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MOTW: Movie of the week

MOTW: Bringing Out The Dead

2014-06-05 17:10:40

Bringing Out The Dead (1999) is an under watched gem starring Nick Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames (with hair!), directed by Martin Scorsese.

Wondering why you haven’t heard of it? Don’t feel bad: It was buried under a year of big movies including Star Wars Episode I, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Toy Story 2, The Green Mile, The Blair Witch Project, and others.

I didn’t get around to seeing it myself until I found it on DVD in 2003. So fucking glad I did!

IMDb synopsis:

A Manhattan ambulance paramedic, overworked and haunted by visions of his failures, fights to keep a tenuous grip on his clarity.

What to say?

With a reported $55 million budget, Bringing Out The Dead made only $17 million in the U.S. Box Office, barely making the top 100 for 1999.  Bringing Out The Dead currently holds the 93rd spot, just above Muppets from Space and below The Rage: Carrie 2.

Ouch!

Other Trollcake Fave Films from the same year include:

(Links to each film’s Box Office Mojo page)

4 of 5 stars

Original post title: FFOTD: Bringing Out The Dead

MOTW: The Strangers

2014-06-04 22:28:29

Todays Fave Film (FFOTD) is The Strangers (2008) – a fucking excellent thriller / horror movie written and directed by Bryan Bertino.

Top Five Reasons The Strangers is Amazing: 1. Cinematography 2. Atmosphere 3. Silence 4. Music 5. Direction   Watch this when you want to be creatively inspired, or feel the perfect mood of a terrifying event.

Original post title: FFOTD: The Strangers

MOTW: The Green Hornet (2011)

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2014-05-20 08:00:56

The Green Hornet (2011) is a fun and far too maligned Michel Gondry (most famous for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004) film starring Seth Rogen and Jay Chou.
Great moments include them driving around an office building in half a car and some excellent quotes such as:

Mike Axford: You are blowing this guy completely out of proportion. Britt Reid: I will blow this guy in any proportion I want! Britt Reid: Kato, I want you to take my hand, and I want you to come with me on this adventure. Kato: I go with you, but I don’t want to touch you. Britt Reid: Kato, we’re completely wasting our potential… you a little more than me.

Plus an opening scene featuring James Franco that is probably the funniest opening scene of any movie in the last 5 years. Trust me, watch this if you love Seth Rogen humor and Indie-style films because Michel Gondry is the king of amazing. 4.5 of 5 stars.

Original post title: FFOTD: The Green Hornet

MOTW: A Scanner Darkly

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2014-05-19 10:11:11

Like Enter The Void, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006) is another acid-trip of a movie.

Where to start?

Based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly stars Keanu Reeves, Pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrolsen, Winona Ryder, and Rory Cochrane (who plays the funnest role of a paranoid hallucinating drug addict).

What makes the movie amazing is the rotoscoped technique used to make it animated, yet look exactly like the actors.  Most of the scenes were shot using the actors, and then sent through a vectorizing graphics effect created specifically for the movie, creating a wonderful Flash-animated style similar to the amazing 2008 animated documentary Waltz with Bashir.

A Scanner Darkly is explained on the Wikipedia page synopsis:

The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia constantly under intrusive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug addiction epidemic.

5 stars out of 5
full starfull starfull starfull starfull star

Original Post title: FFOTD: A Scanner Darkly

MOTW: Outlander (2008)

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2014-05-17 14:05:00

Outlander is one of those low budget (if $45 million is low!) sic-fi films that never quite made it during it’s cinematic release.

James Caviezel plays Kainan, who’s spacecraft crash lands in a lake in Norway, circa 709 AD. He soon discovers that an alien monster was on board the ship that threatens the lives and existence of the Vikings living in a village near the crash site.

Ron Perlman is excellent as a Viking king and warrior. John Hurt isn’t quite as miscast here as in Immortals (2011) – a future FFOTD – and plays the king of the local Viking village and father to the lovely Freya, played by British actress Sophia Myles.

Chalk full of great visuals including futuristic other-worldly costumes and space ship, the monster and cool Viking shizzle.

Highly recommended!

Original post title: FFOTD: Outlander (2008)

MOTW: Logan’s Run

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2014-05-17 13:42:46

Logans Run posterThe year before Star Wars ruled the cinemas, Logan’s Run (1976) was released and impressed sic-fi lovers the world over. The craft put into the film is in nearly every shot. The models, miniatures, set design, and special effects are pretty good for the time.

The acting is not so great – especially by clearly gay trying-to-act-straight actor Michael York, who acts like he has a stick up his ass throughout. Jenny Agutter is beautiful and decent as she helps Logan escape the cult he has been devoted to all his life.

For old seventies eye-candy, an unforgettable segment with the always excellent Peter Ustinov, and an interesting story, check it out!

3 out of 5 stars, but 5 for retro sci-fi sets, effects and costumes.

