Rate the Last Film You Watched

31 Days of Halloween 2025! Day XXVIII: Corpse Bride (2005, Tim Burton, Mike Johnson)

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Since it’s the 20th anniversary of this film and it got a UHD release recently I figured it would be a great opportunity to revisit this macabre musical, and its charm still remains. The songs are mostly very solid, the stop-motion animation absolutely marvellous and the vocal performances fit nicely too. Well worth a look if you haven’t watched already. 4/5
 
31 Days of Halloween 2025! Day XXIX: Martyrs (2008, Pascal Laugier)

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A horrific and brutal story of revenge and abuse, which culminates in a devastating conclusion - this was a hard watch at times, certainly making for one of the most extreme films I’ve watched in one of these marathons excepting some cannibal entries. 3.5/5
 
31 Days of Halloween 2025! Day XXX: Nosferatu (2024, Robert Eggers)

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The newest film for this year’s marathon, Robert Eggers’ take on Nosferatu was certainly a good one, with Bill Skarsgärd providing a solid performance in the central role, as did Lily-Rose Depp. This also had a fairly stacked supporting cast with Willem Dafoe being a particular standout. 4/5
 
31 Days of Halloween 2025! Day XXXI: The Exorcist III (1990, William Peter Blatty)

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Every Halloween I like to dedicate the actual evening in the marathon to rewatch of one of my all-time favourite films, and it never loses its appeal. 5/5

Another year, another Halloween marathon - my full list can be seen here:

  1. The House that Screamed (1969, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador) 3.5/5
  2. The Blair Witch Project (1999, Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez) 3/5
  3. Cannibal Marathon II: Last Cannibal World (1977, Ruggero Deodato) 3.5/5, Slave of the Cannibal God (1978, Sergio Martino) 3.5/5, Primitives (1978, Sisworo Gautama Putra) 2.5/5, Massacre in Dinosaur Valley (1985, Michele Massimo Tarantini) 3/5
  4. Black Pit of Dr. M (1959, Fernando Méndez), 3.5/5, The Witch’s Mirror (1961, Chano Urueta) 3/5, The Braniac (1962, Chano Urueta) 2/5, The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963, Rafael Baledón) 3/5
  5. The Stone Tapes (1972, Peter Sasdy) 3.5/5, Don’t be Afraid of the Dark (1973, John Newland) 3/5
  6. Eyeball (1975, Umberto Lenzi) 3.5/5
  7. From Beyond (1986, Stuart Gordon) 3.5/5
  8. Night of the Living Dead (1990, Tom Savini) 4/5
  9. Last Night in Soho (2021, Edgar Wright) 3.5/5
  10. The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959, Nobuo Nakagawa) 3.5/5, The Snow Woman (1968, Tokuzō Tanaka) 3.5/5, The Bride From Hades (1968, Satsuo Yamamoto) 3.5/5
  11. Tigon Marathon: The Sorcerers (1967, Michael Reeves) 3/5, The Blood Beast Terror (1968, Vernon Sewell) 3/5, Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968, Vernon Sewell) 3/5
  12. Tigon Marathon II: The Haunted House of Horror (1969, Michael Armstrong) 2.5/5, The Beast in the Cellar (1970, James Kelley) 3/5, Neither the Sea Nor the Sand (1972, Fred Burnley) 3/5
  13. Dogra Magra (1988, Toshio Matsumoto) 3.5/5
  14. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982, Amy Holden Jones) 3.5/5, Slumber Party Massacre II (1987, Deborah Brock) 3/5, Slumber Party Massacre III (1990, Sally Mattison) 2/5
  15. Häxan (1922, Benjamin Christensen) 4.5/5
  16. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989, Shinya Tsukamoto) 4.5/5, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992, Shinya Tsukamoto) 3.5/5, Tetsuo: Bullet Man (2009, Shinya Tsukamoto) 2/5
  17. A Nightmare on Elm Street Sequel Marathon: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985, Jack Sholder) 3/5, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987, Chuck Russell) 4/5, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988, Renny Harlin) 3.5/5
  18. A Nightmare on Elm Street Sequel Marathon II: A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989, Stephen Hopkins) 2/5 , Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991, Rachel Talalay) 2/5, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994, Wes Craven) 4/5
  19. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003, Marc Nispel) 3/5, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006, Jonathan Liebesman) 3.5/5
  20. Village of the Damned (1960, Wolf Rilla) 3.5/5, Wolfen (1981, Michael Wadleigh) 3.5/5
  21. I Vampiri (1957, Riccardo Freda) 3/5, Count Dracula (1970, Jesús “Jess” Franco) 3.5/5
  22. Panic in Year Zero! (1962, Ray Milland) 3.5/5
  23. Blood Tide (1982, Richard Jefferies) 3/5, Dream Demon (1988, Harley Cokeliss) 3/5
  24. Coffin Joe Marathon: At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1963, José Mojica Marins) 3.5/5, This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967, José Mojica Marins) 3.5/5, The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968, José Mojica Marins) 3/5, Embodiment of Evil (2008, José Mojica Marins) 3.5/5
  25. The Church (1989, Michael Soavi) 3.5/5, The Sect (1991, Michael Soavi) 3/5, Cemetery Man (DellaMorte DellAmore) (1994, Michael Soavi) 4/5
  26. The Stuff (1985, Larry Cohen) 3.5/5, Return of the Living Dead (1985, Dan O’Bannon) 4/5, The Brain (1988, Ed Hunt) 3/5
  27. In the Mouth of Madness (1994, John Carpenter) 4/5
  28. Corpse Bride (2005, Tim Burton, Mike Johnson) 4/5
  29. Martyrs (2008, Pascal Laugier) 3.5/5
  30. Nosferatu (2024, Robert Eggers) 4/5
  31. The Exorcist III (1990, William Peter Blatty) 5/5

