Movie Recommendation Thread

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Svengoolie was showing a movie today with killer ants, I guess army ants, terrorizing a community. Wish I had taped it as I only saw somewhere in the middle and was too busy to watch more than two uproariously lousy minutes. Anybody know the name? It was definitely from the 1970s.
If it had Joan Collins, it was Empire of the Ants.
 
If it had Joan Collins, it was Empire of the Ants.
I didn't see her but then again I only saw a couple of minutes. Is that the poor man's Kingdom of the Spiders ? Or vice-versa?
 
I didn't see her but then again I only saw a couple of minutes. Is that the poor man's Kingdom of the Spiders ? Or vice-versa?
It's an adaptation of an H.G. Wells story of the same name.

Loosely.
 
And that's the same year as Empire of the Ants. I guess there was a whole mini-fad going on at the time.
Yes, there were killer spiders, killer ants, killer bees, killer piranhas, etc. Basically everybody trying to get some Jaws cash!
 
Yes, there were killer spiders, killer ants, killer bees, killer piranhas, etc. Basically everybody trying to get some Jaws cash!

Don't forget killer frogs in the classic (to me at least) Frogs!

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Empire of the Ants was a beloved favourite of mine as a kid as well, trashy and silly fun.

Phase IV is really quite good, one of those strange cold yet psychedelic sf films you got back in the 70s. The great New Wave sf writer Barry Malzberg even wrote the novelization!

One of the best of the 'revenge of nature' or 'animals run amuck' films from the 70s I've seen is the Australian film Long Weekend.

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Yes, there were killer spiders, killer ants, killer bees, killer piranhas, etc. Basically everybody trying to get some Jaws cash!
Yeah. I was alive at the time, so I remember the broader Jaws cash-in that was occurring. I'd just forgotten that there were two giant ant movies within it. I'd forgotten Empire of the Ants until you mentioned it, probably because my mind always goes to Them when I am thinking of giant ants.

I'll just say that giant ant movies seem produce great posters.

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If I recall correctly, Abed had the poster for Them! on his wall in Community.
 
Oh, come now. Logan has a low bar to clear compared to the other entries in the Wolverine franchise, but it clears it easily. I'm a fan of the X-films and this film is as good as Days of Future Past or X-2, which i would recommend as well.
I watched Logan last night and loved it. Now it has a lot of gore but if you like X-Men it’s a must see.
 
There's a rumor that 2001: A Space Odyssey and possibly 2010: The Year We Make Contact will see a 4K Ultra HD release in May for 2001's 50th anniversary. Now those are two films I'd like to see in 4K Ultra HD.
 
Cannot recommend this highly enough:
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Gérard Depardieu in his prime gives a definitive performance as Cyrano de Bergerac. Faithful to the play by Edmond Rostand, great wordplay and swordplay, comedy and tragedy, this has it all.
 
There's a rumor that 2001: A Space Odyssey and possibly 2010: The Year We Make Contact will see a 4K Ultra HD release in May for 2001's 50th anniversary. Now those are two films I'd like to see in 4K Ultra HD.

I would like to see that. Still I have the bluray which is quite good.
 
Cannot recommend this highly enough:
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Gérard Depardieu in his prime gives a definitive performance as Cyrano de Bergerac. Faithful to the play by Edmond Rostand, great wordplay and swordplay, comedy and tragedy, this has it all.
I saw that in the theater when it first came out. It is a very satisfying movie.
 
I saw that in the theater when it first came out. It is a very satisfying movie.

In French or with subtitles? I seem to recall the English subtitles were interesting because the translation was not exact, especially in the beginning when he is composing his poem whilst dueling and making a fool of a fop, and the translator was making things rhyme in English and frequently the translation was nothing like the French. I've read a couple of English translations of the play and set them alongside the French and they tend to do the same there, too, with utterly different lines from one English text to the other.
 
