Steve Buschemi's directorial effort Trees Lounge is available.  One of my favorite movies.  If you've ever been any kind of drunk this movie will hit close to home.  One of the most realistic portrayals of an alcoholic I've seen.

I just saw "The Pact". Unexpectedly good film. It's a slow-burn horror movie with a lot that's left unsaid, but very little that's unsatisfying. It convincingly portrays that there's a lot going on beneath the surface. It makes fairly good use of two specific horror movie scenarios – one, the "haunted house" movie, that's revealed early on, one left until the end that I won't spoil – and while I worked out what was happening myself about halfway through, I doubt that many people (except maybe hardcore horror fans) would. This isn't like one of those movies where it's obvious from the first ten minutes what's going on. It also has some really good acting, and a child character who impressively manages to be in definite peril without ever getting annoying or cliche'd.

So "The Pact" is a very tight, suspenseful movie. My only real complaint would be with the very last scene, which is kinda corny, and a little too obvious for what's come before. But other than that, it gets a definite recommendation from me if you happen to like slow-burn horror movies.

Oh, and you remember how I complained about "Sinister"'s walking-around-a-house-at-night-while-ambiguous-noises-happen? "The Pact" shows how it should be done.

neal2zod said
"The Girl from the Naked Eye" gets a badass recommendation. The Sin City-esque cover with Sasha Grey is pretty misleading since it doesn't use stylized Rodriguez-esque green screen and Sasha Grey is in it for about a minute (and doesn't get naked). But it's a pretty solid film noir-esque murder mystery with a surprising amount of well-choreographed martial arts fight scenes and interesting, even likable characters. The romance aspect is actually affecting, there's some surprisingly funny parts and it's really short and doesn't wear out its welcome. Plus I've always wanted to see a fight scene scored to "Bolero" and there's finally one here, and it's excellent.

You realise that you just described just about every single element of my perfect film, don't you? You've got:

1) film noir

2) murder mystery

3) martial arts fight scenes

4) likeable characters

5) good romance / funny parts, and

6) Ravel's "Bolero" (I take it we are talking Ravel's version here, and not some rap track that's ironically named after a classical piece by a really famous rapper who everybody knows except me?)

I mean, throw in an alien that imitates human beings and a bit of sci-fi mindfuckery, and you have my absolute perfect movie. This film CANNOT be as good as it sounds, surely?

I tried to watch The Girl From the Naked Eye, but I just couldn't get into it.  While I appreciate the attempts at making something visually striking on a tight budget, the seams were really showing.  Maybe I wasn't in the right mood for something so low budget, but the poor audio and awkward acting took me right out of the movie.  After about 25 minutes I had to stop.  I think this movie requires drinking in order to make it all the way to the end. 

THE GIRL FROM THE NAKED EYE is pretty bad & hard to watch for most of it, though your mileage may vary if you're more forgiving or charmed by microbudgetistical filmatism, but I still liked about half of it and I absolutely *LOVED* the last 20 minutes.  Neal is right about that fight scene.  It's mostly a one-shot take, very impressive by any standard, great music, good choreography (despite some sub-Larnell Stovall/Iko Uwais technique softening the brutality of some of the strikes).  It really is comparable to OLDBOY's "Hammertime" scene.  

If anything, y'all should at least queue up THE GIRL FROM THE NAKED EYE and fast forward to about 66 minutes in and then watch.  

The inverse is true for a Thai movie called HEADSHOT (2011).  Irresistible title, right?  It starts brilliantly, with a badass, exciting shootout in 1st person p-o-v, and the premise is fascinating -- guy gets shot and has his vision flipped, so up is down as he sees it.  

Unfortunately, the bulk of the movie after the first 20 minutes kind of lost me, didn't live up to its admirable mix of genre badassery & filmatistic artsiness, though the ending was fairly interesting.  The whole thing is a weird mix of low-key indie-drama filmatism & slow-burn tension/thoughtfulness & bits of explosive violence.  Usually, this kind of weirdness hits the sweet spot for me.  Vern & y'all might like it better than I did, maybe compare it to Johnnie To's VENGEANCE or something.  

Also, I see you, TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET reference.  I'm proud to be the only person I know who listed TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET CHAPTERS 23-33 as one of the best films of 2012.  

Just saw War, Inc. on Instant, the pseudo-sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank (a movie everyone seems to love but I didn't like when I saw it as a kid) War, Inc. is not particularly good but there are some very funny, almost Hudson Hawk-esque moments and there is one hell of a fight scene in it. I know IMDB is not usually a barometer of accurate opinions, but it makes me happy that alot of people there seem to appreciate John Cusack's fighting skills. Apparently he's been kickboxing for 20 years and the fact that they can actually film his face during the fight scenes and not have to cut to the back of a stunt double's head makes all the difference in the world (which is why Wesley Snipes fight scenes are usually so badass too). I may need to rewatch GPB now because I wouldn't be surprised if the fight scenes are action gold compared to the post-action shit we've been getting lately. 

Oh and Ben Kingsley is an incredible bad guy. Between this, Species, and Sound of Thunder, he's fantastic in genre flicks; I can't wait to see what he does in Iron Man 3.