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Monster on Campus (1958)- A college professor studying evolution get "bitten" by a dead coelacanth  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth)and devolves into a neanderthal with a lust for killing people. Earlier a German Shepard was transformed into a sabertooth Shepard from lapping up some of the water from the thawing fish. Luckily the effects are only temporary.

At first he doesn't realize it's him that's killing people, so he borrows a remote cabin and sets up cameras with a criss-cross of twine to trigger them. He then injects himself with the coelacanth plasma and goes on another rampage.

Not a waste of time, but nothing to write home about either. The film makers did a pretty good job with the transformations and they had a pretty good looking rubber fish.



Live Free or Die Hard (2007)- Bruce Willis is at it again, this time fighting a group of cyberterrorist who are taking down the nations infrastructure starting with the government. At the same time they are killing off the computer hackers who unwittingly helped them.

Bruce teams up with one of the hackers, Justin Long, who you might remember from Galaxy Quest.

The action is pretty good, but goes way over the top sometimes, especially the last 15 minutes of the film.

Good popcorn movie.



Shooter (2007)- Mark Wahlberg plays a retired Marine sniper who gets duped into an asassination plot by a clandestine group run by Danny Glover. There is an involved plot involving a pipeline in Ethiopia and Wahlberg get blame for taking a shot a shot at the president.

He goes on the run and is helped by his spotter's widow and a young FBI agent who thinks things about the case don't add up.

Lots of over the top action in this one too.



The Running Man (1987) - Arnie takes the fall for a massacre and then breaks out of prison. He is then caught and put into the ultimate reality show.

Arnold is, well Arnold. I have to say Jesse Ventura is the gayest you every see him as one of the trackers named Captain Freedom.

I also always suspected Richard Dawson was a closet a***ole, I think that came through here.



Enemy Mine (1985)- Earth expands into the galaxy and gets into a war with the Drac, a reptilian race who happen to be asexual. Dennis Quade is a hot shot fight pilot who crashes on a barren planet while pursuing a Drac fighter (Lou Gossett).

After a couple of attempts at killing each other, the two enemies realize they must cooperate to stay alive on the hostile world where they crashed. Eventually they learn to trust each other and become friends.

I always thought Lou Gossett should've gotten an award for this part, especially for the female persona he takes on when he becomes pregnant. He did a great job of expressing himself under all that makeup. He actually suggested the Drac's gurgling voice (something he did as a kid).

I've always liked this movie, although some may be turned off by it's almost preachy approach to tolerance.


 

They must have been proud of it, considering how often they haul it out and devote screen time to it. Any normal fish would have thawed out and stunk up the place worse than a one dollar brothel.

FRACTURE (2007) - See thread here. (http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,115420.0.html)
Good movie overall.

YELLOW (2006)
Aside from seeing Roselyn Sanchez (Rush Hour 2) naked this movie didn't have much to offer. Wannabe dance flees crappy life to find better life as a dancer, but looks for love and finds it then must choose between love of guy and love of dance, even if it's not the dance she wants to do ... a stripper. Cliche start to stop and fair acting at best. Watch it only if it's free.
(http://www.askmen.com/specials/2005_top_99/celebs/20_roselyn_sanchez.jpg)
See what I mean ... worth looking at!

DECOYS II (2007) - Almost as good as DECOYS I ... and that ain't saying much. If it wasn't for the random nudity this film would have nothing to offer. It qualifies as a truly Bad movie.

THE MESSENGER (2007) - Another good one ... spooky scary with a nice twist at the end. Overall predictable as most horrors are, but that's ok it was still a decent movie and worth watching.

Seen quite a few others too, but that's the short list of a few I've seen lately.

300 (2007) - Crazy machismo fights and Gerard Butler going balls out. Lots of fun to watch, an orgasm for the eyes. My only regret: we never get the see the big mongoloid with the blades for arms do any fighting!  :thumbup:

Pathfinder (2007) - Karl Urban sucks, Clancy Brown was wasted (his face was covered the entire time and his lines were all spoken in Norwegian!?) and the pacing came to a screeching halt about half way through the movie. Plenty of violence though to keep my from turning it off. Brains, blood, impalements and even a severed eyeball! Overall? Meh.  :thumbdown:

Hard Candy (2005) - One big brutal mind-f*ck of a movie that still had me scratching my head over a few parts by the time the end credits rolled. A great concept executed excellently with stellar acting and eye candy direction. Not for the squeamish though. This is how Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" shows should be done!  :thumbup:

Pink Flamingos (1972) - Yes, I finally got around to seeing John Waters' infamous exploitation classic. It's every bit as unsettling and grotesquely charming as I'd heard. Horribly acted in that almost endearing way and so disturbing at times even I found myself putting up a hand to block my eyes from being tortured. Not to be viewed by pregnant women, people with weak hearts, or anyone with any semblance of good taste in their bodies. Otherwise, everybody else is good to go!  :thumbup:

Logan's Run (1976) - Always loved this movie. This was my first time viewing on DVD. I'm surprised no remake of this sci-fi classic has been announced, but on the other hand I'm glad it didn't happen yet. Just leave the classics alone, damnit.

Don't Look In The Basement (1973) - First time viewing, even though I had the (budget) DVD sitting on my shelf for ages. Surprisingly fun and well made mental-terror with a kick ass ending.

Daredevil: Director's Cut (2003) - First time viewing of the Director's Cut, which appeared to be a bit more violent than the Theatrical version. Daredevil is pretty slick and Affleck is even tolerable. Its not in the Spider-Man league but had its fun moments.

Relentless IV: Ashes To Ashes (1994) - First time viewing. Always had a soft spot for Relentless & Relentless II. Part III didn't really suck but I enjoyed IV just a tiny bit more. Must be my fondness for Famke Janssen :)

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) - Still holds up and delivers the Slasher goodies. Haven't seen this one in a while so I totally forgot how bad of an actor Ryan Phillippe really is. His wooden performance didn't hurt the movie though, rather providing more fun cheese which made IKWYDL even better in my opinion.

                                         I first saw this one in the mid-80's on NY's channel 9 Chiller show. One of the most underated movies of the 7O's,and a classick,IMO. The toungless old lady,the horny basket case,Danny , the Judge, Sarge, and especially the "You stole my BAYYYY-BEEE! " lady-all crack me up!   :bouncegiggle:  And of course,Popsicle guy!!!

Monster On Campus - I remember renting a mildly liking this film. The guy cuts himself on the fish as it's being delivered. Turns him into a monster. Fun b/w monster film.  :thumbup:

The Running Man (1987) - One of my favorite Arnold films. Not just because it's Arnold eithier, but because of the whole future world concept.  :thumbup: :thumbup:

Logan's Run (1976) - Another great future world Sci-Fi film concept. When citizens come of age they must die.  :thumbup: :thumbup:

Don't Look In The Basement (1973) - Wacky low budget crazy film. Worth a look.  :thumbup:

300 (2007) - Great film for what it was. One of the best of 2007.  :thumbup: :thumbup:

Pink Flamingos (1972) - Saw it in the 80's and still haven't had the chance to finish it.

Been wanting to see Shooter, Pathfinder (I felt it was going to be bad), and Yellow looks good.

[youtube=425,350]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ao3TYlbkHUQ

Awesome movie. Probably my favorite Arnold flick thanks to the shear over-the-topness that tips the scales nicely. How can you go wrong with a movie about a gameshow where convicted criminals are hunted through an apocalyptic cityscape by other killers, each with their own action figure theme! Buzzsaw, the chainsaw wielding biker tuff! Sub-Zero, the ice hockey goalie from the rinks of Hell! Dynamo, the big fat opera singer with light-up armor (mohawk included!) that shoots electrical blasts from his fingertips and comes with his Dynamo Golf Cart of Doom!

And yes, Captain Freedom was probably Ventura's gayest looking role with his bad toupee and mustache. However, I think his part in the "Tag Team" pilot along with Roddy Piper may have been just a little bit more all around homo-erotic.

Also, I never thought Richard Dawson was a closet assh*le, I figured he was always a boozing, womanizing, self-absorbed prick... but in the "I wish I was that prick" kinda way. Speaking of penises, has anyone else seen Superbad yet? On to add to my recent viewing list:

Superbad (2007) - Holy crap, I don't think I've laughed this hard at a movie since... well... last year when I saw Clerks II. I know that "the funniest movie I've seen in a year!" isn't nearly as impressive as "the funniest movie I've seen in a decade!" or "the funniest movie I've ever seen!", but don't let that dampen my praise. Seth, Evan and Fogell are three high school friends who do nothing but hang out watching internet porn together ("Vagtastic Voyage" anyone?) and letting life generally dump all over them, wind up invited to the biggest graduation party of the year. The only catch: they've agreed to pick up the booze. Now, with their final days together waining (Fogell and Evan are going to college together in the Fall while Seth was rejected), they need to rely on the wormy "wanna-be a gangster while still wearing a Metallica shirt" Fogell to convince the lady at the liquor store that he's a 25 year-old Hawaiian organ donor named "McLovin" (because calling himself Mohammad would've just been stupid...). He gets punched out by a robber before things can come to a viable conclusion, the cops are called, and Seth and Evan leave Fogell to deal with his side of the story while they head off in search of a suitable alcoholic replacement... without fake IDs of their own and without any money since Fogell had their entire booze budget. Seriously, this is the funniest damn movie and it makes me wish I'd seen Knocked Up when I had the chance instead of being scared off by the "heartfelt child raising" crap that the trailers threatened me with. There are two words I'm going to leave everybody with and I recommend everybody stay for the first half of the end credits when I say this: dick drawings.  :thumbup: :thumbup:

Kiki's Delivery Service - a story about a 13 year old witch who must live on her own in another city for one year.  An excellent film from Studio Ghibli.  This film was also the last voice acting job done by the late Phil Hartman.  A good movie for children or animation fans in general.
 

Kiss Me Quick - Lots of women in black lingerie stripping for the camera as a faux Dracula/Dr. Frankenstein narrates for a hideously, smugly, stupid alien.  The camera work is first notch, some of the women are good eye candy, but parts of the movie do drive you nuts.  Watching the one woman on the huge rubber band, shake the booty fat off machine, was one such scene.  Who found that attractive?  Oh, and I wanted to punch the alien guy in his mouth.  That urge lasted the whole darn movie.

The Day After Tomorrow - This film had more problems than I could count.  It also went hugely heavy on the glurg, especially at the end.  The plain fact that the temperature could drop hundreds of degrees in moments, without any wind, might have sprained my brain.

The Host - Good monster flick.  I really loved the creature's design and its opening rampage was great.

Undead - This film tried to hard to make the alien conspiracy nut fisherman into a cool character.  Case in point:  the triple shotgun.  And, while the plot twists and things were interesting, I have to wonder why anyone would suspend thousands of people in the air on a planet that was home to a species which had invented air travel.

Kiss Me Quick (1964) is great it is one of, if not my favorite nudie cutie from the 60's ... yes it is stupid and often times makes little sense but does that really matter? And Sterilox in his rather sad Stan Laurel impersonation he wasn't that bad was he? IF you have not seen this film I highly recommend it as a standard of it's genera.
 :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

A good anime film and a good introduction to Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki, who has been compared favorablely to our own Walt Disney. If one liked that film, one might like to try some of Miyazaki's other films "Howl's Moving Castle," "Spirited Away," "Princess Mononoke," "My Neighbor Totoro," etc.

This weekend I saw -
SERAPHIM FALLS - A beautifully photographed but overly artsy Western starring Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson.  Watchable but SLLOOOWWW and the ending is rather anticlimatic.

KILLER KILLER - Seven serial killlers wake up to find their maximum security prison has been replaced with a crumbling old asylum they cannot leave, and are stalked by a pretty young blonde who takes on the form and garb of their last victim, before killing them in the fashion in which they had dispatched their victims.  Watchable but not great.

O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU - Seen it multiple times, and still love it.  The whole idea of setting the story of the Odyssey in 1930's Mississippi was sheer genius, and the Cyclops, the Sirens, and the evil Sheriff are all over-the-top awesome!

I've seen My Neighbor Totoro and loved it.  I have Howl's Moving Castle on DVD and have not watched it yet.  I have not seen Princess Mononoke, nor Spirited Away but I plan to soon. 

Been wanting to rent SERAPHIM FALLS also and O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU has been on my long list for a long while now.

Assault on Precinct 13 (2004 version)- Meh.  I thought it was okay, not great.  I'm not a big fan of Ethan Hawke, but the movie wasn't terrible.  Others might disagree, but I haven't seen the original yet, and now want to, just to see how they match up. 

The Pacifier (2005)- Vin Diesel in a comedy where he takes care of a bunch of kids.  Disney flick.  Based off of this and Fast and The Furious, I'd say Vin isn't that good of an actor, but of the two flicks, I'd pick this over the Fast and The Furious. 

Forrest Gump- Probably my favorite Tom Hanks movie ever.  Gary Sinese was great as Lt. Dan.  Really can't say much about this, since most people seem to have seen it.

Overall, the ladies were not hard to look at.  However, the one black-haired girl who was part of the trio kept making me say stuff like, "Ah!  Turn around!  Turn around!"  I did notice that the director enjoyed watching women strip off black lingerie, especially garters and stockings.

Sterilox drove me completely nuts.  It's surprising that I didn't run up to the TV and put my fist through the screen; I wanted to punch him in the mouth that badly.  Yes, in the mouth.  There was just something about his characterization that set me off.  From what I can tell, it was his trying to act that part, because I chuckled when he said his final line at the end (which was out of character).

Attack From Mars - This was a trade I got from Andrew. I think waxing my wedding tackle would have been less painful. Still, I can't blame Andrew. He did warn me it was bad (the movie, not waxing...stuff).

Which one Boobra? Yeah if that's the one she has a couple of short films in the extras of the SWV copy. Not a one of them could dance, but hey who cares? Her name was/is Natasha ... that's it just Natasha. That movie was a lose parody of Dr Strangelove. It's just so stupid you can't help but like it a little.

You mean that you didn't like watching the one girl sneeze and blow snot for the whole film, until she was actually creating fried egg out of her nose?  And the fat woman eating everything was not funny?  Hideous flick.  Once you get past the last segment of the "movie inside a movie," there is no reason to keep watching, unless you are a completest.

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/attackmars/index.html

I finally got to see VACANCY last night.  LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!  :teddyr:

Serial Mom (1994) - Yep, I finally watched it. Fun movie. It lacks the extreme crudeness of John Waters' earliest stuff, but I think once you've shocked people with some of the worst grotesqueries you can come up with, you're better off stretching your creative legs and showing people you're not just a one trick pony. You can still tell it's a John Waters movie what with all the glamor and celebrity given to violence and the lampooning of the media for doing as such. A fun flick with plenty of memorable quotes and a thousand times better acted than any of the early stuff too. Then again, when you're shooting legitimate actors, you pretty much expect that. Sam Waterson is awesome.  :thumbup:

The Good Girl.   **1/2 out of ****.   I was expecting a straight up comedy but this movie was more sad than anything else at times. It is about a woman (Jennifer Aniston in a fantastic performance) who is 30, in a boring marriage to what she deems to be a boring man, is in a dead end job and just feeling trapped.  She ends up having an affair with a younger check out clerk at the store she works at and then the problems start.   The 1st half or so of the movie is really strong but then it gets less sturdy as it goes along.  The performances are uniformly great, but the movie never really comes together the way that it should.  I think that this movie got more attention  at the time of its release due to it featuring some fleating Aniston topless activity, but her performance really surprised me.

THE INVASION [2007]

Ostensibly 90 minutes of trailer for a film you're already watching, this version of Jack Finney's novel THE BODY SNATCHERS has less soul than the pod-people (sans pods this go around) who serve as its antagonists.  Connections with 28 DAYS/WEEKS LATER are too numerous to list, but the back-lit and quick footed "infected" who spread the alien organisms through vomit should ring a few bells.  Agonizingly awful quick-cut editing (blatantly attempting to cover up the movie's lack of viability from the start) and more unannounced flash-backs/flash-forwards than I can ever recall having seen in a film are just icing on the cake. 

A message behind the madness is insinuated throughout, but all I got out of it in the end was that the pod-people are considerably better equipped to take care of our planet than us - leading me to wonder why the conversion into them (which, this go around, leaves the host completely intact and ready for a happy vaccination ending) is such a bad thing.  Note to Warner Brothers - car chases, explosions, and gross-out effects do not a worthwhile scifi/horror film make.

This is easily the worst new release I've seen this year and I sincerely hope it never makes back the $50,000,000 spent on it.  What a waste.  There will be more said about it once I get to it in my upcoming five-part retrospective on the Finney novel and it's cinematic adaptations.

Kindest regards,

Kevin P.
http://www.wtf-film.com

Amelie.  **** out of ****. One of the best movies that I've ever seen and I usually despise most French cinema. Audrey Tatou is adorable in the title role and this movie can put a smile on anyone's face.

High Tension.  ***1/2 out of ****.  I realize that this French horror flick is one that people usually either love or hate with not much middle ground.  I happened to like it a lot the 1st time I saw it and my appreciation for it has only grown since then.  As for the infamous and highly controversial twist, I thought that it was well done and adds an extra layer to the film that warrants repeat viewings.

The Saddest Music in the World.  ***1/2 out of ****.  Not a lot of people that I meet have ever seen this movie but it's one of my favorites of the last 10 years.    Isabella Rossellini (who has never been better) plays a very wealthy woman who decides to hold a contest during the Great Depression era to see what the saddest music in the world might be.  Not for all tastes but I've always found this flick to be a little seen treat.   

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors- Decent enough sequel, better than part 2.  I've been watching the Nightmare series in order, enjoying my box set dvd's.  Nice seeing Laurence Fishburne before he made that stupid Matrix crap.  Still liked him better on Pee Wee's Playhouse, but nice.  Best part of Nightmare 3 for me was Freddy on tv, and the "Welcome to prime time, b*tch!"

The Substitute 2- I guess it's a decent sequel.  I mean, the series pretty much has the same formula, so it can't be hard to make a bad sequel here.  Treat Williams is pretty enjoyable in this.  Nice seeing B.D. Wong before he was on Law and Order: SVU.  But the only gripe I had, was more about why USA network showed this last.  They showed Substitute 4, then 3, then 2.  Eh.  Either way, I liked the series with Treat Williams a bit more than with Tom Berenger.

Night Listener - Meh- got bored with it and turned it off.

Elizabeth - Great period piece, very well done and surprisingly close to the truth on key issues, some liberties and fluff, but very real for a movie. Seen it dozens of times.

Wild Hogs -  it was ok being a middle aged biker myself I can relate to it, I ride with a few friends. but down the road from my house is a Hells Angels clubhouse and they are great guys, invite us in when we roll by even though we're not members. So the story to me was a little contrived from I've seen. Few funny moments but it's not a keeper.

 

PROM NIGHT-
 
 Watched this last night...ehhh. Jamie Lee Curtis is good in it. Lotsa VERY cheezy disco dancing-in fact...it's laffably bad!
The ONE (count em-ONE) gore scene is a decap of a guy who was pulling a nasty prank on Jamie,the Prom Queen. The head rools onto the runway. It was an ok time waster,I guess. Eh. The best part was the dance scene,which had my son Eddie cracking up!

  [youtube=425,350] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDhMp7lvR9I

  It looks like the actors had fun with it,though!  :thumbup: Jamie is hot,too!

I saw this at the DVD store the other day and couldn't help but laugh at how lame the title was.  I mean, it's the Night LISTENER!!!!!!

OOOHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!

Meh yeah...

Desert Commandos (1967) - First time viewing. Umberto Lenzi's WWII action/spy/mission adventure wasn't bad but very very tame. It could've used a few fistfights and sex to spice things up. The Brentwood DVD presents the movie in horrible pan & scan.

Cannibal Ferox (1981) - Long time fave - First time viewing on DVD. The movie is still repulsive (animal violence) but also fun (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). The rest remains a mix of corny acting and bad but bloody effects. Not as shocking as it used to be though.

Stone Cold (1991) - The most underrated action movie from 1991. If one doesn't mind Brian Bosworth's funky mullet and William Forsythe's incredible fat belly then good times are guaranteed.

Grand Theft Auto (1977) - Nice car demolition but yow, the comedy was not very funny.

Hannibal Rising: Unrated (2007) - Enjoyed this. Probably more than I should though.

Seed of Chucky (2004)- Pretty decent sequel.  Shows how Chucky adapts to being a father, and the marital strifes that go with that.  Decent enough parody of both the family dramas like Kramer vs. Kramer, and a spoof of it's own franchise.  Nice reference to an Ed Wood classic, "Glen or Glenda."  Makes me want to see a new Chucky movie, if anything to see how he adapts to being a grandfather or something.

SHOOTER - pretty decent film for ole Marky Mark ... but for the life of me why does ever damn movie of this type have to have the girl in peril chiche? I'll give it
(http://forums.armagetronad.net/images/smiles/smiley_star.gif)(http://forums.armagetronad.net/images/smiles/smiley_star.gif)(http://forums.armagetronad.net/images/smiles/smiley_star.gif)

Eddie Izzard - Unrepeatable -- funny he always cracks me up.

Man on the Moon - caught this one late last night in Starz.

My Boss's Daughter- Okay, not good or great comedy flick.  Ashton Kutcher has a crush on his boss's daughter, both of whom think he's gay.  He housesits for the night, with very strict rules.  Then throughout the night, people show up and cause all sorts of hyjinx, including Andy Richter as the drug dealing son with a restraining order and Michael Madsen as the psycho Andy owes money to.  Okay to watch on tv, but I wouldn't buy the dvd or anything.

Malbu's Most Wanted- Jamie Kennedy stars as the white, wannabe gangsta rapping son of California governor candidate Bill Gluckman, played by Ryan O'Neil.  I actually thought it is pretty decent and underrated.  Very funny, and worth checking out.  The two 'thugs' that kidnap Jamie are great.  Plus, any chance to see Kellie Martin on tv is fun. :thumbup:

The Woods (2006) - Not a perfect film, but entertaining enough. Looking forward to Lucky McKee's next movie "Red".

Primeval (2007) - Made for an ok watch. My fifth favorite killer croc/gator flick after Alligator, The Big Alligator River, Lake Placid and Blood Surf.

Escape From Women's Prison (1978) - Lots of sleaze and cheese. Loved it.

