What Emmanuelle Movie Did You Just Watch?

[Matt]

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in IMAX (lieMax)

Awesome. There were two guys behind me, and one of them had his young son in tow. When the film ended, I looked back and the kid was grinning big time. I asked if it was his first time seeing it and he said yes. Did he like it? He LOVED it. The two adults were grinning big time, and I complimented them on 'doing it right' by the kid.

As to the film: it's flawless. Simply a masterpiece in every way, shape, and form. It looked amazing on the huge lieMax screen with the sound system blaring at you.

As to changes: The reflection of the cobra has been removed when Indy faces the snake but that's it...everything else was there, INCLUDING the reflection of the cobra when Marion is facing the snake (more subtle but it's there if you're looking for it). Also, I finally got to see the C3PO/R2D2 hieroglyph.

What a great evening.

[Nathan]

So it was cleaned up?

[gravedigger]

PREDATOR is full of likeable characters, good lines, and coherent action. Even when you can't see the predator, you can understand what's going on.

PREDATOR 2 has none of that. The characters all suck and are poorly acted and directed (especially Bill Paxton, who turns in a career worst performance here). The dialog is ludicrously vulgar for no reason. There are a couole of cool moments here and there (love the predator running across the tops of the cars) but they are few and far between. Every single action sequence SUCKS. Poorly shot and badly edited.

Fucking hate this film so much. Stephen Hopkins can suck a flaming cock.

So I said to the doctor, "Can't I just give you my underwear?"

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Matt]

So it was cleaned up?

Parts of it looked IMMACULATE and totally restored, and other parts (especially in the shade) looked very rough.

[Matt]

So I said to the doctor, "Can't I just give you my underwear?"

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

'Shitty acting...is my specialty!'

[Captain Russ]

I think he just traded SAG cards with Nic that summer.

[Captain Russ]

VHS.

Uneven, pretty silly found-footage horror anthology. The novelty was fresh for the first story, which also ended up being the best of the bunch in terms of acting, genre savvy, and execution.

The weak link in all of them was that the language of the genre has remained largely stagnant, relying on the oldest fucking tricks in the book that anyone who has seen a horror, suspense, or found footage film will know where most of them are going from the first few minutes of tape. That's not to say you will not be entertained, just that the novelty has died a thousand deaths at this point.

The worst moments were not even in the flimsy acting or amateurish attempts at manipulating suspense via camera placement and character interaction (or lack thereof), but in the overarching story and the use of non-diegetic jump-scare cues might be the most awful thing to ever occur in the history of the genre.

Fuck that.

And fuck whoever thought that was a good idea.

It didn't work, and just served as the equivalent of a CG character appearing out of nowhere, and farting in the middle of the scene for the remainder. Though the clichéd camera placement sort of started it down the path of ruination (GEE, I WONDER WHAT FAT DEAD GUY WHO APPEARS PERFECTLY IN FRAME OVER MY SHOULDER IS GOING TO NOT DO?) , the confused use of scare tones took me right out of whatever the director was trying to do. It might have even ended up being effective on its own merits, but I will never know because an idiot thought better of it and handicapped the segment by adding it in several times. The skype/vhs mishmash of technology and ghost story tropes did not work at all, mostly due to the awful kitchen sink mentality of it. Attempting to shoehorn in so many different half-baked ideas instead of concentrating on building some sort of vignette that actually fit the unwritten criteria just annihilated my interest in the whole segment.

But it wasn't all bad. I thought the segment with the digi-killer concept was interesting, though the execution was somewhat lacking. I also appreciated the use of taped-over footage to illustrate the end reveal in the honeymooner segment, whose abrupt finale felt more true to the trappings of the medium.

It's no Picasso, but the concept had legs. Too bad the brain has FAS.

[Abraham Smashington]

I liked it better than Creepshow as a whole.

[Captain Russ]

A handful of METEORSHIT is worth ten VHSes.

(Birthday Cake Patriarch Zombies and Bug Apartments need not apply.)

[Captain Russ]

There are other anthologies out there besides Creepshow, though that one has one of my favorite idiot episodes in Hillbilly Stephen King's dreams of selling his meteor and then it also has Leslie Nielsen being a charismatic, homicidal scumbag. It is hard to excise the nostalgia from my enjoyment of that collection, though the Birthday Cake Patriarch Zombie never fails to put me to sleep. No amount of Ed Harris' hilarious proto-Crispin in Friday the 13th part IV-tier acting could save that one.

I still appreciate the sort of gallows humor of the Amicus Tales From the Crypt more than the modern stuff. They don't give me as much of a headache and rely as much on build as the dry delivery of the cast.

[Anderson]

I liked it better than Creepshow as a whole.

Isn't this some bullshit?

[Ben Thomas]

On the Dead trilogy (What? It's a trilogy, right??), Night is still my favourite. I get that Dawn is more audacious, humorous and loaded with subtext. But nothing in Dawn or Day - which I really like, by the way - floored me the way the ending of Night did the first time I saw it. Me and a buddy stayed up late one Saturday to watch it and rip the piss out of it - it was sold as shambolic and laughable by the Channel 4 promos.

We talked over a lot of it, but when that one chick executes the other one with the trowel (?) and then the rednecks shoot Ben (!) at the end? FUCK. It shut us up big time and we both came away shaking, talking about how ahead of its time it was.

[Anderson]

On the Dead trilogy (What? It's a trilogy, right??), Night is still my favourite. I get that Dawn is more audacious, humorous and loaded with subtext. But nothing in Dawn or Day - which I really like, by the way - floored me the way the ending of Night did the first time I saw it. Me and a buddy stayed up late one Saturday to watch it and rip the piss out of it - it was sold as shambolic and laughable by the Channel 4 promos.

We talked over a lot of it, but when that one chick executes the other one with the trowel (?) and then the rednecks shoot Ben (!) at the end? FUCK. It shut us up big time and we both came away shaking, talking about how ahead of its time it was.

The little girl kills her mother with a trowel.

[Abraham Smashington]

Isn't this some bullshit?

Can't fucking stand Creepshow. It's hokey as fuck, completely non creepy, and has King as a fucking retard. Well actually, that's a plus, but I'm just not a fan.

[Abraham Smashington]

Tales From the Hood > Creepshow