Movie Recommendations and Discussion

General Off-Topic Discussion
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Yowza. I just saw a 1983 slasher film called Fatal Games about a mad javelin thrower offing students at an athletics academy. I’d heard of it on the Hysteria Continues podcast, then I bumped into it on – you guesed it – Tubi.

Fatal Games starts off with a montage of real gymnastic feats in slow motion. My film logistics brain was already wondering, “Are the people doing this uneven bars work going to be the same ones playing the main characters in the film?” And yes, they were!

Not only did they have solid gymnastic and/or swimming skills, and at least a desire to act, they were also prepared to take off all their clothes. I would think people (women – there was no equal opportunity nudity in 1983) ticking all these boxes would not be thick on the ground.

There is acres of nudity and repeated locker room shower scenes. I’m a hetero male who has watched a lot of exploitation films, and this made me feel sleazy. But they actually have a mystery to get through (who’s javelling these kids to death?) so all the nudity’s confined to the first half of the film.

They set up the suspects – all teachers – and the red herrings, quite well. The solution actually spoke directly (if outrageously) to recent events at the 2024 Olympics – the killer is a female teacher, formerly male, who changed sex in order to get an advantage over other women at the Olympics, but was disqualified. Now she wants to “disqualify” everyone!

Scenes of the killer impractically trying to hit people with a javelin in the empty college halls at night are really something.

Another remarkable movie find.

This isn’t the trailer from the 80s, it’s Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray release trailer, but it’s half as long, and superior while still feeling it could have come from the 80s. Contains at least one javelin death set to 80s music.

(I wish it was as easy to review IFComp entries as it is to review films like this one.)

-Wade

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Obligatory “I don’t know what’s more painful, the javelin death or the 1980s music” joke goes here. :rofl:

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OMG that trailer is great like a Grindhouse parody. “Daddy…I don’t know about the future…but I know I’m a good gymnast” * :musical_note:Take it…all the way…takeittothelimit and DON’T LOOK BACK NOW :notes: [javelin mayhem] “Are you going over to Phil’s tonight to do some…acrobatics?” :rofl:

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Watched Who Am I? today. It’s a bit slow going at first but once it gets started, it becomes a great Jackie Chan film. Gotta love the wooden clogs fight, and “I may have amnesia… but I’m not stupid!”. :laughing:

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I finally watched When Marnie Was There. It was… all right? Didn’t have as many sharply observed little details as other Ghibli movies. That’s part of what makes the best ones so great. But I liked it more than From Up On Poppy Hill. We’ll see how much I remember it in a few years. That’s the litmus test.

I also watched Kind Hearts and Coronets recently. Excellent in some respects; ugly in others. Just casually sprinkles some racial slurs into the mix, and also depicts the sole women’s suffrage figure as a violent buffoon. The characters are mostly horrible people, which is by design, but the movie’s own prejudices don’t leave a glowing impression.

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RoboCop (1987) is the most significant event in our history.

I had no idea that Our RoboCop Remake (2014) even existed until recently. It’s a shot for shot remake, done by 50 directors all paying homage to the movie Paul Verhoeven carried down from Mount Sinai.

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Warning: This movie is definitely not suitable for children (and people with poor taste in film).

Full Movie → https://vimeo.com/85903713

IMDb Page → https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3528906/

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Back in 2015 I took off from work early to watch “Mad Max” in the theatre. Couldn’t figure out why so many trailers for patriotic films, religious films, and animal movies. Then the main feature started and realized we were watching “Max” about a military service dog.

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I finally watched When Marnie Was There. It was… all right? Didn’t have as many sharply observed little details as other Ghibli movies.

Did you like the gently freaky windmill part, which was ghosts but not ghosts…or something?

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The first windmill sequence (or silo? I think it was a silo) was probably one of the high points of the movie. How the color palette suddenly changed to black/purple. The animation got a little more loose and wild with those two maids, fitting for stormy weather and traumatic memories. The lightning: sharp and bright and different from the rest of the film. The second sequence, with the larger emphasis on Marnie’s backstory, where they walked into a glowing portal, didn’t work quite as well for me, but the ambiance was still neat.

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Nor I 'til your post. Looks like hardly anyone’s seen it. Well, I will definitely be watching it, soon.

I do love Robocop when I see it, but weirdly it hasn’t set up shop in my mind no matter how many times I have seen it. I couldn’t run through its events off the top of my head except at the broadest level.

I’m wondering if I even saw Robocop 2 (1990) before the first one. I saw the sequel at the cinema with my dad and I found it really traumatic, the intensity and cruelty. Much later I saw it again on video and it didn’t rekindle that intensity.

Then came Robocop 3 (1993) which was the total fall. For my slightly younger friend who rented the video with me, Robocop 3 was when he realised a movie could be bad. His experience reminded me of the first time I discovered a sequel could be bad: The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

As for the Robocop remake, it worked with thorough unremarkability in its own right, but barely registers in my memory.

