Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Spring 2021 Edition

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise

It is interesting to me how almost all of the best horror movies have low body counts. Real horror occurs where death (and, by extension, life) is important. Which brings us to teen horror, a large sub-genre of horror movies, that has flourished now for roughly forty years. While slasher flick franchises are sometimes criticized as appealing to the simple-minded, that seems ungenerous to me. Their appeal is more to an audience that lacks life experience--in other words, adolescents. Seeing great hordes of their generational cohorts creatively tortured and murdered is still fun in movies where simple logic seldom applies and where every adult is a hopeless, mean-spirited, and, most tellingly, utterly clueless blockhead. In a grotesque way, teen horror is the equivalent of YA literature--adults enter at their own risk and should tread gently as this stuff isn't for us.

So despite these provisos, I have always had a soft spot for A Nightmare on Elm Street's franchise. What separates it from its early competition, the Halloween and Friday, the 13th franchises, and more recent entries like the Final Destination series, is the brilliance of its premise: dead child killer Freddy Kruger can inhabit the dreams of the children whose parents in the community were responsible for his execution. Sharing the same dream with somebody else is a great horror idea, the very thought chilling. And what is more frightening than a nightmare to begin with, something which we have all experienced. This is the stuff of genuine horror, a trope with endless potential.

Re-watching the first A Nightmare on Elm Street, the movie stood up pretty well. There were a couple of bumps that I glossed over in my memory that stood out, though. Freddy has yet to develop much personality and he seems to be able to exist in reality on rare occasions as well as dreams. That flaw was airbrushed out of the sequels without ever offering an explanation. Freddy becomes thoroughly a dream figure with real life consequences in subsequent instalments, a very good change, but the mechanics of even that are kept pretty fuzzy throughout the franchise. Likewise, your best friends die, you go to their funeral, and that's that--they are discarded as mere plot devices rather than mourned. The movie has its bites but they heal too quickly. But, again, the story is such a page turner that these flaws are hardly worth mentioning in terms of the movie's overall effect.

The immediate sequel Freddy's Revenge is awful, although Freddy gets to develop his way with a good one-liner a bit more and the dream sequences are becoming more elaborate. But the two young stars are embarrassingly bad--Heather Langenkamp is bad in the original but Mark Patton and Kim Myers are unbearably amateurish in this one, really hard to watch. I thought initially Kim Myers was a young Meryl Streep as she is the spitting image in some early shots. It took about two minutes of watching her to realize my error, maybe less. Writer/director Wes Craven wasn't involved in the is one and it showed.

Craven is involved as writer in the next sequel Dream Warriors, which may actually be the best movie of the original lot, as it gets away from its constricted suburban setting and takes place mostly in an asylum. Plus, Freddy has become the ghoul of choice, played to a tee by Robert Englund who has a gift for combining malevolence with glee but stopping just short of self-parody (well, usually stopping short). Plus, the dream sequences are now becoming very imaginative and inventive. Next up The Dream Master got bombed critically but I really enjoyed it, possibly because it has a heroine who actually can act, Lisa Wilcox, who alone takes the movie to a different level than the past instalments. Craven is not involved but the movie has spirit and imagination.

I skipped the last two instalments and on a whim picked up Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and I certainly wasn't expecting what I got: a brilliantly self-referential Nightmare starring Wes Craven, Robert Englund John Sexton, and the original Nancy, Heather Langenkamp, as themselves. It seems that real life Heather is finding that playing a heroine in a horror franchise is affecting not only herself but her son who is beginning to have some terrible nightmares. This movie works on so many levels largely because Craven plays the material absolutely straight and not for laughs with the result that this might be the best pure horror movie in the entire franchise. I don't know what shocked me more, the brilliance of the idea and its execution or the fact that Langenkamp had actually learned to act and was very good here.

I may or may not pick up the later instalments although I suspect it is downhill from here, but overall my binge watching of these films was a lot of fun.

Sidenote: for anyone wishing to see this shared dream premise executed in wildly different form, pick up Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf and Ildiko Enyeti's fairly recent On Body and Soul.

I think the drop starts at part 4, and at part 6 it's atrocious. Agreed that 1 and 7 are way above the rest (and I agree with everything about part 7), but I am one of the few who have a soft spot for part 2!

