What Movie Did You Just See?

[Jenny]

short cuts, a film by robert altman based on the writings of raymond carver (my favorite short story writer)

[j_rud]

Wall-E!



This wasnt just a great Pixar movie, its a legit sci-fi movie. Loved it.

[tomEisenbraun]

Okay over the last two weeks I've been diggin into my local video store's 5 For 5 deal (five movies, fice days, $5) and I've been back three or four times. Here's what I've been watching...

[big inhale]

Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead (excluding Night, this might be my favorite of Romero's)
Land of the Dead
Diary of the Dead
(they don't have the original soundtrack version of Night of the Living Dead, so I opted out of that one until I can see it as it was originally made)
Bubba Hotep
The Crazies
Eraserhead (Holy fuck.)
Zombie (We Are Going To Eat You!)
Return of the Living Dead (Brains!! -- I love it!)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (probably in my top 5 favorite movies now)
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
The Day Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (not hardly worth watching)
White Zombie (relatively boring but significant as the first actual zombie movie)
Slither (pretty funny and a good take on the genre)
The Evil Dead
Evil Dead 2
Army of Darkness (definitely my favorite of the trilogy, and a great little shout-out to The Day the Earth Stood Still in there!)
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later (holy shit, what a great movie)

[/breathe]

Wow, going back for more in a minute here...

tom, have you seen shaun of the dead?

oh you better believe I have. I'm sort of building up toward seeing it until I get a copy of Night of the Living Dead. I want to finish out all the essential Romero films and then I'll rewatch it and be better able to appreciate it even more this time around...

[Angry Ewok]

The only zombie movies I have ever seen were...

28 Days Later
Loved it... Absolutely loved this film. Except the whole compound... I just couldn't buy into the soldiers lust for women over-riding the despair and absolute terror that any normal human would be suffering.

28 Weeks Later
Didn't love it quite so much, but it seemed more scary than the first film, at times.

Shaun of the Dead
Funny. Probably more so to someone who has seen more zombie movies.

I Am Legend
Are these considered zombies? I liked the film.


What other zombie movies should I see?

[Jellyfish]

The newly restored and remasterd Night Of The Living Dead is out now.But it's not widescreen as advertised,it's the original 1:33 aspect but still it's worth it alone for the documentary and interviews with some of the old cast.There is also an old interview with Duane Jones.It has several soundtrack options with mono and stereo.

Diary of the Dead is Romero's best zombie film since Day.Land is an awful picture worth watching only for the great zombie makeup,special effects and CGI's.

[tomEisenbraun]

Brad,

Romero is kind of considered the canonical master of the zombie genre. His films are:

Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead
Land of the Dead
Diary of the Dead

They're all great, though Land of the Dead was made for a major picture company, and there's some obvious pressure there to make a more hit-and-run movie out of it. Still important though, as Romero was still able to continue the chronology of his films with it. I haven't seen Night, still, so I can't comment on that one, but they all sort of build on the previous ideas. Dawn takes the infection further, has it more widespread, and has some strong social commentary about consumerism and how our lives center around it. Day finds us taking a strong hard look at the leadership of the military, and also sees our first thinking zombie led by a scientist. Land is important (though a bit less awesome than the others) because it finds our first free-roaming thinking zombie, and he has an effect on his constituents. Diary is set in the same time period as the first outbreak, and takes a whole different approach to the telling of that story.

Interesting this, each is set as though it's placed exactly as far after the preceding one as it says (Dawn is about a week or so after night, Day is about a month after the initial outbreak, Land about three years after the outbreak, and Diary at the same time as it, roughly), but each movie is set in the current time. So even though Dawn is almost ten years after Night, it's treated as though it's about a week after the initial outbreak. Land of the Dead came in 2004, I believe? But it's treated as though it's three years since 1968's Night of the Living Dead's outbreak. A bit odd, but it makes sense to keep the movies from being dated and especially to keep them relevant.

Hope that was more than enough info for you!

[ItStillJaimoe]

I agree with your list, ranking and comments Tom. I'd like to add Charleton Heston's The Omega Man as a great quasi-zombie movie worth checking out along with the truly excellent lower-budget classic zombie flick The Re-Animator, based on an H.P. Lovecraft short-story.

[tomEisenbraun]

Herbert West: Re-Animator is actually on my list for the next trip. I'll put The Omega Man on there, too!

Just watched House of 1000 Corpses...

WTF?

I dug all the references, especially all the Alice in Wonderland toward the end, and the obvious reference to TX Chainsaw Massacre! But sweet fuck! Mr. Zombie...!

[tomEisenbraun]

....and The Devil's Rejects...

FuuuuUUCK, Rob!

[Jellyfish]

The Devil's Reject's is one of the best horror flicks(if you can call it that) I have seen in some time.Rob has impressed me with his film making.

[tomEisenbraun]

I probably shouldn't have watched the two of those back to back. I felt morally horrible by the end of it. I was really impressed with House and its absolute lack of reliance on CGI. Can't beat that. It's been a long long time since someone's made a big movie like that. Loved the ending and how I knew exactly where it was going, but still didn't know exactly how. The rabbit hole stuff especially.