-Wade

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For me, RoboCop is kind of like Ghostbusters. The first movie is practically perfect, the second is kind of interesting, but not nearly as good… then the rest of the sequels can go to hell. :wink:

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I recently watched both Allan Quatermain movies… and I have no idea why I like them. If you feel the need to torture yourself, I highly recommend…

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King Solomon’s Mines (1985) → https://tubitv.com… king-solomon-s-mines

The Lost City of Gold (1986) → https://tubitv.com… the-lost-city-of-gold

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Yes! I Saw The TV Glow, I need to watch again because I wasn’t really prepared for the whole experience. As a person who identifies mostly as void, I’m really excited about and terrified by it!

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I Saw the TV Glow was so good (despite maybe having some pacing issues). Has me asking lots of questions like “why do I still stubbornly insist on being vague about my gender online, despite having legally changed it IRL years ago?” and other such conundrums.

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It’s a cautionary tale but one with a hopeful message if you squint (note the message written out in chalk at the end of the movie).
I absolutely agree with you about the pacing issues, btw.

I think I found the exact flip side of a movie recently, which is The People’s Joker. Just a big dumb ridiculous movie that celebrates queer and trans joy while also having a surprising amount of heart (and a surprising amount of David Liebe Hart).

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Watched two Jackie Chan films this weekend: Police Story 3: Supercop and Police Story 4: First Strike. The New Line Cinema/Dimension Films cheesy English dubs, haha. It was great. I must’ve seen almost every film Jackie made in his golden period, but they’re best seen with cheesy English dubs where his character’s just named “Jackie”. :laughing:

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I watched Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven. A plot that is only clear from the synopsis and no theme except “murder and adultery bad.” The supposedly beautiful imagery is just the same wheat field over and over again.

It’s so repetitive that there’s literally a scene that fades from an exterior shot of the house to an identical exterior shot of the house, just slightly to the right.

This is both the worst and the most overrated film I’ve ever seen. I knew about the critical acclaim, but I wish I had known it was a box office failure before watching.

Unfortunately, I have to admit the critics are right and the movie is ahead of its time, at least from my naive perspective on the technical/visual stuff. You could tell me it was made in 1998 instead of 1978 and I’d believe you. The locusts are cool too.

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You remind me I still haven’t seen Days of Heaven.

I don’t know how many Malick films you’ve seen, but his obsession with getting the natural lighting just so is the cinematographic trademark.

-Wade

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I haven’t seen any others, and, to be honest, none of his films appeal to me at first glance. I actually only watched Days of Heaven because it’s leaving the Criterion Channel this month.

Any particular one you’d try and sell me on?

By the way, I watched Helen after you recommended it months ago (I also read your review going into it) and I really liked it.

It’s bleak, but i found it slightly optimistic by the end. It starts out very dark as it seems like Helen is being made to literally follow the footsteps of Joy and become a victim of a horrible crime. Later, the film shows us that Helen would be just as much a victim by being forced into engaging with her own past full of abandonment and neglect.

I was surprised to read a Letterboxd review calling Helen’s takeover of Joy’s life “sociopathic,” because it’s clearly not meant to be realistic. I also wonder if Joy did the same thing and simply disappeared and inserted herself into another life.

I think the film is lamenting that this sort of thing — in less extreme ways — is the best form of human connection that some people can achieve. I think there’s a scene in the film featuring a theatre cast that discusses love in this way.

Anyway, that’s just my interpretation. It’s definitely a good example of how to create progress through character change rather than plot development, because I was entranced by it even though I knew it wouldn’t solve the central mystery outright.

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I’m glad to hear you liked Helen! Yes, it’s a great film for interpretations. Yours interest me and I will probably think on those angles when I next watch it. Which may be soonish. After seeing it on Tubi I ran out and ordered a DVD. The DVD also has the preceding short film ‘Joy’ on it, so I’m keen to see that.

Re: Malick, hm… sell would be a strong word :slight_smile:

I’ve seen The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life and, way back, Badlands. Oh, and The New World.

I did a course at uni (now back in the 90s) looking at New Hollywood, so I saw Badlands there, but I remember almost nothing about it.

The Tree of Life has shots of sun and cloud moving over the battlefield in real time that I do remember, but as I’ve said in this topic elsewhere, I generally don’t like films that hinge on voiceovers. Both Thin Red Line and Tree of Life do that. I remember liking The Tree of Life but unfortunatey I remember nothing more than that.

In my memory, The New World is the one I liked most. It’s not a good sign I didn’t remember it was about Pocahontas. Perhaps it was the most traditionally plotted of his films, but added an abstract filter to the concrete story of John Smith and such.

-Wade

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