Another Happy Halloween to all of those reading the thread!
 
F/X Murder by Illusion
5 out of 10.

It passed the time but it's pretty ordinary and not terribly exciting.
The extras are interesting and I'll watch the 2 film one evening.
Still glad I bought it as it's a nice collection and I don't remember seeing it on TV much if at all.
 
The Hunted (1995)

This silly and violent romp through 90s Nagoya written and directed by the writer of Pretty Woman, sees Christopher Lambert as the hapless businessman on a trip in Japan who is in the wrong place at the wrong time, or rather the right place at the right time, and after a soul shaking one night stand with Joan Chen's mysterious Kirina is suddenly caught in the crossfire of a centuries old fued between a (not so) secret utterly evil ninja assassin clan (whose head honcho is the English language only master killer played by John Loan) and a slightly less evil Samurai clan (whose head honcho is the Japanese language only badass played by Yoshio Harada). The cast is surprisingly great and features Japanese veterans like Yoko Shimada, Mari Natsuki, Masumi Okada and even a brief appearance of "Shredder" James Saito.

Now I won't exactly hold this up as exhibit A in an argument in defense of the artistic fruits of orientalism, and I wouldn't blame any Japanese watchers if they deemed the ludicrous and low effort portrayal of Japan to be a little offensive, not to mention the way Christopher Lambert's character basically becomes the best samurai ever after a few weeks of training with a drunkard swordsmith. It's 90s (in fact it feels more 80s if anything, but without the meanspiritedness of a Black Rain) Japan movie tropes galore but it feels like its tongue is clearly in its cheek. Now whether it's laughing with or at Japan is debatable, but I see it as the former, and for me this whole film hits that perfect sweet spot of so bad it's good, while actually being genuinely quite good in some respects.

Most notably the soundtrack is sincerely amazing synth laced Taiko music performed by the Kodo troupe. It really is a great score and probably deserves a better film to be honest but I'm glad it's here anyway. The highlight of the film for me was probably the surprisingly brutal bullet train fight which sees ninja marauders acting very un-ninja like and methodically butchering all the passengers on the train before being cut down by Yoshio Harada looking magnificently dapper wielding his katana in an Armani trench coat. Also I like to imagine this film really takes place in the Highlander universe and Lambert's Paul Racine character is really Connor Mcleod just pretending to be a noobie without skills for a bit of a laugh, and it would make sense plot wise in explaining how he gets so good with the sword so quickly, is impervious to poison shuriken, and instinctually
lopped John Loan's evil ninja baddie's head off

So all in all, very enjoyable little flick and a must watch for fans of Lambert and Highlander!
 
