- Status
Muse
Lifer
- Jul 11, 2001
- 40,866
- 10,221
- 136
Unforgiven is a masterpiece. I think of it as Eastwood's taking his huge success as an actor in movies that in part glorified violence and applying himself in the more powerful role (than an actor) as a director/producer and utilizing his conscience, because he finally had the power to do so. It's a brilliant film, for me there's no greater western.
Clint Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’ Closed the Book on Movie Westerns
"Twenty-five years later, the genre hasn’t seen a better movie"
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shortylickens
No Lifer
- Jul 15, 2003
- 80,287
- 17,081
- 136
The Cabin In The Woods - 9/10
Totally different from what I was expecting. I somehow managed to avoid spoilers and went in thinking it was more or less a normal horror movie. Nope, not at all. Even with the partial reveal at the beginning of the movie it still surprised me as it went on as we learn what is really happening and why.
Totally different from what I was expecting. I somehow managed to avoid spoilers and went in thinking it was more or less a normal horror movie. Nope, not at all. Even with the partial reveal at the beginning of the movie it still surprised me as it went on as we learn what is really happening and why.
ImpulsE69
Lifer
- Jan 8, 2010
- 14,946
- 1,077
- 126
Ichinisan
Lifer
- Oct 9, 2002
- 28,298
- 1,235
- 136
I enjoyed it. Reminds me of Portal (Valve PC game).
Nobody watch the RedLetterMedia review until you've seen Cabin in the Woods:
http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag-cabin-in-the-woods-and-the-three-stooges/
Muse
Lifer
- Jul 11, 2001
- 40,866
- 10,221
- 136
My take the day after I watched it:
WTF, OK, that was intentional, but myself, I gotta think Joss Weedon has kind of lost it. No, he's not Aaron Sorkin. He did do the TV Serenity series, Firefly, and I liked that a lot. Not as much as West Wing, but that's a different thing entirely. To say TCITW is preposterous is too gross an understatement. Summed up,
5 college kids (yeah sexy, good looking, athletic more or less), go out to a cabin in the woods and it turns out it's under surveilance to put it mildly. Absurdly so, oh, well, why try to explain this, the explanations online do it fine I suppose. I wasn't really into it and the premise of evil demons from the ancient past needing to be appeased by sacrificial rituals is just too much for me to stomach. Get real!
I'm guessing Buffy TVS and Angel were not your cup of tea either, or the Hellraiser series. This movie would fit right into the Buffyverse.
It makes perfect sense if you start with the assumption that the Lovecraftian Elder Gods are real. The ritual had rules that must be observed, such as the victims being warned they were in danger and still choosing to unleash whatever horror kills them. The government stacked the deck by filling the basement with (based on the betting board) 20+ different horrors that could be invoked from IT's clown to Hellraiser's box. The surveillance, drugs, environmental control were all attempts to bend the rules as far as possible to push the victims into making a choice and completing the ritual.
It's a meta horror film that and references many other horror films, and accepts Brian Yuzna's rules for the genre: The guilty must be punished, and the innocent must suffer.
... but here the government's mind control pushes the victims into becoming "guilty"
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Now you have to watch Tucker and Dale VS Evil which is still available on Netflix
and don't watch the trailer or read anything about it either
DigDog
Lifer
- Jun 3, 2011
- 14,615
- 2,997
- 136
ok so, after nearly 2 hours of WTF, i have successfully complete watching Cabin In The Woods - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/reference
and my vote will be 5/10
i would not recommend this piece of crap, and if, among all the other pieces of crap, this one isn't the stinkiest, it's still nowhere, NOWHERE NEAR what a film should be like.
"Oh, but your preconceptions" or any other phrase that starts like that will be met by my response that while we are still the same animal, that breathes air, eats food, sleeps, and has sex, you need to stick to the rules of what makes a film good; or if you are from another planet, what makes a HUMAN film good.
You cannot mix comedy and horror. You can have a comedy with zombies, but you cannot mix an actual comedy with an actual horror film. You cannot jump between 4 different styles in one fucking scene. You got the road trip film, the spy story, the stoner comedy, the office banter, the secret underground facility, fights, romance, violence, anxiety, horror, all in one scene. A wise man once said, "There isn't a violent rape on a pinball machine in the first ten minutes of Ghostbusters. Nor is there a pie-in-the-face gag in the opening of Citizen Kane”
This horrible mishmash of styles looks like the result of an hyperactive editor with ADD, spare footage from 4 films - an action film, a horror, a scifi/spy film, a comedy, and some bits from a drama - who has never seen a film before and has no concept of style, pacing, mood, and while the individual bits are not terrible per se, it appears to me that they were put together by someone who should never be allowed in a film studio.