MOTW: Enter The Void

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2014-05-16 01:28:31

Enter the Void movie posterToday’s Fave film is the king of Acid Trip movies Enter The Void.

Probably the closest you can ever come to frying on acid without having to actually consume LCD, Enter The Void is a mind-trip through the eyes of the kid brother / amateur drug dealer Oscar and his bordering inappropriate (read: too in love?) relationship with his older sister Linda, played by gorgeous Paz de la Huerta (Boardwalk Empire).

The entire movie is literally Oscar’s POV and memories from his troubled past. Paz is notorious for loving to be photographed without clothes so there is plenty of Paz eye-candy, including a disturbingly graphic abortion sequence and about 25 sex scenes. But the real treat is the incredible colors and camera shots as we follow Oscar through Tokyo’s seedy underground and witness his journey to nirvana.

Best seen in a “high” state of mind. Immerse yourself and prepare to be amazed!

5 of 5 stars
star ratingstar ratingstar ratingstar ratingstar rating

MOTW: Dead Snow

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2014-05-15 08:06:57

Død Snø Movie PosterToday’s fave film is the Norwegian horror comedy Dead Snow (Død Snø).

Created by Hansel & Gretel: Witchhunters director Tommy Wirkola, Dead Snow takes place in Northern Norway, where a group of friends accidentally discover a troop of undead Nazis. Mahem ensues.

An absolute must see for zombie fans!

5 of 5 stars

MOTW: Heaven’s Gate (1980)

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Update May 2019: We changed the category from FFOTD to MOTW: Movie Of The Week

2014-05-14 08:20:41

Today’s Favorite Film of The Day (FFOTD) goes to Heaven’s Gate (1980), an American Western Frontier Epic by Michael Cimino. Rolling Stone writer Gavin Edwards summarized the film best:

A 1980 Western about an armed conflict in Wyoming between rich cattlemen and poor farmers, made for a then-astronomical $44 million, it not only destroyed the career of director Michael Cimino (a rising star on the strength of The Deer Hunter) — this marathon-length epic basically put studio United Artists out of business and ended the auteur-driven ’70s golden age of Hollywood.

Heaven’s Gate is a beautiful movie, with some of the best cinematography and beautiful sets in any movie ever. It should have at the very least won awards for art direction, cinematography, costumes.

I admit the pacing is not wonderful and it probably could have benefited from a second or third edit run-through, but poor Cimino didn’t have time because of the scheduled release date, and just barely made it through the rough edit we ended up getting in the theatrical release. In spite of the problems, the film is so beautiful to look at, with such a compelling story and characters, that we add it to our list of fave films.

Steven Soderbergh recently blogged about his own “Butcher’s Cut” edit of the film, which he did as a personal project. He managed to edit the film down from 219 minutes to 108 minutes – less than half!

I really enjoyed his cut of the film! The pacing is much better, but I miss some of the grandiose scenes.

Regardless, Soderbergh’s edit clearly shows that the movie could have been much better had Cimino trusted and allowed a more capable editor than himself to complete the film.

3 out of 5 stars, but 5 stars for visuals alone.

Michael Cimino belongs in the same Elite Club of Visionaries as Terrence Mallick. Saying that, I honestly think there is a 5 star version in there. If only visionary Michael Cimino was given another 3 months or so to complete a proper edit.

MOTW: Martha Marcy May Marlene

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2014-05-12 18:22:08

This is the first in a series of our favorite films.

Starting today we will post a daily  weekly “favourite film” in one of the categories below:

  • Underrated on IMDb
  • Amazing Movies that lost money
  • Indie Sci-Fi or Fantasy
  • Trippy twists
  • High-candy
  • Indie Horror or Thriller
  • Foreign Language Gems
  • Bold and gutsy
  • Empowering, inspirational (not spiritual)
  • Film debuts

Today’s Favorite Film is Martha Marcy May Marlene whose brilliant title alone should arouse curiosity.

The story follows Martha as she joins and then escapes from a cult group of young adults living together on a farm. I am not sure if this qualifies as horror, but it is a very disturbing movie. Mostly because it is so akin to real life.

The title is clever because each name is used by Martha in different parts of the film: Martha is given the new name Marcy-May by cult leader Patrick and answers the cult’s house phone as Marlene (a generic name used by all females living in the house when answering the phone. Males use Michael.).

As Martha, Elisabeth Olsen proves to be an acting force to be reckoned with. I have no doubt that she is going to be a big, big star. I felt it immediately after watching MMMM, which was before she was cast in Godzilla (2014) and as Scarlet Witch in Avengers 2 (2015).

I can’t wait to see more from her! MMMM is great because it treats cult escapees as real people with real, fucked up problems. It shows how being part of a cult can mess up so many aspects of your life to the point of never being able to fully recover or shake the affect.

Watch it. Fave Film otD: Martha Marcy May Marlene

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