Deported Women Of The SS Special Section (1976) - Pacing was rather slow but John Steiner made up for it. His performance was excellent.

Hellgate (1989) - Has about an equal amount of sucky bad and fun cheese. Very bizarre at times.

Private Parts (1997)- Autobiographical movie of Howard Stern's rise to the top of the radio airwaves, and subsequent claim of being the "King of All Media."  Howard turns in a pretty decent performance as a lead actor, but considering it's based on his life, that shouldn't be too surprising.  He's charismatic, funny and at times sweet.  Well worth a look, even for people who don't like Stern all that much.

Zoolander- Ben Stiller stars as obnoxious male model Derrick Zoolander, with Owen Wilson as his enemy/friend.  Will Ferrell also stars, as a fashion designer who is angry over being ousted as the bass player of Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  Pretty decent comedy, but not for everyone either.

Hard Boiled.  ***1/2 out of ****
My personal favorite John Woo flick. One of my favorite action films of all time. Chow Yun Fat has never been better or more cool.

The Replacement Killers.  *1/2 out of ****
A completely wasted opportunity that was supposed to be a vehicle to break Chow Yun Fat into American cinemas.  Mira Sorvino is hot but that's about the only good thing I can say about this piece of crap. Chow deserved much, much better.

The Devil's Rejects.  *** out of ****
Rob Zombie redeems himself after the debacle that was House of 1000 Corpses.  The movie tends to drag a bit in spots and Sheri Moon Zombie is clearly out of her acting league being alongside the always great Sid Haig and Bill Moseley. The infamous hotel scene featuring Priscilla Barnes is the most disturbing scene in the entire film.

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV- Well, off the bat Troma apologizes for Toxic 2 and 3.  So that's always a good sign.  The Toxic Avenger 4 is apparently the "Real" sequel to the 1985 classic film by Lloyd Kaufman.  The Diaper Mafia takes hostage the Tromaville School for the Very Special, and it's up to Toxic Avenger and his sidekick Lardass to stop it.  In the school we are introduced to some of Tromaville's 'special' people, including Sweetie Hunny and Tito the Retarded Rebel.  An explosion occurs and an alternate reality ensues, where the Toxic Avenger is sent to Amortville, Tromaville's exact opposite.  In turn, The Noxious Offender shows up in Tromaville.  The Noxious Offender is evil and starts destroying Tromaville.

Pretty decent flick.  Liked the appearances by Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD.  Plus, there's the celebrity cameo's, including obviously Ron Jeremy, Lemmy Kilmister and Corey Feldman, as well as the late Hank The Angry Drunken Dwarf, of Howard Stern fame.  Plus the Sklar twins, who are comedians.

Once Upon A Time In The West - Sergio Leone's spaghetti western masterpiece. Sure it moves slow, but damn it is just shot so beautifully.

Are you mad?  Put the crack pipe down man.  Seriously, the only thing good about this film was Kate Beckinsale.  I can't believe I went and blew about $25 on this.  2 adult tickets, popcorn, 2 sodas...

To each their own I guess.

This IS a site for bad movies, but in reality, there are limits.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure- Probably Keanu Reeves' best work, acting wise.  Notably, because I don't think it was so much his acting as it was his just showing up to the set and them putting a camera on him.  I don't think he's that far removed from the character in his real life.  But it's an enjoyable flick nonetheless, and him and Alex Winter have a good chemistry together.

An Evening With Kevin Smith- Not so much a movie as a 3 hour long standup performance/question and answer segment featuring writer/director Kevin Smith.  Very much reccomended for anyone.  Very funny, and somewhat insightful.  The stories about Superman Reborn and Prince alone make it enjoyable. 

Ringu (1998) - I'm finally watching the DreamWorks Ringu set/collection I bought ages ago. The first one still packs a punch and is a modern day horror classic in my opinion.

Commandos (1968) - Co-written by Dario Argento but don't expect any witches, gore and maggots though ;) Entertaining WWII action-drama that is well shot and acted.

Full Eclipse (1993) - Long time no see, first time viewing on DVD. Too bad HBO didn't release the unrated version.

Skinwalkers (2006) - I snatched the German R2 which contains the unrated or R-Rated version. Skinwalkers wants to be so many things, like, The Covenant, Near Dark, The Lost Boys and Underworld. Had its moments but doesn't add anything new to the Werewolf genre.

The Night Of The Werewolf (1980) - I've seen this under the title The Craving back in the day of video rentals. Very atmospheric Paul Naschy horror worth checking out.

I just watched Picnic at Hanging Rock.  It's a very strange film, and it kind of frightened me at times.  I liked it.

"Superfly"
I couldn't feel sorry or support the mail character, Priest, in any way, but the film was entertaining.  You see, Priest runs a big ring of drug pushers and wants to make one last score, so he can retire.  He is quite the antihero.  Plus, he has huge lambchops, a constantly angry face, and snorts cocaine from the cross he wears around his neck.

The soundtrack was a lot of fun.  "I'm Your Pusher, Man!"  Now, that is a song.

Something else I noticed was that it was very New York City.  A lot of the city footage made me remember being in the city. 

"Mr.  Bean's Holiday" (2007)

Because of my work schedule, it is hard for me to get tp the cineplex tp see a new film, but I finally did get to see this last night. I must admit with some trepidation, as I also saw "Mr. Bean" and did not enjoy it. So, somewhat to my surprise, I did enjoy this one.

Rowan Atkinson is more of a physical comedian, than a verbal comedian, so this one played up to his strengths, as it was more of a physical comedy than a verbal comedy. Unlike "Mr. Bean," which I remember as being more of a verbal comedy.

Also unlike "Mr. Bean," I did find this one funny.

I also found the ending of the film, on the beach at Cannes, to be surprisingly satisfactory and warm. I think that had alot to do with the music for the scene, as good use was made of the music throughout the film.

*** out of *****

The Green Glove: story centering around the mysterious reappearance of a valuable religious artifact, a green jewel encrested gauntlet. As our hero WW2 veteran Mike Blake (Glenn Ford) pursues its trail which he had learned off during the war in France, mysterious individuals likely connected to a Nazi collaborator/art dealer named Paul Rona (George Macready) are in pursuit. Suddenly a dead man who was trailing Blake is discovered and he finds himself a murder suspect. Along the way he meets and falls in love with a French tour guide played by Geraldine Brooks who adds another twist to the story as she refuses to be left behind.

The mystery, murder and mayhem actually proves secondary in this movie and only occasionally proves as exciting as it sounds. Here, it's the romance that steals the show. Everytime Brooks is on the screen, she heats it up with her realistic flirting and terrific on-screen chemistry with Ford and Macready. If you're a bit of a hopeless romantic like me, you'll probably enjoy this as much as I did.  *** out of *****

Jungle 2 Jungle- Disney flick from 1997 starring Tim Allen.  Tim Allen goes to the Amazon jungle to see his wife to get divorced, and finds out he's got a 14 year old son.  Tim brings him back to New York, and along with Martin Short they end up on the run from the Russian Mafia.  Fun stuff for a kids flick.

Dumb and Dumber- In my opinion the best of the Farrelly Brother movies.  Any movie where a guy sells a dead bird with no head to a blind kid is hilarious.  Un-PC, but works given the context of the movie. 

The Second Woman (1951) : Ellen Foster (Betsy Drake) is a young woman determined to stand by her man, architect Jeff Callohan (Robert Young) when everyone else seems to think him going crazy. All the signs do point to him being targeted by someone as everything close to him, anything he ever loved seems to be killed or destroyed. Is someone really out to get him or is he really going bonkers after all? Another mystery/romantic drama, this one tends to drag its feet quite a bit trying to achieve some type of melodrama style brooding atmosphere. While it doesn't quite hold up or achieve the sweeping romantic feel it seems to be going for, it does have its enjoyable moments and I love how aggressive Ellen Foster is here in showing her affections for her man, even if it's a little unbelievable at times and hard to see just what she sees in Jeff, which might have been considered a little racy for 1951 standards.  ** 1/2 out of *****

Two more viewings from the Treeline Mystery Classics 50-pack (which I cannot recommend high enough, great set of films at about the same quality as the Alpha releases).

Fog Island (1945): Stars George Zucco as Leo Grainger, a man living on an isolated island whose sole remaining purpose in life is to exact revenge against those he believes responsible for the death of his wife. He invites the various suspects to his island for a weekend well aware they well be tempted by the rumors he has a secret stash of loot hidden away there. Your basic old dark house mystery thriller, this one proves fairly predictable as is never quite as satisfying as one wants it to be. Still it does give us the chance to see Zucco and Lionel Atwill interact, albeit only briefly. Has some good moments here and there though and Sharon Douglas proves a pleasing presence throughout the film. What a looker she was in the 1940s! The print on the Mystery Classics set does clock in at only 69 instead of 72 minutes so some footage is presumably missing here. **1/2 out of *****


They Made Me A Criminal (1939) : Stars John Garfield as a bad boy boxer Johnny Bradfield who finds himself on the run after being accused of a murder he didn't commit.  On the run, changing his identity, he eventually comes across the Dead End Kids and falls hook, line and sinker for  Tommy's pretty sister Peggy who brings out the best in him. The kids are all living on a ranch but the money is starting to run out so Bradfield has to decide whether or not he should risk stepping back in the ring for one more time in an attempt to garner enough doe to buy a gas pump to help support the ranch.  Johnny knows full well a wily detective, played by a miscast Claude Rains, is hot on his trail. While not entirely believable on many levels, this is one of those movies that helped create the cliche of the bad boy hero who goes straight for the sake of the good-hearted girl and the little kids who look up to and idolize him. For what it is, it's surprisingly good and involving. Only Rains as the detective proves disappointing as he never seems quite human enough. *** out of *****

Sky High- Fun movie.  Bruce Campbell rocked as the gym teacher, and it was nice seeing two of the Kids In The Hall reunite.

Body Rock (1984) Lorenzo Lameass playing "Chilly D" - a poor breakdancer and hip-hop artist struggling with new found fame and fortune was a hoot.

Unhinged (1982) First time viewing. A bit slow paced but had some nice atmosphere (at the beginning) and a few decent kills & 'surprise' twist ending. Damn those chest hairs ...

Black Christmas (1974) Watched this with my sister who has never seen this classic before. She loved it.

Black Cobra (1987) First time viewing. I've expected a bit more, as in fun cheese. This was pretty dull but Fred Williamson made up for it.

I'm with you on the last part.  Very funny stories. 

Every movie needs a fight with a giant spider in the third act.

The only thing I would suggest about those talking DVDs is that they cut the run time in half.  The lesbian who objected to the plot of Chasing Amy and all the ultra-fans and Jay & Silent Bob lookalikes deserved no screen time.  An entire 90 minutes of stoners asking Kevin if he wanted to get high with them after the show could have been trimmed and made the whole thing much better.

I watched:

Hatchet: Big hype indie slasher movie that promises to put the balls back in horror.  It doesn't quite keep its promise and it's really not the genre saving feature that all of these websites want you to think it is but it is tons of fun and it's gory as hell.

Those two could have been cut.  Although, I liked when he was asked about reccomending Affleck for DareDevil, and Kevin looks at the kid and is like, "I reccomend Affleck for everything.  If they make JAWS 5, Affleck plays the shark."

Soldier of Orange.  ***1/2 out of ****
One of Paul Verhoeven's earlier Dutch movies  and one of his best directorial efforts. Rutget Hauer turns in the performance of his career.  The movie lags a bit during the mid section but overall is highly recommended.

Dolls.   **1/2 out of ****.   
Stuart Gordon's 3rd movie that was filmed back to back with From Beyond.   The movie is very short at  only 77 minutes and it pretty much flies by. Lots of fun but some of the performances are very bad and the puppet/doll effects could have been done better at times but still well worth a rental. Just don't expect another masterpiece like Re-animator.

In the Cut.  *1/2 out of ****.
Seeing Meg Ryan butt naked was pretty cool as she still looks fantastic for her age.  But sadly, this movie is a complete mess.  I watched the unrated version which has some surprisingly explicit sexual content in it that might catch unsuspecting viewers the wrong way.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is completely wasted in this piece of crap.

   

*spoilers to both movies below*

Hulk: After loving Marvel's Essential "Hulk" vol.1 I had to see this. I was told it was utter crap and boring and I can't blame anyone that said that. I'm glad I heard them downplay this one because I could have my expectations low. And that's why I enjoyed it and I think it's quite underratted. Betty Ross and General Ross are certainly more interesting characters than their comic book counterparts. I got use to the Hulk and I there was enough action for me. What Ang Lee tried to do was put his heart into this, I can see he tried to but it feels like something is missing. I really do like that he tried to make it an emotional tale with action. A little more Hulk Smash wouldn't have hurt but I was satisfied. I wish Banner Senior (as a nod to the Absorbing Man) got to run through a few more elements. His actor was a little over the top but it kind of helped the rather insane character.

The Punisher (2004): I liked this, Thomas Jane made a great Punisher and I'm saddened to hear he won't be returning. Another underrated movie. People seem to think that killling off his ENTIRE family rather than just his wife and kids detracted from it. I see where they're coming but what they did in the movie didn't detract me. I loved Nash as the Russian, I liked how Frank's neighnors defended him in a rather dire hour, good action. The only thing it was missing was the Punisher didn't have quite the amount of action I expected, what we got was good. I'll just lay it on that it was the Punisher's opening year. Travolta was good just because he fit the roll of the a***ole and he's gets totally owned in the end, so does his son, and it feels GREAT. Something about this feels old school, maybe it's the amount of action and how it's carried.

I give three stars to both movies. Not in the Spider-Man 2 or Batman Begins league but still good Super Hero/Comic book films.

Fat Albert- I watched this last night on FX.  I gotta say, I really enjoyed it.  I'm not overly familar with the original cartoon, though.  But Keenan did a decent enough job as Albert, and the script wasn't terrible.  Lots of funny parts as well.

More from the Mystery Classics pack:

Jigsaw (1949) : By the numbers, obviously low budget murder mystery film in which as assistant D.A. (Franchot Tone) while investigating the murder of a journalist friend uncovers a conspiracy centering around a secret facist style racist hate group. Aside from some bright moments from Jean Wallace in her performance as troubled singer Barbara Whitfield, this one feels pretty routine and predictable. Keep a sharp look out though and you'll see a lot of famous people making cameos here including Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Burgess Meredith and John Garfield to name a few. ** out of *****

Algiers (1938): The police are determined to get a notorious criminal bandit/jewel thief named Pepe Le Moko (Charles Boyer), who's holed himself up inside a seemingly  invincible labyrinth of supporters in the Casbah section within Algiers. The police know they must trick him into coming out of the Casbah if they are to ever capture him. Meanwhile a beautiful young French woman named Gaby (played by the then delectable Hedy LeMarr), engaged to a wealthy man she doesn't love, hopes to find adventure and escape within the Casbah and is intrigued by and instantlly attracted to the mysterious, dashing Le Moko. The two dare to fall in love but  when the police learn of this, they use Gaby as a lure to bring Le Moko out. Will he risk all for love? This sweeping romance is very well executed. The chemistry between Boyer and LeMarr is terrific. A very moving film, this one really pulls its strings masterfully.  **** out of *****

Glory was on AMC earlier so I watched that.   I think it's scientifically impossible for a movie to suck if Denzel Washington AND Morgan Freeman are in it.

Last night I watched Dr. Cyclops.  The effects are fairlyimpressive, especially considering that this was made in 1940.  It's pretty hokey and not as thrilling as I'd hoped, but it's a good way to kill some time, and the villain is interesting.

It is shocking it is as good as it is with Matthew Broderick in it.


Recent viewings for the Cheeze ...

Dead Like Me

Season 1 and 2

 :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

I was watching Glory.  Decent flick.

From Beyond  *** out of ****.   Stuart Gordon's followup to his amazing directorial debut Re-Animator re-teams Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs from that 1st film in addition to Ken Foree.  While not as good as Re-Animator it is still a whole lot of fun, especially in it's unrated version on the very recent unrated DVD.  Barbara Crampton fans should note that she gets into a really sexy S&M leather outfit at a certain point in the movie and also has some topless activity.  Pretty good gore effects and lots and lots of slime all over the place.  Jeffrey Combs is a hoot.


Ginger Snaps.  ***1/2 out of ****.  One of the best werewolf movies that I've seen and it's awesome in that it tells a werewolf tale from a female perspective.  Great performances all around and some ferocious attack sequences.  The sequel was decent and the 3 film (a prequel of sorts) was terrible but the 1st is a near classic.

How does it compare to her brief boom-boom scene in Body Double?

Burial of the Rats (1995)

I caught this on Showtime ... man stupid movie but enough skin to keep watching it. Skin lots and lots of skin.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995)- Decent enough adaption of the televison series.  Somewhat new costumes, good villian, and the Hitchiker from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre played Lord Zedd.

Afraid Of The Dark (1991) - Creepy, unsettling and a bit twisted. Loved it.
It's the type of movie David Lynch should've made. And yeah, totally forgot Catriona McColl was in this!

Blow- Decent flick, with Johnny Depp, Paul Reubens and Ray Liotta.  Johnny Depp is a coke dealer who keeps screwing up.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl- Watched this afternoon.  Johnny Depp is hilarious in it.  Keira Knightly is cute, but could stand to gain like, 10-15 pounds.  Great flick.

I'm still waiting on my copies of From Beyond and The Burning from Amazon.  I really need to learn to not pre-order from them anymore as it normally takes a week or two for me to get my DVDs where as sites like Buy.com get me my DVDs on or before their release date.  I didn't really care for From Beyond my first time around with it, but that was years ago on a torn up VHS.  I'm hoping a better DVD transfer will make the film more enjoyable for me.

Ginger Snaps is a modern classic.  It's a great little retelling of the classic werewolf story.  I have yet to see either of the sequels, but I've heard the 2nd is decent with the third being trash.  I need to get around to netflixing them sometime.

Vegas Vacation (1997)- I gotta say, being the fourth "Vacation" flick with the Griswold's, I feel this is still a decent flick.  I loved Wallace Shawn as the Blackjack Dealer. 

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians- I watched the dvd today.  Gotta love Dropo.

Coyote Ugly- Eh.  Decent enough I guess.  But two hours of Tyra Banks, Piper Perabo and other hot chicks dancing on a bar makes up for the lack of a plot.

Yesterday afternoon I watched The Creature with the Blue Hand (comments in the "recent purchases" thread).   I also watched Godzilla vs. Hedorah for the first time and it was a wonderful thing.  I absolutely loved how odd and bizarre it was.  One brief review I've read compared it to a Seijun Suzuki film, and while I've only seen Branded to Kill, it seems like a good way of describing it.

An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder- Not as good as the first.  But, some decent questions/answers.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3- Saw this bad boy in the theater when it came out.  Worst of the three, I suppose.  I liked it though.

The 2nd one is decent and the 3rd one is complete crap.  You are correct!

Knocked Up.   *** out of ****
Not quite as laugh-out-loud-funny as The 40 Year Old Virgin and about 30 or so minutes too long, but still very funny.  Great performances all around and most of the regulars from 40 Year Old Virgin are here in new roles. I had read that Knocked Up was originally intended to be a sequel to 40 Year Old Virgin but following Seth Rogen's character, but they decided to just make it it's own movie.

Freaked- Funny, funny movie.  Underrated classic.  "Styrofoam Cup."

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest- Good stuff.  Moved up to my top ten list.

The Brave One.  *** out of ****.

Jodie Foster turns in a ferocious performance in this vigilante tale that doesn't necessarily reinvent the cinematic wheel but is very entertaining.   Terrific performances all around overcome some of the plot holes and contrivances that are unfortunately part of the vigilante genre.

HOUSE [1977]

Probably the weirdest haunted house film you'll ever see - 7 Japanese school-girl friends take a trip through the glory of forced perspective sets and absurd optical effects to a house that eats unmarried women.  Some highlights include a kung fu battle between a girl and a bunch of firewood and an entirely bizarre sequence in which the most musically inclined of the group is devoured by a piano.

Highly recommended for weird cinema enthusiasts, this one is definitely getting a review from myself in the near future.

Kindest regards,

Kevin P.
http://www.wtf-film.com

The Black Dahlia (2006)

And here I thought it was going to be a realistic look at the case. WRONG. I felt it tried too hard to be noir-ish and the made up ending was just bogus IMO.

2 out of 5

Shadow, I think you are being to generous. I unfortunately saw it in theaters. Why-oh-why?! :thumbdown: :thumbdown:

Snoop Dogg's Hood Of Horror (2006) ***1/2 out of *****
What can I say, I was entertained. There are really worse movies out there.

The Last Round (1976) **** out of *****
Excellent crime/action from Italy. Some nice sleaze and bloodshed (at times).

The Heroin Busters (1977) ***1/2 out of *****
Well made action with music by The Goblin.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- Decent adaption of the comic book.  Good costumes by Jim Henson.  Funny, action, etc.

The Rise and Fall of ECW- Not necessarily a 'movie', but a documentary type on ECW.  ECW is a now defunct wrestling organization based in Philly that pushed the envelope both with storylines and action never ever seen before in America.  Then they went out of business.  Long too, like 3 hours.

That movie was easily my pick for worst film of 2006.

The Muppets Take Manhattan- Great flick.  Muppets rule.  Plus it had live-action Muppet Babies, as well as Big Bird and Bert and Ernie.   :thumbup:

Bram Stoker's Dracula  (1992). *** out of ****.
Still ranks IMO as one of the most visually grand and gorgeous movies to ever be released by a major studio.  Too bad they didn't spend quite as much time on the script problems as they did on the look of the film.  Coppola's direction is very flashy but never overpowers the acting.  Keanu Reeves is painfully wooden but the rest of the cast is great with Gary Oldman making a great Dracula, Anthony Hopkins getting  a fun turn as Van Helsing and Winona Ryder looking so gorgeous and sexy at times that it almost takes my breath away during some of her big scenes.  One case in which style definitely triumphs over substance.

1408.  *** out of ****.
Based on a Stephen King short story of the same name, this could almost at times be viewed as a horror movie version of Cast Away as John Cusack for a good portion of the film is putting on an excellent one man show.   The film is visually spectacular and can get pretty creepy at times but it is hurt somewhat by a rushed and poor ending. The direction is really nice and avoids the problem of the way-too-quick-cutting type style that plauges many modern films, horror movies in particular.  If you get the 2 disc set the alternate ending on the extended director's cut is much better IMO.  Not the best that I've seen but it kind of works as a hodge podge of The Shining, Silent Hill and Jacob's Ladder. 