It's not funny. Evil Dead is funny.
It's not scary. The Ring is scary. Does The Ring have a major scene where all the major characters do bong hits? No. It does not.
while there can be some films that have sections that differ in mood from the rest of the film, these happen as situations within a setting, you cannot change the setting from creaky old house to fake forest with pheromone sprinklers and not have the viewer's mindset go from imagining old wooden boards to metal pipes and computers. You cannot have one scene with hitech hacking in Conan The Barbarian and expect to not break the mood of the film.
it's such a waste, because the effects are good .. *some* effects are good, but when they switch from puppets to CGI it just hurts my brain it's so bad. You cannot have a guy in prosthetics and then a computer-generated cobra and not expect one of the two to look out of place.
Here is my guess as to what has happened:
1. some guy writes a draft. In it, it tells the story of the gods, the ritual, and finally of the underground facility that needs to exist for this purpose. he fleshes it out a bit, and realizes it's the same thing as Cube 2.
2. another guy decides to make it less grim and introduces the stoner comedy, the buddy comedy, romance and love interests, and the on the road. they write it down but they realize that they picked two styles that do not work together and they go back to the drawing board.
3. someone else "does not want to waste more money" so they throw in some breaking bad shit to make it seem like the comedy is only the way the characters perceive their selves, but oh boy are they due for a surprise.
4. and finally when they realize they cannot end the film by just killing them, because they have not set up a mood of failure and despair, and because we do not relate to the characters in their trouble, AS WE ONLY SEE THEM HAVE FUN and we think they are in a comedy, and the guy who just died will come back as a friendly zombie, a la Shaun of The Dead
5. a producer steps in a pays 3/4 of the budget to have fucking Sigourney Weaver show up and punctuate exactly why this film is shit.
Cabin In The Woods is like a Duck Yoghurt with a side of mustard coffee: good if you need to vomit.
**2021 edit** please note that i have substantially changed my opinion on CITW, after watching the "CITW EXPLAINED" video. Essentially this film completely flew over my head, i got none of the references, and i wasn't really understanding what i was watching.
and my vote will be 5/10
i would not recommend this piece of crap, and if, among all the other pieces of crap, this one isn't the stinkiest, it's still nowhere, NOWHERE NEAR what a film should be like.
"Oh, but your preconceptions" or any other phrase that starts like that will be met by my response that while we are still the same animal, that breathes air, eats food, sleeps, and has sex, you need to stick to the rules of what makes a film good; or if you are from another planet, what makes a HUMAN film good.
You cannot mix comedy and horror. You can have a comedy with zombies, but you cannot mix an actual comedy with an actual horror film. You cannot jump between 4 different styles in one fucking scene. You got the road trip film, the spy story, the stoner comedy, the office banter, the secret underground facility, fights, romance, violence, anxiety, horror, all in one scene. A wise man once said, "There isn't a violent rape on a pinball machine in the first ten minutes of Ghostbusters. Nor is there a pie-in-the-face gag in the opening of Citizen Kane”
This horrible mishmash of styles looks like the result of an hyperactive editor with ADD, spare footage from 4 films - an action film, a horror, a scifi/spy film, a comedy, and some bits from a drama - who has never seen a film before and has no concept of style, pacing, mood, and while the individual bits are not terrible per se, it appears to me that they were put together by someone who should never be allowed in a film studio.
It's not funny. Evil Dead is funny.
It's not scary. The Ring is scary. Does The Ring have a major scene where all the major characters do bong hits? No. It does not.
while there can be some films that have sections that differ in mood from the rest of the film, these happen as situations within a setting, you cannot change the setting from creaky old house to fake forest with pheromone sprinklers and not have the viewer's mindset go from imagining old wooden boards to metal pipes and computers. You cannot have one scene with hitech hacking in Conan The Barbarian and expect to not break the mood of the film.
it's such a waste, because the effects are good .. *some* effects are good, but when they switch from puppets to CGI it just hurts my brain it's so bad. You cannot have a guy in prosthetics and then a computer-generated cobra and not expect one of the two to look out of place.
Here is my guess as to what has happened:
1. some guy writes a draft. In it, it tells the story of the gods, the ritual, and finally of the underground facility that needs to exist for this purpose. he fleshes it out a bit, and realizes it's the same thing as Cube 2.
2. another guy decides to make it less grim and introduces the stoner comedy, the buddy comedy, romance and love interests, and the on the road. they write it down but they realize that they picked two styles that do not work together and they go back to the drawing board.
3. someone else "does not want to waste more money" so they throw in some breaking bad shit to make it seem like the comedy is only the way the characters perceive their selves, but oh boy are they due for a surprise.
