Topic: The Movie Thread

@FuriousMachine This looks great I loved Prey, I'd hoped for a Predator game inspired by the movie but I'll take this. Predator looks like an absolute unit too. It kind of reminds me of that Highlander anime that came out years ago, the timelines look very similar. I wonder will they have some Easter eggs in the ships trophy room like Predator 2, June is too far away.

Did you see they are remaking The Running Man? It's slated for November 7th, 2025. Hopefully it's better than the remake of Total Recall. Predator Badlands is also down for November 7th.

@GirlVersusGame Yeah, Edgar Wright is making it, so it's been on my radar a while

Also, if there are any "Happy Death Day" fans on here, there is excellent news: The third movie is finally moving forward, confirmed by both Landon and Rothe.

Speaking of Landon, his latest, Drop, is getting great buzz and I secured a ticket for a Sunday screening just hours ago. Really looking forward to it!

@FuriousMachine That looks amazing. I'm also looking forward to Love Death + Robots volume 4 in May.

@MightyDemon82 Right, I'd forgotten all about that one. Slept on season 2 and then it just fell by the wayside. Must try to remember picking it back up when I re-sub to Netflix later this year.

A few films I’ve watched...
The Shallows (on Tubi). Surfer stranded and at the mercy of a shark. Pretty good, the shark was the star. Definitely worth a watch.

The arrival (on Freevee/Prime). Charlie Sheen not quite winning as an astronomer working for SETI and discovering little green men (and women). Again, a good film and Charlie was well cast.

Total Recall remake (on PS Plus Premium). Not bad but you do wonder why they bother when the original is so good, thankfully they chose a different dark direction (no humour, no mars).

@CaptD It's often down to the rights of the IP. It's sometimes cheaper to do a remake before you lose the rights to it, studios rarely buy back rights to something. There's an awful lot of red tape involved. A remake is a gamble stacked in their favor because even if it doesn't do well it's still a profit and they can relaunch special editions/etc of the original to accompany the release. There's actually a lot of investor confidence in remakes too, you can use the original as a reference point which then leads (in theory) to more accuracy when predicting your overall outcome. It's all quite boring but it has to do with calculating the original box office statistics versus your current potential audience.

@GirlVersusGame
Thanks for your detailed response and now you come to mention it I have heard something similar before.

They certainly put this effort in and it was a well made film with good actors, as I say they did change the story enough to warrant a watch. Plus you can never have enough sci fi.

@CaptD You're welcome, I've seen it up close. They don't really advertise that sort of thing, once I saw that side of the industry I was out the door. There's no passion in that part of production and now they send people like that to sit in on closed sets watching everyone like hawks. Every second has a dollar amount even-though most of it has gone digital. I think streaming did it, there is too much competition by smaller studios and production teams who need barely a fraction of the budget, less time in post production and if it's in-house distribution is free. It doesn't add up though because it takes less time to set-up camera rigs/etc now, they've gotten smaller and Hollywood post-production/editing also takes less time. It's a very shady industry, at least now and a lot of what people say about it concerning what goes on behind closed doors is unfortunately true.

It's rarely ever for the love of the subject matter, more so the profits and if the profits aren't there they have ways to make make a return on the original investment. Especially remakes. It's like printing money, even at a loss. I love the original Total Recall. It's peak Verhoven (the director) he was just after coming off of Robocop. They gave him Robocop because other than being crazy he also brought a European twist to the American Dream. He wanted to show the dangers of excess and consumerism. Unfortunately it was almost ruined for me when a tutor in film school gave us a full breakdown on why Robocop was a modern telling of Jesus. That might sound out there but Verhoeven went on to say the same thing. He wanted to crucify Alex Murphy, he settled for pretty much blowing him to pieces. Then there's the Steelmill when he's 'walking on water', but that's Verhoven for you. By the time he got to Starship Troopers and Hollow Man he'd pretty much lost it, it's a shame really because it's hard to replace that kind of crazy. His goal was always to show that his movies didn't promote violence or even cause violence, more-so they were a mirror to the real world violence that exists because of human nature/greed, not because they watched a violent movie. People like him just aren't replaceable, the same goes for David Lynch, John Carpenter and so many others.