TROY: director's cut .  *** out of ****.
Gladiator with brains.  While the extended director's cut still has some problems mainly in the narrative area, it is still a pretty big improvement over the shallow theatrical cut.  In particular, the battle scenes are much, much more gory and bloody in comparison to the rather bloodless theatrical cut.  I didn't really like Gladiator that much but Troy came across to me as that movie with actual brains behind it.

Kingdom of Heaven:  director's cut ***1/2 out of ****.
I never saw the truncated theatrical cut but the director's cut with nearly 50 minutes reinstated was quite good.  I can't recall a good movie being made about the crusades and this movie does the trick. While not always historically accurate, it does manage to paint a great picture of what those times were like.  Ridley Scott's direction is flawless and the movie suffers just slightly from Orlando's Bloom performance. While not bad per se, it pales in comparison  at times to the rest of the great cast.   

My recent vieing over the last week

Ramob 3 7/10

At this point I think someone just decided to say f*** it and went out on a limb.  The idea of Rambo being in a monastary is just absurd.  I mean he was in prison in Rambo 2 so after he got done he decided not to go back to jail.  Action wise it was a good movie, and the script was pretty good, I just think that the monastary part could have been done away with.

Philadelphia 9/10

Now, I'm not a real emotional person, but this film nearly had me in tears.  One of Tom Hanks best roles that he has played.  Everyone did a good job in this film, and you couldn't help but feel sad for Tom Hank's character and what he was going to thru.

Tron 6/10

Cheesy at best.  A good idea, just I think with technology at the time, it wasn't a god time to make it.  I didn't like the whole concept of programs looking like people in the games.  Script was corny at times too.

Glengarry Glen Ross 8/10

Wow, Awesome movie.  While the profanity is way over the top it's a good story about trying to make it in a cut throat business. 

right now I'm working on Sixteen Candles and I might either go for Hoffa, The Naked Gun, or something else today.

I though Glory was good, I just didn't think Matthew Broderick was the best choice for the Colonel.  I mean he did a good job, I  think someone else could have done a better job overall.

My latest viewings:

Matandos Cabos : funny and action-packed film from Mexico about a kidnapping gone wrong.  Includes a former lucha libre wrestler with some serious issues and a cannibal midget, what more does a film need?  Lots of fun, reminded me of films like Go and Snatch.

The Prestige : Michael Caine, Christian Bale, and Hugh Jackman in a film about rival stage magicians who turn on each other after a trick goes terribly wrong.  Started a bit slow, but made up for it when it started gaining momentum, with a great ending.

Blades of Glory : Not the movie I would have picked, but turned out to be funnier than I expected.  Figure skating is so over-the-top anyway that making fun of it is just too easy, but the film stayed funny the whole way through.

The Shining.  (1980).  ***1/2 out of ****
One of the rare moments in which a movie based on a book actually improves on the book a bit.  One of my favorite Kubrick films and one that really gets under your skin no matter how many times you've seen it. Jack Nicholson is gloriously over the top in a career defining performance.

I watched FANTASTIC 4 - RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER  last night and really liked it.  Of the various superhero movies of recent years, both of the FF movies have worked well for me.  Not quite on par with BATMAN BEGINS or the SPIDER MAN trilogy, but light years ahead of the incredibly dull SUPERMAN RETURNS.  I love the guy who plays Ben Grimm.  I never can remember his last name.

Without A Paddle- Dax Shepard, Matthew Lillard and Seth Green are three guys stranded in the woods.  Then Burt Reynolds saves them.  Seth Green is hilarious in the movie.  He saves it.

I had planned to see this one but I keep forgetting the title, thanks for bringing this one up.  I like Seth Green, and this one did look funny.

Ringu - 8/10

I though it was good, wasn't as scary as I though it would be.

Underground Comedy Movie -600/10

Worst MOVIE ever.  I only watched 25 mint of the film, and I feel I've seen 25 min too much.  Stupid humor and stupid unfunny jokes.  It's like a bad episode of SNL and MadTV combined but the jokes are replaced with tasteless toilet humor.

BLACK SHEEP (2007)  *** out of ****.
How can you go wrong with killer sheep?  This movie is quite a lot of fun and the premise alone (killer sheep on the loose in New Zealand) makes it worth a rental for fans of bad movies.  Peter Jackson's WETA effects shop did the effects work in the movie.

I Spit on Your Grave  **1/2 out of ****.
Memorable mainly for the prolonged rapes and a man getting his wang doodle cut off in a bath tub by the female lead, the movie really drags in places and maybe with about 15 minutes being removed making it a tight 85 minute exploitation flick, I could rate it *** instead.  Worth a look however.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End  (unrated)  *** out of ****
While not a great move by any means, it is still a lot of fun.  Henry Rollins rules in his performance as usual as a survivalist fronting a survivor type reality game show called The Apocalypse.  There are some fantastic kills in the movie and only one reeks of CGI though it is a well staged and gruesome effect.  I thought that it was a bit better than the 1st movie and as a slasher film of sorts, it works. And thanks to the flick's unrated status, it is very brutal and very bloody as well.

The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West (1976)

Stars Bob Denver as Dusty, a clueless cowpoke helping Skip...a wagon master named Callahan (Forrest Tucker reduced to playing a wannabe Skipper). Basically Gilligan goes west only Gilligan is the only member of the original "Gilligan's Island" gang on board. The rest of the cast does include characters just like those on the show...a rich man and his wife, a young spunky brunette, a hot blonde saloon hostess,  and a smart educated man who basically acts like a professor. There's really nothing new here to be found. One is much better off watching some reruns of the real "Gilligan's Island".

* out of ***** stars.

Clerks 2- 2 and a half stars.  I'd probably rank this higher, but the first is probably my all time favorite comedy, so in my mind, it's very hard to live up to.  But Clerks 2 isn't bad either.  New guy Elias is hilarious, and Pillow Pants is the oddest scene in the movie.

 Somebody  must have liked it...it was made into a Saterday morning TV show in the 70's! (It sucked too.)

            (http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l79/RCMerchant/untitled-61.jpg)

Yeah the movie is apparently 4 episodes of the TV Series smashed together. Still one's better off watching "Gilligan's Island".

The Amazing Transparent Man  (1960) -  A master safe cracker gets broken out of prison by a mysterious benefactor.  His liberator wants him to steal "fissionable materials" for him to use in his quest to create an army of invisible so he can hold the world hostage.   

Just another take on the invisible man, only this time set in the atomic age.


The Phantom Planet (1961) - Space Hunk Frank Chapman is sent to discover what's happening to those missing earth ships.  Frank end up on a planet full and 6" high people.  When exposed to their atmosphere Frank turns small too, and just in time to get two horny space babes fighting for his attentions.  Oh, and there's also one the girl's jealous would-be boyfriend to contend with .

The monsters in this one are called Solarites and they look like the film makers were going for the Metaluna Mutant look and ended up with something that looked like it came from Barney and Friends.

This one has few not-so -bad effect scenes.


Gerry (2001) - Directed by Gus van Sant, Casey Affleck and Matt Damon play two morons who wander off  of a nature trail in Death Valley. The movie mostly consists of the two walking endessly trying figure out where they started out.  There isn't much dialogue and most of it seems to be adlibbed

A pretty boring way to spend a couple of hours.

Cannibal! The Musical- *** out of ****.  Great little flick.  I go quoting it all the time.  Just wish others knew what the hell I was mumbling to myself.  :bouncegiggle:

I just watched Day of the Animals and I'm suprised how enjoyable it was.  Now that I've seen a couple of Girdler films I want to see the rest!

I bought that movie in a videogame store(mint condition),because i was interested and it was cheap(was new at the moment,so the store prices were higher) and I can understand now the reason hehe, I only saw half of the movie i guess..someday i´ll finish it..but without any hope.



About TRON...I like that movie. :teddyr:



Continuing the Topic.

Los Violadores(Mad Foxes) -  yuppie vs. nazi biker  gang ...funny crappy movie.


Suicide Club - really i didn´t finish it (I´m kind of lazy lately), but i like it so far.

TransFormers- I really liked it.  I'm not much for Michael Bay's movies, outside of Coyote Ugly, but this was really well done.

Freaks- Good movie.  Saw it on TCM last night, part of their Friday Fright Fest thing all month.  First time I saw it.  Good stuff.

  I watched it too! Also watched MARK of the VAMPIRE before hand. Wanted to stay up and watch DEVIL DOLL and the UNKNOWN-but I hadda get to bed...being I knew I would be doing duct work for my furnace today...which I just finished...dam! Whatta job! I got what they call a Michigan basement...half fruit cellar and half crawl space. Whatta pain in the ass dragging pipe through a dirt and stone crawl space!

 Oh...MARK of the VAMPIRE: I like this movie...the cinematography is beautiful...but Lionel Barrymore overacts  and babbles waaay too much. And I HATE the cheat ending. On the up side...Lugosi looks great...and Carol Borland looks greater! In my opinion-she steals the show!

Child's Play 2 (1990)

Well this managed to exceed my low expectations for a sequel. While it never really comes close to recapturing the creepy, unsettling eerieness of the first film, it has its fun moments. The exciting conclusion in particular is an entertaining actionfest with some great FX work even if it does perhaps owe something to THE TERMINATOR.  That said, there's loads in this movie that doesn't really hold up to close scrutiny such as it never being explained how Chucky escaped from the basement at one point but couldn't at another and Chucky's slowness to take action at times. Still better than I expected it would be. ** 1/2 out of *****.

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

The overall premise is great fun. Giant leeches infest a backwoods Southern swamp and begin chowing down on the white trash locales. Unfortunately lead Ken Clark is unbelievably wooden and the FX is laughable making this film often tough slugging. Nice to see the then gorgeous Yvette Vickers getting a chance to show off some skin and getting a chance to play an early scream queen. Still when a film that runs 62 minutes feels a lot longer than that to watch, well something is amiss. Still this bad movie can be fun if you're in the right sort of mood to have some fun with it. ** out of *****

They showed the Monkees classic HEAD at 2, but I didn't get to watch cause I had to get up early for work.

 Try ABBY-I'ts a blaxpliotation version of the EXORCIST...great stuff! And for pure BAD movie fun...ASYLUM of SATAN! Whatta godawful mess! Bad acting,silly fx, uncomprehensible plot....a great crappy flick!

Dr.Strangelove: or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb  **** out of ****
Pure genius. Never gets old. Kubrick's best film and  my #2 favorite film of all time.

Ultraviolet  **1/2 out of ****
Fun almost nonstop action sequences, a super hot Milla Jovovich and an almost at times incomprehensible story add up to an enjoyable time waster that wasn't as bad as a lot of people have made it out to be.

The Matador  ***1/2 out of ****.
Pierce Brosnan's best performance to date and the rest of the cast is equally terrific,  especially Greg Kinnear.  Lots of fun and worthy of repeat viewings.

D.O.A.: Dead or Alive  **1/2 out of ****.
Hot chicks kung fu fighting in bikinis or next to nothing, a slumming Eric Roberts hamming it up and some fun action sequences help overcome a pretty bad story. So silly that you can't help but crack a smile while watching it. Actually one of the better video game  film adaptations that I've seen, though that's really not saying much. Like Ultraviolet, a fun time waster.  The film is like Charlie's Angels, Mortal Kombat and Enter the Dragon all thrown into a PG-13 blender.

Eyes Wide Shut  ***1/2 out of ****.
While this film really polarized Kubrick's fan base, I found it to be sort of a return to form for him.  Tom Cruise actually turns in a great performance and Nicole Kidman is amazing as usual (in terms of acting and her gorgeous looks).  I got this in the recent box set and it's so nice to finally get to see the uncensored orgy scene.  The only thing that I think ruffled the MPAA's feathers was how much thrusting was going on in that scene.  But I've seen far worse in some other hard R rated movies.  But anyway, the movie's very deliberate pacing turned off many people, some claiming that what wound up in theaters was just a rough cut as Kubrick was known to work editing on his films right up to release and sometimes after their premiers (2001 and The Shining in particular). 

Who knows if he might have tightened up the movie more but we'll never know with his death on March 7, 1999.   The movie was released on July 16. 1999. Many state that this was presented to Warner Bros. as his final cut and Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman have both gone on record that it was as well.  A lot of people claimed that the movie was really cold emotionally but I really think that this movie shows Kubrick at his most playful since Dr. Strangelove.   The ending is a bit too abrupt for me which is why I can't quite give it a perfect 4 stars,  but I think that this was a great ending to an amazing directorial career that will probably never be equaled. 

Hellbound: Hellraiser 2- Well, I liked it.  Decent sequel, compared to later films in the series.

The Punisher- I'd say it's pretty decent.  Then again, I'm not too familiar with the comic series.  I've known who he is from appearances in other books.

Are you talking about the new Jane/Travolta movie or the Dolph version?

I sorta liked the Jane version.  I thought it could be better.  They are making a sequel...I'll probably check it out when it comes out.

Rituals (1977)

Hal Holbrook and Lawrence Dane raise this cheaply made Canadian thriller a slight notch in quality as two men battling to survive after their group, a bunch of doctors on a fishing trip, becomes the target of someone with dastardly and evil intentions. The interplay between Holbrook and Dane as they struggle to cling on to hope and their sanity in the face of something they never expected is surpisingly good. Unfortunately the rest of this film is not, being largely a combination of the psycho killer stalking through the woods combined with elements of Deliverance.  It's too bad it lighting is horrible as many scenes are dark, the sound tends to suffer greatly too and the direction is often a bit misguided. Still if one has the patience to stick with this one, it's not too bad of its type. The other thing that most stood for me is there's lots of cussing in this one.  ** out of *****

I've noticed that there are a few Abby DVDs out, now, but I suspect they're not exactly official.  I'll probably pick it up sometime.  Same with Asylum of Satan.  I've seen bits from both and they look pretty crazy!

I just finished watching Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?.  This isn't a spoiler since it's the very first scene, but it would've been much better if the bit where Shelley Winters is singing a lullaby to the corpse of her daughter had come later in the film, but instead the audience is shown that she's a bit nuts at the beginning of the movie!  Plus Winters gave a silly performance, otherwise I liked it.

Along the same lines (Curtis Harrington directed this and the Auntie Roo flick, plus Shelley Winters plays a wacko in both), I watched What's the Matter with Helen? yesterday, but it was disappointing.

I saw the Travolta/Jane version recently.  I wasn't too familiar with the comic series, so overall I liked it.  Whereas, the Spider-Man and X-Men films, I was a fan of the comics and could sit there and nitpick, etc.

I saw the old Captain America flick from 1990.  Good stuff, that was. :lookingup:

Camille (1936)

Stars Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor as a pair of star-crossed lovers who have to try and overcome a major test given Taylor's lack of wealth and Garbo's many debts owed to a rich Baron played by Henry Daniell in order for their love to survive. This is a very moving story that really gets the veiwers emotionally because we are made to care so much about its leads even if the story is a little bit dated thematically. Keep the tissues handy for this one if you have a soft heart. ***** out of *****

D2: The Mighty Ducks-- :thumbup:.  Good Times.  Any movie with Wayne Gretzky and Kareem Abdul Jabar is a decent flick.

The African Queen (1951)

Highly entertaining romance adventure set on an African river during World War I. Leads Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn are superb and have sizzling romantic chemistry on screen together. The high adventure aspect of the story is sometimes really hard to accept but if one allows oneself, this is high escapism at its cinematic best as Bogart and Hepburn set out to use the steamship the African Queen to fight German forces taking over Africa. **** 1/2 out of *****

Friday the 13th  **1/2 out of ****

Friday the 13th: Part 2  *1/2 out of ****

Friday the 13th: Part 3   ** out of ****

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter   **1/2 out of ****

Friday the 13th: Part 6 Jason Lives  *** out of ****

Friday the 13th: Part 7 The New Blood  *1/2 out of ****

Friday the 13th: Part 8 Jason Takes Manhattan  * out of ****

Jason Goes to Hell  **1/2 out of ****

Jason X   *1/2 out of ****

Cool and the Crazy (1994)

A TV movie directed by Ralph Bakshi of all people. Surprisingly this one is live action and not animated. Anyways Bakshi's direction as usual is all over the place and the story never seems to find a good clear direction. Set in 1950s America, it does have some interesting things to say about the American Family Ideal. Alicia Silverstone stands out a young woman who suddenly finds herself slave and servant in a much too early marriage and struggles and tries to come to grips with what she needs in order to be happy as do really all the characters in this story. This does have its moments but ultimately if falls short of really convincing an audience of which answer is right I guess leaving things up to the viewer to decide. This conclusion proves somewhat unsatisfactory in this case. ** 1/2 out of *****

Blood Relic - about some kids who are finishing up work on an aerospace museum before it opens.  But 20 years earlier a pilot had an evil little figurine and he killed everyone in the base, then tossed the figurine in an electrical box in the building.  Now the kids have found the figurine, and the pilot has just been released from the insane asylum.  This wasn't too bad, drinking a few beers helped to disguise the nearly zero budget aspect of it.  Acting was passable, the action moved along okay, atmosphere was descent, and there was T&A o'plenty.

Friday the 13th part 7.  Finally saw this one!  It was fairly okay.  The editing was sort of an amateurish mess, and they spent far too much time on the girl, her mom and her therapist.  Not nearly enough time with the kids partying next door.  The kills got rather humorous.  Jason kills someone with a machete, the next guy with a tree trimmer, the next one with a weed eater (you read that right - a weed eater), the next person with an axe.  There must be some very P.O.'d gardener somewhere wondering who the hell stole all his stuff   :teddyr: 

It left me wondering - why does AMC display that stupid "TV14 - LSV" box in the corner when all the language, all the sex and a fair bit of the violence have been edited out?

Day Watch  ***1/2 out of ****.

I liked the Russian fantasy/action/horror film Nightwatch and was looking forward to the sequel in a planned trilogy of films. From what I've read, the filmmaker actually combined the planned 2nd and 3rd films into just one film, Day Watch.  The movie runs 2 1/2 hours long and features stunning visuals, crazy action sequences, fun performances and hyper kinetic directorial style.  If you didn't like Nightwatch , I still recommend catching Day Watch as it really builds on the promises shown in Nightwatch that some people feel like they didn't accomplish.

The Invisible Ray - Starring Boris Karlof and Bela Lugosi.  About a scientist who discovers "Radium X", an element that allows him to immediately build a death ray, and with a bit more research, it can also cure just about any known ailment.  Unfortunately, the scientist was irradiated during its discovery, and now he glows in the dark and anything he touches dies.  His mind also goes a little coo-coo, and he gets it in his head that other scientists stole his discovery, and someone else stole his wife! 

Pretty good overall.  The one special effect was vastly superior to anything you'll see in today's CGI movies - he turned the death ray on a large boulder and the thing just fell to pieces.  Plot moved along nicely, characters were fleshed out nicely, quite interesting really.  Now I've got to add the Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi DVD collections to my wishlist  :teddyr: 

I've been downloading a lot of public domain stuff from archive.org.


The Killer Shrews (1959) - A scientist on an isolated island experimenting with the metabolism of the small rodents unleashes a horde of giant shrews. Once the shrews have devoured all the other food on the island they start coming after the humans.

Enter cargo ship Captain Roscoe P. , huh, I mean  Thorne Sherman (James Best).

This is pretty straight forward drive-in fare.  The shrews are just dogs with a piece of shag carpet on their backs. A shrew head with big gnarly teeth does most of the damage.

The big treat for me was watching Ken Curtis (Fetus from Gunsmoke) as a mean tempered alcoholic SOB (he's responsible for the shrews getting loose).



Dementia 13 (1963) - The new American wife of the oldest son of an Irish matriarch, watches her husband die of  a heart attack while they're in a row boat on the local pond. Realizing that if his family finds out he's dead, she won't get any inheritance when the old lady croaks. So she dumps him overboard and tells the family he went to New York on business.

When she learns of the old lady's obsession with her the death of her young daughter seven years before, she starts plotting her demise. Little does she know the little girls accident wasn't one and the killer doesn't want anyone snooping around the pond.

This one is Psycho with a bit of a twist. It also benefits from being directed by Francis Ford Coppola when he was under the tutelage of Roger Corman.



The Snow Creature (1954) - A couple of botanists are looking for new plants in the Himalayas and end up getting taken hostage by their Sherpa guides who force them go on a Yeti hunt with them.  When they catch the creature, the two scientists get the upper hand and keep the Sherpas from killing him.

They ship the Yeti back to the US in a big glass doored fridge. Their only problem is the Immigration service won't let them have the Yeti until they determine if it's human. Of course,as any good movie monster does, the Yeti gets tired of sitting around and breaks out causing all kinds of chaos. He seem to have predilection for human women.

This movie was directed by the famous director Billy Wilder's brother, W. Lee Wilder who was also responsible for the Phantom from Space.



The Wild Hogs (2007) - John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, and William Macy are all middle aged guys who ride Harleys and call themselves the Wild Hogs.  Travolta's supermodel wife leaves him and his business goes bust, so he convinces the others to go on a bike trip to the west coast.

On the way they have several goof misadventures and run afoul of a real biker gang lead by Ray Liotta.

This was a mildly entertaining movie with a few very funny parts. Whether you like it or not may be dependent on your age.

 My halloween viewing has been exhausting!!!
 >TONIGHT I'LL POSSESs YOUR SOUL -Coffin Joe...a weird GREAT MOVIE!!! A lot of people don't like coffin Joe...I LOVE HIS WORK!!!
..CREATURE From the HAUNTED SEA-a cheezy Roger Corman comedy...-I really enjoyed it!!! In fact,I thought it much better than LITTLE SHOP of HORRORS...but not as good as BUCKET of BLOOD.
.PIT and the PENDULUM-Vinnie and co. in my favorite Poe/AIP flick. My brother Mike used to torment me with this movie. We had an old room in a house back in 1969...when I was a wee geek of 7...he threw me in it, leaned into the door and quoted,in his best Price imatation-"NO ONE SHALL EVER ENTER THIS ROOM AGAIN." Which,of course,threw me into a fit of pure terror!
.The HAUNTING- I own this movie...and,as a tradition, watch it every Halloween Eve...if you have never read the book by Shirly Jackson...dammit whattaya waitin' for?!?!?


