Charles Smith4 said:I still find it bizarre that the movie pulled three Strawberry nominations out of thin air... worst director, worst screenplay, and worst cinematography.
Those were the very first Strawberries back in 1980, which were full of weird nods... they even nominated Friday the 13th for worst film, along with Brian De Palma (Dress to Kill) and Stanley Kubrick (The Shining) for worst director.
brightcobra91 said:Who actually figured this one out? Who killed the neighbor? I’m completely lost... 😁 Could someone please give me an explanation... 😳
I don't know if they just ran out of actors during production or what... but the killer from the first murder ends up being the victim in the second one. It's confirmed. Word on the street is there are actually several different killers involved who aren't even connected... and if you listen to some of the theories floating around, Al Pacino might even be one of them... I didn't quite catch that. I'm going to have to sit down and really break this one down...
Anthony Jackson50 said:When it comes to the undisputed king of cinematic suffering, you really can't top Mel Gibson. Honestly—it’s like he’s being tortured in pretty much every single movie he stars in! Take Lethal Weapon, for example—he’s right in the thick of it. And if you ask me? It almost looks like he actually enjoys the chaos—the guy is a total masochist! In *Payback*, he basically just lets the villains put him through the wringer—totally plays along with their torture—just so he can pull off a massive sting and catch them all off guard. It's such a calculated move! So, look—it’s totally fine that William Wallace refuses to shout "mercy" in *Braveheart*; honestly, that actually works perfectly within the context of his character. But when he spits out that painkiller serum Sophie Marceau gave him? Now we’re getting into territory that feels like a massive overstatement. As a director, you can really see his obsession with scenes of intense torture—I mean, we’ve already talked about Braveheart, but he leans even harder into that vibe with Passion and Apocalypto. When it comes to depicting torture on screen—not just in general, but even when you look at the global landscape of cinema—I honestly think the series Unforgiven holds the absolute top spot. It’s just in a league of its own!
No, I’m not talking about suffering along the lines of "The English Patient" or "Shakespeare in Love," but rather those beautifully sadistic displays of human anatomy... Since we're all sitting here impatiently waiting for "Saw IV," I figured it was high time to revisit some of the most legendary torture sequences ever put on screen.
10. Hostel (2005)
Let's kick things off with the flick that dragged the sadistic genre back into the spotlight. While the torment in both sequels is hard to forget, I’ll stick to the first one, where a charming, middle-aged Dutchman gets to play with a terrified young American; first, he goes to town on the kid's knee with a drill, then slices through his Achilles tendons and just lets him go. The kid actually believes he's free, which leads to a few agonizing seconds... ...where our unlucky protagonist desperately tries to scramble toward an exit, only for this absolute piece of trash to drag him back and play surgeon on his body for a bit longer.
9. Ichi the Killer (2001)
A sadistic psycho with slits cut in his throat—just enough to blow cigarette smoke through—decides to extract information in a pretty "original" way; he hangs a guy on hooks (kind of like those scenes you see in India), stabs him through the beard and cheeks with a massive needle, and pours boiling oil (the same stuff he used for his shrimp earlier) all over his back.
8. The Wild Bunch (1969)
People in the American West certainly have their own unique ways of dealing with enemies... To liven up a rural party, they decide to tie a prisoner to a wagon and drag him through the dirt all day long, while kids ride over him, splash him with water, and mess with him using sprayers.
7. Waxwork (1988)
In this 80s horror flick, there's one particularly striking scene; vampires in a castle basement hold a bound victim, condemned to eternal misery, from whose legs they tear off pieces of meat every single day for dinner.
6. Tango & Cash (1989)
Out of the mountain of unforgettable torture from 80s action movies ("Rambo: First Blood Part II," "Lethal Weapon," "Nico," "Showdown in Little Tokyo"), I decided to go with this witty duo who get tortured in prison with electricity and water... honestly, all they needed was a gas leak to complete the whole utility infrastructure nightmare.
5. Marathon Man (1976)
In this thriller, alongside Steve Martin from "Little Shop of Horrors," we have the darkest dentist in cinematic history (played by Laurence Olivier) using his dental expertise to try and squeeze vital info out of a confused Dustin Hoffman.
4. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
An indifferent Mr. Blonde, right before he starts the heavy lifting, gives the cop a little advice: "Pray for a quick death that isn't coming," followed by a slapping, an ear slicing, and being doused in gasoline...
3. Braveheart (1995)
Even if the real William Wallace was a thief and a killer of innocents, it didn't stop us from shedding a tear while those corrupt Englishmen hung him, stretched him, and ripped his guts out. All he had to do was say "Mercy"...
2. Audition (1999)
Along with "Hard Candy" from 2005, this is easily one of the most traumatic films for men, after which I'm convinced you might find yourself appreciating women just a little bit more. Basically, a girl who has had enough of being abused decides to take her revenge in a truly cruel and terrifying way; she takes a male pig who approached her through a fake audition and paralyzes his body (and his tongue, so he can't scream), while leaving his nerves fully intact so he can sit there and soak in the pain while she jams needles into his stomach and eyes and gently saws at his feet with wire.