There's not a lot of expansion for new directors now either, they get type cast to fit a movie that the studio thinks might suit their style. So even if they want to try something new it's very hard to do it. Realistically it's the difference between working for a year, versus not. The studios have it down to a fine art now, 8 to 10 weeks prep, 12 weeks for the shoot then depending on the budget it sometimes carries into 6 to 8ish weeks post/editing/scoring etc. Budget is everything though.

I don't mean to ramble but I literally had this conversation with someone yesterday. They couldn't understand why I got out, I think people only see one side of the industry. Gaming can be like that too, you don't get a fuller perspective until you talk to people in that field and even then you're only getting that one sector of the business. I love sci-fi too but for a while sci-fi wasn't a priority for a lot of studios, they thought it was too risky. Horror was in the same boat, then Newline Cinema took a chance with Scream and the genre bounced back. Market prediction is all over the place now, that's another reason why you're seeing so many sequels/prequels and remakes. A lot of it is just testing for the sake of releasing bigger pictures down the line. In a couple of years the real extent of the damage will start to come out. Productions keep being impacted by strikes, streaming has made it very hard to adapt to a new system of distribution/promotion. It's completely fragmented the market due to so many streaming platforms. Internal wages are down, and box office revenue as a whole is down, movies like Minecraft are an exception.

It's still one of my favorite passions, I'd like to see it all bounce back and stabilize but I work in music now and the same thing is happening there too. Streaming is really accessible and has many benefits for the consumer but it's at a hidden cost. I'm starting to feel that way about gaming subscriptions now too, especially with price hikes on already poorer regions. It doesn't feel like I'm helping the Devs by playing a day one game on Gamepass versus buying their game in an actual store. I know streaming music versus buying CDs is only helping 1% of most artists, like I said I'm rambling but it's hard to ignore some of those issues while they are just left to worsen over time. I like market prediction, I just don't like the results.

@GirlVersusGame Thank you so much for this! A very interesting read with lots of confirmation of things I've suspected and a quite a few interesting new angles for me to consider as well. I love it when that happens
And there is such a rich conversation to be had regarding the state of the industry, the downsides of streaming/gamepass, chasing maximised profits in entertainment/art, piracy, etc.
In my opinion, our profit mad society is on a downward slide, where the unattainable goal of unlimited growth seems to drive almost everything and rampant wealth inequality is a root problem nobody is talking about. It is impacting everything and not for the better.
I guess the moral here is to try to support original IP by going to the theatres, renting them online or buying physical. Effectively voting with your money. Creating / contributing to the buzz on social media seems to be something the studios pay attention to, so if you're a person with a SoMe presence, that might be a good idea as well.
I'm happy to say that 7 of the 10 movies I've seen at the cinema this year have been original IP, and I'm seeing The Amateur today and Ryan Coogler's Sinners later in the week.
I also buy (too many) 4k discs, though that tends to skew towards releases of old classics from companies like Arrow, Criterion and Kino Lorber

@FuriousMachine You're welcome it's a really interesting industry and I love movies to bits but they are brushing a lot of the hard statistics under the mat and hoping the problem fixes itself. I originally got into it to work with cinematography and camera work then moved up into the PR/financial side of production. It's run by dinosaurs who aren't moving with the times, they are very stuck in their ways. It's not like that with music, hires are getting younger and younger, they are more equipped to deal with an evolving landscape and the artists themselves have a genuine respect for their fans. Hollywood is still pulling people with a legacy to the industry, it's still who you know not what you know. I had two career choices, either diplomacy (politics) or business, I hoodwinked my parents, they thought my focus was on producing/financing in film so I used the connections offered to crash sets and learn. I think everything becomes a job after a while, it did for me.