 Some choice scences of COFFIN JOE horror!

 [youtube=425,350] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nznbTrNetV0

Jurassic Park.  *** out of ****.
I hadn't watched this one in a few years as it used to be in the laser disc player when I worked at Circuit City in the mid 90's.  I got sick of the movie and as a result haven't watched it too much since then.  It still holds up quite well particularly in the CGI department.  Some of the stuff with the kids still grates on my nerves, but it's not quite annoying as what they did with Jeff Goldblum's daughter character in the sequel.  The T-rex sequence is still amazing.  While I know that a lot of people hated the 3rd movie, I felt that at least they trimmed off most of the fat and gave people what they wanted, people running from and getting eaten by dinosaurs for 90 minutes.   :teddyr:

1941   **1/2 out ****.
I have the extended cut on DVD and while the movie is still a complete mess, it's a glorious mess at that.  Way too long and filled with lots of scenes that go nowhere, the movie still manages to entertain due to how over-the-top it is at about every moment. This movie is LOUD as well.  Watch this on a cranked sound system and bug your neighbors!  A mammoth and terrific cast gets overwhelmed by the non-stop clutter going on around them, but they make do with what they were given.    Treat Williams has never been better, Ned Beatty is hilarious and Slim Pickens is his usual great self.  John Belushi appears to have been coked out in all of his scenes which adds to his normal lunacy.

1408
Not bad.

Knocked Up
Riot!

Aliens Gone Wild
Meh it's ok

The Toxic Avenger- ** out of ****.  Probably higher than most would give it.

COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984).  A girl on the verge of puberty has a nightmare in which she is Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf is a wolfman.  Featuring a good performance by Angela Landsbury as a fussy, prudish grandma.   Early Neil Jordan arthouse werewolf pic is full of great images and a none too subtle sexual coming-of-age subtext.  Some dog-for-werewolf shots.  4 out of 5.

MERLIN'S MYSTICAL SHOP OF HORRORS (MST3K VERSION):  Ernest Borgnine relates two rejected Twilight Zone scripts to his grandson, linked for some reason by Merlin the Magician.  The movies bad but not that laughable by itself, and the riffing and host segments seem to lack inspiration.  Still, no MST3K episode is worse than a 3 of 5.

THE SCREAMING SKULL (1958):  Like all neurotic wealthy women in bad movies, Jenni leaves the sanitarium and marries with a man whose previous wife died under mysterious circumstances.  They move to his isolated mansion in the country where he plans to scare her to death by placing skulls in the cabinets.  Precitable and tedious; the filmmakers offered a free burial to anyone who died of fright while watching the movie.  They were too smart to offer the same deal to anyone who died of boredom.  1 of 5.

Major Payne - seen it a dozen times and I still bust up every time I watch it. Great goofy film.

My favorite part is the "Little Engine that Could" story.

Just watched Ruby.  It's far from flawless, but it's a decent film except for an atrocious and abrupt ending that was added in by one of the producers.

This trailer is beyond misleading and has a handful of spoilers:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De7es8HMevw

That's a great flick. One of my personal favorites. I don't think that it's come out on DVD yet has it? I know that they just go around fairly recently to releasing The Butcher Boy on DVD.

EDIT: My bad. I just checked on Amazon.com, and Company of Wolves is on DVD though it's a bit pricey. I just ordered it nonetheless.

http://www.amazon.com/Company-Wolves-Sarah-Patterson/dp/B00006G8H3/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1194664407&sr=1-1 (http://www.amazon.com/Company-Wolves-Sarah-Patterson/dp/B00006G8H3/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1194664407&sr=1-1)

Y Tu Mama Tambien   ***1/2 out of ****.
Excellent coming-of-age film from Mexico also doubles as a sort of travelogue along Mexico's lesser seen areas.  The acting is great and the film while sexually explicit never seems dirty or exploitative of its cast.   Some critics/viewers have issues with the "twist" at the end of the film in terms of what happens to the female lead but if you go back and pay attention to early scenes with her it completely makes sense as to why she makes the choices in the movie that she does.

 

Sam's Lake (2005) - Independent Slasher that got some sort of festival buzz. I bought the R2 and was a bit underwhelmed. Technically it's not a bad movie - gorgeous scenery and location that reminded me of Friday The 13th. The build up is interesting and well made but the second act kind of falls flat. Still, better than the usual Slasher crap out there. ***/*****

Fragile (2005) - Ally McBeal doing horror? Why yes, and great it was. Since I'm a sucker for good ghost stories taking place in old creepy hospitals this one won me over right from beginning to end. Calista Flockhart was great as the last-minute replacement night nurse investigating bone-breaking shenanigans in the children's ward. ****/*****

Ils (Them) (2006) - Amazingly effective terror flick done with so little. Highly recommended! *****/*****

I remember in the MST3K version of that, Servo requested and received a free coffing from the film makers.  Good stuff!

Who Framed Roger Rabbit- Still holds up after all these years.  Good stuff.  Bob Hoskins rocks.

Mallrats- Better than people give it credit for.  Granted, it's not as good as Smith's films Clerks or Chasing Amy, but it's better than people give it credit for.

Carrie   (1976)  *** out of ****
Terrific performances and taut pacing help overcome Brian DePalma's at times annoying and intrusive camera/directorial tendencies.  The ending is still a chiller.  Sissy Spasek and Piper Laurie are tremendous in Oscar nominated roles.

FIVE DEADLY VENOMS: A dying master's last pupil is sent to a town where five former students are congregating.   Each is master of a different style of kung-fu named after a venomous animal, and the identities of each, and whether they use their powers for good or evil, are unknown.  Surprisingly inventive torture scenes are a highlight, as is the final four-combatant brawl.  I thought that given all the possibilities for intrigue, there could have been more double-crossing, backstabbing and surprises than there were.  I guessed the identity of the "good" venom pretty quickly.  This may be a case where I was disappointed by high expectations after hearing what a masterpiece this movie was, but if I had watched it without hearing the hype, I would have thought it was an above average Shaw Brothers picture with too much plot getting in the way of the ass-kicking.  3 of 5 slimes.

MST3K SHORTS VOLUME 2:  These shorts are always fun, but a disc full of them is like a meal composed only of appetizers.  Get all your driving, dating and personal hygiene advice here ("In the 50s, people responded well to authoritative, disembodied voices," Mike observed).  The strangest one to me was "The Days of Our Years," a doom-laden pro-safety short sponsored by Union Pacific.  A melancholy pastor wanders around the most hope-foresaken town in America, recalling the terrible tragedies that befell the townsfolk when they forgot to put safety first, EVEN FOR A SECOND.  And these are not everyday tragedies either, like shearing off a finger in a buzzsaw. These are grandiose  ironic tragedies that leave a wake of shattered lives, like when a shop worker gets a telephone call announcing the birth of his first child and is immediately blinded for life when he taps a welder on the shoulder to pass him a celebratory cigar.  I think they adapted this short from a lost manuscript of Dostoevsky.  3 of 5 stars.       

I like this one a lot, but people really hyping a film can definitely screw with your enjoyment when you finally see it.  I'd call it a 4 out of 5 slimes movie.  There are some good fights and the idea behind each of the Venoms is kinda fun.  I still like to say stuff along the lines of, "You're the Toad!" when we do close combat training.

Yeah, high expectations definitely damaged my enjoyment.  But ironically it was also a little too "good" for my tastes, tried a little to hard to make sense and have a meaningful plot.  I prefer my chopsocky consistently absurd, like MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE. 

The Full Bottom Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson's early-mid 90s comedy series. Christopher Ryan, also of Young Ones fame, is on board as clueless old codger Dave Hedgehog who along with his fat friend Spudgun are Eddie Hitler (Edmondson)'s only friends. Richard Richard (Rik Mayall) is the thoroughly unlikable and detestable, slovenly sweaty lead who wants nothing more than for some woman to finally have a shag with him only he's positively too revolting for that to ever happen. Thoroughly offensive (what do you expect from the former Young Ones?), this show was ahead of its time only unlike today's series, this was actually laugh out loud funny more often than not. Also the usual level of looniness one expects from Mayall and Edmondson. **** 1/2 out of *****

The Young Ones: Every Stoopid Episode The series that started it all for Mayall and Edmondson. Groundbreaking and widely influential. The first series to portray realistic unlikeable characters getting up to various hijinks. Sure there's a lot of weirdness with this one as elements of sci-fi, fantasy and horror creep their way into the series and the show does just about everything it can to defy the censors. Hilariously funny if you don't mind in your face comedic hijinks. Not for the weak or faint hearted but brilliant to those who are able to appreciate it's wonderfully vulgar charms. ***** out of *****

Brides of Dracula - the old Hammer Horror movie.  A young girl is travelling through Transylvania on her way to a teaching assignment.  She gets stranded and ends up staying the night at the castle of a spooky old woman.  Turns out the woman's son is a vampire, and she keeps him chained in his room.  The young girl unwittingly releases him, and I wish I could say he goes on a killing spree, but in reality he just bites one girl.  Then like an hour later he bites a second one.  Then he gets engaged to the young teacher.  Peter Cushing shows up as Van Helsing, and hunts down the evil bloodsucker.

This was pretty good, with all the Gothic atmosphere you'd expect from Hammer.  Fairly good performances, though Cushing takes the whole "understated" thing a bit too far.  I especially liked the crazy old maid character, she stole every scene she was in.  Unfortunately it was really slow moving, not picking up until the end.  I also found it a bit cheesy, probably due to my modern cynicism, but when somebody holds up a crucifix and the vampire recoils in pain and hides behind his cape, I kinda gotta chuckle.

Orgazmo- Matt Stone and Trey Parker's second live action flick, about a Mormon in Los Angeles trying to convert people, only to be hired to act in a Superhero based Porn flick.  Then the movie becomes the second highest grossing movie after Titanic.  Downright hilarious, and Dian Bachar shines as the sidekick.  Features a cameo by Troma Pictures founder Lloyd Kaufman in the final scene.

Not really movies per se but, given the inspiration from Akira's '80s cartoon thread, I've been searching for some of those old school shows.  I watched the whole C.O.P.S. ("It's crime fighting time") series, and The Silverhawks series.  And now, through the miracle of the Big Apple Comic Convention that finished up yesterday, I'm now in the middle of watching the Mighty Orbots series and Bionic 6, both of which were burned to dvds.  And as a bonus, I also got the Robotix movie.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians- Good flick.  Dropo rocks. :smile:

BLACK BOOK - good film from the Netherlands about WWII and the plight if some of the Jews. Really good film I though.
4.5 out of 5

(http://chud.com/nextraimages/black_book_ver4.jpg)

I thought that Black Book was great as well.  I'm glad to see Verhoeven back making great films again in his native country.

Live Free or Die Hard  (unrated version)  ***1/2 out of ****
Surprisingly great and I agree with Bruce Willis that it's the 2nd best film in the series  next to the 1st one.  The action set pieces are great with the filmmakers thankfully opting to do everything as old school and real as possible only resorting to CGI when they had to do accentuate scenes.  The fight between Willis and the sexy Maggie Q was great.  Anyone like myself doubting them making a 4th Die Hard flick should really check this one out.    Great stuff IMO!

The Screaming Skull (1958): Dull, predictable, cliched. That said, buried deep within this are some decent scare attempts that don't fully succeed because of a limited budget. Still there's moments here that certainly could give some viewers the willies. The best and by far most exciting part of this movie is what happens after we hear the repeated pounding knocks at the door. Unfortunately it proves rather hard to stay awake through until we get to this final bit. The whole plot of a dashing widow marrying a rich but mentally unbalanced woman was ridiculously overdone in this era and the whole thing plays out in pretty much expected fashion. Laughably bad at times and dreadfully dull at others, this does have its moments. Enough for me to give it ** out *****

Lightning: Bolts of Destruction (2003) (TV): A modern era dull, predictable cliched film, this one runs through every expected twist typically used in the disaster formula. While the cast here including Joanna Pacula, Nick Mancuso, Ellen Dubin and Noel Fisher do the best they could and prove rather likable for the most part, nothing could save this poorly written film with FX and a plot about as convincing as those of Ed Wood's films, maybe even less so. Just simple-minded pointless escapist fare that comes across as way too wholesomely clean and PC on every level. * out of *****

The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961): Undeniably one of the worst films I've ever seen, there's something mindbending about this viewing experience. Tor Johnson stars as a scientist who gets caught in the aftermath of an A-Bomb explosion and becomes an hulking monster whose sole desire is to kill. Meanwhile police on the hunt for him seem just as intent on killing as ole Tor himself. How this all ties to a mysterious voluptuous woman getting strangled as this one opens is anyone's guess? The movie plays pretty much the same way a silent film does only this movie has completely ridiculous and downright demented surreal narration. That said, the desert night setting creates an unsettling iolsated feel and one wonders how this might have played without the narration but then again, the narration is bizarrely entertaining in its weird fashion, almost zen-like as my old buddy Dr. Mality described it. * 1/2 out of ***** just for entertaining me on some weird b-movie loving level.

The Terror (1963): Not even a cast of favourites including Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, Sandra Knight, Dorothy Neumann and Dick Miller can save this turkey. Basically it stars Jack Nicholson as wandering French soldier Lt. Andre DuValier during the turn of the 19th century. He encounters a mysterious girl who has an odd habit of disappearing and tracks her to a spooky castle inhabited by a kooky old eccentric named Baron Victor Frederick Von Leppe (Boris Karloff). Eventually the mystery unravels and we learn of murder, witchery and a plot of revenge. Unfortunately it's complete dullsville sitting through this movie. It's mainly focuses on people wandering around. Going for an eerie chilling atmosphere believe it or not isn't aided by padding a film with scene after scene of people walking or riding on horseback. Still it's amazing this is as good as it is given director Roger Corman made this film in like 2 or 3 days. However it's very tough slugging unless you have incredible patience. I often find myself lulling into sleep while watching this to be honest. Tough one to stay awake throughout. * out of *****

Revolt of the Zombies (1936): A follow-up zombie film from the Halperin Brothers following their success with WHITE ZOMBIE. Follows more of less the same plot only this time the lead jealous protagonist learns the ancient art of turning men into zombies via an hidden in ruins South American formula. This lacks all the chilling impact of WHITE ZOMBIE and suffers greatly for a lack of Bela Lugosi or someone equally effectively eerie. Even the zombies here seem too much like ordinary people. In fact, they are more like individuals mass hypnotized although there's one startling scene featuring a small army of zombie soldiers. Way too bland and dull with no truly effective leads. * 1/2 out of *****

The Giant Gila Monster (1959): Laughably silly when it's not flat out dull. Has to be seen to be believed. Teen leads, who look much older than teens in reality, are the only ones who can be counted to get anything effective down in small backroads country towns it seems. Lead Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan) is a 1950s Buckaroo Banzai who speeds around in his car, gives everybody valued and solid advice, sings and plays completely inappropriate tunes at just the right times (albeit most of his songs are pretty bad), all while eventually being the only man to tackle a giant Mexican beaded lizard posing as a giant gila monster. However not even Don gets as many close-ups as said monster. A true bad movie experience everyone should have at least once. ** out of *****

The Fatal Hour (1940): Boris Karloff returns yet again as Mr. Wong. This time he joins Captain Street (Grant Withers) and reporter Bobbie Logan (Marjorie Reynolds) as they try to track down the killer of police officer and friend Dan O' Grady who was getting close to cracking a smuggling case from the Orient wide open. While Karloff as one might expect is never fully convincing as an Oriental, this movie proves a likable enough murder mystery than should keep most guessing until the very end. More enjoyable than perhaps it should be, perhaps due to a very likable set of leads. At least it is for me. ** 1/2 out of *****

Dead Men Walk (1943): George Zucco really gets an opportunity to shine here playing both lead hero and lead villain as a pair of long feuding brothers, one good and one evil. The evil brother eventually manages to return from the grave and aided by a manical henchman named Zolarr (the one and only Dwight Frye) plots to feed on the blood of the living to quench his vampire taste. Eventually he sets his sights on his own daughter as he knows her habits while her good uncle, who greatly loves her, sets out to try and save her. This is really in essence yet another variation of the Dracula story. However while there are some plot similarities, this one proves wholly unique in its approach. Could have perhaps been a bit better and less predictable in places but certainly worth a watch for Zucco, who proves convincing in both his roles, and Frye, who's always entertaining. **1/2 out of *****

The Mad Monster (1942): George Zucco again, this time in perhaps his most over-the-top but nevertheless very entertaining mad scientist role, a role he played often and in fact may have somewhat become typecast for him to perform. This time he's turning country bumpkin Glenn Strange, another familiar face to most horror fans, into a menacing werewolf in a plot of revenge against those other scientists who discredited him and scoffed at his idea of creating an army of wolfmen. I kid you not! Sadly this film proves at times a bit more dull than exciting although I think a lot of people are too hard of it. I rather enjoyed it for the most part myself, especially for the wild expressions and antics of Zucco's Dr. Cameron and Strange's reluctanct hillbilly werewolf.  ** 1/2 out of *****

Art School Confidential  *** out of ****
A very strange film that isn't as much a straight up comedy as it was advertised. There's some very funny stuff in this film but there's also a subplot about a serial killer offing students as well that makes the movie a weird concoction, but it somehow works thanks to the talented cast and director.

The Dreamers  (NC-17 version)   ** out of ****
Bernardo Bertolucci's sexually explicit and daring film is too pretentious to be all that entertaining.  While the movie is very erotic at times (thanks in large parts to an almost always nude Eva Greene) the movie moves as slow as molasses and it really doesn't seem to say all that much at all.  It's almost like he was trying to make another film like Last Tango in Paris (which is his best film) but missed the point of what made that movie truly one of the greats of all time IMO. BTW, anyone who saw Casino Royale and wondered what Eva Greene would look like sans clothes, check this one out.   :tongueout: 

Hard Boiled  ***1/2 out of ****
One of my favorite action films of all time and IMO John Woo's best film to date. Chow Yun Phat has never been better (or cooler) and the rest of the cast is fantastic.   The extended shoot out in the hospital is one of the most intenese and hypnotic action set pieces ever put on film.

The Princess Bride  **** out of ****
IMO Rob Reiner's best film and still one of the most entertaining and delightful films of all time. So many quotable lines and situations in this movie to count. 

This weekend I saw

Wedding Crashers
Wasn't sure I'd enjoy this one, but it was pretty funny.  Vince Vaughn's character was suitably over the top and it amazed me how fast he could talk and still make sense.  I'm not surprised he ended up in that crazy family, he fit right in.  I didn't think there was much chemistry between Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson though.

From Dusk Til Dawn
Absolutely HATED this one.  It was recommended to me by a friend who knows my taste and said I would love it.  I usually love the vampire genre, but this one sucked hairy dog's balls.  That surprised me because I really thought I'd love it.  The special effects were pretty good, but I didn't find any of the characters sympathetic.  Maybe my prejudice against anything Tarantino spoiled it for me.  And I really don't like George Clooney.

X-Men: The Last Stand
Love, love, love anything X-Men.  And Hugh Jackman is a babe of epic proportions.  Special effects:  good.  Storyline: good.  Shock value at character development:  good.  Hugh Jackman shirtless with claws out:  swoon   :thumbup:     :teddyr:

JaseSF, I can see you're working your way through that Horror Classics 50 pack too. I gave SCREAMING SKULL 1 of 5, see next post for THE TERROR.  Didn't review YUCCA FLATS because I'd seen it before, but I'd give it 3 of 5 just because everyone should see it as an example of jaw-droppingly bad filmmaking, because it's mercifully short, and for the ambiguous ending.  Was Tor trying to strangle the bunny with his last ounce of strength, or cuddle it?  Coleman Francis masterfully leaves the audience wondering...

I may fall behind you because of my busy schedule, but I look forward to comparing notes on REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES soon.

I'm in the process of moving, so I haven't had much time to post.  But I have snuck in a few unsatisfying movie viewing experiences.

THE TERROR (1963): A beautiful ghost lures Jack Nicholson into Baron Boris Karloff's castle.  Jack wanders around a bit, opening drawers and picking up random items and placing them back on the table, until it's time for the climax.  There's actually a twist ending that surprised me.  Didn't interest me, but surprised me.  With Jack & Boris acting, and Corman directing with the help of regulars F.F. Coppola, Jack Hill and Monte Hellman, there's no excuse for this to be as dull as it was.  One reviewer said the script was improvised, though I think it was probably just rushed to take advantage of the availability of the sets of the RAVEN and Karloff's schedule.  1 out of 5 slimes.  LESSON LEARNED: If a witch is suddenly struck by lightning out of nowhere, Jack Nicholson will register mild surprise.

SERPAHIM FALLS (2006): Liam Neeson chases Pierce Brosnan across some gorgeous Western scenery to avenge a mysterious wrong.  Fairly enjoyable, if highly implausible, adventure-western features some excellent cinematography and keeps you guessing as to who the good guy is.  Unfortunately, in the final reel the director feels it necessary to add some clumsy symbolism to give it that "existential" feel.  Nothing prepares the viewer for this sudden reality shift.  2 of 5.  LESSON LEARNED: Hollowed out horse carcasses make excellent hiding places from which to launch sneak attacks.

Fred Claus- Decent enough performances.  Vince Vaughn is hilarious, and Paul Giamatti always is great.  Great cameos by Frank Stallone, Stephen Baldwin and Roger Clinton during a scene, and a funny fight scene between rapper Ludacris and Vince Vaughn in the North Pole.

Monster Squad- Great flick from my childhood.  Shame though, cause I found out during the dvd extras that the kid who played Horace passed away like ten years ago.

Since we've finally gotten a Netflix type service here is Aussie land, I've been going crazy watching movies I either haven't seen before or not seen in a long time:

In no particular order

Ginger Snaps
Minority Report
Both Tomb Raiders
Flightplan
The Host
Music and Lyrics
Underworld
Underworld Evolution


On order now are:
Ginger Snaps 2
American Beauty
The Usual Suspects
Decoy
Cube 2
Undead
Raw Feed: Sublime
Deja Vu
Derailed
O Brother Whereart Thou

Did monkey-fest here this weekend, to raining and cold to do anything else.

Mighty Peking Man
Mighty Gorga
Mighty Joe Young
King Kong (Orig, 1976 and new)
Son of Kong

Jason X- Jason goes to space.  I'm just waiting for the flick where he builds a time travelling DeLorean and goes back to the mid '50s and takes his mom to the dance.