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Been a long time since I've seen them, but IIRC Elm Streets 1 and 3 were good, 2 and 4 were bad, and everything else with that character is an utter waste of time.

 

[Osprey]

A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise

Aw, you skipped the two worst ones, in which Freddy rides a skateboard and uses a Nintendo Power Glove and joystick to kill an 8-bit version of a character. I was mostly looking forward to your thoughts on those installments. Sad.

New Nightmare is also neat as a precursor to Wes Craven's Scream franchise a few years later. The former is self referential while the latter references other horror films, but the tone felt similar to me, as if Craven was encouraged by the success of New Nightmare to go in a more tongue-in-cheek direction (which was maybe a good call because horror became a bit of a joke in the 90s, anyways).

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I really love Chinatown - it is somehow timeless and it really should be a must watch for people who want to see Jack Nicholson in his prime when he wasn’t hamming it up incessantly.

I caught it by accident when I younger and I was surprised how quickly and easily I was riveted for such a slow burn film.

It’s funny because I had seen LA Confidential first and sort of had an a-ha moment when realizing that it was really more of an homage to pulpy noir generically but also Chinatown specifically.

Still an excellent film.

Just started The Big Goodbye, Sam Wasson's book about the making of Chinatown ... will report back.

Have been wanting to rewatch for a while but holding off until I finish that.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise

It is interesting to me how almost all of the best horror movies have low body counts. Real horror occurs where death (and, by extension, life) is important. Which brings us to teen horror, a large sub-genre of horror movies, that has flourished now for roughly forty years. While slasher flick franchises are sometimes criticized as appealing to the simple-minded, that seems ungenerous to me. Their appeal is more to an audience that lacks life experience--in other words, adolescents. Seeing great hordes of their generational cohorts creatively tortured and murdered is still fun in movies where simple logic seldom applies and where every adult is a hopeless, mean-spirited, and, most tellingly, utterly clueless blockhead. In a grotesque way, teen horror is the equivalent of YA literature--adults enter at their own risk and should tread gently as this stuff isn't for us.

So despite these provisos, I have always had a soft spot for A Nightmare on Elm Street's franchise. What separates it from its early competition, the Halloween and Friday, the 13th franchises, and more recent entries like the Final Destination series, is the brilliance of its premise: dead child killer Freddy Kruger can inhabit the dreams of the children whose parents in the community were responsible for his execution. Sharing the same dream with somebody else is a great horror idea, the very thought chilling. And what is more frightening than a nightmare to begin with, something which we have all experienced. This is the stuff of genuine horror, a trope with endless potential.

Re-watching the first A Nightmare on Elm Street, the movie stood up pretty well. There were a couple of bumps that I glossed over in my memory that stood out, though. Freddy has yet to develop much personality and he seems to be able to exist in reality on rare occasions as well as dreams. That flaw was airbrushed out of the sequels without ever offering an explanation. Freddy becomes thoroughly a dream figure with real life consequences in subsequent instalments, a very good change, but the mechanics of even that are kept pretty fuzzy throughout the franchise. Likewise, your best friends die, you go to their funeral, and that's that--they are discarded as mere plot devices rather than mourned. The movie has its bites but they heal too quickly. But, again, the story is such a page turner that these flaws are hardly worth mentioning in terms of the movie's overall effect.

The immediate sequel Freddy's Revenge is awful, although Freddy gets to develop his way with a good one-liner a bit more and the dream sequences are becoming more elaborate. But the two young stars are embarrassingly bad--Heather Langenkamp is bad in the original but Mark Patton and Kim Myers are unbearably amateurish in this one, really hard to watch. I thought initially Kim Myers was a young Meryl Streep as she is the spitting image in some early shots. It took about two minutes of watching her to realize my error, maybe less. Writer/director Wes Craven wasn't involved in the is one and it showed.

Craven is involved as writer in the next sequel Dream Warriors, which may actually be the best movie of the original lot, as it gets away from its constricted suburban setting and takes place mostly in an asylum. Plus, Freddy has become the ghoul of choice, played to a tee by Robert Englund who has a gift for combining malevolence with glee but stopping just short of self-parody (well, usually stopping short). Plus, the dream sequences are now becoming very imaginative and inventive. Next up The Dream Master got bombed critically but I really enjoyed it, possibly because it has a heroine who actually can act, Lisa Wilcox, who alone takes the movie to a different level than the past instalments. Craven is not involved but the movie has spirit and imagination.