In French or with subtitles? I seem to recall the English subtitles were interesting because the translation was not exact, especially in the beginning when he is composing his poem whilst dueling and making a fool of a fop, and the translator was making things rhyme in English and frequently the translation was nothing like the French. I've read a couple of English translations of the play and set them alongside the French and they tend to do the same there, too, with utterly different lines from one English text to the other.
It was the English subtitles. I find that to be common practice with subtitles. I always find it frustrating when a foreign figure of speech gets replaced by a English one. Maybe the foreign one will sound odd to me, but I AM watching a foreign film. I want to stretch a little. It's like the subtitles in movies are written for the kind of people that will never watch a movie with subtitles.
 
It was the English subtitles. I find that to be common practice with subtitles. I always find it frustrating when a foreign figure of speech gets replaced by a English one. Maybe the foreign one will sound odd to me, but I AM watching a foreign film. I want to stretch a little. It's like the subtitles in movies are written for the kind of people that will never watch a movie with subtitles.

Irony at its best. Then again, Mexicans answer the phone with "Bueno," so a direct translation would be pretty weird so I can see why they write "Hello" or sometimes nothing at all since anyone with half a brain can register that it's just a simple greeting and no one literally answers the phone with "Good." I try to watch as much as I can in French or Spanish to see how much I can understand...sometimes I barely need any subtitles, but with Spanish sometimes they talk so fast I'm still registering and translating the first sentence of Speaker A when Speaker B is already answering.
 
Irony at its best. Then again, Mexicans answer the phone with "Bueno," so a direct translation would be pretty weird so I can see why they write "Hello" or sometimes nothing at all since anyone with half a brain can register that it's just a simple greeting and no one literally answers the phone with "Good." I try to watch as much as I can in French or Spanish to see how much I can understand...sometimes I barely need any subtitles, but with Spanish sometimes they talk so fast I'm still registering and translating the first sentence of Speaker A when Speaker B is already answering.
I have high school Spanish, which means I can read it very slowly if I am highly motivated (I found Mediterráneo Mítico for Mythras to be pretty cool), but I can't do more than catch the occasional phrase when watching a movie.
 
One of the best noir films of recent decades, from back when Nicolas Cage was still an actor and not just a bag of shtick, before Lara Flynn Boyle transformed herself into a duck, and with Dennis Hopper and J.T. Walsh.
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And another great noir of recent times, from the same director as "Red Rock West." Linda Fiorentino was cheated out of an Oscar nomination due to idiotic technicalities.
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Another great modern film noir, which got me into the books of Jim Thompson. The great character actor J.T. Walsh is in this one as well.
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Yet another modern film noir...I was smitten with Joanne Whalley after this one (well, and "Willow"). Same director as "Red Rock West" and "The Last Seduction."
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This one is more of a black comedy in a noirish setting. I didn't realize this one was also directed by John Dahl until I started posting these movie recommendations.
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I didn't realize Dahl had made another neo-noir after The Last Seduction. He was on a roll there in the 90s.
 
I didn't realize Dahl had made another neo-noir after The Last Seduction. He was on a roll there in the 90s.
That one completely passed me by as a well, and I was a pretty serious film nerd in the '90s.
 
Somehow I have gone 39 years without having heard of this. Came across it the other day and got a lightly used copy on the cheap. Can't wait to watch it. Anyone familiar with this movie?
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That's one heck of a cast.
 
If it’s the one I’m thinking of it’s a “Man in The Iron Mask” adaption.
 
If it’s the one I’m thinking of it’s a “Man in The Iron Mask” adaption.

I hope to find out soon.

I also came across the odd bilingually titled La Femme Musketeer, which I'd like to see just because it has Michael York and Gérard Depardieu in it. If only they were playing D'Artagnan and Cyrano de Bergerac. (I always got a kick out of the moment in Cyrano de Bergerac when D'Artagnan makes a blink-and-you've-missed-it cameo.)
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Another I'd like to see sometime is La fille de D'Artagnan with Sophie Marceau.
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Watched The Villainess last night on Netflix.

