Movie News & Miscellany

PatrThom

PatrThom

To be fair, since the studios keep inflating various line items (marketing, etc.) in order to manipulate the take so they can claim a movie was net unprofitable, I can kinda see where he's coming from. At that point it's more indentured servitude than a job, which almost makes what Adam Sandler & Friends are doing look like the smart thing in comparison.

--Patrick
 
Frank

Frank

mroosc1979 said:
Uwe Boll to retire from making movies. Apparently there's no money in it anymore saying "I would be happy to make movies but it is just not financially profitable." Maybe if your movies weren't so dreck they would have made more money? Oh, and if Uwe Boll ever sees this, takes offense & decides to challenge me to a boxing match, just so he knows - the outcome of that match woudln't actually change the (lack of) quality of his movies.
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I'd fight him. I'm younger, undoubtedly stronger and box on the weekends.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Frank said:
I'd fight him. I'm younger, undoubtedly stronger and box on the weekends.
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Which is why he'd never fight you. He infamously called out all his critics to fight him and some took him up on it in a boxing exhibition. Boll himself is an amateur boxer but he turned away anyone who actually had fighting experience, but still fought (and slaughtered) the ones who didn't.

Which basically means Uwe Boll is a monster.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Yeah, Lowtax, the dude who basically founded Somethingawful.com, fought him and lost pretty handily. Skinny computer geek getting trounced by buck-toothed German bully, whodathunkit?
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

AshburnerX said:
Which is why he'd never fight you. He infamously called out all his critics to fight him and some took him up on it in a boxing exhibition. Boll himself is an amateur boxer but he turned away anyone who actually had fighting experience, but still fought (and slaughtered) the ones who didn't.
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Well then maybe not mention that you're a weekend boxer then?
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

This past October's Monster Madness, AVGN did Top _ Horror Movies for different eras/time periods of horror movies, and put the cutoff at 1989 essentially, saying that there really hadn't been enough good horror movies or new cultural pushes in the genre to merit a top list.

I've been thinking about that and the more I think of movies, the less that sounds like earnest critique and more it sounds like he just didn't feel like it. There have been plenty of excellent horror films in the last 26 years; it's ridiculous to insinuate there haven't even been ten, so it's not worth digging to list them (not that I'd mind doing so at some point). But the era-split ... I know that gets tough because of inane remakes and shitty sequels, but it's ignoring a couple of trends in the genre, for better or worse.

One is found footage films. Yeah, they didn't originate then and most of them suck, but The Blair Witch Project's success did start something and good things have come out of it. A bigger push has been Asian horror. Not just the movies themselves, but the remakes/rip-offs that have been made in the west. Even good ones. And there's a lot to go through that never really crossed over to the west, but overall the unique supernatural horror from various eastern countries has had a cultural impact globally, not just in home countries.

This doesn't really matter; I just think it's ridiculous to shrug at the last 26 years and suggest there's been nothing of note or quality.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Ehh...

- Silence of the Lambs
- The Blair Witch Project (which wasn't GOOD, but did launch a genre)
- Ringu (Foreign)
- Audition (Foreign)
- Misery
- The Eye (Foreign version)
- Ju-On: The Grudge (Foreign)
- 28 Days Later (Foreign)
- Se7En
- Let the Right One In (Foreign)
- Trick R' Treat
- The Babadook (Foreign)
- The Witch

Pretty much anything else is hardly horror (Tremors), revisting old ground (Scream), stock genre (I Know What You Did Last Summer and MANY others), or just isn't very good (Too much to count). And I still can't do a Top Ten list of ether without half the list ether being domestic or foreign, which should really be two different lists.
 
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Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

AshburnerX said:
Ehh...

- Silence of the Lambs
- The Blair Witch Project (which wasn't GOOD, but did launch a genre)
- Ringu (Foreign)
- Audition (Foreign)
- Misery
- The Eye (Foreign version)
- Ju-On: The Grudge (Foreign)
- Trick R' Treat
- 28 Days Later (Foreign)
- Se7En
- Let the Right One In (Foreign)
- Trick R' Treat
- The Babadook (Foreign)
- The Witch

Pretty much anything else is hardly horror (Tremors), revisting old ground (Scream), stock genre (I Know What You Did Last Summer and MANY others), or just isn't very good (Too much to count). And I still can't do a Top Ten list of ether without half the list ether being domestic or foreign, which should really be two different lists.
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He didn't split domestic and foreign for his other lists. He also included horror-comedy, even though he said he wouldn't. But anyway, just to add to the list good horror genre movies

The Sixth Sense
Candyman
Jacob's Ladder (I haven't seen, but praised and certainly iconic)
The People Under the Stairs
Stir of Echoes
Cronos
The Descent
The Mist
A Tale of Two Sisters
Ginger Snaps
Insidious
Pontypool
The Devil's Backbone
The Cabin in the Woods
The Conjuring
Troll Hunter
The Last Exorcism
Crimson Peak
Oculus

And then recent ones I haven't seen yet, but have heard are good, take with a grain of salt

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
It Follows
Krampus
Under the Skin

I'm not saying every one of these should be a candidate for a top-ten list, but there's more than enough to choose from, and this is ignoring horror-comedies like Shaun of the Dead and The Host (the good one) or good remakes like Let Me In and The Ring. I also take umbrage with his 80s listing that put Carpenter's The Thing as an honorable mention, but I'll just have to accept that he's wrong it's his list.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Krampus is by the guy who did Trick R' Treat. It's great. It Follows isn't destined to be a classic, but I dug it.