I skipped the last two instalments and on a whim picked up Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and I certainly wasn't expecting what I got: a brilliantly self-referential Nightmare starring Wes Craven, Robert Englund John Sexton, and the original Nancy, Heather Langenkamp, as themselves. It seems that real life Heather is finding that playing a heroine in a horror franchise is affecting not only herself but her son who is beginning to have some terrible nightmares. This movie works on so many levels largely because Craven plays the material absolutely straight and not for laughs with the result that this might be the best pure horror movie in the entire franchise. I don't know what shocked me more, the brilliance of the idea and its execution or the fact that Langenkamp had actually learned to act and was very good here.

I may or may not pick up the later instalments although I suspect it is downhill from here, but overall my binge watching of these films was a lot of fun.

Sidenote: for anyone wishing to see this shared dream premise executed in wildly different form, pick up Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf and Ildiko Enyeti's fairly recent On Body and Soul.

I've always favored the Nightmare series overall versus the other big franchise peers. I line up with your assessments here as well. The second one is so bad I actually have a soft spot for it, but it's for all the wrong reasons. Gonna guess that you wouldn't enjoy 4-6 which turn more jokey so you've probably saved yourself some time and energy. I still kinda like 4, but 1, 3 and 7 I would say are the close to consensus best ones.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Ah, you skipped the two worst ones, in which Freddy rides a skateboard and uses a Nintendo Power Glove and joystick to kill an 8-bit version of a character. I was mostly looking forward to your thoughts on those installments. Sad.

New Nightmare is also neat as a precursor to Wes Craven's Scream franchise a few years later. The former is self referential while the latter references other horror films, but the tone felt similar to me, as if Craven was encouraged by the success of New Nightmare to go in a more tongue-in-cheek direction (which was maybe a good call because horror became a bit of a joke in the 90s, anyways).

You'd be right in thinking NN paved the way for Scream to appear - but what Kevin Williamson did to horror films with that crap ruined everything for quite a while.

I've always favored the Nightmare series overall versus the other big franchise peers. I line up with your assessments here as well. The second one is so bad I actually have a soft spot for it, but it's for all the wrong reasons. Gonna guess that you wouldn't enjoy 4-6 which turn more jokey so you've probably saved yourself some time and energy. I still kinda like 4, but 1, 3 and 7 I would say are the close to consensus best ones.

1-7 (I think 1 is the better film, but 7 has quite a few interesting ideas)
-
-
2-3
-
-
4-5
-
-
-
-
6

Wes Craven looks like a genius with these films, launching a great horror series and coming back to top every sequels that were done without him. Sad that apart from Last House on the Left, he never did anything else that was really interesting. I like a few of his films - Shocker, The People Under the Stairs, and The Serpent and the Rainbow - but the first two are goofy and the third ain't that great overall.

I should watch Night Visions, which he did in the same period, with Mitch Pileggi too. Someone has seen it?

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Vengeance: A Love Story (Martin, 2017) - An embalmed Nicolas Cage decides to go vigilante on a bunch of improbable white trash who gang raped some girl that once talked to him. 3/10

Screenshot in spoiler only because it's kinda huge, but seriously, it's not clear if he's still breathing.

Spoiler

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

48 Hrs (Hill, 1982) - 80s fun. The dialogues have some racist, sexist, macho tones that nobody would touch today. 4/10

 

[Puck]

I've dumped on the horror genre but I just wanted to say I still commend people getting a blast out of these. Just for fun, and in the spirit of things (pardon the pun) I watched an Irish horror flick today, Perhaps best labeled occult-Satanic-drama. Low budget. They don't take themselves seriously. Good twist at the end.

Extra Ordinary (2019) - IMDb

Recommend watching....

 

[kihei]

Martyrs (2009) Directed by Pascal Laugier 3C

Two young women take revenge on the family that abducted and abused them for years. Curiously they hang around the house for awhile afterwards which proves a bad idea. Martyrs was a huge nothing-burger as far as I'm concerned. The torture and violence, and admittedly there is a lot of it, are there not so much to help progress the story but because the makers of the film wanted it to be there. I wasn't shocked or grossed out or even mildly invested at what looks like a student film idea gone way overboard. If this was meant as a story, it is poorly told; if this is meant as an artistic manifesto of some kind than it's just plain silly. Sometimes a bad movie is just a bad movie.

