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unzki
Movie I'd take to a secluded place: The Thing, John Carpenter version.
It's good if a movie has a plot and decent acting. It's great if a movie has a message that gets you thinking! But if a movie has a decent/interesting enough monster and a cool premise, everything else is just a bonus. B)
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The Breach (2022)
Unfulfilled potential
By the blurb, this one sounded interesting and I'll definitely have to check out the original book. This adaptation however is quite lackluster, coming off as rather amateurish which is odd as the director HAS made better-reviewed films and should know what he's doing. Perhaps the production team he was working with just didn't deliver, or maybe he's getting too old?
Nevertheless, as others have said, the overall quality of the movie screams "barely adequate TV mystery-drama" for the most part: Flat and bright lighting in places, overtly sharp image (a common issue with modern stuff, almost everything looking like a TV production instead of an actual movie), reasonably capable actors who could've used a bit more direction, a script that wasn't quite finished, and overall leaving me with a constant feel that things were just somehow lacking. It never really grabbed me the way that From Beyond (1986) or The Void (2016) did. I found the plot reasonable easy to follow and liked that it didn't spell things out too much, but I have seen and read quite a lot of similar stories so YMMV.
What I personally found most annoying besides the nagging feeling of the movie just lacking a bit more tune and polish was the soundtrack: There were a couple of functionally creepy tunes, but as others have once again said, mostly it just detracted from the movie. Slash might now his rock'n'roll, but a horror movie composer he is NOT.
Check it out on streaming, maybe even rent for cheap... Me? I spent 15 euros on the DVD that I feel should've been 5.
Enys Men (2022)
Emergent Storytelling
Seems most people either love it or dislike/hate it... I liked it but probably won't watch it again anytime soon. I don't have a clue about the regional legends, folktales or cultural markers the movie is said to reference.
What I do have is a lot of patience and quite a bit of imagination. It also helped that it was screened at a folk horror event so I had some context for it. Thus the film did keep my interest as I tried to piece together WTH was going on, and creating a story within my head as the movie went on. The atmosphere is eerie and the movie overall is experimentally interesting so I think the director is on to something, I'd just hope his next effort would be something where I don't have to create most of the story for myself.
Go see if you're ok with experimental, slow-paced stuff that doesn't offer you much answers.
Avoid if you want your horror with action and explanations, and have a low threshold for experimental stuff.
The Bomb (2016)
Few Additions...
I would've added at the end imagery of extremophile life: bacteria, tardigrades, insects, deep-sea volcanic vents. Then moved on to abandoned human places that nature has taken over, like the Pripyat region (Chernobyl incident).
Why? To show that life will go on even if humanity is stupid enough to erase itself from existence. We do not matter on such a scale, and nothing will cry for us after we are gone.
Also, would've liked to see death/injury rate on the animal testing.
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
A Solid Adaptation With A Couple Issues
As a fan of the manga and anime OVA, I really wanted to like it more... It is a better adaptation than I feared, mostly doing a very good job at adapting the source materials (both the aforementioned manga and anime), heart-pounding action, eliciting tears as it rightly should in places, solid cyberpunk/postapoc feels, despite the PG-13 rating you still get a fair idea of the brutality of the original (though no brain-munching or spine-stealing =P ), they didn't even overlook some of the smaller but IMO important details. Alita herself was well realized, and felt like the character I know from the original materials.
However, there were two very major drawbacks:
Firstly, the motivations of one important character aren't established well enough, and overall there's a rushed feel when IMO more time should've been invested into them. Cramming the first three books into one film was a bit too much, as I feared, and as a result the scene-arc which I think should have been the climax of the movie and taken all the time needed for maximum dramatic impact went by all too fast.
Second, the music... It's the nowadays all-too-usual "Generic Epic" orchestral Hollywood music that seems to plague action and adventure movies. It sounds fine by itself, but it lacks any character whatsoever and is utterly forgettable which is a damn shame because Alita would've deserved a metal/punk/techno-soundtrack with crummy machine noise and synthesizers in the vein of Brad Fiedel's classic scores for Cameron's Terminator movies. =/ I am rather biased in this respect, though, as I believe the simple yet stylish OST of the anime adaptation from early nineties is one of the best I've ever heard, though I understand that's partly nostalgia and partly because of how hard I got hit by the fan-bug when it comes to Alita/Gunnm. ^^; Still, seems nowadays both movie- and gamemakers tend to go for epic orchestral soundtracks, regardless of whether it actually benefits or even fits a story...
