes of grief rather than paranoia, and had an actual zombie apocalypse as its setting rather than the undefined plague ravaging the survivors in It Comes at Night.
Don't expect to get any real new insights into the Amityville story... it certainly didn't change my opinion on whether or not the Lutzes' story was true or not. Instead, it's really a look at how this experience deeply affected one of the Lutz children, and how the deep psychological scars of the event continues to affect him nearly 40 years later.
Was totally thrown by the filmmaker's references to Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros", which seems a little high-brow for a story about undead exotic dancers. But even that didn't save it from being essentially a really silly, bad horror-comedy.
Needs to be updated to "The Taking of Deborah Logan"
Has some decent, spooky atmosphere and creepy effects, but since I have family members who suffer from Alzheimer's it felt a little exploitative, which ended up spoiling a lot of the fun for me. Still, I have to admit that Jill Larson did an amazing job with creating all the various versions of her character.
Since the entire horror genre is now flush with "found-footage" style stories, I suppose it would have been silly to think that a Blair Witch sequel would stick to the ambiguity and slow buildup of tension of the original. Part of the joy of the original Blair Witch Project was the ambiguity of its ending. You weren't really meant to know if anything seen on the film was truly supernatural or not. Since that's not really an option in the sequel, instead we get a movie that tries to quickly get to all of the supernatural scares and completely undercutting any spooky tension of the original. You also see a lot more blood (the original is practically bloodless) and even
glimpses of some sort of humanoid creature chasing after our protagonists
. It really adds nothing to the genre or to the Blair Witch series itself.
Perhaps the only thing it shares with the original is the nauseatingly shaky camera work. Make sure to take a Dramamine before seeing it.
That final image, of Ichi's face lit up by the light of fireworks, blood trickling down his forehead... holy moley! The entire last act is visually stunning, almost more like a horror or thriller than your usual chanbara sword-flick.
Found myself getting annoyed that they didn't explore the abusive relationship between the Joker and Harley. Both the animated series (where Harley Quinn was invented) and the later comics portrayed the relationship as almost entirely one-sided, with Harley's devotion to "Mr. J" being tolerated by the Joker only so long as it benefited him. Instead we get a neon-splashed Bonnie and Clyde, causing some young women to get the wrong impression about what these two characters are all about. Maybe that's an aspect to be explored in future DC movies, allowing for further development for Harley's character in other films. I don't know.
aka: "Godzilla vs. Monster Zero" or "Invasion of Astro-Monster"
Besides having three of the best of the classic Toho monsters sharing almost equal screen-time (Godzilla, Rodan, and big bad King Ghidorah), what always struck me about this particular installment of the Godzilla franchise when I first saw it as a kid was the ambiguous ending
with all three monsters falling into the sea, and only Ghidorah flying away, leaving Rodan and Godzilla's fates unknown (until the sequel)
Sort of an interesting transitional film for Wes Craven, as it comes at the tail-end of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, but its meta, self-aware nature pre-dated his later "Scream" films.
Really fun, cheesy sci-fi. I thought it was especially funny how it seems every time Flash meets a new culture on Mongo (be it the Lion Men, the Shark Men, etc.), his first instinct is to pick a fight. Like every... single... time.
Like Clean_Slate said, this is a completely different movie compared to the previous "Police Story" films, with Chan playing an older, more serious mainland Chinese cop. They excise most of the comedy in favor of a more dramatic story, which may be galling to most Jackie Chan fans, but I found to be an interesting change of pace for the 60+ year old actor.
aka: "War-Gods of the Deep" (the picture even says it!)
An absurd thriller loosely inspired by the poem "The City in the Sea" by Edgar Allen Poe... the producers were likely trying to cash-in on Vincent Price's previous Poe-related films. The steam-punk look of the technology was fun, but the whole thing gets dragged down by the poorly-lit, overly-long underwater sequences, not to mention the laughably-terrible monsters.
This movie has a weird history, but basically the producers at After Dark Films shot this movie in Bulgaria with a Bulgarian director, ended up with a completely unwatchable mess, and had to quickly rework the entire thing into a MST3k-style comedy just to salvage it. Some of the jokes are pretty good, but even that couldn't really save this terrible, terrible movie.