Sidenote: The cutesy ending reminded me of a joke. It is one of those jokes that you are supposed to string out for an half hour before delivering the punchline but I will just do the basics. This young monk studies for years and years to discover the meaning of life, and he is told that there is an old guru on top of a rugged mountain in faraway Tibet who absolutely has the answer. So he gets to the mountain and struggles up its difficult ascent meeting one hardship after another, often almost turning back, but plunging on anyway. Finally the young monk gets to the guru and says "So Holy One, I have suffered hardships and pain to get to you, sold all my belongings and lost all my friends. All because I am told you can tell me the meaning of life." And the guru goes "Indeed, I can my son." So the monk goes "What is it? What is it?" And the old guru says with quiet certainty, "It is the monarch butterfly." The young monk pauses, a confused look crossing his face, then exclaims "The monarch butterfly? The monarch butterfly? What the hell?" And the guru looks at him and says, "You mean, it isn't?"

subtitles

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I wasn't shocked or grossed out or even mildly invested at what looks like a student film idea gone way overboard. If this was meant as a story, it is poorly told; if this is meant as an artistic manifesto of some kind than it's just plain silly.

Now this quote should be framed.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Read the recap of Martyrs on wikipedia. That was enough for me. No thanks.

 

[Osprey]

Read the recap of Martyrs on wikipedia. That was enough for me. No thanks.

I've done that a few times. It's a good way to satisfy curiosity and save at least an hour and a half. I'll do it for only the most offensive and irredeemable of films, though... like The Rise of Skywalker.

 

[Puck]

Sidenote: The cutesy ending reminded me of a joke. It is one of those jokes that you are supposed to string out for an half hour before delivering the punchline but I will just do the basics. This young monk studies for years and years to discover the meaning of life, and he is told that there is an old guru on top of a rugged mountain in faraway Tibet who absolutely has the answer. So he gets to the mountain and struggles up its difficult ascent meeting one hardship after another, often almost turning back, but plunging on anyway. Finally the young monk gets to the guru and says "So Holy One, I have suffered hardships and pain to get to you, sold all my belongings and lost all my friends. All because I am told you can tell me the meaning of life." And the guru goes "Indeed, I can my son." So the monk goes "What is it? What is it?" And the old guru says with quiet certainty, "It is the monarch butterfly." The young monk pauses, a confused look crossing his face, then exclaims "The monarch butterfly? The monarch butterfly? What the hell?" And the guru looks at him and says, "You mean, it isn't?"

subtitles

That is a good but extremely old joke. Saw it on a "Best of Ed Sullivan" video on YouTube, the joke was done by Jewish stand-up comic Jackie Mason. It was in colour, so I'd say circa late 1960's. It was considered good enough to make the Best of. In it, (after a long build up story) the guru tells the understudy that the meaning of life is 'the bluebird flies south for the Winter'. The young understudy says, 'I walked all the way up here for you to tell me the meaning of life is the bluebird flies south for the Winter?!!!, Reply is 'You mean it doesn't? (cue the drum roll). Probably repeated often later in popular culture. A variation on the theme was done later by Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the Bridge of Death skit with the guru replaced by the bridge-keeper. (After a big build up for the final gag, "African or European swallow?" "I don't know." Wooosh).

 

[Mantis]

Green Room (2016) A shitty punk rock band performs at some skinhead bar, witnesses a murder and becomes targeted by the skinheads. Not great but not terrible. Kinda weird seein Patrick Stewart play the leader of a bunch of skinheads.
I’ll say 6.5/10.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Warlock (Miner, 1989) - This was pretty bad when it came out, and it didn't get any better. It's Les visiteurs, without the jokes (well, with lesser jokes, the only redeemable thing is the humor in Warlock). Steve Miner is a strange bird, came in under Cunningham and directed some of the best slasher films and caped it off with House, one of my favorite horror comedies, as his first three films - but after that never made anything watchable. Warlock might just be his fourth best effort, but it's too long and it's boring. Now I guess I'll have to watch the Hickox sequel, another director that started his horror career with a bang only to quickly prove he was worthless. 2.5/10

 

[sdf]

Last movie you rated and watch it

 

[sdf]

Green Room (2016) A shitty punk rock band performs at some skinhead bar, witnesses a murder and becomes targeted by the skinheads. Not great but not terrible. Kinda weird seein Patrick Stewart play the leader of a bunch of skinheads.
I’ll say 6.5/10.

