Bear

Discharge and Christian Death! Both releases could easily have been on my list another day. Fantastic!

In no particular order...
 

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens - Been looking forward to this film since forever, but I've been sceptical all the way, not expecting anything but another crap film. I'm not gonna lie to y'all. This isn't genius filmmaking. It's solid, but not much more than that. It's more or less a remake, and it's very safe from begining to end. Unlike what they did with the prequel, J.J. Abrams' goal here was qiote obviously to capture the classic Star Wars-feeling from the old trilogy. First and foremost please the old fans, while adding modern touches to please the new, younger generation and gain new fans. As boring that sounds, I thought it was the right thing to do. Because I had the feeling of watching a Star Wars film here, something I did not get from the prequel trilogy. So yeah, I am happy with that.
 
The second thing is that I see this more as a film to get the franchise started again. It offers nothing new, but it's a safe, but extremely pleasing start to the new era of Star Wars. I can understand how that is displeasing to a lot of people. I can understand their disappointments. But I was not disappointed at all. I was surprised. The feeling of wathing a Star Wars film felt great, I had chills almost from begining to end and I had to fight to keep some tears of joy back at times. It was everything I had dared to hope it was gonna be, plus some more.
 
My only complaints is a few standard Hollywood moments (Finn and Rey taking in eachothers mouth in the Millenium Falcon), Kylo Ren taking off his mask when he's questioning Rey and Snoke looking like a character that looked too fucking stupid for The Hobbit films, which says a lot considering how dumb, stupid and fake some of the characters in The Hobbit was. The trolls was awful. And Snoke looks like a fucking troll from The Hobbit. But everything else was on point, so those elements didn't bother me much at all.
 
I can't wait for this year's spin-off, and I sure as fuck can't wait for the sequel. Oh dear! I am already on my way dying to watch 'em both.
 

Afflicted - Derek Lee and Cliff Prowse directed, wrote and stars this film as two friends, Derek Lee and Cliff Prowse, who goes out on a trip with a goal to document it all. It's a nice enough touch to the found footage genre and it feels fresh without really offering anything new or anything. Fairly straight-forwad and predictable, but very cool. Low-budget on.  What makes it stand out a bit is the tone which is a lot different from the usual.
 
I don't think it's excellent, but it sure is worth a look. I liked it!
 

 
Triangle - Really cool psychologial horror flick that twists, turns and makes you ask a lot of questions throughout the film. It's interesting and tense, and Melissa George's performance is very, very good. Honest and emotional. I'm not sure if I can say anything more without spoiling it, and I really don't want to spoil it. Just check it out, guys!
 
I can see this film gaining a cult following sometime soon. It sure does deserve it.
 

I have the exact problem, but it's the opposite for me. Despite my efforts, it's been pretty difficult for me to get into Ryutaro's vocals. As a whole, Plastic Tree definitely seems solid, and they have some pleasant melodies here and there, but the vocals are just not my cup of tea.
I went with THE NOVEMBERS. I don't really care for the first half of their discography, but the latter half has made them one of my favorite bands.

Plastic Tree. Their discography is very uneven, but their 3-4 best albums are fantastic.
 
The Novembers never did it for me because of the vocals. It's one of very few bands where I can't look past the vocals no matter how good the music is.

Been rewatching/watching a bunch of stuff in the past week. So far I've re-watched The Evil Dead 2 and Return of the Living Dead for like the 4th or 5th time, and Tucker & Dale vs Evil for the 2nd time.
 
Also watched Child's Play 2 and What We Do In The Shadows... Both were fun. In fact, i'd say the latter is one of the best and most entertaining recent movies I've seen in a long, long time.. Wish there were more like it.

January is drawing to a close, so I thought I'd make this. Picking up the torch this year too, I hope we can make 12 threads for the 12 months of this year (I'll try to be more prescient/proactive this time around). The thread title is pretty self-explanatory, but here are the rules (well, more like guidelines) as said by @Bear last year:
 
 
This year started out in a pretty good way musically for me, especially considering the latter half of January. Many anticipated releases, good times, some disappointments, but mostly cool vibes all around. Here are three albums that had a bigger impact on me than others:
 
 

David Bowie - Blackstar / What a strange and monumental work of art! Mr. Bowie's passing makes listening to it all the more strange and surreal. Exciting, thought-provoking and full of adventure, especially considering how far into his career he made this record. He will always be one of the very best!
 