All in all, if you're a fan of the original or just out to see a futuristic action romp, I would recommend checking Alita out. Knowledge of the original material isn't required as there's enough exposition to fill the necessary gaps, though at times it certainly helped to know a bit more about the backstory, even when they gave this version their own twists.
Alita: Battle Angel is in my opinion a solid 7/10.
Parasite (1982)
Almost Thoroughly Poorly Executed
While I'm a creature feature aficionado, I can safely say I will not be adding this to my collection unless I find it *really* cheap or part of a larger collection as this is one of the most ineptly made movies I've ever seen! It does have some historical value though, being Demi Moore's second movie and more importantly for me, Stan Winston's third. It is particularly interesting to note how familiar some forms of the Winston-created creature in Leviathan (1989) are to the Parasite.
Unfortunately, Charles Band seems an incompetent director, especially considering this was his third feature. It makes me doubly angry that a promising director like Fred Dekker got his career crushed after a solid start by the single mistake that was Robocop 3 (which likely would've been a disaster regardless of director, thanks to idiotic studio demands), yet Band has went on to direct C-grade schlock, one after the other! He should've stuck to producing, since at least there he has managed to do some good like Stuart Gordon's From Beyond. Getting back to Parasite, this movie also wasn't helped by the utterly atrocious editing, meandering writing, unbelievable characters or poor acting. It isn't even campy, it's just inept and rather boring.
If there's a single good thing about the movie in addition to the interesting if somewhat static creature effects, it is Richard Band's musical score which hits just the right notes for an 80's horror. I recommend steering clear of this, unless you're a lover of monster movies and want to calibrate the lower end of your rating spectrum.
Crawl or Die (2014)
Nice for a B-Indie, but way too long!
I was originally planning to give this a 6 for trying, alas, rethinking does force me to decrease to 5... I don't think it deserves lower, but it also does not deserve higher either. Had this been 45-60min in length, then maybe.
Scrappy security team protects last fertile woman in existence from an alien creature doggedly pursuing them. I won't call them soldiers, since they make a couple decisions that distinctly mark them untrained in that regard... But overall the actors do well enough with what they got.
The backstory is told in an unnecessary flashback and could've easily been recounted by the characters in-action. The backstory is pretty basic and works mostly as an excuse to force the events upon our protagonists, exactly like in older Shoot-Em-Up -games, and is thus pretty irrelevant to the actual happenings on-screen.
What happens, then? Here we come into the main pro AND con of the movie: most of it is simply crawling through very, VERY cramped spaces and while it ups the claustrophobia, it also gets rather dull to watch and I constantly had the feeling that Crawl or Die would've worked better if it were shorter.
Creature itself is a cheap Alien rip-off, though that doesn't matter much to me, as I prefer cheap but usually workable practical effects to cheap and usually crappy CGI.
All in all, I'm not regretting buying the DVD on cheap, but also don't think I'll watch it again anytime soon! Had the writer-director kept this at the length of approx a TV episode, it could've worked better, so my verdict will be "Nice try, try again!", especially if he's planning to continue Tank's story in the future. =)
Death Machine (1994)
Solid B-Shocker
It is a shame that Stephen Norrington's directing career was buried by Extraordinary Gentlemen, since he could've pulled off some interesting things! As his directing debut this is a fairly strong movie, and with Blade he showed that he did have what it took... If only he had avoided LoEG!!
Sure, the plot isn't anything special nor are the effects that spectacular... But they work, and workable practical effects are always better than naff CGI! Brad Dourif is also always a pleasure to watch, even though it seems that he's been typecast into slimebag roles for a lot of his career. The other actors also give decent performances, and didn't make me cringe... Well, not too often, anyway. ^^
All in all, "Death Machine" is, if not a gem of a B-movie, at least a solid performer for friends of the genre. It recycles known cliches but remained entertaining for its runtime (111min UK version) and thus I give it a recommendation.