When they do source outside talent it's usually to snipe them before the competition does, or through a bidding war, they treat people like they treat scripts and IP properties. And once again music isn't like that, it's one big family that looks out for it's people. They are the same people fighting to lower ticket costs and to find ways to compete with streaming. Both industries are at risk. Hollywood's answer (currently in the making) is to try to get a stranglehold on the Movie side of streaming, then to set the prices as they see fit. Netflix is a problem, they have the biggest foothold in the market. Before streaming a lot of people at the top had their fingers in distribution, box office (owning a chunk of the theaters themselves) and video releases. They've slowly been losing that extra income and it's making them desperate. Amazon too have become a player, they have complete creative control of the Bond franchise. There's a concern that they are going to push for more then lock it behind Prime. Then there's the really shady side of it all, there are some very twisted standards in place. There was always something just off to the side that was completely wrong, but people go along with it because that's how you climb the ladder. You don't get that in the UK or European industry.

My focus was the Eastern European market. It's something I knew well and it got me out of there. They don't have people on the ground anymore, it's state sponsored piracy. There are too many loop holes and rows of red tape to maneuver, growing up around state politics gave me that in. Now it's become a whole other beast. It's a 'right' to entertainment, one that's easily disputed in writing but not in person. I shouldn't even be talking about it but it's a big problem.

Theaters are selling tickets much cheaper, Hollywood is getting zero profit from the sales, the state is getting all of it. There is no shortage of new movies, the promotion is just more low key and most theaters aren't doing online bookings so it's impossible to prove violations unless you have someone on the ground, which they don't. It's my home so of course I have to look at it from both sides, but damage is damage. I warned people about it for years, now it's playing out and when Hollywood does return to Russia there won't be any repercussions. They want back in, it's a massive profit loss for them. I spend most of my time in The West but I want them back in too, profits will start to return to the original holder and there will be less state sanitation and censorship (in theory)

We're suffering massive losses by not being able to send bands there for touring too. It's a kind of limbo, parts of the world being no-go areas are really impacting the industry. The small things like logistics and freight are frequently changing, there's less competition for them so they can overcharge with impunity. It's pushed things into an even more digital landscape, the content is still there it's just not being paid for. I think if the people in the gaming community (who are pro-piracy because they see it as a right not a luxury) could understand what zero profits actually does, they'd never do it. It's really hard to watch that happen to other entertainment industries. This current market is a minefield and the truth is that sanctions in the entertainment industry only hurt the original owner of the content, everyone else is profiting off of their work, tenfold. Hollywood knows what's happening, they just can't and won't do anything about it, they've become completely tone-deaf and it's going to cost them. It might sound like all I care about are profits, I don't, I choose these industries because life is short and I'd rather invest my time into something that makes me happy.

There's no joy in watching people lose their jobs over situations that could have been prevented. Gaming used to take my mind off of all of the turbulence but politics and greed are surfacing there too. I lost count of how many studios faced closure over groups like Embracer. I turned to charity work and preservation a couple of years ago, it can't fix the current situation but it's fun at least. I'm rescuing a lot of tapes and merchandise that would otherwise be left to rot. Charity often means it's tax free too, everyone wins. I collect for myself too, mostly VHS and DVDs, I never really liked blu-rays they are a little too clean. It's nice to see a little wear and tear but I get why someone might want optimal quality too and right now that's pretty much all that's being marketed. I collect books too but haven't really jumped into the book thread here because they are mostly esoteric and Occult. People would think it was all very strange but it's a sort of preservation too. It's a genre/field with a very limited publication and a very niche reader-base. Hardcore book collecting is definitely dying off, eBooks and Kindle made it too easy to self publish and push it further into a digital format. I just got a small consignment of horror tapes that I'm really excited about, I'll try to share a picture once I get them dusted off. I already see a Clive Barker tape that I was after for a while (it's so bad that it's good)

Salem's Lot (2024) - Totally naff, avoid at all costs.

Smile 2 - not half as good as the original, which felt a more personal tale. Not awful though and worth a watch.

The Hunt for the Red October - brilliantly tense in places and probably my fave Jack Ryan movie, if you can past a Scottish sounding Russian naval captain lol.