Ty Segall - Emotional Mugger / This dude just can't seem to stop releasing music all over the place, and I sure as hell don't mind. His latest album has everything that makes his style so cozy to listen to: warm fuzzy guitars, trippy vocals and an almost glam-like garage-rock atmosphere.
 

Chthe'ilist - Le Dernier Crépuscule / These guys don't play around: this is probably the most twisted and deliciously morbidly groovin' death metal release I listened to in a long time. It has the technical chops, the appropriate powerful sound and the sick atmosphere to elevate it into perfection.
 
 
Honorable mentions
 
DEZERT -「最高の食卓」/ Even better than their first album. These guys keep doing their own twisted thing, and it's excellent.
Savages - Adore Life / Their debut album was a bit more to my taste, but the mood is still there. More of a 'thinker's album.'
Spektr - The Art to Disappear / Pulverizing black metal mixed with industrial wastelands and fever-dream jazz? YES, COUNT ME IN.

I'll try, but this is impossible.
 
Sigh - Hail Horror Hail
Sigh - Infidel Art
Kagrra - San
Kagrra - Shizuku
Sabbat - Karisma
Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark
Paysage d'Hiver - Paysage d'Hiver
Summoning - Dol Guldur
Alcest - Le Secret
 
 
Had you asked me this tomorrow the list would've been slightly different. I might had chosen another Alcest, Summoning, Paysage d'Hiver or Summoning album, or chosen different bands alltogether. The three albums I always keep on a list like this is Hail Horror Hail, San and Under the Sign of the Black Mark, the rest will always look different. It all depends on what day you ask me this on, how I am feeling and so on.

For a band like Dream Theater that is 34 songs too many.

Prisoners - Really nice and atmospheric crime-thriller with a brilliant Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman in the lead roles. The latter is left incredibly emotionally exposed in certain scenes. You can just feel his pain. While it is a bit predictable it's just dark, powerful and disturbing enough to make you look way past that., and the film looks great. Superb cinematography. I thought the film was lovely.
 
Jake Gyllenhaal has turned into such a fine actor in recent years and just topped it with his chilling performance in Nightcrawle. Now, I really liked the guy in Brokeback Mountain, Jarhead and Zodiac, but around 2011-2012 he just turned into a completely different actor. I can't think of many actors in recent years that's gone through the same changes. It's incredible how much he's grown as an actor. Impressed!
 

 
The Hateful Eight - Quentin Tarantino has done it again! I've never been disappointed by a Tarantino film, and I even worship Death Proof. It's a bit early to tell as I've only seen the film once, but right now I feel like The Hateful Eight might be his best film since 1994's Pulp Fiction. It's a slow-burning, atmospheric and dialogue-driven western-crime with a fantastic cast, great characters and, as always from this mad genius, brilliant dialogue. I thought it was beautifully shot, and the violence is nothing but a pleasure to the eye. I can see those scenes a thousand times and I would not get tired of them. Beautiful! And as with most Tarantino films, this is all about the dialogue. You need to be able to appreciate dialogue to appreciate this. It's intimate, yet huge. It's so calm and quiet, yet so god damn epic. He does things no-one should be able to do in 2015.
 
Glad to see him to something a bit different too. It's reeks of Tarantino, but still he offers something fresh here. It's not a new Django Unchained. It's something so very different, yet so familiar.
 
As far as the cast goes, incredible! Samuel L. Jackson gives us one of his performances of his life, Kurt Russell did here exactly what he did in 2015's western-horror Bone Tomahawk and gives us his best performance since 1993's Tombstone at least, Jennifer Jason Leigh is just too good and the rest of the bunch is fantastic too. Well, maybe with the exception of Zoe Bell who is no actor, but she has just enough charm and pressence to make up for her lack of talent. Was very impressed by Channing Tatum. Role of his life for sure!
 
And the score? Ennio Morricone for fuck sake! Brilliant! He is western and he knowns how to make a western soundtrack that'll increase the viewing experience. He know how to strenghten even the simplest of scenes with a bit of music. Genius!
 
I understand the hate/dislike for Tarantino, both as a person and filmmaker, but I am not of them. I worship the guy, and I worship all of his films. This man cannot do no wrong, not even if he did his best to fail. He'd still win!
 
Best of 2015 along with Bone Tomahawk, and both are probably my favourite westerns since the 80's, if not 70's.
 