Never Sleep Again
The Elm Street documentary.
7/10

I wasn't sure whether to buy as I've only seen 1+3. Maybe 2 but I've no recollection.
All the actors were pretty hyped to be talking. Most of them seem happy that people still recognise them from at least one film they made.
Most of the directors star including Wes Craven.
And that guy from the show V.
An interesting 4 hours.

A Man of Reason.
Korean action movie. 6.5/10
A gangster gets out of prison and finds out he has a daughter. He doesn't want to rejoin the gang. Oh dear, that'll cause trouble. Lots of action and fighting.

I spent some time saying I've seen the MC somewhere. Looked up his films. No haven't watched any of them, hang on there's The Good, The Bad and the Weird. That's it. He was Good.

The Great Yokai War
4/10

A boy helps the Yokai to fend of their enemies.
Couldn't really get into but I finished.
I liked the special effects.
 
The Room (2003)
Finally found the time to sit down and watch this thing. I wasn't expecting to have a good time considering the joke has been known for years but it's just so much fun that I had a great time with this wreck.

I'm convinced that Wiseau must've had a massive breakup at the time though because every woman in this thing are just nasty and the way that it frames Mark as a victim when he's just as guilty as Lisa is oof.

Awful film but a fun one.1000022558.jpg
 
A Company Man
Korea 2012
8/10

A man works for a private assassination bureau, falls in love and wants to resign.
His bosses don't like the staff to quit.
So, FIGHT!
Pre John Wick.

Unstoppable
Korea 2018
7/10

Don Lee plays a former gangster who's wife is kidnapped for ransom.
The police are no help so he has to punch everyone to get her back.
 
A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)

Obsessed with her Bohemian nuisance-neighbour, Julia (Anita Strindberg), wealthy London socialite Carol (Florinda Bolkan) dreams alternately of making love to or killing the other woman, only to find herself the chief suspect when Julia is found dead in real life.

The first twenty minutes of this Lucio Fulci-helmed giallo are quite special, with surreal, pared back dream sequences contrasting scenes of Carol’s banal domestic life, with unusual (for the time) handheld camerawork bringing a real sense of tension to the conversations at the dining table. I had hoped we were in for a gender-swapped version of weird-noir classic Performance, but disappointingly, however, the film can’t keep this strangeness up, and becomes something more conventional for most of its runtime.

It is still a good example of the form, but it’s also worth warning that, in its unedited version, the film does contain one scene of very graphic (but, I must stress, simulated) animal cruelty, which seems to serve no purpose other than a cheap jump scare.

Predator: Badlands

Following the death of his brother, Yautja hunter Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) journeys to a hostile planet to kill the legendary beast that he believes will make him worthy in the eyes of his clansmen, only to end up in an unlikely alliance with stranded synthetic human Thia (Elle Fanning), after both have bitten off more than they can chew.

There is definitely a conversation to be had here about what people want from a Predator movie. Badlands largely tones down the horror element that distinguished pretty much everything else in the series (including director Dan Trachtenberg’s own Prey), in favour of a muscular adventure-quest, with a strong hint of buddy-cop schtick, as Thia provides a motor-mouthed commentary to make up for Dek’s mono-syllabic glower. With its jovial tone and questionable companions, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there’s even something of latter day Star Wars about the proceedings. We’ve come a long way from Arnie calling someone an ugly muppet-plucker.

Yet, if you can approach it with an open mind, I think you’d be hard pushed not to find something to your liking here. The two people I saw it with dug their heels in and hated it, but I thought it was tremendous. The quippy dialogue can grate at times, but this feels like an absolute love letter to classic genre movies, with great action and effects work to complement a surprisingly charming odd-couple dynamic at its heart. I’d go as far as to say I think this is a better movie than Prey (it brings more fresh ideas to the table) and I’m genuinely keen to see what Trachtenberg will do with his next film.

Vashdaman said:
The Hunted (1995)
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If you’re in the mood for something else along similar lines, I can recommend The Challenge. It’s a little overlong (I reached tolerance point for looking at Scott Glenn’s terrible hairdo after about an hour) but Toshiro Mifune gives it a touch of class and the finale is bananas.
 