@FuriousMachine There we go, Rawhead Rex. I'm not even sure how you'd summarize the plot. A demon gets stirred from it's sleep then goes on a rampage in a small rural village. It didn't do very well so you rarely see tapes show up in the wild. I don't use online market places like Ebay, it spoils the fun of stumbling upon hauls like that. People usually just want them gone too, they don't see the value in them. I like finding old rental stores, they usually have some stock in storage. You just have to be prepared to get very dusty. There were three boxes of tapes and nine boxes of DVDs, with more boxes on the way.

There's more of them, the flat boxes on top are lobby cards and posters. I don't like to roll them. When flat-packed they take up less space and there's less damage to the print. My friends think I have a collecting problem, maybe. It's an organized problem at least. Neat, tidy, and kept track of.

@GirlVersusGame It's clearly something that gives you joy, so I would hesitate to call it a problem (it's only if something you enjoy is also somehow hurting you or others it may become problem, in my opinion). Life is short and we should fill it with things we enjoy, especially these days when there is so much evil and hurt everywhere.
And, funny coincidence, I just watched "John Carpenter's Vampires" the other day! I didn't hold up too well in my opinion, but I think that is mostly because I've come to dislike James Woods in recent years.

I was also not aware that they ever adapted "Rawhead Rex"! It wasn't among my favourite stories from "Books of Blood", but it was decent enough. I don't expect it to be readily available on streaming here, but if it is, I will give it a look

I've been to the cinema a couple of times in the last few weeks and just the other day I saw The Amateur with Rami Malek and Laurence Fishburne. I'd say it was an above-average Bourne-like, where Malek plays a CIA analyst who blackmails his superiors to train him to be able to exact revenge on shady characters who did him wrong (keeping it purposefully vague here). It was fine and worth seeing if you like these types of movies.

A few weeks back I saw two Norwegian movies back-to-back, the first being Spermageddon, an adult animated comedy in the vein of "Sausage Party", about a teenager's first sexual experiences and the sperm that lives in his junk. It has, naturally, caused a lot of pearl clutching and "won't anyone think of the children?" outcries in the media and people want to ban it because it ism animated and children might see it. That someone wants to prevent it from being seen is, of course, reason alone to see it. It was, predictably, filled to the brim with infantile humour, puns and wordplay, not all of which landed, but overall I had fun with it.
The second film of the evening, Don't Hang Up, was a horror film I didn't even know was a Norwegian production until after. It's a kind of found footage movie, where everything shown is through a FaceTime type video call between a girl and her boyfriend while she stays in an AirBnB in Tulsa with two friends following a wedding. They f**k around and find out that the place may be haunted. I had zero expectations for this one, but it it wasn't half-bad. Excepting a couple of references to Norway (which never happens in American movies; they love their Swedes too much ), I never would have guessed it was directed by a dude from Drøbak, a small town on the Norwegian coast. Turns out one of the actresses was Norwegian too, and while she had a slight accent, it was no way near the exaggerated Scandinavian accents that always makes me cringe when I hear it.

The best of this recent batch of movie-going experiences was easily The Drop by Christopher Landon, who made the absolutely brilliant "Happy Death Day" films. A really tight thriller about a woman who goes on her first date after having become a widow some time ago. While on the date, she gets increasingly disturbing drops on her phone, turning the date into a nightmare. I really enjoyed this one. While, in hindsight, it contains no real surprises, it still avoided being obvious about things and it managed to keep me guessing as to who the tormentor was. This is one of those small, contained movies that manages to keep me engaged and feels earnest rather than cynical. Will be getting this on physical

@FuriousMachine I showed my bestfriend Vampires recently too. We'd watched a movie on Netflix called Day Shift and I kept seeing things they'd taken from the John Carpenter movie. It was really obvious that either the writer or director was very familiar with the movie. For a Netflix horror/comedy it wasn't bad, and definitely more tolerable than what we'd watched before that, Renfield. I knew it would be bad but I just had to see how bad. At times it felt like I was watching a live action Saints Row movie, if it had a spin-off horror DLC. If they had focused more on Nicolas Cage, and removed Awkwafina it might have had more going for it. If it was a solo watch I'd have given up early into it, probably in the first half hour. It rarely pays off to watch something you know will be bad, The Crow reboot is a perfect example. The original 1994 movie is probably one of my top ten favorite movies of all time, I love everything about it especially the music. But mother of Christ was the reboot a whole other level of bad. The sequels aren't great, but there's a lot more leeway with a reboot and they absolutely massacred everything about it.

