Surely more of a case of how many towers the characters were asked to climb?

Rewatched Carlito's Way and I still think it holds up. Underrated in my book. Great 70s look and soundtrack and some great Pacino scenery eating. Marvellous support cast with Penn standing out and a great old chase scene at the end. The end credits are superb and never fail to squeeze a tear out of me.

16. Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Don't really need to say anything. Fucking banger.

[9]

\o

5. A Good Day to Die Hard
Pointless fifth instalment, as far removed from the OG trilogy as it gets. Willis has slipped into his straight to video career nadir at this point and phones in a facsimile John McClane performance, Jai Courtney adds frig all as Jack McClane. I'm only giving it a five as it's my fifth film of the year so far and the fifth and hopefully final DH. 5

6. Scream 3
Disappointing second sequel sees Ghostface working his way through the cast of Stab 3 to draw out Sidney towards a flimsy and convoluted final reveal. Less memorable than the first two films. 6

7. Scream 4
A long gap between sequels sees Sidney now a successful writer on a book tour, as Ghostface begins another murderous spree. A better sequel than 3, the horror genres influencing the themes have changed but the tenuous nature of the central plot has not. 7

5. The Rock
Just the right amount of Bay. Dumb as a bag of rocks but fun all the same.
For added fun pretend its a Bond sequel.
[7]

Surely you're running out of slashers by now Webbo!

Amityville Horror (1979)

I read the book on which this based in the late 70s in my early teens and it was a hair raising tale; particularly at the time because it was claimed by the author to be true and based on his own experiences. The book is hokum but gradually builds one weird event upon the other escalating the tension - some of the ideas were particularly unsettling - such as the pig that walked about on two legs and sat in the kid's room in a rocking chair that only the child could see but left hoofprints in the snow in the garden. The book in the right hands could become a rather taught horror story.

This film adaption is very loose. It starts off well enough and has a great cast. But it soon diverges from the book (which is fantastical in itself) and descends into a load of preposterous rubbish, which is a pity. The story soon loses focus and lurches about all over the place - raiding bits from other successful horror films of the 70s while it does so - but chucking them into the script with no structure. This may have entertained somewhat in '79 off the back of the book hype but even that is a stretch. I avoided this in the day because I heard it was bad. It's bad all right. Not worth it.

If a film overdoes the hokey old trope of mysteriously locked doors then this is it. It even has someone going back to the demon populated house to get the damn dog.......A load of old tosh.  And what a waste of a talent like Rod Steiger who is overacting to the max. I was barely paying attention in the last third.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Is that the Margot Kidder one? I haven't seen it since I was first allowed to rent from the horror section in Ritz (1992ish) but I remember thinking it was quite good. Not a patch on The Changeling, but a decent house horror.

Aye. Kidder and James Brolin are the leads and there are good performances from them trying to get out. I had forgot how attractive Kidder was too.

It's a patchy film - it lurches from ridiculous sections to stuff that could be part of a good film. A real waste of an IP.

The Changling is a cracker - one of my favourites of that era.

Eternals
The first Marvel film to be dull. Emotionless performances, flat imagery, and worst of all it takes itself way too seriously whilst tackling ridiculous themes.

Join us, snooker is the game of kings.

The weirdest part of it all was me sitting there thinking “go Trump!”

poprock wrote:

Eternals
The first Marvel film to be dull. Emotionless performances, flat imagery, and worst of all it takes itself way too seriously whilst tackling ridiculous themes.

Halfway through and it’s like Marvel have lost their confidence. The jokes are very tame and the characters are forgettable which is a crime in any film. It’s not dark like DC but it does feel extremely average like DC.

Kyren sounds like a bloody star wars character ffs

b0r1s wrote:

Halfway through and it’s like Marvel have lost their confidence. The jokes are very tame and the characters are forgettable which is a crime in any film. It’s not dark like DC but it does feel extremely average like DC.

It’s not a good sign when you reach the end of the film realising you still don’t know the names of some of the central characters.