CS Film Club

[Doomsday]

I'll go with Primer.

[JBond]

Hah, ****. Only now that you've said it I wonder if it's a bit similar to Inception in style. But at the same time, not at all.

[Dracula]

Originally Posted by JBond

Hah, ****. Only now that you've said it I wonder if it's a bit similar to Inception in style. But at the same time, not at all.

Mostly not at all

[JBond]

Yeah, I had to add that part because "style" isn't really what I meant. But concerning our discuss about sci-fi where things are explained to you in complex detail, it's similar.

[Doomsday]

I'm intrigued already, muahaha.

[JBond]

Watch it with your full attention.

[shained]

FULL attention (and a notepad!)



Cracking film.

[Hollywood]

shained

Attack the Block

1 out of 5 stars.

Did mine little earlier cause had extra time. I give it a 1, Its not horrible but wasn't that great. Hope it doesn't offend you (sorry if it does) but just have different taste in this movie then you. There were some things i didn't like about the movie and will explain more below. I think it was a straight to dvd type of movie that didnt reach theaters but not certain. Low budget film.

Non spoiler plot

A london gang do there everyday activities and one night a mysterious things comes crashing down in london. Soon to find out that it was aliens that was crashing down. The town gets overrun by them and gang are in a tough situation throughout the film.

Spoiler plot version

A london gang does there everyday activities and on this 1 particular night they rob a random lady. Little after a mysterious object falls from the sky crashing by a car next to the gang. They look to see what it is and find out it to be a alien looking thing. So the alien runs and gang goes after it and kills it. Shortly after more mysterious things fall from the sky in packs. This time they look different then the one before. When they spot them it looks like a gorilla looking thing with big blue teeth. The town gets over run by them and the gang made friends with the women they robbed and sicked together for survival. They partially stick to this one building most of the film. They gathered weapons and fireworks to fight against the gorilla aliens. Then they had let gas flow from stove on a high level that killed the gorilla aliens that one of the gangs shoot in gas area with a firecracker.

Story wasn't too believable. I can tell it was trying to be a fun type of scary movie but it wasn't that fun for me. Was way too cheesy on several things in the movie.

Music was horrible during some of the fights and important parts of movie. Some techno, elevator type of music that didnt fit that parts of important of film when played. Kind of wanted to mute that music to be honest, but didnt. Music selection was horrible. The gorilla aliens looks way too cheesy and had cheap budget effects on them. Very cheesy movie over all. Acting wasn't all that great and sorry to say but give it a 1 star. Sorry
shained that i didnt like it.

[shained]

No worries mate I'm sure it's not to everyone's tastes.

Sorry you never liked it.

[morpheus1987]

Wow, I really liked Attack the Block

[PG Cooper]

Switched to Flame and Citron, review should be up in a few minutes.

[PG Cooper]

Flame and Citron

Flame and Citron is set in Copenhagen between 1943 and 1944. There exists a resistance group called the Holger Danske who are fighting against the Nazis. Two of their most notorious members are Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and Citron (Mads Mikkelsen), a duo who's job consists of going through Copenhagen and assassinating Nazis and their allies. But the two are eventually pulled into a world where they aren't sure who can be trusted.

Flame and Citron was a movie that wasn't even on my radar. I remember seeing a trailer for it a while back, thinking it looked interesting, and then forgetting about it. Will I'm glad I got it recommended to me because this is a great movie. The story starts out simple enough, but becomes more complicated when Flame and Citron start to realize there aren't a lot of people they can trust. This a film fill of lies, double-crosses, informants, etc. This leads into one of the film's main themes; the ambiguities and grey areas of war. Flame and Citron have doubts about what there doing throughout, and I admire that the film never glorified or condemned their actions, merely presented them.

The two leads are both excellent, with Thure Lindhardt playing the more reckless Flame and Mads Mikkelsen playing the more reserved and apprehensive Citron. I really liked these characters, and a big part of why the movie worked is because I was rooting for them. Director Ole Christian Madsen does a great job keeping the film tense thanks to some great cinematography and tight editing. Kudos as well to the costume and set designers who did a good job capturing the time period.

So far, this is my favourite movie I've watched for the film club. The acting is great, the story is interesting, and on the whole Flame and Citron is a very well-made film. It isn't quite an A+ film, but it is a great movie that I strongly recommend to anyone with an interest in history or in film.

Rating: A

In for next round.

[Doomsday]

1 out of 5 is 'not horrible but not great? Then what's a 2 out of 10?

[MovieBuff801]

Originally Posted by PG Cooper

Flame and Citron

So far, this is my favourite movie I've watched for the film club.

Awesome, so glad you enjoyed it. Like you, I saw the trailer on the DVD of In The Loop, and just had to hunt the movie down. Definitely one of the best thrillers of the past few years.

[PG Cooper]

Originally Posted by moviebuff801

Awesome, so glad you enjoyed it. Like you, I saw the trailer on the DVD of In The Loop, and just had to hunt the movie down. Definitely one of the best thrillers of the past few years.

You even know the DVD that showed me the trailer, what would I do without you moviebuff

[MovieBuff801]

Originally Posted by PG Cooper

You even know the DVD that showed me the trailer, what would I do without you moviebuff

You'd be lost, that's for sure.

And still try to see Take Shelter if you can. I have a feeling you'd love that, too.

[Dracula]

Originally Posted by morpheus1987

Dracula:

Being Elmo
Bottle Rocket
The Grey
Tucker and Dale Vs Evil
12 Angry Men
A Scanner Darkly
Dog Day Afternoon

Let me know if you need another list. Hopefully there is something there that you haven't seen.