Was willing to give this a shot because the character designs reminded me of 2013's "Epic", which I felt was very underrated. Unfortunately, this was just awful. It certainly didn't help that they tried to cram in as many pop-song covers into its 99 minute runtime as they could... it'd probably appeal to young kids or those raised on "Glee" and "High School Musical", but it was simply painful for me to sit through.
Comments 1 - 25 of 192
Movie comment on Overlord
DJPowWow
Pure popcorn action/horror. Was expecting a silly Nazi-sploitation horror flick in the same vein as 2013's "Frankenstein's Army" or 2009's "Dead Snow"... you know, lots of splatter, but not much story. It ended up being more of a war-time thriller, with the horror aspects mostly contained in the second half. Lots of spectacle, just don't go in expecting any kind of historical accuracy or anything intellectually challenging.Movie comment on Gallows Hill
DJPowWow
Should include an "aka: The Damned" on this page, as it was released in many territories under this title (including Netflix in the U.S.)Movie comment on Tomb Raider
DJPowWow
Compared to most action-adventure stories, it's pretty average. But compared to other video-game movies, this is definitely one of the better game adaptations. It borrows more heavily from the more recent Tomb Raider games than the older '90s games most people are probably more familiar with (particularly Lara's use of bow-and-arrow instead of her trademark twin pistols). It's less tongue-in-cheek than the two Angelina Jolie films (which also fits with the darker tone of the recent games), but still manages to be a fun time.Movie comment on Batman and Harley Quinn
DJPowWow
It was alright... not great, but not terrible either. I think what throws people off is the humor, and I think some Batman fans get annoyed seeing their favorite crime-fighter do anything that isn't 100% dead-serious. (That being said, I grew up with the Adam West version of Batman, and often pine for the days when we could take our cape-wearing protagonists a little less seriously.)Perhaps if this were animated in a style that was distinct enough from the old '90s Batman: the Animated Series style (which was a more serious take on the character than previous animated shows had been, coming off the popularity of the Tim Burton films), it might not have rubbed so many people the wrong way.
My favorite part was the brief cameo by Swamp Thing at the end, though the entire sequence in the costumed-henchmen bar was pretty fun as well, as it reminded me of something you'd see in an episode of The Venture Bros. (which is itself a satire of super-hero cartoons).
Movie comment on It Comes at Night
DJPowWow
Really glad I saw this with no pre-conceived notions about what this film was about... I didn't see any trailers for it, and had only heard through word-of-mouth that it was a decent thriller. From what I can tell from others, a lot of people were expecting a typical horror film, which did not work in its favor. I've seen this happen with other movies as well (2006's Bug and 2014's The Babadook both immediately come to mind, as neither one could really be considered "traditional" horror films, yet were largely advertised as such and suffered with larger audiences for it).Very well-crafted and haunting, it's almost meditative in the ways it plays with themes of paranoia and the break-down of society and family in times of desperation. It reminded me at times of 2015's Maggie, which had a similar contemplative and slow pace to it, though that one was more focused on themes of grief rather than paranoia, and had an actual zombie apocalypse as its setting rather than the undefined plague ravaging the survivors in It Comes at Night.
Movie comment on Bram Stoker's Dracula
DJPowWow
aka: "Bram Stoker's Dracula"Movie comment on My Amityville Horror
DJPowWow
Don't expect to get any real new insights into the Amityville story... it certainly didn't change my opinion on whether or not the Lutzes' story was true or not. Instead, it's really a look at how this experience deeply affected one of the Lutz children, and how the deep psychological scars of the event continues to affect him nearly 40 years later.Movie comment on Zombie Strippers!
DJPowWow
Was totally thrown by the filmmaker's references to Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros", which seems a little high-brow for a story about undead exotic dancers. But even that didn't save it from being essentially a really silly, bad horror-comedy.Movie comment on The Taking
DJPowWow
Needs to be updated to "The Taking of Deborah Logan"Has some decent, spooky atmosphere and creepy effects, but since I have family members who suffer from Alzheimer's it felt a little exploitative, which ended up spoiling a lot of the fun for me. Still, I have to admit that Jill Larson did an amazing job with creating all the various versions of her character.