Nosferatu made up for it. Willem Dafoe was such a good choice for the professor and the whole thing was shot beautifully. I really liked Eggers work with VVitch too so my hopes were high, it's the small things he did like shooting almost the whole picture in natural light. That's so rare and it paid off, Nosferatu has the same Cinematographer too. Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula is still one of my favorite classic vampire movies, it's cheesy at times because it's a 90's movie but Gary Oldman did an amazing performance and even now the visuals still hold up. The set design, costumes and practical effects were just that good, Oldman kept a book on set with pictures of his children. He used to flip through it when he had to perform an emotional scene, those tears were all real and it shows.

It's funny you mentioned Books of Blood too, I just mentioned that to my friend and said we have to watch that next. The 2009 one did a really good job of getting under my skin, I still haven't seen the 2020 Hulu production. It wasn't perfect but it wasn't terrible either, the ending really left a chill. I haven't seen many Norwegian horror movies, Dead Snow instantly comes to mind as does Rovdyr. I remember The Drop, it felt like a 90's movie in all the right way, I didn't think anyone else had seen Happy Death Day. I tried to explain that movie to someone before and it came off all wrong, I thought it was very clever. I'm waiting to see how The Strangers 2 (I really liked the first one) and Talk 2 Me turn out. Talk to Me had one of my favorite endings in a long time. I'll probably watch Heretic next, I need to see what an evil Hugh Grant looks like.

@GirlVersusGame I saw Day Shift a while back and while I can't remember a single thing from it, I do remember being pleasantly surprised. Movies produced by streamers tend to be mediocre at best, so I didn't expect much going in. Haven't seen Renfield yet, as consensus seems to be that it is pretty bad, but it's one of those where I feel I need to see it for myself, if you know what I mean?

That does not apply to The Crow remake, though. Like you, I love the original (and, yes, that soundtrack is fantastic!!) and the new one looks like a massive dumpster fire, so I'll avoid that one. I've never been a huge fan of Eggers, I have a blind spot there. I simply cannot see what everyone is so excited about. I've seen The VVitch, The Northman and Nosferatu, and they were fine, but they all left me cold. Having just seen Murnau's original (along with Shadow of the Vampire as a companion piece) and Herzog's version just prior to seeing Eggers' version, I would say the latter was the weakest of them all. Murnau's is still untouchable, IMO (though I love Herzog's bleak ending)

Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula is, along with Bigelow's Near Dark and Jordan's Interview with the Vampire, one of my absolute favourite vampire movies, and I re-watch it probably once a year. Beautiful in all respects and the soundtrack from Wojchiech Kilar is so incredibly good and is probably the vinyl in my collection that gets the most love on my turntable.

I haven't seen Rovdyr, but Dead Snow was fun (Wirkola is a friend of a friend. Haven't met him or anything, but I keep an eye out for his projects). Norwegian movies are a bit hit and miss and for the longest time the Norwegian movie scene seemed to consist mostly of a bunch of film students trying to impress each other rather than making movies, but that changed around the turn of the century when a few more commercially minded filmmakers started making movies for entertainment purposes. 2003's Villmark (aka "Dark Woods") was the turning point for me, when I realised that Norwegian horror movies didn't necessarily mean boring claptrap.

If you haven't seen Happy Death Day 2 U, Landon's sequel, you absolutely should if you enjoyed the first one. Going a bit more sci-fi than slasher, it is a blast! I also liked Harlin's version of The Strangers, so will check out the sequel when it arrives. Was not aware they were working on a sequel to Talk to Me, but I'm definitely going to see their next movie, Bring Her Back when it drops this summer.

Hope you'll enjoy Heretic, Hugh Grant is phenomenal in that one! Really liked it