4. and finally when they realize they cannot end the film by just killing them, because they have not set up a mood of failure and despair, and because we do not relate to the characters in their trouble, AS WE ONLY SEE THEM HAVE FUN and we think they are in a comedy, and the guy who just died will come back as a friendly zombie, a la Shaun of The Dead
5. a producer steps in a pays 3/4 of the budget to have fucking Sigourney Weaver show up and punctuate exactly why this film is shit.
Cabin In The Woods is like a Duck Yoghurt with a side of mustard coffee: good if you need to vomit.
**2021 edit** please note that i have substantially changed my opinion on CITW, after watching the "CITW EXPLAINED" video. Essentially this film completely flew over my head, i got none of the references, and i wasn't really understanding what i was watching.
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ImpulsE69
Lifer
- Jan 8, 2010
- 14,946
- 1,077
- 126
LMAO. After the 30 pages of reviews you dropped, how did I know you wouldn't like this? It's a satire/parody...what have you and it is done VERY well It touches every horror cliche. It is done for horror fans, and one thing you are NOT is a horror fan. It is not scary, and I would disagree it isn't funny, but no it isn't hilarious. I think you really missed what this movie is about given your diatribe of 'thought process'.
Also, The Ring is not scary or good.
sdifox
No Lifer
- Sep 30, 2005
- 100,154
- 17,879
- 126
ImpulsE69
Lifer
- Jan 8, 2010
- 14,946
- 1,077
- 126
I won't knock you for that, everyone has what they like for their own reasons. I just disagree with you.
DigDog
Lifer
- Jun 3, 2011
- 14,615
- 2,997
- 136
i love The Ring - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298130/
i love everything about it. I think casting Naomi Watts is perfect, instead of a buxom sexy bombshell, because it moves away from your typical slasher horror with running in bloodied shirt and bouncing tits trope, and the final girl trope. She looks like many a typical mom, who got *something* out of life but nowhere near everything they could wish for (compare, say, to poster boy Chris Hemsworth in Cabin In The Woods). She fits her character who has separated but her ex husband is not completely estranged, and who loves her son but cannot afford to give him 100% of her time.
The story is flawless. There is a constant impending doom, punctuated by the apparitions of the unstoppable Samara, and Rachel (watts) is running against the clock. They manage to even avoid the "incredulity in the face of obvious proof" trope but somehow keep the sense of urgency. The art style and cinematography perfectly support the story. The horror scenes scare both the audience and the character, but never give either the impression that there is no escape, *IF* Rachel manages to find the source of the curse and give Samara her rest.
The visual effects need the sole comment that they have been copied by just every horror film made afterwards.
There is a constant creepy Lovecraftian theme in this film, reinforced by the investigation in the middle part of the film, the same kind of anxiety you find in stories like Erich Zann, that the more you discover, the worse things get, yet you must still go on.
If only Shutter Island was a film of this caliber; instead of using the grotesque, and suggestive implications, The Ring does the same, better, using reality and certainty. Everything about it feels real, and i feel emotionally invested in the character and story.
9/10
i love everything about it. I think casting Naomi Watts is perfect, instead of a buxom sexy bombshell, because it moves away from your typical slasher horror with running in bloodied shirt and bouncing tits trope, and the final girl trope. She looks like many a typical mom, who got *something* out of life but nowhere near everything they could wish for (compare, say, to poster boy Chris Hemsworth in Cabin In The Woods). She fits her character who has separated but her ex husband is not completely estranged, and who loves her son but cannot afford to give him 100% of her time.
The story is flawless. There is a constant impending doom, punctuated by the apparitions of the unstoppable Samara, and Rachel (watts) is running against the clock. They manage to even avoid the "incredulity in the face of obvious proof" trope but somehow keep the sense of urgency. The art style and cinematography perfectly support the story. The horror scenes scare both the audience and the character, but never give either the impression that there is no escape, *IF* Rachel manages to find the source of the curse and give Samara her rest.
The visual effects need the sole comment that they have been copied by just every horror film made afterwards.
There is a constant creepy Lovecraftian theme in this film, reinforced by the investigation in the middle part of the film, the same kind of anxiety you find in stories like Erich Zann, that the more you discover, the worse things get, yet you must still go on.
If only Shutter Island was a film of this caliber; instead of using the grotesque, and suggestive implications, The Ring does the same, better, using reality and certainty. Everything about it feels real, and i feel emotionally invested in the character and story.
9/10
sdifox
No Lifer
- Sep 30, 2005
- 100,154
- 17,879
- 126
sdifox
No Lifer
- Sep 30, 2005
- 100,154
- 17,879
- 126
- Status
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