1. Saw III (2006)
The "Saw" franchise really took torture to a whole new level. The thing is, the tormentor doesn't even have to break a sweat doing the actual work (which is usually exhausting); instead, he can just... ...lean back in his chair and enjoy watching the victims struggle to escape while exposing themselves to all sorts of agony. While every single torture in the first three films deserves its moment, the one I find myself thinking about most is the last one in the third installment; a man is strapped to a medieval-looking device that slowly rotates, tearing apart his limbs first, and finally his neck. Even Jigsaw admitted it was his favorite setup.
Anyway, if any of you can think of something else, feel free to chime in. And don't forget to pack a barf bag before you head to the theater.
Lately, I’ve been spiraling down this rabbit hole thinking about how, in the near future, massive multinational corporations might actually end up running the whole show. I know, I know—they already pull most of the strings in some capacity—but I mean literally replacing governments entirely. Instead of nations fighting wars, we’d have these transnational corporate systems clashing. And they wouldn't even bother with traditional weapons; it would be much cleaner... just refined methods of economic coercion, using financial warfare to redistribute global wealth on a massive scale. In that light, certain movies feel eerily prophetic: Westworld, Robocop, Soylent Green, The Stepford Wives, Total Recall... But honestly, nothing hits quite as dark as the 1975 film "Rollerball." In the world of Rollerball, following a series of corporate wars, every single decision rests in the hands of these all-powerful, monolithic conglomerates. Their entire philosophy is built on the idea that the individual must always be subservient to the collective. It’s like an ant colony... once you strip away individuality, people become incredibly easy to manipulate. That principle is baked right into the game itself—this brutal, collective sport that feels like a twisted descendant of basketball mixed with rugby rules. The problem starts when the star player of the top-tier team (played by James Caan) begins to overshadow the rest of the squad. As his popularity grows, he becomes a dangerous outlier to the totalitarian structure the companies rely on to maintain control. And that's exactly where things start to fall apart for the corporations...
It starts out so promisingly, you know? This slow burn romance brewing between a high-powered businesswoman and her taxi driver... everything is going perfectly. And then, everything just goes completely to hell the second Tom Hanks walks into the cab... 🙄
So, we're looking at Collateral here. And that whole Collateral Damage thing... you know, the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Look, "Collateral" isn't a bad flick—it’s tense and all that... But as the movie winds down, you start seeing Tom Cruise morphing more and more into The Terminator. He's just mowing down half the people in the room like it's nothing, the police can't touch him, he takes a bullet to the neck and still refuses to quit his day job... then he's jumping over trains just to get to his target. It gets a little ridiculous...
P.S. Just a quick heads-up—that woman at the start of the movie isn't some corporate executive, she's actually a District Attorney...
Peter Ortiz4 said:For instance, you’ve got all these cinephiles, critics, reviewers, and whatever else, who have enough nerve to claim Stanley Kubrick is the greatest director to ever live. They take that consensus—let's call it what it is, the majority opinion—and turn it into some kind of fixed constant. That's how they manufacture this invisible yardstick for directorial quality.
A perfect example of critics forcing their views down our throats is Stanley's swan song, "Eyes Wide Shut". The global critical establishment hailed it as an absolute masterpiece executed with total mastery. In reality, it’s just a tedious, pretentious, ultra-long episode of "Tales of the Unexpected". I don't think anyone's reputation has ever been quite so blinded by its own hype...
I honestly can't wrap my head around how Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, and Udo Kier all actually signed on for this Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer project. But hey, look, the movie isn't even that bad (certainly not compared to Pearl Harbor). It’s one of those total guilty pleasures... you know it's trash, but you just can't help yourself. Plus, it’s way more entertaining than something like Deep Impact. Sure, the cast is unforgettable, but I just can't get past Ben Affleck and that blank, vacant stare of his. As for the genre, I'd argue it's primarily Sci-Fi. It pushes the boundaries of what's possible, shifting from the real world into a hypothetical space based on scientific extrapolation—well, as much as astronomy allows for that kind of thing...
Nathan Myers28 said:Then why the hell did they credit Tarantino then? Was he just producing it or something?
Tarantino has absolutely nothing to do with "Jeepers Creepers." That was directed and written by that creep Victor Salva, and Quentin isn't even listed among the eight producers. You probably had "Hostel" on the brain...
redowl90 said:2001: A Space Odyssey by Kubrick has one of the best opening 20-minute stretches in cinema history, but it falls off a cliff so fast that it ends up being the worst movie ever made.
How on earth can messing with a calm Hal and an agitated Bowman be a bad thing? For me, the movie doesn't even really start until they head toward Jupiter. Those first 20 minutes are just pure artistic posturing... The rest is easily the most intense two hours ever put to film.
Honestly, "Jacket" and "When Stranger Calls" from '79 are basically the same thing in that regard... you're glued to the couch for the first 30 minutes, then the tension just completely tanks, leaving you with about an hour of pure, unadulterated boredom, only for things to get great again in those last 20 minutes...
Man, I didn't even make it to the end... I shut it off the second that thing started flying. So, I have no clue how it wrapped up, nor do I actually care. The most ridiculous part? There's a sequel where this winged freak attacks a school bus full of meathead jocks using shurikens made out of human body parts. Beyond stupid.
The movie kicks off feeling like some nasty little mashup of "duel" and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" tailored for the turn of the millennium... just two kids messing with a black van driven by some guy in a hat. Then, right around the halfway point, that mysterious guy absolutely crushes his car, only to bounce back, morph into this massive, insect-like monstrosity, and take to the skies. I want my money back.