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Zebraman 2. Different from the first one but very enjoyable nonetheless. Has me even more excited for the Radiance Takashi Miike boxset at the end of March.
 
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Weapons
A school class of young children disappear on the same night, except for one boy, and we follow several people from the town as they deal with the aftermath and slowly figure out what happened. Billed as horror, this movie's real strength is as a mystery. It's intriguing and atmospheric, with some eerie moments and a few splashes of gore.

The best parts are the establishing scenes and early parts of the mystery in the first 40 minutes, and the viscerally cathartic resolution. Where it falters is in the middle. Its main structural gimmick is that we switch to the perspective of a different character every 15-20 minutes throughout. The problem is that each character's story starts over from roughly the same time, and the perspective switches are usually deployed just as it looks like events are about to press forward. It's clearly intended to build tension, but ends up draining all of the momentum out of the middle hour by rehashing a lot of the same events repeatedly. Some of these characters' perspectives don't add much to the story, and it just ends up feeling like the film-makers were trying to be too clever for their own good. The movie's strengths definitely outweight this though.

28 Years Later
A competent post-apocalyptic zombie movie that unfortunately fails to add anything new or interesting to one of cinema's most worn-out sub-genres. It at least tries to flesh out the world of its prequels with a more varied ecology of infected, but take off those series-specific blinkers and any sense of originality crumbles. The story it tells in this world fares somewhat better, being a boy's desperate quest to save his ailing mother. Again, nothing remarkably original, but at least competently executed.

The main issue is tonal. It tries to swing back and forth between quirky, gory excess and heart-wrenching sincerity, and the tonal whiplash can be more distracting than the flapping dong of the naked 7ft alpha zombie who jogs around in pursuit of the protagonist for much of the movie. I'm not certain if I was supposed to be laughing at some scenes or not.
 
Dai said:
28 Years Later
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I didn’t mind it, but I definitely get where you’re coming from. There are bits and pieces in there that work quite well, but overall I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking at episode one of a TV series, and perhaps that format might have allowed them more space to further flesh out the world and characters.

On which note:

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Following a harrowing trial by combat, Spike (Alfie Williams) is inducted into a gang of murderous anarchists roaming the English countryside. Cracks appear in the personality cult of their self-styled anti-messiah leader (Jack O’Connell), however, after they encounter a very real man who matches the description of the deity he claims to worship.

A fine action film that thankfully dispenses with the gimmick camera tricks of the previous instalment, but that’s really about all there is to it. It does surprise me that a lot of people have said they prefer this to its predecessor; the main thing I thought 28 Years did well was the character storytelling it developed throughout the film, and that seems largely absent here.

There’s some unusually strong gore if that’s your thing (this is easily the messiest mainstream cinema release I’ve seen in a very long time), but I was surprised at the lack of development for Jack O’Connell’s character, given the amount of foreshadowing he had last time. It feels like the obvious thing would be to show something of his journey from scared young boy to cult leader, perhaps as a counterpoint to Alfie’s story, but we learn almost nothing about him beyond what we can glean from his actions.
Even the choice to dress his gang like Jimmy Saville seems to have no real significance.

The one saving grace here is Ralph Fiennes. His performance, capped off by a riotous set piece at the end of the film, is absolutely fantastic and really ought to net him an Oscar for his troubles.

There seems to be some debate as to whether the third planned film will actually happen. If it does, I’ll probably watch it, but if it doesn’t, well. No great loss?
 
Professor Irony said:
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
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My interpretation of the Jimmy gang is that it's an extension of the series' anti-nationalism themes, particularly in how the past can be distorted into myth. Just like how it's presenting a community looking at the past of their nation through rose tinted glasses, Jimmy is emulating the appearance of one of his childhood heroes without knowing the full story.

But yeah I do feel they didn't do enough to put that message across in the second one and it does feel like it's lost the medieval vibe of the previous film. That said I still found it to be a great time and I look forward to the third one.
 
Not a movie but an old tv series about WW2 called Victory At Sea, I've had a dvd set of it for many years and finally decided to watch it. I think one of the best things about it is that the soundtrack was partially created by Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The show is generally regarded as one of the best documentaries of WW2. Anyone who is interested in the sea warfare campaigns of the second world war should watch it.
 
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