I watched...
For the first time...GLEN or GLENDA!!!

 EGADS!!! Whatta  f#cked up movie! I have a new respect for Ed Woods ineptness at constructing sentences that make NO DAM SENSE whatso ever! It was quite surreal to hear Bela mouthing Wood's mindles  psycho-babble. Excellent!!!!
Also watched a dubbed Argentine WIP from 1984  called CONDEMENDED to HELL. Despite the title...not so great. A few boobies...but mostly boredom. The end was ok when the herione excapes the prison and shotguns some of her tormentors...but blah for the most part. Oh-one good line-"Go puke in your panties,you turd!" :bouncegiggle:

Superbad  *** out of ****.
Not as consistently laugh-out-loud-funny as The 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up, but still a very funny movie.  The main problem is that they strecthed what at the most should have been a 90 minute movie into almost a 2 hour film. The performances are all winners though especially with the kid who plays McLovin.  Every single thing he says or does in the film will have you in stitches.  A very funny film though but just don't expect it to be on the same level as the 2 other films I mentioned.   

Boogie Nights  **** out of ****.
A truly fantastic movie in every sense of the word. Terrific acting all around, wonderful writing, great direction and editing, Burt Reynolds being Burt in the best way possible and full frontal Heather Graham nudity.  Yeah, the story may follow the typical type of story arc for this film but when it's done with as much style and filmmaking savvy as this it makes it all new again.

Munich  ***1/2 out of ****
A great movie from Spielberg that unfortunately got ignored by most of the movie going public during it's initial theatrical run.  Eric Bana turns in an Oscar worthy performance and the movie is just fantstic and nerve wracking throughout. My only reason for knocking off a half of a star is the middle of the movie drags a bit compared to the 1st and 3rd acts.   

Ed Wood- ***.  Great performances from Johnny Depp and Martin Landau, especially.  Virtually an unknown flick, which kinda surprised me, considering the stars in it.  Didn't necessarily surprise me either, considering Ed Wood's work in real life either.  Because of this flick I actually went out and bought Plan 9. 

I love Boogie Nights.  Great cast, too.  Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Phillip Seymore Hoffman and Heather Graham naked.  Haven't really checked out the director's other works though.  I've only seen this and Punch Drunk Love.  Have 0% interest in Magnolia.

pink flamingos is great, anything by john waters is awesome, he's a guilty pleasure

(http://m1.dotspotter.com/media/0/33/58/HeatherGrahamShape.m.jpg)
Speaking of Heather Graham really quick, man does she still look fantastic at 37!



His first film Hard Eight is great though I would really like to see his original director's cut of it as it was taken out of his hands during the editing stage and lost a ton of great scenes.

Magnolia was actually good (though a bit overwrought at times IMO) except for the ending which I thought was too much of a blatent Short Cuts ripoff of sorts.  That movie ended (or I should say just stops) with an earthquake that affects all of the characters while Magnolia tries for something much more profound and thought provoking that IMO just came across as stupid.

Punch Drunk Love is a flick that I have never quite liked that much though Adam Sandler's perforance in it was quite good as I usually can't stand him.

I saw the trailer for the newest PTA film that stars Daniel Day Lewis about something to do with oil back in the 1800's I believe.  It looks pretty interesting.
 

I finished Castle in the sky which is a great animated film, and I also watched The Truman Show again.  The Truman show has become one of my favorite films of all time.  I think I'm going to start watching Manos: Hands of Fate tonight.  I need a bad movie to get me out of my depression, and I feel this movie would do it.

As for Heather: age difference be damned, I'd tap that.

Punch Drunk was just an odd flick.  I didn't hate it, but it was just like, "Okay.  That's one dvd I won't buy, but I might watch if it comes on tv."  I don't know if I'd like Adam in dramas.  He's good when it comes to playing the "idiot man-child/yelling at people/falls in love" type guy he plays in most of his comedies.  Obviously by my name, I'm a fan of his flicks. 

I want to see Hard Eight though. 

Watched Paranoiac last night.  Another Hammer horror film, this one in black and white.  Was a tiny bit disappointed that it didn't have any of the Gothic atmosphere of most of their films, it just seemed like any other British film from that time period (had about the same atmosphere as an episode of The Avengers).  And no supernatural elements at all, though the ending sort of bordered on the supernatural.  It's about a family, a brother and two sisters.  Their parents were killed long ago, and their other brother committed suicide soon after.  One of the sisters is going insane, and she thinks she sees her dead brother walking around.  Just as she's about to commit suicide, the brother everyone thought was dead shows up and saves her.  The other brother (the one who didn't commit suicide) is a drunken nutcase, and is very upset that he'll be losing a good chunk of his inheritance now that another sibling is around (they are living on trust funds, and the entire inheritance is coming to them in three weeks).  Anyhow, plenty of plot twists and turns, made for an interesting story.  It just spirals deeper and deeper into depravity as it goes.  Good acting as usual in Hammer films.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Strange what slips through the cracks sometimes.  I'm shocked a Bela fan like you never saw this particular gem in his crown, GLEN OR GLENDA!  This is my favorite Wood movie, by a wide margin.  "Bevare! Bevare of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys... Puppy dog tails, and big fat snails... Bevare... Take care... Bevare!"  Words to live by.

It's just one of those I never got the oppurtonity to see!I saw a Fuzzy pink Ed Wood VHS set at the Mall in Kalamazoo some years back...but I had BRIDE of the MONSTER and PLAN 9 already...so paying $35 dollars or so seemed a bit too much at the time...still kicking my own corn for passing it up...!!! A few other Lugosi films I've yet to see...
.RETURN of the APEMAN
.BOWARY at MIDNIGHT
.The PHANTOM SHIP (a very early Hammer film!!!)
.any of his silents.
...and of course...the long lost LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS (50's) and also lost German version of Jekyll and Hyde...with Conrad Veidt as the good Doctor and Bela as his trusted servant...DER JANUSKOPH (directed by F.W. Munrou of NOSFERATU fame.)
.

Clerks 2- Good flick.  Works well for a sequel, performances are top notch.  Dante having two girlfriends still seems a bit far-fetched, but Elias, the new Clerk was a good find.

Bad Santa (unrated version)  ***1/2 out of ****
This has quickly become probably my favorite Christmas movie of all time. I guess that might say more about me than I would like  :teddyr: but the movie DOES have good message buried deep beneath all of the vulgarities and obscene behavior.  Billy Bob Thorton has the role of a life time, Lauren Graham is hot and sweet as well as funny and the rest of the cast is pure gold.  John Ritter is particularly good in what would sadly be his final role after an unknown heart condition would kill him in his late 50's.

13 GOING ON 30 (2005): Predictable remake of BIG (and about a hundred other movies) where a teenaged girl wishes to be an adult, finds her wish magically granted.  A few chuckles and Jennifer Garner ain't bad to look at, but for most people on badmovies.org it would rate a skull, or even negative slimes.  For its intended audience of teenaged girls and people nostalgic for dance numbers featuring bad 80s pop songs, it's probably 2 out of 5.  LESSON LEARNED: There is no possibility of learning a useful lesson from such pablum.

Before anyone jumps on me for my movie choices, I should mention that I'm trapped at my parent's house for about a week while my furniture is en route to Louisville from Las Vegas.  Based on the first 5 minutes of the flick my mom, bless her heart, thought this tripe would be "cute."   

Over the weekend, I watched 4 movies.

Manos, Hands of Fate.  Now I see why it's so BAD.

Tremors - It was a good film, and I'll probably watch the 2nd film tonight or sometime next week.

The Untouchables - A great film, aminly b/c I have a strong interest in Prohibition era America, I find it intersting to say the least.

Tommy Boy - Very funny film, I've sene it before, but it was a long time ago.

Ah, Manos.  That wonderful little gem.  Egad.  I think when you go to watch it and are blasted with 5 minutes of a non dialouge driving around scene just looking at trees, it says an awful lot about how awful the rest of the flick will be.

Tommy Boy- Classic comedy in my opinon.  I even have Chris Farley's line about the head up the butcher's ass as my ringtone on my cell phone.

Manos was something that I was looking foward to for a while, knowing how bad it was I went in with an open mind, and still nearly fell asleep watching it.  My favorite was the couple making out, since they had NOTHING to do with the plot.

We used to spew lines from Tommy Boy when I was till in grade school. 

That teen couple must have been an easy sell to be in the movie.  I can see the director now: "I'll give you ten bucks to sit in a car and make out."  Teens: "Okay."

Even Dr. Forrester and Tv's Frank from MST3K apologized for making Joel watch it.  Twice an apology came out.

See, this is why I am bitter.  Most people are familiar with "Manos" due to MST3K.  I am familiar with "Manos" sans any sort of comedy buffer between me and the film.  The effect of "Manos" on your average human being...is not pleasant to watch.

I first saw Manos (like most other people) on MST3K but a couple of years after that a mom & pop video store was going out of business and I got an actual uncut VHS copy of the movie itself for only a dollar.

I can only imagine someone watching this first without the MST3K treatment. I was able to place the jokes in my head so seeing it afterwards was of a waste.

(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n205/oldskool138/torgo1.jpg)

Sleepy Hollow
I'm not a huge fan of Tim Burton's movies.  He's pretty hit and miss and in my book. And although I love Johnny Depp, he seemed to be overacting a little.  Christina RIcci was quite emotionless like she was on a sedative or something.  But Miranda Richardson was delightfully wicked as only she can be.  And kudos and much karma to the ever wonderful Christopher Walken as the bad guy.  Overall the story was okay but it's not one I would watch again.

Coneheads.
A classic that I haven't watched for a while.  We don't get Saturday Night Live here, so it was a long time before I found out that this was originally an SNL sketch.  Not a fan of Chris Farley, all that jerking of his head he does is annoying.  But he played his pat well.

Jeepers Creepers 2
Love this franchise.  I'm hoping they'll make another one maybe set in the past but I don't know if that will happen.  And even watching the special features making of didn't deter me from feeling scared when I saw Jonathan Beck in the Creeper make up.

Kelly's Heroes.
One of the few war movies I can tolerate.  Great performances all round by a stellar cast.

In The Mouth of Madness
I happened upon this gem whilst shopping one day.  We are huge Carpenter fans in our house and when I saw his name plus Sam Neill on the one box and the miniscule price of $10 I took a chance, sight unseen.  Brilliantly acted by all concerned, great story and I would have been happy paying double the money for this great find.  I was VERY pleased with myself for buying this one.

Viewings coming up in the next few days:

Ginger Snaps 2
Rosemary's Baby
Hoodwinked
Cube 2 Hypercube

Haven't seen any of these movies before.  Should be awesome

I'm a big fan of horror movies (duh) and this movie actually gave me the chills when I first saw it.  It still creeps me out when I watch it today.  I think it's because they never really explain everything and show you just enough of the evil to creep you out and let your mind fill in the blanks.

It is far and away the best Lovecraft homage movie out there and, IMO, Carpenter's last great horror movie...And you gotta love the Charlton Heston cameo for no reason.

The 1st Ginger Snaps flick is awesome.

The 2nd one is merely good but the 3rd one is a train wreck IMO.

I almost ... ALMOST bought the 2nd one today. I looked at it and looked at it, and opted to buy the Batman - The Movie (Adam West/Burt Ward) and Might Joe Young (the original one) instead.

I watched Shadow Puppets the other day..the props were mediocre except for the deprevation chamber looked kinda realistic..the story was easy to figure out like within twenty minutes, the only thing different was the nerd didn't meet his end right away and for once tony todd wasn't the bad guy. Don't buy this, don't rent this, maybe watch it if you have to choose between it and dr phil...maybe..

I watched it first without the MST3K treatment.  I bought the DVD earlier this year for real cheap, and decided I need a bad movie to end the work week on.

Watched Casino Royale (2006) last night.  That was one of the best James Bond films every made.

MST3K helped open the floodgates for me.  The movies they had on, some at least, I do actually like without them ripping on it.  For all of it's flaws, I still do like the movie.  Well, at least the Torgo character.  Beyond that, it's brutal.  For me at least.

For me, I probably wouldn't be watching half the movies I do without things like MST3K, USA Up ALL Night, or MonsterVision.

A former co worker opened the flood gates for me, and that's how I got into B movies.

I showed Cannibal! The Musical to a friend of mine, who went to school for psychology.  He began to question my sanity.  I was at an uncle's and he saw it.  He was like, "Get this crap out of the dvd player.  It's not even a 'b' movie, it's like, an L level movie."

Watched Shapeshifter again last night, for about the fourth time.  It's one of my favorite Alien type movies, about a creature locked in a prison, chasing the convicts and the really, really sexy guard babe around.  Very good performances by the cast, good setting, and just a fun watch every time.

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut- ***.  Great movie.  I liked the fact that they kinda went after the MPAA, and the line about "horrible senseless violence is okay, but naughty language is a no-no" part.  Besides, what's better than an R-Rated animated musical?  Especially when it targets parents who'd rather blame the media for their messed up kids, then look in the mirrors and point the finger at themselves.

I watched Hoodwinked (animation) last night.  Very funny.  The animation was pretty clunky compared to what we're used to with movies like Shrek and Monsters Inc, etc.  It reminded me a little of Jimmy Neutron in texture.

But someone should tell Jim Belushi that he can't do a German accent and shouldn't really bother trying.  I"m sure they could have found somebody else to do a better job for the Woodsman's voice, even if it meant going with an unknown voice actor.  But that's really the only bad thing I can say about it.

My fave character was the mountain goat with the detachable horns.  He had me in hysterics and he totally stole the whole show.

Also watched Cube 2: Hypercube.  I loved the first one and was looking forward to this one.  I"m pleased to say I wasn't disappointed.  The story moved along quickly and even with the weird time dilation aspect it made sense.  Definitely a purchase to keep the first movie company on my shelf.

Tomorrow night I will be watching Rosemary's Baby with Mia Farrow.  I keep hearing about what a horror masterpiece it is, so I thought I'd try it out.  I just hope it's as good as everyone raves.  It's got a huge reputation to live up to.

What did you all think of it?

Coneheads- classic.  I wasn't alive during that era of SNL, but have seen a few of the Conehead sketches through syndication.  I grew up with SNL during the late '80s and '90s cast, like Mike Myers, Adam Sandler etc.

Of the SNL related movies, I'd probably put Coneheads at number 3, which is decent considering there's been like, 15 movies or so based off their sketches.  Only two I'd put ahead of it are Wayne's World and Blues Brothers.

Good selection. 

Offered for free on my cable systems "On Demand" channel:

THE BAD & THE BEAUTIFUL (1952):  A director, an actress and a writer tell three bitter stories in flashback about a cutthroat Hollywood producer (Kirk Douglas).  Some of the individual scenes are perfectly done, but the whole seems less than the sum of its parts.  Though Douglas gets pretty nasty at times, its more a character study than a savage Hollywood satire.  Lana Turner (as a slutty, boozy, unmotivated actress) and Douglas each get a chance for some Oscar-quality hysterics (though Turner mysteriously wasn't even nominated, and Gloria Grahame won best supporting actress instead for a cartoonish role as a Southern belle).  Not much for B-movie fans to chew on, but is a cool homage to Val Lewton when Kirk is paying his dues cranking out horror movies on the studios B-unit.  4 out of 5.  LESSON LEARNED: Lana Turner's mood can change a sunny cloudless day in LA into a hurricane within minutes.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966):  The camera follows the rise and fall of an insurgent leader in Algiers, fighting a secret war against the French occupation.  Shot in a neorealist, pseudo-documentary style, this pic is full of cold-blooded assassinations, street shootouts, riots, terrorist bombings and torture scenes, and is consistently fascinating to watch.  More sympathetic to the rebels than the occupiers, but shows the warts of both sides.  It's full of eerie parallels to Iraq, and the Pentagon actually screened the film for some of its top brass as a lesson in "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas".  5 out of 5.  LESSON LEARNED:  The lesson of this film may well be unlearnable.

HATCHET  (unrated version)  *** out of ****
Genuinely funny characters, lots of boobies, gloriously over-the-top & gory kill scenes and Kane Hodder as the monster being his usual bad @ss self.  Not original in any way and takes a bit too long to get going but once it does it's really cool old school style horror.  Worth a look for people wanting to see old school gore effects without any CGI with none of that quick MTV style cutting either.

I picked up the 4-disk Blade Runner edition.  (The briefcase edition looks cool but I decided against it).  I can't wait to see Blade Runner with improved effects and better sound!   :smile:

I just love British comedy (being an Aussie and all), and nobody does it better than those Young Ones boys Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson.  One of my faves is the Bottom series.  Richard Richard (Rik Mayall) and Eddie Hitler (Adrian Edmonson) are two complete and utter losers - scruffy, rude, violent and sad.  They live for the day when they will finally score with somebody - anybody., and their whole lives are about trying to do just that.

The series always has me laughing so hard I can't breathe.  So imagine my surprise when, the other day I discovered that they'd actually made a movie with their characters called Guest House Paradiso.  This is what I watched last night.

Guest House Paradiso has the boys running a dirty, derelict guesthouse a la Fawlty Towers, but much worse and with lower hygiene standards.  The guesthouse is situated high on a seaside cliff next to a nuclear power plant that also looks like it's seen better days.

Of course with the boys' lack of social skills, any guest brave enough or stupid enough to stay there is in for a shock!  There was one major change I noticed in that Richard Richard's last name is now Mr Twat (although he pronounces it "Thwait") but of course all the guests call him "Twat".

The supporting cast of characters is quite hilarious.  They include, but not limited to:  eAn old and senile grande dame who gets afforded their best "service" because she's rich, and the boys do everything they can to con as much money out of her as possible whilst subjecting her to the most horribly funny physical assaults.

The chef who is Eastern Europen, stinking, greasy, heavy smoker, quite possibly insane and quits early in the piece to leave the boys to run things themselves.  The head waiter who never makes an appearance but you see Richie on the phone to the local insane asylum asking if he shows up to send him back to work.

The couple with two school aged children seem normal enough, but the dad has a fetish for bondage and piercing and all manner of sex toys.

And the piece de resistance is the famous Italian movie star Gina Carbonara who ran away from her wedding to a cheating Italian playboy and is hiding out in the hotel.  Of course the boyfriend shows up and all hell breaks loose.

What these boys get up to is insane and hilariously funny.  There is much physical violence, endless sight gags, wall to wall projectile vomiting and voyeurism on a grand scale.

So if you like slapstick, random physical violence, puns, sight gags, and lots of bodily fluids in your humour, this is the movie for you.  It's definitely my next purchase.

Back To The Future Part 2- ***.  Great movie, with decent performances by Michael J. Fox, who plays 3 different characters, and a good performance by Christopher Lloyd.  Small appearances by Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame, and an early appearance by Billy Zane, who later starred in Titanic, The Phantom and other movies.

Evil Dead a thon here last night.

EVIL DEAD
EVIL DEAD II
Amry of DARKNESS

Don't forget Demon Knight!   :teddyr:

I finished watching Blade Runner (The Final Cut) yesterday.  I haven't watched it in years and I've always liked it but I really like it now.  It's one of those movies that means something different to you when you watch it at different stages of your life.

The sound mix is excellent and the remastered print makes the colors and scenery pop off the screen (even on regular DVD).  I liked the updated special effects.  No, Ridley didn't pull a Lucas by shoehorning a bunch of crap that wasn't in the original into this cut.  All he did was clean them up and subtlety enhanced them.

In the "Final Cut" the editing is tighter as some scenes are slightly shorter while others are longer.  It really helps the narrative...and yes, there are no voiceovers.

The 4-disk edition contains three (remastered) alternate cuts.

This is a must-have for your DVD collection!  Worth every penny!

TRIVIA:  The Blade Runner who is killed at the beginning is played by Morgan Paull a.k.a.- Mistretta from the Joe Don Baker opus Mitchell!   :teddyr:

Demon Knight rocks. :smile:

Great minds think alike apparently, I did the exact same thing last night after I got off work.

Here's how I rate them individually on a B movie grading scale:

THE EVIL DEAD *** out of ****
EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN   ***1/2 out of  ****
ARMY OF DARKNESS (theatrical cut)  ***1/2 out of ****

I watched Dark City last night (Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt, Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly).

I really liked this movie. Dark, atmospheric, put me in mind of Sin City a lot.  Good premise, well acted, even though Jennifer Connelly isn't one of my favourites.   The aliens were interesting and creepy, especially the little kid. Decent special effects which were well done, but Kiefer's character annoyed me a little with the constant sharp intakes of breath.  Still, it suited his character.

Overall a 4 stars out of 5.

Maniac (1934)

A film every true bad movie film fanatic should experience in their lifetime. This is one of the best examples of unintentional hiliarity I've ever seen. It's way over the top performances feel like something you might see at a local play, a bad local play. A mad doctor's assistant is threatened into using his impersonation skills to aid in said mad doctor's diabolical plans of creating life after death. Eventually when the assistant fails, the mad doctor sets his sights on him as his next victim! What happens after that is even crazier. This movie has an unbelievable cat eyeball eating seqeunce, a fight between two people armed with hypodermic needles and even more insanity. It's certainly far from being a dull 51 minutes. Recommended mainly to bad movie lovers, I'd give this 5 slimes. However, for normal folks, I'd be hard pressed to give it more than ** out ***** and I'm only giving it that because it holds one's attention and manages to be quite shocking. I can only imagine how freaky it was in its time.

Metropolis (1927)

Well I watched both the altered version contained in the Horror Movies 50 pack and the Restored Version the last couple days. Clearly the restored version is a much more complete and superior version of the film. The restoration is beautifully done from what remaining elements they could find. The film is still missing a quarter of the original footage but text has been added to explain what was going on in these missing seqeunces. In the restored version, Rotwang becomes a much more interesting and complex villain and his motivations are finally sufficiently explained whereas in the altered version he's little more than Joh Frederson's lackey. In the restored version, he's in actuality a villainous rival of Frederson. This makes one better appreciate the performance given by Rudolf Klein-Rogge in the role. The only element in the altered version I liked better is I felt they slowed down Freder's emotional reactions to the worker's plight which perhaps helped better get across his compassion. Metropolis is one of those films that is a wonder to behold and the restored 75th anniversary version does keep the action moving more briskly. There's always something interesting and fascinating on screen and the sets and special effects are still wondrous today let alone how they must have come across in 1927. ***** out of ***** for the restored version. ***1/2 out of ***** for the altered one.

