Movies I Have Seen Lately

[The Baron]

Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.

[The Baron]

It is a fact that social distanciong hasn't been hard for me, because I don't have any close friends nearby.

PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod said:

I do wish we were within a day trip driving distance.

[JD DeLuzio]

Where?

PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod said:

The drama department of the school in which I work is performing "The Little Shop of Horrors" March 31 - April 3.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I've never seen any version of that, either.

The Baron said:

I've never seen any version of that, myself.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960): I had never seen this cult-classic before until last night. (I've never seen the 1986 remake, either.) I'm sure most of you reading this post will have seen it, so no need to belabor the plot. It was funnier than I expected it to be, and I was expecting the Jack Nicholson role. It is staged very much like a play. I thought the play came first,  based on the staging, but Wikipedia tells me the play was based on the movie. I wouldn't mind seeing it performed on stage sometime. 

[JD DeLuzio]

We rewatched Logan's Run. It holds up reasonably well, but man, that has to be the most 70s future ever.

[Richard Willis]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960): I had never seen this cult-classic before until last night. (I've never seen the 1986 remake, either.) I'm sure most of you reading this post will have seen it, so no need to belabor the plot. It was funnier than I expected it to be, and I was expecting the Jack Nicholson role. It is staged very much like a play. I thought the play came first,  based on the staging, but Wikipedia tells me the play was based on the movie. I wouldn't mind seeing it performed on stage sometime. 

I've seen the 1960 movie and the musical (reworked from the movie) in both movie form and on an actual (tiny) stage. The musical stage play came in 1982 and the movie adaptation of the stage play came in 1986, as you said. I recommend all three of them. IMO, the movie version is recommended if only to see the wonderful Ellen Greene as Audrey. Steve Martin makes Jack Nicholson look timid as a biker version of the sadistic dentist, who is also Audrey's boyfriend. 

[Richard Willis]

(Corrected)

Last Night in Soho (2021). Watched on rental DVD.

I can’t say enough about this movie, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. The trailer and the casting of Anya Taylor-Joy as Sandie made me want to see it (Everything starring her has been great, including The New Mutants, which you should see). Soho also boasts great performances by Diana Rigg and Terence Stamp. This is either Diana Rigg’s last role or one of her last. This is definitely a genre movie and is definitely not for kids.

This is the London England Soho, not the New York Soho. Thomasin McKenzie is Eloise, a fashion design student from Cornwall. She apparently has some psychic ability. It is implied that her mother did, too, and that it drove her to suicide. When she goes out on the town with some fellow students she starts to see the neighborhood as it was in the 1960s and to channel the mysterious Sandie from that time. Sandie was an aspiring singer back then, whose story didn’t end well. The visuals are stunning and the story’s intensity builds all the way through the movie.

The director, writer and co-screenwriter is Edgar Wright. He directed Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver. He loves movies that I also love. As funny as the Simon Pegg movies are, Edgar Wright has a lot of range. I had passed up Baby Driver and now will have to see it.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"Logan's Run"

Now there's a movie I haven't seen in a while. I used to watch the TV show (back when I first started "seriously" watching TV), and I saw the TV show before I ever had the chance to see the movie. I know I saw it after The Three/Four Musketeers (which I saw in the theater) because I was already familiar with Michael York. I remember that the advertisements for Logan's Run (on TV) really pushed that it "starred" Farrah Fawcett-Majors. (She was in, like, one scene.) I never watched Charlie's Angels, but I did own her poster. 

TORMENTED: This 1960 film is close in tone to Carnival of Souls, not really a horror, but rather more atmospheric or "creepy." A jazz pianist lives next to an abandoned lighthouse in an island community. He's getting married in a couple of days, but first he has to break things off with his girlfriend. He doesn't exactly kill her, but when the railing of the lighthouse breaks he doesn't exactly do anything to prevent her from falling to her death, either. From that point on, he hallucinates that she is haunting him. Or is he hallucinating? 

[The Baron]

Never saw the movie or the TV show of Logan's Run.

Tormented I only know from Show 414 of Mystery ScienceTheater 3000, as one of the darkest films they did.  If you have the time, you can even watch some folks from the new show be horrified by this episode.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

"Logan's Run"

Now there's a movie I haven't seen in a while. I used to watch the TV show (back when I first started "seriously" watching TV), and I saw the TV show before I ever had the chance to see the movie. I know I saw it after The Three/Four Musketeers (which I saw in the theater) because I was already familiar with Michael York. I remember that the advertisements for Logan's Run (on TV) really pushed that it "starred" Farrah Fawcett-Majors. (She was in, like, one scene.) I never watched Charlie's Angels, but I did own her poster. 

TORMENTED: This 1960 film is close in tone to Carnival of Souls, not really a horror, but rather more atmospheric or "creepy." A jazz pianist lives next to an abandoned lighthouse in an island community. He's getting married in a couple of days, but first he has to break things off with his girlfriend. He doesn't exactly kill her, but when the railing of the lighthouse breaks he doesn't exactly do anything to prevent her from falling to her death, either. From that point on, he hallucinates that she is haunting him. Or is he hallucinating? 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I didn't know Tormented was done on MST3K. Thanks for pointing that out. I watched a bit of that video you linked, but didn't care for the format; I'd rather watch the episode itself. I guess the film is a bit on the dark side, now that you mention it. The chromakey "floating head" wasn't very effective, even less so when it turned into a wig stand. the dead body turning into a pile of seaweed, however, was very effective. 

[JD DeLuzio]

Carnival of Souls is fascinating.

(And Farrah, in Logan's Run, actually gets... two scenes)

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Just north of Memphis.

JD DeLuzio said:

Where?

PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod said:

The drama department of the school in which I work is performing "The Little Shop of Horrors" March 31 - April 3.

[The Baron]

That's fiar. I had already seen the original episode umpty-zillion times, and was more interested in the new folks' reactions.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

I didn't know Tormented was done on MST3K. Thanks for pointing that out. I watched a bit of that video you linked, but didn't care for the format; I'd rather watch the episode itself. I guess the film is a bit on the dark side, now that you mention it. The chromakey "floating head" wasn't very effective, even less so when it turned into a wig stand. the dead body turning into a pile of seaweed, however, was very effective.