A Korean ultaviolent action thriller with the usual over-the-top melodrama elements delivered with the endearing sincerity of a Korean film (something I actually really like about their popular films). The actors deliver the melodrama in a nicely understated style that makes it all the more effective.

Pretty stunning action sequences as the trailer suggests but the story and characters pull you in as well. I take it as a given that Korean films will be overlong, they regularly push past the 2.5 hr mark but this one feels relatively tight and concise.

One word of warning, while the fight scenes are very bloody there is also a very disturbing incident late in the film that may be too much for those who are not jaded exploitation fans who have seen the likes of the notorious HK Cat II film Run to Kill.

I wonder if BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan has seen this yet and what his opinion of it is.

 
Just seen The Death of Stalin, which is Monty-Python-esque hilarious about some very dark historical figures. I'm not surprised that Russia wanted to ban it - it does for them what Life of Brian did for the Christian church.
 
Just seen The Death of Stalin, which is Monty-Python-esque hilarious about some very dark historical figures. I'm not surprised that Russia wanted to ban it - it does for them what Life of Brian did for the Christian church.

"He's not a Communist Dictator! He's a very naughty boy!"
 
Just seen The Death of Stalin, which is Monty-Python-esque hilarious about some very dark historical figures. I'm not surprised that Russia wanted to ban it - it does for them what Life of Brian did for the Christian church.

You mean it in no way disrespects or undermines it but rather pokes fun at empty-headed idolatry and dogmatism?
 
Finally saw La fille de d'Artagnan in French with English subtitles. I was surprised at how gritty it was while also being fun and light. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes swashbuckling adventure flicks. It takes place maybe 20 or 30 years after The Three Musketeers and takes a few liberties with Alexandre Dumas inasmuch as d'Artagnan has peacefully retired and has a daughter, but then again it's not based on any of Dumas' sequels to the original book and if you haven't read the sequels you won't even know the difference. The fights and costumes are top-notch and it nicely subverts the trope of a woman disguised as a man and no one noticing. Plus it has Sophie Marceau as its lead, so what's not to like? Highly recommended.

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You mean it in no way disrespects or undermines it but rather pokes fun at empty-headed idolatry and dogmatism?
Well, it lampoons the very serious situation of a brutal, murderous dictatorship involving some of the most evil men of the 20th century (Beria was a serial rapist and head of the secret police force, for example, but here is presented almost like The Penguin out of the Batman comics), along with a farcical interpretation of the immediate aftermath of the dictator's death and the machiavellian developments that led to a military coup. It's satire, involving funny British accents and ugly men in ill fitting suits, etc. In this respect it isn't respectful at all - particularly if you consider Stalin to be a folk hero as many still do in parts the world (whether this is deserved or not, I'll leave for you to decide).

The idolatry and dogmatism is also satirised, insofar that they are shown up as empty, tedious rhetoric in the midst of realpolitik and craven survival instincts. I particularly like the council meeting where the weak chairman calls every motion "uuuuuuun-----aaaan----iiiii-mous" with long delays as the rest of members slowly and reluctantly raise their hands as he says it, or Michael Palin's (Molotov) protracted, shaggy dog speech at the same meeting where the council are confused whether he is supporting or not supporting a motion, and keep partially raising and dropping their hands accordingly. It's almost like The Office or In the Thick of It, in style, but about a very real era of terror.

I could see a good Vampire scenario being inspired by it, myself.
 
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...particularly if you consider Stalin to be a folk hero as many still do in parts the world (whether this is deserved or not, I'll leave for you to decide)...

I'd say there is about only one 'part' of the world where that is true...That he was a terrible murderous dictator everywhere else is about as controversial as saying Hitler was a bad person.
 
Just watched both of these with my son this weekend. Really well done sci-fi, really sad, and generate a lot of discussion about responsibility, weapons, war, and family. Generates a lot of emotion.

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I ordered the original five movies from the library along with War for the PotA.
 
The great part is that in Rise otPotA there is an Easter egg of a manned flight to Mars getting lost in flight. Which loops back around to Planet of the Apes.

Did I not just say
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?
 
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