Oh and sorry for posting so many movies, I just know that Drac has seen a ton.

Originally Posted by Dracula

I'll try and see if I can get a copy of The Grey

Well, getting that copy of The Grey turned out to be harder than I expected, so I did Tucker and Dale vs. Evil instead.


Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil (2010)
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is a movie that’s I’d heard about in passing but had casually dismissed, largely because it has a truly terrible title which was completely off-putting, partly because it expects us to know who the hell “tucker and dale” are and partly because the notion of pitting them against evil sounds downright silly. When I heard it was a parody of horror movies I thought to myself “Oh, great, yet another movie that will point out that virgins tend to be the survivor at the end of slasher movies.” As it turns out, the film is less interested in lampooning genre tropes than it is in poking fun at the tensions between “rednecks” and “city-folk.” The premise of the movie is that Tucker and Dale are two perfectly harmless hillbillies, who (through a series of wacky misunderstandings) are judged to be deranged and evil killers by a group of horny and incredibly accident-prone college students that are camping in the woods. For this concept to work the characters on all sides need to behave in ways that are really really stupid. I get that this is satire and that things need to be exaggerated, but it gets to a point where nothing these people do really seems to reflect any kind of reality and that undercuts any message the film might have about the wider world. Still, the film’s central role-reversal is fairly clever and in the context of a fifteen to twenty minute comedy sketch it would be pretty amusing. The problem is that the filmmakers do a whole lot of padding in order to get it up to feature length. It quickly becomes apparent that this is little more than a one-joke film and after about an hour of that one joke being repeated over and over again, tedium began to set in.
** out of Four

[morpheus1987]

Sorry to hear you didn't like it all that much. I think you make some very valid comments though.

So I wasn't able to snag a copy of Reds, so i ended up going with The Road instead.

The Road

This is yet another movie that I have wanted to see for a while, but just never got around to viewing it. I really enjoyed watching it, but I can honestly say that this was one of the bleakest, most disturbing films I have seen in a long time. This is definitely not a feel good movie, but I think it is a very fascinating study of human nature and what exactly we would do in the face of the apocalypse. By the end of this movie, it is hard to not be disgusted with the results. I can't stop thinking about the scene where humans were being farmed by cannibals in the basement, and the scene with Michael K. Williams is one of the more disturbing and haunting scenes I have seen in a while. The acting was top notch, and I was very impressed with the acting by Kodi Smit-McKee, who plays the boy.
I'm glad I ended up watching this movie, but it is definitely a tough pill to swallow. Certainly not the type of movie I would want to revisit often. It was very well done, the story was excellent (I really liked the minimalist approach to explaining the apocalpyse), and the acting was top notch. I would highly recommend this, but I caution the easily distraught not to take caution when watching this. This is a violent, disturbing, and sad movie. A good one, but a haunting one.

Overall: 8/10

[MovieBuff801]

Planning on watching my movie in a bit, so my review should be up tonight or by tomorrow at the latest.

[JBond]

Mine might be a day late.

[sshuttari]

Im jumping back into this since I have no school this summer and why not.... Im in for next round. Let me know with a PM in case I don't check to see when the list goes up

[shained]

I'll try and watch mine tonight, was hoping to find a bird to watch it with but no luck :-(

[JBond]

The Red Shoes (1948)

A young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.

This film had an interesting narrative style that loosely followed a few different storylines through the eyes of three characters. It was refreshing in a way, but also a bit boring. Over an hour later we get to the performance of The Red Shoes which was pretty interesting because it had some special effects that clearly the audience in the movie couldn't see, giving it this surreal and creative feeling.

Near the end the movie finally coalesces a bit and the plot intesifies as the ballet dancer can't decide between her lover or dancing. It has a pretty surprising (though foreshadowed) and memorable ending, but in the end this movie really wasn't for me.

**.5/****

[MovieBuff801]

The Devil's Backbone

Horror is NOT one of my favorite film genres, pretty much because if you've seen a handful, you've basically seen them all. But also because very little effort is put into the genre these days, and filmmakers think gore and jump scares constitute terror. Um, no. There's a lot more that goes into crafting a good horror film, and fortunately, Guillermo Del Toro is one of the few directors who understands that.

While I wouldn't call "The Devil's Backbone" an outright horror film, it still has elements of one. And while I'd call this film good, I think this is clearly an exercise of Del Toro trying to find his voice, and he'd make a superior film years later with "Pan's Labryinth."

"The Devil's Backbone" tells the story of a young Spanish orphan who's left to be cared for in an isolated orphanage during the Civil War. The boy immediately starts to get bullied by other boys living there, but also, he stumbles upon a secret contained within the walls of the orphanage: that the spirit of another young boy haunts it, seeking revenge for something. Or is it to warn the boys of another secret danger? That mystery is the focal point of the film.

Overall, my reaction to this film wasn't as strong as the one I had to "Pan's Labryinth." I mean, the story is still interesting and Del Toro does a good job of maintaining mystery throughout, but there were still points where I thought the film dragged, even for a 103-minute film. I also could have done without a lot of the bullying that was inflicted on the main kid; I mean, I understand the desire for conflict there, but the theme of bullying, to me, has kinda worn thin by now. And there were some moments where I could see the "boo" scares coming.

But nonetheless, I admire Del Toro's darker vision for fantasy, and he rightfully earns his status as an adult fairy tale storyteller. I also really like how he creates atmosphere in his films. And while "The Devil's Backbone", in my opinion, isn't one of his stronger efforts, it's still more worth seeing than 95% of today's ghost stories.

***/****

And I'm in for the next round.

[Hollywood]

Im in for next round. Anyone left for reviews?