Yeah, i would give it 3.6 roentgen

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

Pee Wee: The Winter That Changed My Life (2012) - Amazon Prime

If you love hockey, and I assume most on these boards do, this movie is a must see.

Sadly, the pickings for great hockey movies are slim, but this is easily the best hockey movie I have seen to date.

Some people get all choked up about Miracle, but like Janeau (our protagonist), I lost my mother as well, so seeing his struggles to accept her absence touched a really sensitive nerve.

The thing I enjoyed the most about this film is that these kids can actually play the game and act (sorry Ducks).

Overall this makes for a fun movie with hockey action that is really well done.

We have a few cliches in The Pee Wee and some callbacks to the Mighty Ducks (scared goalie pucks firing squad), but this movie really stands on it’s own two legs.

If you love hockey, I can almost guarantee you will enjoy this film.

 

[Pink Mist]

Pee Wee: The Winter That Changed My Life (2012) - Amazon Prime

If you love hockey, and I assume most on these boards do, this movie is a must see.

Sadly, the pickings for great hockey movies are slim, but this is easily the best hockey movie I have seen to date.

Some people get all choked up about Miracle, but like Janeau (our protagonist), I lost my mother as well, so seeing his struggles to accept her absence touched a really sensitive nerve.

The thing I enjoyed the most about this film is that these kids can actually play the game and act (sorry Ducks).

Overall this makes for a fun movie with hockey action that is really well done.

We have a few cliches in The Pee Wee and some callbacks to the Mighty Ducks (scared goalie pucks firing squad), but this movie really stands on it’s own two legs.

If you love hockey, I can almost guarantee you will enjoy this film.

Funny seeing Antoine Olivier Pilon in this after just watching him in Mommy the other week

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

Funny seeing Antoine Olivier Pilon in this after just watching him in Mommy the other week

Definitely some irony in there for sure.

 

[WeaponOfChoice]

Pee Wee: The Winter That Changed My Life (2012) - Amazon Prime

If you love hockey, and I assume most on these boards do, this movie is a must see.

Sadly, the pickings for great hockey movies are slim, but this is easily the best hockey movie I have seen to date.

Some people get all choked up about Miracle, but like Janeau (our protagonist), I lost my mother as well, so seeing his struggles to accept her absence touched a really sensitive nerve.

The thing I enjoyed the most about this film is that these kids can actually play the game and act (sorry Ducks).

Overall this makes for a fun movie with hockey action that is really well done.

We have a few cliches in The Pee Wee and some callbacks to the Mighty Ducks (scared goalie pucks firing squad), but this movie really stands on it’s own two legs.

If you love hockey, I can almost guarantee you will enjoy this film.

Not a fan of Slap Shot?

 

[silkyjohnson50]

I watched You’re Next last night. Felt like I was watching a gory, torture porn version of Home Alone without any of the fun or laughs. Throats being cut is not my thing, so this movie got old real quick.

I’ve got Hereditary on deck, so we’ll see how that goes.

Green Room (2016) A shitty punk rock band performs at some skinhead bar, witnesses a murder and becomes targeted by the skinheads. Not great but not terrible. Kinda weird seein Patrick Stewart play the leader of a bunch of skinheads.
I’ll say 6.5/10.

Yeah, I couldn’t buy into Stewart in that role at all. I was disappointed in that film, but some of that probably had to do with expectations as I was told it was great.

 

[Osprey]

I watched You’re Next last night. Felt like I was watching a gory, torture porn version of Home Alone without any of the fun or laughs. Throats being cut is not my thing, so this movie got old real quick.

You might like Ready or Not better. It has a somewhat similar premise (rich family gathers at a mansion; carnage ensues), but with a little less gore and a lot more fun, if I recall correctly.

 

[silkyjohnson50]

You might like Ready or Not better. It has a somewhat similar premise (rich family gathers at a mansion; carnage ensues), but with a little less gore and a lot more fun, if I recall correctly.

Good call . I caught that one a few months back and you’re absolutely right. I liked the lead quite a bit more as well.