As for the list... I thought Jacob's Ladder was 80's? Or I'd have put it on my list.
 
mikerc

mikerc

Adding to the good horror movies since 1989 that haven't been mentioned yet

Wes Craven's New Nightmare
Saw
Dog Soldiers
Apt Pupil
The Others
The People Under the Stairs
Dawn of the Dead Remake
Evil Dead Remake
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

I routinely see people putting Scream on their lists and not New Nightmare. They are clueless. That does deserve to be on the list.
I did forget The People Under the Stairs, but only because it's probably been 15+ years since I've seen it.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Are things like Se7en and Apt Pupil really horror though? Thrillers certainly (same with The Silence Of The Lambs) but I wouldn't call them horror movies. Jacob's Ladder is on the edge, having seen it (and had it explained to me too).

But just because something is scary doesn't make it horror IMO. Not sure of a great definition, but something that is straight-out thriller but with a bit of scary isn't it IMO.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Eriol said:
Are things like Se7en and Apt Pupil really horror though? Thrillers certainly (same with The Silence Of The Lambs) but I wouldn't call them horror movies. Jacob's Ladder is on the edge, having seen it (and had it explained to me too).

But just because something is scary doesn't make it horror IMO. Not sure of a great definition, but something that is straight-out thriller but with a bit of scary isn't it IMO.
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This is kind of my sticking point: A lot of what people call horror are really thrillers and we'll never agree what is and isn't one.

I think Jacob's Ladder gets it, if only because it later inspired horror classics like Silent Hill and more.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I think Se7en is a horror movie; it really only has one thriller scene and is otherwise horror in its other elements. Same with Silence of the Lambs.

But yeah, it's going to always be a point of contention. Same with horror comedies, should they even be called horror? Again, AVGN said there wouldn't be any horror-comedies on his 80s Top list, and then put Evil Dead II and Return of the Living Dead on there. Maybe he doesn't see them as comedic? I find Return creepy, but Evil Dead II hilarious.

Another good horror comedy of late was Tucker and Dale vs Evil.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

So, what's listed between the lot of us? 50 or so movies? And that's just the stuff we deem good, not even passable like Dead Silence or the Paranormal Activity movies, and certainly not the mountains of DTV garbage. Many of them are far better than stuff that made the other lists. I don't think AVGN really took the time to think about it.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

I think he's just got such a strong love of classic, pre-90's horror that he sort of shuts down when it comes to new stuff. I mean, if you skim over the videos of his collection the guy basically owns nothing you'd only get on DVD or newer. It's sad he won't give the newer stuff a chance, but I guess that's just something that happens with classic collectors sometimes.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

CynicismKills said:
I think he's just got such a strong love of classic, pre-90's horror that he sort of shuts down when it comes to new stuff. I mean, if you skim over the videos of his collection the guy basically owns nothing you'd only get on DVD or newer. It's sad he won't give the newer stuff a chance, but I guess that's just something that happens with classic collectors sometimes.
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I know his collection, but he's reviewed recent ones positively, like Krampus and ... I'm sure some others, but the problem is his Monster Madnesss reviews seem to vanish from Youtube for some reason.

And in the vein of AVGN and newer movies, I'd throw Shin Godzilla in as a good recent horror movie, though it's the only Godzilla movie I'd put in the horror genre besides the original 1954 film in the sense that it had scenes which were genuinely horrifying.

Thanks to a discussion I started, I'm bleeding away what's left of my Amazon credits on horror movies. The Witch DVD just dropped to $8 on Amazon, so now I can watch it with proper subtitles. Grabbed Candyman too since it's only $5. IF It Follows drops some more on Black Friday, I'll snag it then. I told my friend I'd wait to watch it until she and I could watch it together, but that was a while ago and she keeps leaing the country, so I can't see it sitting down to watch it even when we find time to get together.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

I wanted to condemn this list, because no one mentioned REC, but then Zero Esc mentioned Pontypool, and we got Dog Soldiers and the Descent, so we're good.

I would also include:

In The Mouth Of Madness
Vampires (admittedly more for the intentionally kitschy lols than anything else)
From Dusk Till Dawn
Shawn of the Dead (really, we missed this one, guys?)
Take Me To Hell
Triangle
Timecrimes (this one may be debatable; it's a horror movie filmed like a thriller)
V/H/S
Pitch Black
30 Days Of Night (I will cop to this one possibly being a result of being heartily sick of sparkly vampires when this one came out)
Dead Snow
R-Point
The Purge (though pointedly stupid, the craft of the actual film is really great)
Daywalkers
Deathwatch[DOUBLEPOST=1479134609,1479134435][/DOUBLEPOST]I would also interject that I would accept Shin Godzilla but for slightly different reasons.

The back half of the film may have a genuinely scary kaiju, but the true horror of the film is the Kafka-esque dark horror/comedy about bureaucracy in the first half.[DOUBLEPOST=1479134660][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, The Fly. Whoops! Out of era.
 
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evilmike

evilmike

ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

I thought I knew my comic lore rather well, but I don't recognize some of those characters. I recognize Cat Man, King Tut, Orca, Red Hoot, and....Calculator, maybe?
 
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