Finnish pagan metal act MOONSORROW will release its brand-new, seventh studio album "Jumalten Aika" - which means 'The Age Of Gods' in English - via Century Media Records."There are a lot more folk music influences present in "Jumalten Aika" than earlier", comments Henri Sorvali (Guitars, keyboards & vocals). "This time around, they are more deeply integrated to the overall sound. "Jumalten Aika" is like a circling wolf biting the hardest when you would never expect it. The music is unchained aggression, deep mysteries of the North and thundering witchcraft combined together in a molten forge of the Gods and reminds us all of something that never left our blood and soil.

"Jumalten Aika" track-listing:
1. Jumalten Aika (12:43)
2. Ruttolehto incl. Päivättömän Päivän Kansa (15:21)
3. Suden Tunti (7:06)
4. Mimisbrunn (15:55)
5. Ihmisen Aika (Kumarrus Pimeyteen) (16:00)

Bonus disc:
1. Soulless (Grave cover) (3:18)
2. Non Serviam (Rotting Christ cover) (5:10)
 
 
 
Oh fuck yeah! I can't wait for this.

I'll start playing Hotline Miami again as soon as I get home. It have to be dark and it have to be loud. It'll put me into a trance. One of the best games ever.
Will play Hotline Miami 2 after that. If it's half as good as the first game I'll be more than happy.

Big Bad Wolves  - Now, I'll be honest: this film is as much thriller and black-comedy as it is horror, but I till feels it fits this thread. Tarantino named this his best film of 2013, and he's not too far off. Dark, exciting, thrillign and at times morbidly funny. Big Bad Wolves has all the ingredients for a classic, and they treat all these ingredients so well we got an instant classic. This film is very dark, morbid and twisted, and it all works so well, topped off with ome pitch black humour that got me bursting out in laughter several times. Brilliant. Totally recommended!
 
At times it feels very Tarantino-esque as well, which is something I like with me being a Tarantino fanboy and all.
 

Castle Freak - Very cool and super underrated Stuart Gordon with Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Outsider. Great astmosphere, cool cast, surprisingly well-written and directed, and the special effects are superb. I'd never have guessed this was a direct-to-video release back in 1995 if I didn't know so before watching it.
 
Great film!
 

 
Necronomicon: Book of Dead - Another underrated horror film based on H.P. Lovecraft's work, this time an anthology directed by Brian Yuzna (who helped produce films such as Re-Animator and From Beyond, and directed both Re-Animator sequels), Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf) and Shusuke Kaneko (director of several Gamera films, as well as Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack).
 
The main narative is about H.P. Lovecraft himself, and is fun, much because Jeffrey Combs is excellent as H.P. Lovecraft.
 
The Drowned - A good start, but pretty weak compared to the rest. It's got a nice Lovecraftian vibe to it, but feels a bit cheap. This one is directed by Christophe Gans and based on The Rats in the Walls. 7/10
The Cold - This one is just really cool (pun intended!), and the atmosphere is really nice. But the highlight here are the special effects. They're crazy fucking good! This one is directed by Brian Yuza and based on Cool Air. 8/10
Whispers - Another fine entry, and almost as good as The Cold. Great special effects, fine cast and so on. This one is directed by Shusuke Kaneko and is based on  The Whisperer in Darkness. 8/10
 
OK, so this isn't exactly super faithful to the source material, but it's great, atmospheric horror with lovely special effects, a memorable cast and shit. What's not to like?
 

From Beyond - Say whatever you want about this film as an H.P. Lovecraft-adaption, but as a horror film this is so god damn good, and it stars everybody's favourite H.P. Lovecraft actors Jeffry Combs and Barbara Crampton, both whom are excellent as usual. The entire film reeks of the 80's, and for fans of horror that's nothing but fantastic. Fuck, this is just one of Stuart Gordon's many masterpieces. What a director he was!
 
The special effects, guy. They're easily among the best special effects ever caught on film. So incredibly cool, creative and fucked up. A real treat to the eye.
 

Within the Woods - Low-budget and amateurish short film by Sam Raimi with Bruce Campbell and Ellen Sandweiss, good friends of director Sam Raimi. Guess what? This film is was sorta remade as The Evil Dead a few years later, and helped finance that film. The rip that I saw was pretty poor, but the film was very cool. It's fun, eerie and dark, and the make-up looked really cool.
 