Seconded.  I was amazed at this.  Not only is the plot insane (there's even more crazy stuff Jase left out), but it features every species of bad acting known to man, from maniacal scenery munching to reading the lines off a cue card.  Every bad movie fan owes it to themselves track down a copy.  If all that's not enough to get you excited, it even has B&W boobies!

 :thumbup:

I'd agree with those rating. I guess it's about my 20th or 30th viewing of these classics.

I ordered a bunch of box sets from Full Moon, can't wait to get those.

Tonight feast of bad cinema is Murder Party (http://amazon.imdb.com/title/tt0878695/).

Alvin and The Chipmunks- Surprisingly, a very funny, sweet movie.  Much better than I expected.  A bit better than the Scooby Doo movies.  I guess about equal to Garfield, although I didn't see all of Garfield to judge.  Reccomended.

I've seen Murder Party for sale at the local Wally World. The plot synopsis looked interesting and it's gotten some pretty solid reviews, particularly from horror sites. I might have to check that out at some point.

Two fine examples of how to make a classic and how to f$ck up in every way possible....thus making an anti-classic!!!  :cheers:

Maniac is brilliantly twisted, although that may not have been Dwain Esper's intention.

Metropolis is a silent masterpiece, but sadly some idiots are going to try and remake it.

Watched Club Dread last night.  It was sort of cute;  A parody of slasher flicks.  There's a resort on a tropical island, and the employees are turning up dead.  Everyone suspects everyone else.  The characters are quite entertaining, you've got the hot babe main girl, some English dude with dreadlocks who likes her, but she likes the martial arts guy (his skills include a nerve pinch which induces instant orgasm).  Then there's a washed up rock star from the '70s, his album titles include stuff like "Sea Shanties and Wet Panties".

Nothing spectacular, but it made me laugh a few times.  Sort of in the vein of Scary Movie, same crude humor, but it's not nearly as silly as those movies.  Pretty silly, but not that silly.

Thats funny I actually bought Maniac for $1 about a month ago. Still have to watch it.

UHF- Good, fun little movie, starring Weird Al Yankovic and Michael Richards amongst others.  Not to mention Kevin McCarthy of Invasion of The Body Snatchers fame.

Yes, an unheralded comedy classic!  I love the Yappy's Dog Treats scene and the old bum.

A CHRISTMAS STORY   **** out of ****
My favorite Christmas movie  of all time.  It never gets old.  Classic stuff.

THE REF  *** out of ****
Very underrated and I think that this has Denis Leary's best performance to date in it.  Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis shine as the married couple who almost succeed in driving Leary crazy.  Lags a bit but overall has quite a bit of funny stuff in it.

Dark Queen - sort of like a Cinemax After Dark film, but with only 1/10th as much sex.  So what would be the point of such a movie, you ask?  Well, that's a really good question.  This hot babe college professor is studying ESP, and there's an evil dude in a mental institution that has made some sort of breakthrough - he's got a secret formula that can let you read people's minds.  Hot babe is depressed because she's in love with her teaching assistant, but he's out boinking a cheerleader, so she drinks the secret potion.  She turns evil and begins killing people.  In a black leather S&M type outfit.  The script and the acting are Z-grade, I think half the actors were actually set builders or other crew members.  Lots of hot babes, and you'll see every one topless, so there's that. 

All Souls Day - After 2 or 3 prologues, we meet a young couple who are travelling through Mexico.  They have an accident and end up stuck in a small village.  Turns out there's zombies inhabiting the village, and they need a sacrifice.  The plot moves at a fairly agonizing pace, but I thought the characters were likable enough to keep me entertained.  Overall it was fairly okay.  Things learned:  All cheerleaders can do Kim Possible style cheer-fu. 

I love that the old bum asks for change, counts it out to a dollar, then gives Al a one dollar bill.

WTH is that? :bouncegiggle:

The bum was asking for change for a dollar rather than begging for change.  It's a brilliant joke.

It is a brilliant joke.  Al's underrated sometimes, in my opinion.  Between his album's, that movie, etc. he's got a lot of funny material.

UHF has one of my all-time favorite movie quotes:  "You get to drink from...THE FIRE HOOOOOOOOOOSE!"  :teddyr:

I liked Crazy Ernie.  "Club a seal to get a better deal.  That's right, I'm gonna club a seal to get a better deal."

Or Conan the Librarian, "Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System?"

Last night I watched WARNING from SPACE...an early Japenese sci-fi film. I assumed it would feature giant aliens from space.

Boy...was I WRONG!
Here's a pic of the aliens:
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l79/RCMerchant/945889131_824431ab73.jpg)

Now-the stpry is about aliens from space to save us from ourselves.All well and good. And no toungue in cheek is invloved. But the aliens are so STUPID looking and fake...it's hard not to laff at them waddling around!

Shrek- I love Shrek.  Gingerbread Man and Pinocchio are the most funny and underrated characters in the flick.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. 5/5:  Not much needs to be said about this classic, except that it may be the ultimate "guy" movie.  I started a thread about it here (http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,117324.0.html).

JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963). 4/5: Fun family fantasy flick, reasonably faithful to Greek mythology.  The main attraction is Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animation.  I watched this with a 7 and an 8 year old.  The 8 year old was a fan of Greek myth and stayed interested throughout; the 7 year old complained that the special effects were "bad" (damn CGI!) and left after the giant bronze titan appeared.

A CHRISTMAS STORY: This could (should) have been an unbearably saccharine nostalgic movie, but the humor redeems it and turns it into a classic.  Surprisingly rewatchable, in season.

Well after all this UHF talk I dusted off my copy and me and the Misses watch 3 imagination movies Christmas eve while waiting for Santa to do his jolly thing.

We watched...

UHF
Better off Dead
and the classic imagination film ...
The Christmas Story

Hardest we've laughed in a while, which does nothing to get the kids to sleep! (What?!, what's so funny? What are you doing in there? etc etc ... Go to sleep or Santa's going to skip this house!)

My most recent viewings.

Karate Bullfighter - Interesting movie about Mas Omaya the founder of Kyokushin Karate.  Sonny Chiba really does a good job in portraying his instructor Master Omaya.  It's notr dub which is good since it still holds some goodness of the film.  The camera work imo could have been better and some times the camera is all over the place. m It's violent, but it's not like other Martial arts films that are commonly seen. 

Battle Royale -   Excellent film, however though at times it's hard to watch.  Not as detailed as the book, but it's close to what the book has in it.  I would recommending reading the book first, as it gives you A LOT of background story that may not be in the film, such certain people's relationships in the book are giving a lot of depth to it. 

 

I loved Ed Wood.  I found it quite interesting to say the least.  My only complaints were that Jeffrey Jones couldn't pull off Criswell that well.  He just didn't jump out as Criswell to me.  I also felt that Sarah Jessica Parker was kinda wooden at times.  I really think that if the film would have been released today instead of 1994 I think it would have done really well.  The reason I think this is that more people know about Ed Wood and his "films" now then they did back in 1994. 

Honestly, I like this movie despite Sarah.  I've never been a fan of hers honestly, and can name this movie and Hocus Pocus as the only two I'll watch her in.  As far as the movie goes, I wish it was more well known, because when I mention it to people, they look blankly like, "What?"

It would've been a hit today I think, due in part to the fact that more people are aware of Ed's movies, and the fact that Johnny Depp is now 'bankable' as an actor, as opposed to being the odd co-star type he was then.  Now, between Pirates, Willy Wonka, Sweeny Todd he's broken that barrier, apparently.

For our Christmas night movie, we finally sat down and gave FRANKENHOOKER a look.

(http://www.badmovies.org/movies/frankenhooker/frankenhooker6.jpg)

What a fun film, and Andrew's review is a load of laughs as well.   :smile:

I watched Eastern Promises (*** and 1/2 out of ****) last night.  Very, very good film.  It's a nice mob thriller by David Cronenberg.  It's not his usual weird gross-out fare (although the killings in the movie are pretty graphic) but he hits this one out of the park.  Lots of twists, turns and tension.

I highly recommend this movie.  One of the best of '07.  (BTW, I watched it with a friend who is not a movie buff and he loved the hell out of it.)

Cannibal! The Musical

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4i3vw4Qwbwg

Watched a Double Feature dvd last nite...CIRCUS of FEAR with Christopher Lee and Klaus Kinski and WEB of the SPIDER with Tony Francious (whatever happened to him,anyway?) and Klaus Kinski as Edgar Allen Poe...meh. !st was kinda blah...second had a nice atmosphere...but was a convoluted mess. But...I only spent a dollar on the thing so...

Conan The Barbarian
I've never seen the whole thing start to finish.  My son bought it for xmas and he watched it on his own and loved it.  Then we watched it together and I started giving it the old MST3K treatment.  After that, the kid couldn't look at the movie in the same way.  He actually said, "I didn't realise how funny it really is!".  Then he started and we were in fits for the whole 2 hours.  Awesome way to spend an evening when there's nothing on telly.

Law And Order Criminal Intent Season One
Watched the first four episodes.  Apart from the fact it's a brilliant show and Vincent D'Onofrio is VERY yummy, I bought the box on sale for $25!!!!!  Normally these shows are $50 +.  So, majorly enjoyable all 'round.

I, Robot
Will Smith does a great job being himself and the scene when he's in the shower, I keep yelling, "turn around, turn around!" but he never does.  *sigh* Oh, well, it's still a great movie.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
I'm not a fan of artsy farsty movies and the same holds true with this one.  It's confusin and annoying, even though Jim Carrey is good in serious roles.  The ending was a little too abrupt for my tastes, but I couldn't tell you how it should have ended.  At the end, I just said, "huh?"  One of those films that doesn't really have a point.

Cypher
Rollicking adventure that had me glued to the telly.  Lucy Liu looked frightful in a short wig, but Jeremy Northam was brilliant as always.  It wasn't until nearly the very end that I sussed out what was going on.  Good value in my book.  Enjoyed it immensely.

Robots
Funny and well done.  Robin Williams was amusing, but not over the top which I appreciated.  Jennifer Coolidge as Aunt Fan was delightful as always.  Her voice really suited the character.  The animation was brilliant and I just loved the express public transport *lol*

Karate Bearfighter ** 1/2 out of ****

Decent film that hit the camp button late in the film.  The fight scenese were good and the acting is interesting as well.  The dialouge was odd at times, and it gave the impression that US military just wants to kick peoples ass when ever they get a chance.  The camp vaule of the film came when the main character had to fight a bear.  Well it's not a real bear, but a man in a bear costume.  It was still fun to watch, but it's not as good as the first.

I still have the last movie is the box set to watch, then I have my two Netflix rentals Leonard Part 6 and It's Pat the Movie to watch, so I'll watch them this weekend.  Plus I also have the Toxic Avenger coming on Saturday as well from Netflix.

Good show.  Slowly becoming my favorite of the Law and Orders.  Did you see the episode where he goes into the prison recently and acts crazy to see if the jail is really drugging prisoners and whatnot?  I hope they do another episode like that, cause they need to finish the story.

Just watched the WILD RIDE (1960) with a VERY young Jack Nicholson. And Jack plays an amoral, self centered hot-rodder and cop-killer! Not too shabby for a Z-budget movie...and Jack's first starring movie! Give it a look!  :thumbup:

 http://youtube.com/watch?v=3iRme1eR5Cs

So basically Jack Nicholson plays himself in this movie.   :wink:   :bouncegiggle:

Uhmmmm...yeah!  :bouncegiggle:

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back- Hilarious movie. 

The Trollenberg Terror (1958) (AKA: The Crawling Eye)

Deserves way better than the 4.0 rating it currently has at IMDB. A grand example of 1950s Sci-Fi as Forrest Tucker leads a team of scientists into battle with alien eyeball creatures capable of controlling certain people telepathically. Loaded with Lovecraftian style atmosphere, this one delivers the goods in terms of shocks and surprisingly gory thrills and is way ahead of its time (THE MIST owes this one big time just as one example). Overall I'd have to give it a **** out ***** only knocking it a point because it's ending feels somewhat tacked on and is in that way disappointing and of course, its cheap FX, are not always up to par even though there's an effectively chilling moment or two. Favourite moment: the little girl and the ball with the Crawling Eye peaking in.

Transformers (2007)

Well I went into this with low expectations given Michael Bay's past crappola efforts but this one proved a surprisingly entertaining, if somewhat mindless, popcorn summer blockbuster. It's a huge dumb comic book brought to life. Lots of action, explosions and surprisingly likable leads keep this afloat and of course it has giant honking robots which is always a plus! It's stupid yes and one could drive an Optimus Prime truck through its plot holes and lack of believability but nevertheless, pretty much shut off the old noggin aside from keeping a scorecard of various Transfromers handy, and this is not half bad entertainment. Plus it's got giant robots. Did I mention that? ** 1/2 out of *****

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

Basically an extra long episode of the series, one slighty better than usual from the series the last several years or so. However it ultimately disappoints because it tries to cram too much in to its running time in terms of characters making short cameo appearances which of course leaves one unsatisfied and craving more of said characters and also somewhat distracts from the film's basic overall plot. Its story too feels lifted from some other source to me although I can't place it off the top of my head or maybe it's just that it really kind of lacks overall in terms of originality. ** 1/2 out of ***** as it still has some decent laughs then and again.

Treasure Island (1950)

Highly entertaining Disney feature film should appeal to everyone who as a youth perhaps dreamed of pirates and adventures on the open seas. Robert Newton is perfectly cast into the role of Long John Silver, the cutthroat pirate who one cannot help but empathize with more and more as out story unfolds. Bobby Driscoll is also quite good as young Jim Hawkins, the brave young lad who finds himself tangling with a band of dastardly theiving pirates. This movie likely set up many of the stereotypes of pirates we have to this day and is highly entertaining even if it does require much suspension of disbelief and feels more like a TV adventure than a big screen movie. Still I'd have to give it a solid **1/2 out of *****.

Queen of Outer Space
Head of the Family
Dead and Rotten
Starship Troopers 2

Intermedio - four young people decide to buy a bunch of pot, and the deal goes down in some tunnels running beneath the US / Mexico border.  Little do they know (or maybe they do know?  Ah, who the hell cares) that the tunnels are inhabited by goofy looking CGI things, a really bored looking guy, and some kid that appears and disappears.  This is one baaaaaad movie, you could make a drinking game out of spotting all the continuity errors.  Edward Furlong (the kid from Terminator 2) has apparently spent all his time since that movie drinking and putting on weight.  His acting in this could best be described as bizarre.  Instead of acting like a scared and desperate young guy, he acts like a drug addict going through extreme withdrawals.  And listening to him hyperventilate every time he has to get up off his fat butt and walk three feet is just...kinda funny and sad I guess.  Cerina Vincent is in it, looking sexy as always.  I give her a B for effort, nobody could have done anything with this awful mess of a movie but at least she tried. 

Good show.  Slowly becoming my favorite of the Law and Orders.  Did you see the episode where he goes into the prison recently and acts crazy to see if the jail is really drugging prisoners and whatnot?  I hope they do another episode like that, cause they need to finish the story.
[/quote]

No, haven't seen that one yet.  Our free to air tv stations are complete bastards because they are always changing program days and times and if you don't have a paper guide, trying to find out what's on is a nightmare.

I'll just buy the DVDs and catch up that way.  I didn't even see the ep where Goren's arch nemesis Nicole's fate was decided by tv poll.  I assume she survived because I saw a bit of an ep later down the track where she came into it and kidnapped some young kid.

This is also my fave franchise of the L & O series.

I saw Edward Furlong in a movie where he gets sucked into an interactive video/tv game where he's not sure if he's awake or asleep.  It had aliens or monsters or something it it.  Can't remember the name, but it was a brilliant movie and I enjoyed it immensely.

20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

Classic Disney Adventure was the first live-action film from them made in the U.S. I believe. Has an all-star cast including Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre and James Mason. The Special Effects work and Set Design is top notch and overall, this is a very entertaining adventure with a somewhat epic scope. The battle with the giant squid though is the real show stealer here and really everything else that follows after that cannot help but feel somewhat anticlimatic in comparison. Plus this does feel just a tad overlong and a certain amount of Disney cuteness, particularly Nemo's pet seal Esmay, ultimately brings this down a notch or two IMO. James Mason gives a terrific performance as Nemo and Douglas and Peter Lorre are quite fun in their somewhat unlikely roles. ***1/2 out of *****

Karate for life *** 1/2 out of ****

This was a good finish for the Mas Oyama trilogy of movies.  More violent and more blood than previous films.  The dialouge is quite good, but some of the stuff I didn't like.  Like Oyama helping a bunch of war orphans seemed out of place.  The fight scenes were really good, and the director did a really good to show the infulence of the US military on Okinawa in the 1950's and some of our culture bleeding out in there.

 

Black Sheep- (2007) ***.  Any movie with killer sheep = greatness.

Eastern Promises - The Cronenberg movie about Russian mobsters in London. Good, but I liked it less than A History of Violence. Still brutal, absorbing and intense, but just lacked something for me to call it great instead of good. Effective use of violence, though, as always Cronenberg manages convey how ugly and unglamourous or exciting/titilating death and violence are.

Are You Scared? - cheap and stupid Saw ripoff with an obvious and unlikely plot twist that reminded me of a Lifetime Movie for Women. Dumb characters with awful dialogue to say in stupid unbelievable situations, it took the one girl how long to even remember to even think to use her cell phone? Who can tell if the actors are any good since all got to do was complain and scream?


Married 2 Malcolm - a cute, if slight comedy about a lovable bigamist in Blackpool, England married to two women who he loves equally. Reminds me of lots of US sitcoms in that both wives would be usually considered too attractive for him in real life. Both women become involved separately in an upcoming concert by Noddy Holder of the rock gorup Slade, and the husband leaps through comedic hoops trying to keep both wives satisfied and unaware of each other. Probably funnier if you're British and can appreciate some of the jokes that relate to regionalism, Slade and Holder being bigger names there than in the US (where they had two minor late career hits and are virtually unknown outside of music buff circles here, loved or hated by those music buffs) or digs at how drab and crude Blackpool is supposed to be. Is it like the UK version of Cleveland? Cast includes some familiar faces like comedienne Josie Lawrence from Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Mark Addy from The Full Monty and some others who's names I may not know but I've seen them in other UK films and TV shows. A decent enough little time waster I picked up in a grocery store discount rack. If nothing else you can make an excellent drinking game out of everytime the name "Noddy Holder" or an image from his Slade days appears on screen on posters, flyers, tickets, etc.

I have a couple of more but I'll check back.

Ghost Rider
Enjoyed this one immensely.  I could tell it was filmed in Australia.  I've never been to Texas, but there's no way you could ever mistake outback Victoria for the Texas countryside.  Still, it's a minor issue and I guess if you didn't know beforehand, you may not be able to tell.  But you can't fool an Aussie when it comes to our countryside!

I didn't know much about this movie when I started watching it - I was never a comic book fan.  I also deliberately avoided all mention of the movie so that I could enjoy it or not on my own.  So I was expecting to be entertained and I wasn't disappointed.

One little complaint:  I didn't think Eva Mendez was a good love interest for Nicholas Cage.  There wasn't much chemistry between them and she's not that great an actor.  Also, she's not overly attractive and I wish she would stop wearing those low cut tops that squish her boobs together.  They look fake (who knows, maybe they are?)  I guess that's not issue to the male population of moviegoers, but it irks me no end.  It's almost as though she using that look to mask the fact that she's not a good actor and not very attractive in the way that some Latina women are (Salma Hayek case it point - beautiful girl).

The special effects were well done and I was pleasantly surprise when Cage's head became a skull and caught on fire.  (I'll leave that inference to anyone who wants to make one!!)  But I'm glad it didn't stay on fire the whole movie, that would have been boring.  I loved the morphed motorbike and Cage looks uber-cool in black leather.  I also liked the way the story moved along at a fast pace.  He was very believeable as Johnny Blaze and I liked the way he played the guy a little flaky.  I also liked that fact that he embraced what was happening to him and used it to his advantage instead of spending the whole movie trying to get back to his normal, pre-Mephistopheles self.

I would give this 4 out of 5 stars for sheer entertainment value and the fact that he did away with all the bad guys in a firey storm of death.  A rollicking adventure all around.

The Night Stalker (1972)

Darren McGavin stars as ever-determined, irascible reporter Carl Kolchak, who's out to get the facts and his story out to the public despite the best efforts of seeming everyone around him, including his editor, the police, the District Attorney and seemingly everyone else to keep him in check.

This movie is just plain entertaining. It's fun, has great moments of chilling horror and suspense and a nice subtle sense of comedy in addition. It's colorful, lively and far better than one expects from a Television film effort. Of course it helps that those behind this one seemed to be less reigned in as to what they could do than perhaps most TV film productions are nowadays.  Also aside from McGavin's terrific lead performance, this is filled with great character actors such as Claude Akins, Kent Smith, Ralph Meeker and Charles McGraw. It even boosts great character actors in bit parts including the always entertaining Elisha Cook Jr. and Stanley Adams. The only off-putting element here is Carol Lynley as Kolchak's unlikely girlfriend Gail Foster. She just doesn't seem to fit in with the Kolchak character at all. Also the vampire villain feels a bit undeveloped but honestly I think they did the right thing keeping him mysterious and having him be a bit more like the vampires of legend, a little more akin to Nosferatu perhaps than Lugosi although they seemed to blend the two together a tad as well. It's interesting to note that when I was doing the "Best Of" Series (Voting on Genre film of the Year for each year), The Night Stalker beat out Solaryis in the popular vote to take top spot. ****1/2 out of *****

I just saw No Country for Old Men a short while ago, and it was an amazing film.  Very intense, and rather poetic.

I've also seen Juno and Sweeny Todd within the past week and I recommend them both.  Juno has a bit of an obnoxious soundtrack, and some of the dialogue sounds like the writer was trying really hard to be hip, but it's good.  Sweeney Todd is probably one of Tim Burton's best.

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE   *** out of ****.
While still not as great as the show was during it's 1st 9 seasons or so, this was still funnier than anything they've done in about the last 10 years.  I was surprised after the Family Guy "movie" that the Simpsons people actually made a movie with an actual story arc that went logically throughout the entire movie.   It does kind of run out of steam near the end but overall it's very funny stuff.