Movie comment on Blair Witch
DJPowWow
Since the entire horror genre is now flush with "found-footage" style stories, I suppose it would have been silly to think that a Blair Witch sequel would stick to the ambiguity and slow buildup of tension of the original. Part of the joy of the original Blair Witch Project was the ambiguity of its ending. You weren't really meant to know if anything seen on the film was truly supernatural or not. Since that's not really an option in the sequel, instead we get a movie that tries to quickly get to all of the supernatural scares and completely undercutting any spooky tension of the original. You also see a lot more blood (the original is practically bloodless) and evenPerhaps the only thing it shares with the original is the nauseatingly shaky camera work. Make sure to take a Dramamine before seeing it.
Movie comment on Zatôichi abare tako
DJPowWow
That final image, of Ichi's face lit up by the light of fireworks, blood trickling down his forehead... holy moley! The entire last act is visually stunning, almost more like a horror or thriller than your usual chanbara sword-flick.Movie comment on Suicide Squad
DJPowWow
Found myself getting annoyed that they didn't explore the abusive relationship between the Joker and Harley. Both the animated series (where Harley Quinn was invented) and the later comics portrayed the relationship as almost entirely one-sided, with Harley's devotion to "Mr. J" being tolerated by the Joker only so long as it benefited him. Instead we get a neon-splashed Bonnie and Clyde, causing some young women to get the wrong impression about what these two characters are all about. Maybe that's an aspect to be explored in future DC movies, allowing for further development for Harley's character in other films. I don't know.Movie comment on Ichimei
DJPowWow
aka: "Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai" (world-wide English title)Movie comment on Kaijû daisensô
DJPowWow
aka: "Godzilla vs. Monster Zero" or "Invasion of Astro-Monster"Besides having three of the best of the classic Toho monsters sharing almost equal screen-time (Godzilla, Rodan, and big bad King Ghidorah), what always struck me about this particular installment of the Godzilla franchise when I first saw it as a kid was the ambiguous ending
Movie comment on Hodejegerne
DJPowWow
aka: "Headhunters"Movie comment on Wes Craven's New Nightmare
DJPowWow
aka: "Wes Craven's New Nightmare"Sort of an interesting transitional film for Wes Craven, as it comes at the tail-end of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, but its meta, self-aware nature pre-dated his later "Scream" films.
Movie comment on Eliza Graves
DJPowWow
aka: "Stonehearst Asylum"Movie comment on Big Game
DJPowWow
It's a fun, dumb action adventure! What's not to like?Movie comment on Flash Gordon
DJPowWow
Really fun, cheesy sci-fi. I thought it was especially funny how it seems every time Flash meets a new culture on Mongo (be it the Lion Men, the Shark Men, etc.), his first instinct is to pick a fight. Like every... single... time.Movie comment on Ging Chat Goo Si
DJPowWow
aka: "Police Story: Lockdown" (USA title)Like Clean_Slate said, this is a completely different movie compared to the previous "Police Story" films, with Chan playing an older, more serious mainland Chinese cop. They excise most of the comedy in favor of a more dramatic story, which may be galling to most Jackie Chan fans, but I found to be an interesting change of pace for the 60+ year old actor.
Movie comment on War-Gods of the Deep
DJPowWow
aka: "War-Gods of the Deep" (the picture even says it!)An absurd thriller loosely inspired by the poem "The City in the Sea" by Edgar Allen Poe... the producers were likely trying to cash-in on Vincent Price's previous Poe-related films. The steam-punk look of the technology was fun, but the whole thing gets dragged down by the poorly-lit, overly-long underwater sequences, not to mention the laughably-terrible monsters.
Movie comment on Relatos salvajes
DJPowWow
aka: "Wild Tales"Movie comment on Asylum
DJPowWow
This movie has a weird history, but basically the producers at After Dark Films shot this movie in Bulgaria with a Bulgarian director, ended up with a completely unwatchable mess, and had to quickly rework the entire thing into a MST3k-style comedy just to salvage it. Some of the jokes are pretty good, but even that couldn't really save this terrible, terrible movie.Movie comment on Penthouse North
DJPowWow
aka: "Blindsided"Movie comment on Strange Magic
DJPowWow
Was willing to give this a shot because the character designs reminded me of 2013's "Epic", which I felt was very underrated. Unfortunately, this was just awful. It certainly didn't help that they tried to cram in as many pop-song covers into its 99 minute runtime as they could... it'd probably appeal to young kids or those raised on "Glee" and "High School Musical", but it was simply painful for me to sit through.Showing items 1 – 25 of 192