Picked up another five tonight.... someone needs to cut me off...

[tomEisenbraun]

The Host
Relatively disappointing, way too long, and waaaaay too obvious of an indictment of the Iraq war. I'm not a die-hard conservative by any means, but when a movie's made as so blatant an attack on something, it loses all of its great monster elements and becomes one giant groan as we beat another dead $30 million a day horse. Wound up fast-forwarding through it because of damn awful overdubs. When everyone in your movie sounds hilariously whiny, I'm not going to be convinced that the situation is actually serious. Then we make it to the Iraq war bit and I was completely gone. Come on. And it came from Korea (south not north, though...)

Herbert West: Re-Animator
Damn classic. Need to re-read the story now. Loved this treatment of it, though! The gore was great (Karo syrup! Yum!), and the severed head was really well executed. Add that and a whole mess of nudity and you've got a great horror flick!



My girlfriend and I have begun rating horror movies on the "Titty Scale"--Her only real interest in them (and foreign film, too, for that matter) is the number of times we see bare breasts in the film. Added points for the lower extremities, and double downs if it's the penis. (I swear this is her scale, not mine!) She does have an aversion to extreme gore, or overtly evil situations, and anything apocalyptic is right out, though, so the Titty Scale can be very easily upset in any of those scenarios. For instance, Devil's Rejects is completely out due to all the disturbing shit and overtly evil mess in there. While an excellent horror flick, the evil factor ranks too strongly and thus cancels out its Titty Factor.

She's been gone for the past week and a half, which is why I've gone on this randiculous horror binge, and I've been taking solid note of which ones I'm going to have to rewatch due to a high ranking on the Titty Scale. Instant classics include The Return of the Living Dead, where we have a fully nude prancing lady-character *SPOILER* reanimated as a fully nude prancing lady-zombie. Add that to a comedic film and relatively low ranking on the evil end of the scale and we've got about a 8.7 on the Titty Scale!  
[smiley=thumbup.gif]

Sorry if that's really base, but that's just how the Eisenbraun household is shaping up in the horror genre!

EDIT:
Jut wanted to make sure everyone (especially DITH) realizes that I'm not much for objectification of women and exploiting the fairer sex for their bits and parts. My wonderful lady friend and I have found a lot of humor in the pandering of the horror genre toward their target audience's apparent want for that material in movies, and there's a certain ironic humor that goes alogn with it, just because it makes the movie that much more ridiculous. I would never seriously post anything about a Titty Scale on here, just because that's rude and not at all something I'd talk about seriously in mixed company (or unmixed company for that matter). But if someone's gonna offer 'em up, we're gonna have fun with it!

[Jaimoe]

Herbert West: Re-Animator
Damn classic. Need to re-read the story now. Loved this treatment of it, though! The gore was great (Karo syrup! Yum!), and the severed head was really well executed. Add that and a whole mess of nudity and you've got a great horror flick!

I assume you know your B-film acting icons? Jeffrey Combs is amazingly good in The Re-Animator as Herbert West. Combs (also starred in Peter Jackson's The Frighteners and Star Trek DS9, Voyager and Enterprise), in my opinion, ranks just a notch lower in fame and popularity in the B-film world than Bruce Campbell. BTW, the latest of the Re-Animator sequels is being produced right now: The House of the Re-Animator. I've seen three of these flicks and none so far match the original, but Beyond Re-Animator is campy fun. If you like H.P. Lovecraft, Combs has been in a bunch of film versions of his short-stories, usually with horror genre directors/producers Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna. From Beyond comes immediately to mind.

[tomEisenbraun]

Huh! I'll have to check that out! I got into Lovecraft through Metallica when I was in middle school, and I've still got the book around here somewhere....

I need to pick it up and read through those stories again.

[Jaimoe]

From what I've heard over the years, Gordon and/or Yuzna want to produce as many film versions of Lovecraft as possible. I've seen a few and I like them a lot. Dagon is a cult classic too. Guillermo del Toro has written a screenplay for At The Mountains of Maddness and wants to direct the film verison. A match made in heaven where I'm sitting.

[Jaimoe]

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - I watched this great modern western whilst downing 4 French Boris beers last night. Tommy Lee Jones does an excellent job in his directoral debut. The film is more allegorical the more I think about it, at least it is in how  Barry Pepper's character endures and Lee doesn't leave the audience with any tidy ending. Well done.

[tomEisenbraun]

That one's goin' on my list, too. My stepdad absolutely raved about it last time I saw him.

[Jaimoe]

Hey Tom, if you can find them, try downing some Boris beers while watching The Three Burials... it worked for me.

[Angry Ewok]

Just saw THE DEPARTED for the first time. Wow, such a great movie. Several twists that I did not see coming. A million times better than Goodfellas, or even Taxi Driver.

[Jenny]

umm i saw both kung fu panda and wall-e over the course of 3 days.   :-/