SHOOT 'EM UP   ***1/2 out of ****.
Should be the new definition of escapist action entertainment.  The movie literally never stops moving and approaches the level of absurdity of a cartoon many times, though that's more of an asset in this case than a liability.  Clive Owens is his usual great self, Monica Bellucci does what she does best (incredible physicality and sex appeal) and Paul Giamanti has never been given a chance to cut loose like he does here as the villain.   

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (4/5): Clint Eastwood inserts himself between two warring gangs in a lawless Mexican frontier town.  Entertaining but occasionally absurd, and really a Leone/eastwood warm-up for the great spaghetti westerns to follow.  The scene where 'the man with no name" makes the desperadoes apologize to his "mule" is a classic and set the tone for the character.

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (5/5):  Two bounty hunters (Eastwood & Lee Van Cleef)  track a bloodthirsty, bankrobbing bandito, and each other.  A fantastic adventure full of twists, double-crosses and oneupmanship.  Also probably the funniest of the "Dollars" movies.  The scene where Eastwood and Van Cleef demonstrate their marksmanship using each others' hats is completely over the top, but Leone sells it.  This scene is what made me fall in love with Leone's westerns in the first place.     

I've yet to see this, considering how big a fan of the show I was.  Still am, but unfortunately with work I don't get to watch it much, cause I don't get home from work on Sunday until about 10.

Overall though, worth picking up?

Godzilla - Destroy All Monsters and Godzilla -v- The Cosmic Monster

This was a double disc feature.  What can I say?  I enjoyed the hell out of these movies and my son and I had riotous fun poking holes in everything!

I didn't realise that the cosmic monster was actually MechaGodzilla.  That was one well done metal suit!  Unfortunately due to tiredness from work, I feel asleep half way the cosmic monster and didn't get to find out what happened(!) but I'll rewatch it tonight

These are awesome B-movies.  Sometimes all we could do was say "huh?" at the plot holes and dodgy continuity, but that's the fun of the whole thing I guess.

An amusingly good time was had by all and I will definitely be buying these babies on DVD/

The Toxic Avenger -*** 1/2 out of ****

A true b movie classic.  It was funny at times and had all the right aspects to make it a b movie.  The only problem I had was the blind girl who you can obviously tell she is not blind.

I have two movies to watch tonight It's Pat and Leonard Part 6.

Watched the REAPING last night. Meh...
It was ok,I guess...but not very suspenseful....some of the visuals were interesting. The river of blood was the coolest thing for me. The rest left me blah. The only interesting charecter for me was the preist in Africa. And he was barely in the film! I recognized him (can't remember the actors name off hand) as the detective tracking down the cannibal serial killer in CITIZEN X.

 And of course it was left wide open for a part 2. Was one made yet?  :question: Not that I'll be in any rush to see it.

 Soon-very soon...I'll be able to finally see PLANET TERROR-as Angel (Tara Sue's daughter) asked her boss at the video store to order it! YAY!  :teddyr:

Stephen Rea? Good actor, even in bad films.

It's Pat * 1/2 out of ****

It's just bad, but it's kinda funny as well.  The whole movie based on one simple thing is Pat a Man or a Woman.  The dialog is corny at times and some of the sterotypes are just werid too.  I liked it, but it's not my favorite film out there.

It's Pat is a movie I would say is definitely not a better SNL produced flick.  Then again, when they put out Blues Brothers and Wayne's World, that's a lot to live up to.

Ghostbusters- ***/****.  Bill Murray has so many quotable and classic lines in this.  Very funny flick.

Batman-Jack Nicholson rocks as Joker.

"Casshern" (2004)
Highly stylized Japanese science fiction film with an array of robots, mechanical apparatus, and super humans having swordfights.  I really liked this movie, both in the visuals (not always true for completely stylizing the film) and the message - the latter of which is brought to fruition by a plot that was interconnected beyond what I had thought.  And it has a very thoughtful message about war, hate, and selfishness.  Four slimes, perhaps five.

"Slaughter" (1972)
He's a black ex-Green Beret out to make the mob pay for killing his mother.  The best part is when he teaches the nervous white detective, "This is how you pick up a fine white woman."  The woman in question is Stella Stevens.  Seeing her, I wonder if she was the template for Mrs. Thistlewhite in "The Year Without A Santa Claus."  If so, Ignatius Thistlewhite's mom has got it going on!  Three slimes.

The bar was set quite high, so there was a HIGH chance that a movie based off a SNL skit after BB and WW would not be as good.

(http://www.doorfromhell.com/thelair/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/fido_l200705241819.jpg)

Fido - a new zombie flick set in the 1950's and it is FUNNY!

First off some alien thing happens that when people die they turn into zombies, along come ZOMCOM that tames the zombies with electronic collars and turns them into domestic helpers. Well the Robinson's are the only family on the block without a zombie so Mrs Robinson (Carrie-Anne Moss who's smokin' hot in this flick) goes out and get a zombie, that her zombie fearing and hating hubby (Dylan Baker) is none to pleases with this, but who can you turn down Carrie-Anne Moss in a little red dress with a 3 olive martini waiting for you, well you can't.
So zombie guy stays much to Mr. Robinson dismay and everyone is happy, Little Timmy decides zombie guy needs a name and calls him "Fido" (Billy Connolly)
Well this and that happen until one day Fido's collar malfunctions and he eats the mean old neighbor women Mrs Henderson and the antics begin.

Will they figure out it was Fido that ate Mrs Henderson? Will Timmy and Mrs Robinson protect him from the zombie hunters? What will happen next?

You'll just have to watch Fido to find out!!

Easily 4.5 out of 5  :thumbup:

This is a must have flick and is bound to be a quirky movie classic!

Leonard Part 6 * out of ****

Just awful to watch.  Animals being controlled by vegetarians and killing people is just stupid.  The idea of them terrorist being afraid of meat products was also stupid.  There wasn't really any funny parts, just lots of dumb areas.  It was painful to watch, but I managed to watch it to the end.

Airplane Ii: The Sequel ** 1/2 of ****

Funny at times but not as good as the first Airplane was.  Jokes are the same as before and the returning characters act the same as before.

The Night Strangler (1973)

Darren McGavin returns as Kolchak once again given the earlier popularity and success of "The Night Stalker" TV movie. This time, Dan Curtis, who was producer on "Night Stalker" takes over the directing reigns.  It starts off great and all the humor and those small moments featuring great old stars and character actors the likes of John Carradine, Margaret Hamilton, Wally Cox, Al Lewis and Scott Brady prove terrific fun. Personally I prefer the tighter paced and shorter "Night Stalker" film. This feels a bit overlong, especially featuring too many scenes of people walking dark streets (not that it isn't appropriate for building suspense, it's just done a bit too much here to the point it really feels like padding to make the film's time run its full 90 minutes). Plus this relies a little too much on the tired element of having the villain explain all his actions to the hero. I should also add the story is basically just a repeat of "The Night Stalker" with some slight alterations here and there and personally I feel this one's villain never truly feels as terrifying as the one in the Night Stalker although the character is perhaps more fully realized here. My favourite moments here actually feature Kolchak and his interactions with Simon Oakland's Tony Vincenzo (which would also prove one of the most entertaining aspects of the follow-up TV series), Scott Brady's Captain Schubert and Wally Cox's Mr. Beery, a small man who suddenly finds himself unexpectedly important in Kolchak's world. Still better than average for a TV film. ***1/2 out *****

Sadly, you'd think with the 14/15 movies they've done, they'd actually be worth watching.  Wayne's World was great, Blues Brothers was great.  Beyond that, Coneheads was tolerable but nothing to write home about.  Beyond that, they've got stuff like Stuart Saves His Family and It's Pat.  Ladies Man I felt was funny, but didn't compare to Wayne's World or Blues Brothers.

SNL skits are usually 1-2 joke affairs that struggle to be entertaining for their five minutes slot.  I think it's remarkable that they've produced ANY good movies (BB, WW) from such less-than-promising stock.

I think it's kinda remarkable they've really produced any movies.  I love SNL, but to think a five minute skit can last for 2 hours is kinda pushing it.  I think Mike Myers is funny and did a good job with Wayne's World.  The Austin Powers franchise was kinda annoying, but I much preferred the Dr. Evil character and wished the movie was kinda just about him.

Ernest Goes to Africa- Ernest P. Worrell stumbles upon a valuable piece of property, gets kidnapped because they think he's a secret agent, and winds up in the jungles of Africa.

I liked it, but it's not the best Ernest flick.  A few laugh out loud moments though.

JACOB'S LADDER  ***1/2 out of ****
Easily my favorite Adrian Lyne film and my favorite Tim Robbins performance to date.  A truly haunting film and (depending on your outlook on life) uplifting at the same time in an odd way.  I remember the first time I saw this film and it scared the living hell out of me.  Ending is a bit abrupt but overall it's a terrific landmark film IMO.

Last night we watched DEATH RACE 2000:

(http://www.badmovies.org/movies/deathrace/deathrace2-ic.jpg)

 :cheers:

Saw 1408 last night-One of the BEST movies I've seen inna looong time!  :cheers:

And I finally seen GRINDHOUSE!!!!

PLANET TERROR- Wow. So over the top gruesome...what's not to love. ONE quibble-the ripping and burning of the film was almost as annoying as when it happened to me in real life at the movies.
 Otherwise...great. Loved seeing ol' Tom Savani up on screen! And surronded by such lovely gore and body parts!

As for DEATH PROOF...I loved it too. I can see where some might be felt let down by comparing it to the first film...expecting more of the same ultra violence of PT,but this is a different kind of creature all it's own. A great tribute to all those Terror on the Highway and FASTER p***y CAT type movies! Kurt Russell was priceless!!!!

I wish they would make MACHETE into a REAL movie!

Soylent Green **** out of ****

I already know how it ended before I watched it, but I had to watch this classic film.  I really enjoyed it a lot and now it's become one of my favorite films.  The script was well written and the Nature scene at the center was just amazing. 

Sunshine **1/2 out of ****

I liked 2/3rds of this movie.  It has a great old school style sci-fi plot and characters.  The special effects are top notch and (IMO) rival 2001 insofar as showing planets and ships moving in space like the probably do in real life.  The ship design is spot-on.  The tension in the movie comes from the tension between the characters and the director plays it straight up...asking the audience what would they do in these quasi-realistic situations.

And then they decide to tack on a scary monster at the end apropos of nothing.  They never explain it and it doesn't make sense because of the "realism" in the rest of the story.  In story about a ship flying towards the sun, the "villain" should be the intense heat and radiation from the sun...not some out-of-focus boogeyman (you never really get to see it because the director decided to make the monster all shaky and out of focus).  That really dragged the film down for me.

I recommend it but be warned about the WTF factor when the monster arrives to chase nubile crew members around the Icarus.

Spoilers Ahead!!


I agree there Oldskool.

I trie really hard to like the movie.  I was fully expecting it to be a favourite.

It was good until the bad guy showed up.  I was expecting it to be like Alien or Event Horizon.  My son loved this one, but even he wanted to know how the guy survived alone for 7 years before the rescue.  And I kept expecting them to show the guy up close and hideous.  Sure he was burned, but you barely got to see it.  And what's the deal with making disfigured/retarded/inbred villains super strong and super agile?

ZODIAC  (director's cut)  **** out of ****
David Fincher's best film to date and just an all around fantastic film.  It's slow pace and attention to the smallest detail won't be for everybody, but I found it to be fascinating stuff. I had read the book Zodiac years ago but it was something to see it all made into a film.    A magnificent cast and the murders are genuinely unnerving and unsettling at times.

I've been on a Full Moon kick these days, as I got several box sets from them lately. I've been working my through them, jumping from one set to another. All ratings are out of a possible ***** (5). Some I am seeing for the very first time, others for the first time in many, many years.

Shadowzone ****
Netherworld **
Seed People ***
Bad Channels **
Dollman ****
Demonic Toys ****
Doctor Mordrid ****
Crash and Burn ****
Subspecies ****
Arcade *

I bought every BOX Set they had when they were half price with free shipping in Dec, I got them quick, but Subspecies and Trancers were on back order. I haven't started watching them yet, I still have dozens of other movies I haven't watched yet.

But I'm watching now ...

Wishmaster I, II, III, IV

****SPOILERS*****

I was getting a Event Horizon vibe from the last third of the movie, too.  Having the "monster" be the captain of the Icarus One made no sense...because even if he survived 7 years on his own ship (horribly burned and insane) how could he have sabotaged the airlock and made it on board the Icarus Two...and not be noticed by the other crew members.

Plus, I don't know why they had to go back to the Icarus One right away.  Why not complete the mission first and if it fails, go back and get the other nuke.

However, seeing these special effects makes me want to see a remake of The Black Hole (minus the cutesy robots) in the worst way.

DUCK, YOU SUCKER (1971): A bandito (Rod Steiger) and an Irish terrorist and master dynamiter (James Coburn) cross paths during the Mexican revolution of 1910.  An attempt by Leone to remake his spaghetti western style to fit a lighter buddy movie template, against a backdrop of terrible slaughter; there a constant problems achieving a consistent tone.  I started a thread here (http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,117508.0.html).  LESSON LEARNED: James Coburn should not be allowed to have theme music. 

2/5 slimes.

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994):  In 1947 an innocent man wrongly accused of murder is sent to a penitentiary full of life-affirming symbolism and free of racial tension.  Well-crafted and engaging, especially in the third act when it takes on the character of a thriller with clues dropped earlier coming together in a truly satisfying resolution.  Easily one of the top ten movies of 1994, but I'm baffled that it's #2 in the IMDB's all time movies.  People need to see more movies!  LESSON LEARNED: Morgan Freeman has a secret power that prevents characters in historical dramas from noticing or acknowledging that he is of African descent.  (see also: UNFORGIVEN).

4/5 slimes.

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946): Slightly overlong biopic about the life of songwriter/composer Jerome Kern. Its best moments come from the musical performances of such stars as Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbusy, Lena Horne, Judy Garland, Tony Martin performing music Kern had written for some of his fantastic stage plays including SHOWBOAT, LEAVE IT TO JANE, OH BOY and SALLY. The story of Kern's life ultimately proves far less captivating than his music although Robert Walker does well in the role and this movie proves to be for the most part an uplifting, positive experience. *** out of *****

Godzilla (1998) 3/5

I'm guessing that everyone knows the plot: a giant lizard/dinosaur rampages through a large city, destroying famous landmarks and asphalt roads in abandon. This one, though, is the infamous Roland Emmerich-Dean Devlin production, a remake of the original Japanese Gojira film. In this one, an irraditated iguana swims from the French Polynesia islands to New York City in order to nest, and a bunch of scientists and reporters have to stop it.

Anyways. I saw this movie at the movies back in '98, so that might explain why I don't really understand why people hate it so much. I watched it again mostly for the nostalgia factor.

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie- A sequel film to the movie "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie."  Basically, a space pirate wants to marry an evil warlord, so she kidnaps a wizard to open the Nemesis triangle.  Then she kidnaps two former Power Rangers, who happen to still be friends with one or two of the current rangers, and a chase ensues between the Rangers and Divatox. 

I gotta say, the villain and the female rangers are HOT.

I saw most of Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster on AMC last night.  Insanely bad, but amusing.  I liked the apparent disregard of night and day.

Class of Nuke 'em High ** 1/2 out of ****

Decent film, but not one of my favorites.  The breasts shots were to say the least interesting.  It was nice to see how the Power Plant covered up the accident like nothing ever happened.

The Medicine Man (1930): Betty Bronson stars Mamie Goltz, a young girl hoping to, along with her baby brother Buddy (Billy Butts), escape the influence of their horribly abusive shopkeeper father (played by E. Alyn Warren). When a medicine show run by Dr. John Harvey (Jack Benny is an unlikely role) comes to town, she hopes this might provide a way of escape for them both. This film wasn't terribly good and is a pretty creaky early talkie but E. Alyn Warren's portrayal as the abusive father should prove memorable for most bad movie fans. ** out of *****

Disorder in the Court (1936): Three Stooges short. The trio were certainly at their best here. In this story, they get called as witnesses in a murder trial. Memorable chaos and hijinks are the result. Curly has a great bit on the witness stand and then later with a water hose while the "intelligent, broad-minded" jury also provides some hilarious moments as does the attorney who keeps losing his toupee. **** 1/2 out of *****

Malice in the Palace (1949): Another Three Stooges short, this one a much later one featuring Shemp. Here the comedy tends to feel a lot more forced especially the bit in the palace with the Sultan of Schmo. The best bit comes earlier with Larry as a chef who everyone mistakenly comes to believe has cooked the restaurant's cat and dog for dinner. While this scene is disturbing on some levels, it's always clear to the viewer the cat and dog are actually unharmed even if it's not to the characters in the scene. A well executed bit. ** 1/2 out *****

Brideless Groom (1947): And yet another Three Stooges short, again featuring Shemp. Of all those featuring Shemp I've seen, this is my favourite performance by him in a Stooges short. The basic plot is that Shemp must get married by 6 o'clock that very evening if he's to inherit the half a million dollars a rich uncle left him in his will. So Shemp sets out to get himself a bride but finds it a tougher road than expected, that is until they learn of his inheritance money. Best bits here involve Shemp shaving, Shemp and Moe in a telephone booth and Larry on piano as accompaniment to Shemp's voice-training session. Also the sequence where Shemp is mistaken as Cousin Basil and its outcome proves hilarious.  *** 1/2 out *****

Let's Get Tough! (1942): Propoganda pro-American war effort film that came out in 1942 has the East Side Kids getting tough against any Japanese they spot in their own neighborhood when they learn they're too young to enlist. Ultimately they learn they were mistaken in their mistrust of some individuals but also happen to stumble across a spy ring they then set out to bust. The print of this film on the Family Classics Movie Pack is missing 8 minutes or so of footage which makes one wonder what's been cut out, quite possibly some jingoistic remarks given the time. The film is harmless enough in its fashion although some may well take offense given how innocent Asians really did get singled out during the Second World War. Overall though, it's a pretty generic effort and both Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall would have better moments, the best of which tend to come here when they ad-lib. ** out *****

Gamera vs. Gaos- Can't go wrong with this folks.  Giant turtle fighting a giant bat.   :thumbup:

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954): Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson star as a pair of tragic, lovestruck Americans who fall in love in Paris following the end of World War II. Johnson's character, a newspaper correspondent, is haunted by the fact he can never seem to get that first novel published while Taylor's character is youthful and wants only to live each day to the fullest. The film glosses over bits and pieces of their lives together using a flashback as the key means of accomplishing this. At times, it seems a bit too melodramatic in terms of its emotional presentation and really too much of the story is quickly brushed over and not examined in enough depth but there was a lot of ground to cover here and no doubt they wanted a tighter paced film. Overall it's a pretty good movie with some quality performances from Van Johnson, Elizabeth Taylor, Donna Reed as Taylor's sister who's disppointed Johnson didn't pick her over Taylor, Walter Pidgeon as the girls' father who also embraces the live every day as though it were your last philosophy and finally Eva Gabor and Roger Moore as infidelity temptation for the married couple. *** out of *****

Jane Eyre (1934): Stagey early version of classic Charlotte Brontë novel stars Virgina Bruce as Jane Eyre and Colin Clive (of FRANKENSTEIN fame) as Edward Rochester. While not a great adaptation of the novel, this movie focuses on select elements in the story to cover (showing us glimpses of Jane's life before the orphanage and then as a teacher in it before briskly moving along to her life as a governess assigned to care for the ward of Rochester) and in that way never fills completely whole or complete, its ending also feels somewhat abrupt and doesn't quite match the expectations it builds up in its viewing audience and no doubt will disappoint many in that regard. Also our leads prove somewhat miscast. Nevertheless, I have to admit to enjoying this one at times. I felt there was some good humor at work in some of the early scenes featuring young Jane and later when she stands up to David Torrence's Mr. Brocklehurst at the orphanage and also on her way to Thornfield Hall that serves to make Bruce's character very likable. Also there's some appeal to the way the romance is presented here even if it is somewhat fanciful. And I wouldn't be surprised if some horror/mystery fans didn't enjoy the terrible secret of the house and the way it gets presented, almost like something out of an Horror film. Actually the film does have that feel on occasion. Honestly had they not called this JANE EYRE, given it really is a terrible adaptation in terms of that novel, but changed some of the names and identities, it might be a bit more highly regarded. ** 1/2 out of *****

A Star is Born (1937): A young country girl named Ester Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) arrives in Hollywood filled with dreams of becoming a famous movie starlet. However, she gets nowhere until she's noticed by famous movie star Norman Maine (Fredric March), a performer on his way down in terms of popular appeal. The two fall in love but just as Ester's star, under the stage name Vicki Lester begins to rise, Maine's begins to fade.

The best thing about this film is the performance given by Fredric March as actor Norman Maine. He nails the inner emotional turmoil going on inside his character and makes him always sympathetic to the viewer even as Maine falls in and out of sobriety. It's Maine's character that proves most interesting to the viewer here as March completely steals the film away from star Janet Gaynor.

Gaynor doesn't prove quite as appealing or convincing in her lead role as Ester Blodgett/Vicki Lester and honestly it's hard to see why the public should favor her so. Maybe this was to symbolize the fickleness of the public in that they should prefer a pretty new face over a talented older one. Who knows? Nevertheless Gaynor just doesn't ever prove as appealing here in her role as she should. *** out **** stars.

Terminator 3- Not as good as Judgment Day in my opinion, but I liked it.

Hellraiser I've been familiar with Pinhead and his boys for awhile, but this was the first time I've actually seen the movie.
Could have gotten a better actress as the woman who kept seducing people though. Then again, she was attracting middle aged buisnessmen so, meh.

The Racketeer (1929): A beautiful, down and out former social débutante named Rhoda Philbrooke (Carol Lombard), who fell out of favor when she left her wealthy husband for a musician, is helped by a racketeer/mob boss named Mahlon Keane (Robert Armstrong), a man who seems to find his only real happiness in helping others with his ill gotten gain. Rhoda needs help to cure her musician Tony Vaughan (Roland Drew)'s alcohol addiction.

Not surprisingly the story soon turns into something of a romantic triangle cliché as Keane falls in love with Rhoda too. As early talkies go, this movie is better done than most. It moves pretty briskly and is an interesting curio in that it shows so much sympathy to the plight of a divorced débutante and an unhappy, unsatisfied gangster boss. Overall though, it's never credible enough to be fully satisfying but still its story makes for some good melodrama. **1/2 out of ***** stars.