 
Dead & Buried - While not a H.P. Lovecaft adaption, this film is still very Lovecraftian in many ways. It's one of the films that eventually would end up on the Video Nasty list, and it sure is a nasty, little gem, this. It's trash cinema alright, but it's great trash cinema. Nasty exploitation with a fairly nice plot, good cast and all. The best part? The special effects. They look absolutely gorgeous!
 
Yeah, it's a great film overall.
 

 
Die, Monster, Die! - Mid 60's horror based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space. This stars Boris Karloff, Suzan Farmer and Nick Adams, and it offers some real chills. ure made the hair on the back of my neck stand u quite a few times. It's a chiller alright. I will admit though, that with the exception of a few scenes, I get more Edgar Allan Poe feeling from the film, than Lovecraft. It's a gothic horror film that looks stunnig, and it's got a great sense of mystery and suspense to it.
 
My one complaint here is the ending, when it turns to a fairly standard 60's monster film. Should've dropped that, if you ask me. But it's nitpicking, because it's not something I didn't like a lot. I truly did. It just felt a bit out of place.
 
But the scenes with Helga makes up for it. So chilling, man!
 
And they should've gone with the working title, The House at the End of the World, instead. Much cooler title.
 

Deathgasm - A nice tribute to metal and a fun splatter, even though they take the whole "brothers of metal" bullshit a bit too far for my taste. But it was good, silly fun with lots of blood and gore. It offered plenty laughs, and for me who're both a fan of metal, blood and gore, there's nothing not to enjoy here really. I had plenty fun!
 
The special effects were a bit up and down, though. At times fantastic, but a few times awful, and the ending disappointed a bit. Could've gotten a much better look on the demon.
 
The most disappoting thing about this film, aside from certain awful special effects moments, is the soundtrack. It's not that it's bad, you even get great stuff like Midnight, Nunslaughter, old Emperor, hell, even stuff like Beastwars, Bulletbelt, Elm Street, Lair of the Minotaur, Razorwyre, Skull Fist and The Wretched End are decent enough. But I just feel like they could've done so much better. But that's just nitpicking.
 

Since Lestat posted the cover for the new A Forest of Stars, I just gotta follow up wih the full layout which is stunning:
 

John Wick - Very nice neo-noir action with Keanu Reeves, and a huge surprise. I expected a decent enough monday entertainer, but this was so much more than that. The neo-noir atmoshere is incredible and very 60's french-esque, and the action sequences is top, top notch. Very un-american and awesome-as-fuck. The creators of the film must be huge fans of 80's and early 90's Hong Kong cinema, because the action sequences oozes of Hong Kong cinema of the past. Now, the film isn't very original, and Keanu Reeves still in't the best actor around, something which is very visible in the emotional scenes, but he does very well as a hard motherfucker out for revenge. The supporting cast is very good too.
 
And I can't be wrong when I am saying that there's something very French, Italian, Chinese and to some degree also Japanese and South-Korean about this film. I got a serious John Woo, Jean Pierre Melville, Sergio Leone, Park Chan wook and Akira Kurosawa feeling from it all. Some of it in the characterization, some of it from the action sequences, some of it from the visuals, some of it from the noir-feeling and so on.  lot of influences I'd say were clear (without actually knowing if these were any influence at all), but treated with much respect. Loved it!
 
Reeves' best film since Dracula, a film where he was the weakest link. But the film is enjoyable as fuck, and so was this!
 

John Wick - Very nice neo-noir action with Keanu Reeves, and a huge surprise. I expected a decent enough monday entertainer, but this was so much more than that. The neo-noir atmoshere is incredible and very 60's french-esque, and the action sequences is top, top notch. Very un-american and awesome-as-fuck. The creators of the film must be huge fans of 80's and early 90's Hong Kong cinema, because the action sequences oozes of Hong Kong cinema of the past. Now, the film isn't very original, and Keanu Reeves still in't the best actor around, something which is very visible in the emotional scenes, but he does very well as a hard motherfucker out for revenge. The supporting cast is very good too.
 
And I can't be wrong when I am saying that there's something very French, Italian, Chinese and to some degree also Japanese and South-Korean about this film. I got a serious John Woo, Jean Pierre Melville, Sergio Leone, Park Chan wook and Akira Kurosawa feeling from it all. Some of it in the characterization, some of it from the action sequences, some of it from the visuals, some of it from the noir-feeling and so on.  lot of influences I'd say were clear (without actually knowing if these were any influence at all), but treated with much respect. Loved it!
 
Reeves' best film since Dracula, a film where he was the weakest link. But the film is enjoyable as fuck, and so was this!