If you watch the scence when Curly is playing with his gum on the Stand...he gives the jury box (and us,the audiance ) the Finger...not once,but twice!!!  :bouncegiggle:

Gulliver's Travels (1939): Lemuel Gulliver, his ship wrecked in a fantastic storm, washes ashore on the island of Lilliput, inhabited by people so tiny that Gulliver is a giant in their eyes. Soon Gulliver finds himself entangled in a war between Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu, all brought about because the two kings of these lands couldn't decide which song was to be sung at the wedding of their two beloved children, who happen to be deeply in love with one another.

The animation is often breathtaking here especially when it focuses on the fairytale like romance between Prince David and Princess Glory. Unfortunately we never fully learn their back story or get to see much of them at all except when it's absolutely necessary to advance the plot. The rotoscoping process used for Gulliver is also fascinating to watch both in terms of its historical significance and the interesting visual impression of realism it creates on screen.

However Jonathan Swift's satirical story is almost completely sacrificed here in favor of fairytale fantasy which arguably borrows more from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet than it does Gulliver's Travels. Its main focus also is on the wrong character, a town crier named Gabby who isn't particularly appealing to the viewer. Too many of the other far more interesting and fun characters get sacrificed to make room for him. Actually the best fun here comes the two kings and their interactions with one another not to mention the hijinks that goes on between Belfuscu spies Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch. Gulliver himself is reduced to friendly giant peacemaker. Prince David does get a great moment towards the end. Of course, it would have had far more impact if the viewer was actually made to care about him. **1/2 out of *****

Managed Money (1934): Mary Lou (Shirley Temple)'s older brother Sonny (Frank Coghlan Jr.) wants desperately to go to a coveted military school along with his buddy Sidney but his Dad cannot afford it. This doesn't deter Sonny however who hatches up a scheme to go prospecting for gold so his Dad will have money to pay for his education at the institute. Mary Lou, ever getting into trouble, decides to stow away in the back of Sonny's old car.

This whole short is built on and relies on the prospect of Temple's being cute enough to entertain most viewers and get a laugh because there's sure very little else here to really laugh about. Temple's meeting with the crazy "gold prospecter" in the desert is more often uncomfortable than funny and all attempts made here at comedy feel far too forced to be the least bit effective. Only required viewing if you like to see a young Shirley Temple being cute. ** out of *****

MASTER WITH CRACKED FINGERS [AKA TEN FINGERS OF DEATH and many others] (1971):  Evil kung fu ninjas kill Jackie Chan's father and years later... well, you know the rest.  Comic kung fu sequences include a man defeating his opponent by passing gas on his fists.  Chan's first movie: his athleticism is top-notch but he hadn't developed his on-screen charisma in this standard chop-socky that drags whenever there's no fighting on the screen.  2/5.  LESSON LEARNED: If you defeat the kung fu master who killed your father, you win a large blue flag.

THE SKYDIVERS (MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 version):  Yes, Coleman Francis (THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS) tried to make an exploitation film centering around skydiving.  "Seems like they forgot to have things happen in this movie,"  Mike sagely observes, but the few things that do happen are depressing---multiple affairs, joyless sex, and a murder by way of acid in the divers chutes that seems motivated by boredom as much as by badness.  This badly acted mix of boredom punctuated by senseless tragedy seems too much like real life for me; I wouldn't want to sit through Coleman's existential nightmare without the aid of wisecracking bots.  Host segments include the swing choir competition, Crow accidentally sawing himself in half, Crow hanging himself up by his jock strap, Crow being strafed by Tom.  4/5.  LESSON LEARNED: "Sex for sundries is fun!"     

Sleeping Dogs - Don't know how many of you are familiar with the works of Lloyd A Simandl, but he's filmed some scenes and used them in about four or five movies now.  In this one, set in the future, there's a guy who is sort of a low-rent James Bond type, except he's a jewel thief.  In the future, emeralds are used for currency.  Anyhow, the bad guy runs some sort of illegal emerald processing warehouse (?), and to process the stones he's got these girls.  They wear some sort of gag that needs an electronic key to unlock, and a matching bikini bottom.  And a really thin T-shirt.  So yeah, um...where was I?  The James Bond dude steals some emeralds and one of the girls tags along with him.  There's a big gunfight and they hide in a freight container.  The cops catch the bad guy and put him on a spaceship, headed towards a prison on the moon of some planet.  Well, wouldn't you know it, the freight container ends up on the same spaceship!  So our two protagonists fight the bad guys and run around on this ship for the rest of the movie.  It's bad, but it's one of those low budget things that at least tosses in some occasional T&A because they know full well that the "action" isn't going to make anyone buy this.   The exact same emerald girls and all the spaceship footage can also be seen in Lloyd's other movies, such as Lethal Target, Last Stand and Fatal Conflict.  One of those movies also includes every single special effect shot from one of the Xtro movies.  Apparently the guy is really into recycling, good for the environment you know.

Sounds like a cut-rate Andy Sidaris.  This could be promising. 

The General (1927): Buster Keaton stars in this classic silent film, which he also helped write and direct, as Johnny Gray, engineer on the General, a train that runs the railroad throughout the South. When the Civil War moves into his territory, Johnny wishes to enlist along with his main squeeze's father and brother. However finds he cannot because they consider him more valuable to the South as an engineer aboard his train. Eventually, when Union soldiers, disguised as Confederates steal his General, Johnny takes off in pursuit after them and soon finds himself one man against an army of Union soldiers!

With Buster Keaton involved in a silent era film, you know it's more than likely going to deliver the laughs and this does aplenty. Never does it fail to amuse even when it's slowly building up to its next big laugh. Plus this also has thrills, excitement, romance, and all the elements you could ever want in any action thriller all with a lead whose so funny and ingeniously entertaining that it's hard to take one's eyes off of him even when he's just sitting around doing nothing. His expressions and body language insure we always have a good idea of what's going through his mind and his heart at practically all times making this arguably one of the best films ever made. The only issue with the copy I own in the Family Classics 50 Movie Pack from Treeline is the score seems all wrong. In fact, the Blue Danube is even used at one point?! ***** out of *****

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of The Ooze- Turtles are homeless, living with April.  Shredder returns, finds out about the mutagen that transformed the turtles and steals the last cannister, hoping to use it to create new mutants.  A series of battles ensues, with Vanilla Ice rapping a song and Shredder using the ooze on himself to grow about 3 feet, bringing his height to like, 7'.  Overall a good movie.

The Kid (1921): Charlie Chaplin is a Tramp in this one who suddenly finds himself unexpectedly saddled with the unwanted responsibility of looking after an orphaned child. At first resistant to such an idea, the Tramp eventually comes to love and appreciate the child's happy presence in his life, an otherwise dark and dreary existence. However things get complicated when the child's birth mother comes looking for him.

This enjoyable comedy romp also has lots of drama and delivers not only laughs but gut-wrenching sad moments and delightfully happy ones. This isn't just comedic silliness but deals with real world serious issues such as poverty demonstrating how love can surpass most any bounds and/or limitations. Jackie Coogan as the five-year old version of the kid is an absolute delight and plays off of Charlie and his Tramp character wonderfully. Just a terrific job from a young talent who never once becomes annoying or irritating to the viewing audience as so many children in films often seem to do. *** out of ***** stars.

Shock (1946)

Vincent Price plays a psychiatrist named Dr. Cross who, in the beginning, has a fight with his wife and kills her with a blow to the head. This takes place in a hotel room. A young woman named Janet Stewart is waiting for her husband in her suite because she hasn't seen him in years, and she witnesses the murder on a balcony. She goes into shock and collapses with her eyes wide open. Her husband comes in the next day to find her in that state and calls a doctor. The doctor confesses that there's nothing he can do, so he recommends a psychiatrist. Dr. Cross is called in and discovers that she may have seen him kill his wife. She is sent to his sanitarium and left to his mercy. He is having an affair with another woman named Elaine, and Elaine finds out about the witness, Janet, so she starts putting pressure on Dr. Cross in a way that reminded me of Lady Macbeth. Will he become a tragic hero, or will he avoid punishment?

It was a good movie. My copy wasn't the best quality, but I'm happy that I saw it. It wasn't scary, but it was thrilling. If you like the story of Macbeth, you will probably enjoy this one.

Invisible Ghost (1941)

Charles Kessler's wife is supposably dead, but sometimes at night he sees her outside the window and it makes him insane. Through his insanity he is driven to commit murder. There have been several murders in his house over the years, and he is oblivious as to who's the killer. He genuinely wants to find the culprit, and because he doesn't know it's himself, an innocent man is tried and hanged. Charles Kessler is played by Bela Lugosi.

It's almost comical when he goes insane. His eyes bug out, his arms become outstretched and he shambles towards his next victim. Strangling is always the preferred method of homicide. If your arms are outstretched anyway, why not use them? I found that highly amusing. Despite the madness, the viewer is set up to sympathize with Mr. Kessler. He may have been a murderer, but he was the last one to find out about it. It's tragic.

One of my favorite characters was Evans the Butler, played by Clarence Muse. I admired him for telling his story about Ralph Dickson and the maid. It was the right thing to do. I like how he was treated so well by the family. That is probably what kept him alive for so long. The other two victims seemed to have it coming. Had Mr. Kessler killed Evans or his daughter, the ending would have been less tragic in a way. Perhaps it would have been a different, convoluted kind of tragedy. I am thankful that they kept up the simplicity.

It was an interesting film. Bela Lugosi's performance was quite good, despite being comical at times. The warmth and feeling coming from his character when the insanity was absent made me smile.

School Of Rock- Jack Black is hilarious in this movie.  He basically gets kicked out of his band right before a battle of the bands, and takes the opportunity to teach at a school so he could get the kids to be his 'band.'  Cute movie.

Little Nicky- Adam Sandler is Nicky, the 'nice' son of the devil, played by Harvey Keitel.  Rodney Dangerfield is Lucifer, Reese Witherspoon is his mom, an angel in Heaven.  Not a lot of people seem to like it, but I thought it was downright hilarious.  The cameos include Carl Weathers (reprising his Happy Gilmore character), Quinten Tarantino, Henry Winkler, Ozzy Osbourne, and Rob Schneider.

Spy Hard- 1996 movie with Leslie Nielsen as a spy, who's long thought dead enemy, played by Andy Griffith, returns with no arms and kidnaps an agent of the government.  I felt it was a pretty decent flick.  Might not have compared to Naked Gun or Airplane, but Leslie carries the flick and is pretty hilarious in it.  Hard to believe he started off doing drama and horror flicks.  Plus, I loved the cameos by Weird Al Yankovic and Hulk Hogan, as well as Mr. T and Ray Charles. :smile:

Long John Silver (1954): "Argh! A Land Lubber I'll Never Be!!"

Robert Newton returns once again to his famous role from TREASURE ISLAND, that of Long John Silver. Once more he chews the scenery with gusto and is just grand fun to watch in this particular role any time you can catch him.

This time Long John sets out to save young Jim Hawkins (played by Kit Taylor who sadly doesn't possess the memorable screen presence that his predecessor Bobby Driscoll put into the role) from a cutthroat pirate named "El Toro" Mendoza (Lloyd Berrell) but also added into the mix are a slightly more memorable crew of pirates following after Long John's lead and Long John's frequently comedic interactions with his main squeeze Purity Pinker (Connie Gilchrist), who has her eyes firmly set on marriage and settling down the old sea Captain. Things become truly adventurous when the band of pirates set out for a return to Treasure Island and meet up with some most unexpected surprises and obstacles along the way.

In many ways, this unofficial sequel to the classic Walt Disney film, has a more gritty, real down to Earth feel about it although it really adds little new to the mix. Still any boy who ever dreamed of pirates and searching for lost treasure should find much to enjoy here. Great fun overall, Newton is just a pure delight to watch in this entertaining, surprisingly well-written and executed boys fantasy brought to life. *** out of ***** stars.

The Scarlet Letter (1934): In 1642 Puritan America, a woman named Hester Prynne (Colleen Moore) is forced to wear a mark of shame, a Scarlet Letter "A" on her chest after being found guilty of adultery after bearing a child two years after her husband disappeared thought lost at sea. The truth is known to only two others, the town's beloved Reverand Dimmesdale (Hardie Albright) who happens to be in reality secretly the child's father and Hester's returned husband Dr. Roger Chillingworth (Henry B. Walthall), who assumes that identity rather than be shamed by a cheating wife. Chillingworth is determined to gain a measure of revenge by trying to make the lives of Hester and the Reverand as miserable as he possibly can.

While this movie may be faithful to its source material, it's overall a dreary, melodramatic bore for most of its running time. Albright's sometimes hammy performance as Dimmesdale seems particularly overdone. Moore does try as Hester Prynne but ultimately the role proves fairly plain, simple and unmemorable overall. Only those comedic bits featuring Alan Hale and William Kent added here and there to lighten the mood makes this the least bit viewable at all.  ** out of ***** stars.

SUBLIME (2007): A man goes into a hospital for a routine colonoscopy, and wakes up with strange scars, drugged out of his mind on morphine, and having difficulty distinguishing reality from paranoid fantasy.  Slightly more misses than hits in this direct-to-DVD psychological horror.  2/5.

FANTASY MISSION FORCE (1982): A ragtag band of conmen and criminals fights through the wilds of Canada to rescue captured general Abraham Lincoln and comrades from the Japanese.  This jaw dropping intentional kung fu comedy features Jakie Chan and Brigitte Lin, and moves seamfully from musical numbers to rejected Benny Hill skits to capture by a tribe of Amazons wielding bolts of brightly colored cloth to a haunted house inhabited by hopping vampires and disembodied hands offering rolls of toilet paper to a demolition derby where all of the characters except Chan and his girlfriend are killed in operatically tragic and bloody fashion by Japanese Nazis.  The review by Max Gardner (http://www.badmovies.org/othermovies/fantasymiss/) is pretty accurate. A pulp surrealism classic filmed in some previously unknown movie universe at the conjunction of the Shaw Brothers, Luis Bunuel and the Three Stooges.   5/5.

CATALINA CAPER (MST3K version):  A very fun season 2 episode.  The feature film is a beach party comedy with some sort of stolen scroll serving as the brain dead MacGuffin.  The real plot is the tasty chickees in sixties bikinis gyrating provocatively ("this is the kind of padding I like!", Crow observes) to the music of a squiniting Little Richard ("I see a promising young artists who's hepped up on goofballs!" Joel remarks) and far less talented rock n' roll bands.  Host segments include Joel's nostalgic/bitter diatribe about the sixties; Tom Servo's lovesick doo-wop ballad dedicated to the mysterious "Creepy Girl"; and a Tupperware party hosted by Frank, with mole people Sylvia and Jerry as the guests.  Sci-fi and horror films can be easy to mock, so its lots of fun to see the gang stretching by taking on an extremely inept beach comedy.  5/5.

THE ORPHANAGE   **** out of ****
Terrifice Spanish ghost story.  Don't want to say too much about it other than anyone who likes a great ghost story should seek this one out.

TOTAL RECALL  ***1/2 out of ****
One of Paul Verhoeven's best movies and also one of AHNOLD's best flicks as well.  Sharon Stone is great and the movie manages to be ultra violent and nihilistic while also being thoughT provoking at the same time.  The effects are great throughout.

(http://www.britfilms.tv/images/news/total%20recall.gif)

Beavis and Butthead Do America

I haven't seen this for a loooong time.  I'd forgotten how gut bustingly funny it is.  Great little story about the guys going on an epic trip across the good ol' US of A to find their stolen TV.

One of my favourite comedies and well worth a look if you haven't seen it yet.

:thumbup:

Great movie.  I love it.  Also love the fact that Greg Kinnear, David Letterman, Bruce Willis and Rob Zombie are involved in it, as well as Robert Stack.

La Sirène du Mississipi (1969)

Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Louis Mahé, a rich tobacco plantation owner. He asks a woman to marry him who he's never met before. They converse through the mail. Catherine Deneuve plays the woman, supposably named Julie Roussel. Louis Mahé finds that something is amiss. Julie isn't telling the entire truth. He stupidly puts his name on both her bank accounts. This film is full of clichés, and sometimes that doesn't bother me, but in this case it made it even more boring. It's entirely in French, though I think it made it more interesting. Had it been in English I probably would have turned it off sooner.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3- Decent sequel, which features time travel and equal mass replacement (basically, whoever holds the magic scepter in the past, and is of equal proportions to somebody of the present, switches, or something to that effect.)  So April gets transported from 1993 New York to feudal Japan, and the Emperor's son is transported to 1993.  So the Turtles have their friend Casey babysit Splinter and they head back to feudal Japan, and in turn, send 4 honor guards to New York.  My favorite part is Casey showing the Honor Guards hockey on tv, and he puts on a goalie mask and attempts to play with them, but all they do is fight, cause that's what they saw on tv.

To Die For  (1994)  ***1/2 out of ****.
Nicole Kidman at her most drop dead sexiest as well as turning in an Oscar worthy performance. The movie is very darkly funny and the pseudo documentary type approach in parts of the movie ( in regards to the interviews of certain characters) actually adds to the proceedings nicely.

D-War aka Dragon Wars - What a complete and beautiful mess. Giant monsters, ancient prophecies, otherworldly armies, terrible dialog, bad acting and not a single lick of sense.. I loved it! :teddyr:

Watched Eragon last night.  Quite a nice little film.  Jeremy Irons, as always, is a pleasure to watch.  A lot of people make parallels between this and Lord of the Rings, like this is a rip off or something.

Of course there will be similarities but that is natural when the times and societies are similar.  The acting was well done, the dragon was kick arse and the bad guys were really ugly and evil and needed killing.

John Malkovich plays the evil king effortlessly.  He doesn't even have to try hard and you just want to punch him.  But such is his talent I guess.

All in all a film worth a look-see if you want a decent well paced adventure story that you can just enjoy for it's own sake.

For all you Kubrick fans out there check out Colour Me Kubrick starring John Malkovich.  It's directed by one Kubrick's close friends and cinematographers.  It's a great homage to the master (lots of similar shots and music from all Kubrick's classics) and is based on a true story about a guy who pretended to be Stanley Kubrick to con a bunch of people even though he looked and acted nothing like him.

The Muppets Take Manhattan- ***/****.  Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie and the gang are just out of college and have a show they'd love to sell on Broadway.  They head to New York with limited money and attempt to sell it, but meet shady agents and get rejected by every producer, so the gang splits up and get real jobs to earn money.  Great movie, and directed by Frank Oz.  I loved the Gregory Hines cameo and the live action "Muppet Babies" sequence that, apparently, worked as a 'pilot' to see if Muppets as babies would work. 

The Inspector General (1949): An illiterate buffoon named Georgi (Danny Kaye), part of a traveling Gypsy medicine sideshow in Eastern Europe somehow winds up mistaken for the all-powerful, visiting Inspector General whose assignment from Emperor Napoleon is to root out all evil and corruption in every town he visits. Of course, the town's officials, thoroughly corrupt to the core, are terrified by his presence and do everything they can to impress him and throw him off their trail. Georgi meanwhile is thoroughly confused but not above accepting the good hospitality especially given how hungry and down on his luck he's been. Of course, being an Inspector General also means you're a target and much danger looms for Georgi.

No mistaking this is the Danny Kaye show all the way. The rest of the cast including Elsa Lancaster, Gene Lockhart, Alan Hale and Walter Slezak are all good no doubt but it's Kaye's singing, dancing and comedy routines that prove this film's main focus. How much you enjoy it probably depends on how much you enjoy Kaye's brand of humor. I have to admit at times it goes on much too long, almost to the point of annoyance, but there's a kind of innocence about Kaye's Georgi character here that one is able to ultimately forgive this more often than not. Favorite bits: The "Be Arrogant, Be Elegant, Be Smart" section and the Gyspy drinking song. *** out of ***** stars.

The Paleface (1922): After having their land unscrupulously stolen from them by greedy oil sharks, a tribe of Native American Indians vows to kill the next white man who comes into their presence. Said white man turns out to be an unknowing Buster Keaton seeking butterflies for his collection.

This movie is basically a live-action cartoon. It features the type of chase and stunt sequences one more expects from Looney Tunes only here its accomplished in live action via a series of daring stunts and surprisingly well accomplished special effects sequences. These are pulled off much better than I though would be even possible for the time and era.

Overall this short may not be as humorous as many of Keaton's other efforts but it sure doesn't lack in terms of its overall entertainment value due to the above mentioned dangerous stunt sequences that seem more fitting for a cartoon than live action, the best of which involves Buster being thrown over a cliff and creating a makeshift bridge across a gorge. **1/2 out of ***** stars.

That Gang of Mine (1940): Streetwise Muggs Maloney (Leo Gorcey) has dreams of becoming a world class jockey and finally gets his chance after befriending a kindly old poor black man named Ben (Clarence Muse) who just happens to possess and take care of a championship thoroughbred race horse.

This movie proves far more dramatic than most East Side Kids films with a fine performance from Clarence Muse as wise old Ben, who acts as a sort of adviser/mentor for Muggs and shows considerable care for him, something which is not lost on Leo Gorcey's Muggs either. The type of friendship displayed here was arguably ahead of its time in many respects. Leo Gorcey too does surprisingly well in this more dramatic role displaying the inner struggle going on in Muggs when he has to try and come to grips with his fear of racing and also his fear of letting everyone down.

While no doubt some may be a bit disappointed the humor more or less takes a back seat to the drama in this one, it actually proves a far more effective drama, and director Joseph H. Lewis does manage to keep an exciting focus on the horse racing too, than I thought was possible from many involved. *** out of ***** stars

Blood Monkey - a Sci-Fi Channel original.  Some college kids are taken to a remote jungle where they're going to do their internship under a professor, examining flora and fauna and other harmless stuff.  Well, the professor has discovered a new species of primates, giant monkeys with large brains, and he's willing to do anything to capture one and get recognition for the discovery.  Up to and including using the college kids for bait.

I found myself rooting for the evil professor and his Asian henchbabe.  They were the only characters who were even the slightest bit interesting in the movie.  The college kids are straight cliches:  jock dude, nerd boy, quiet guy, pretty girl, homely girl, and "what up?" girl.  I correctly guessed who would be the last to survive about 20 minutes into the movie.  There's some camcorder footage throughout the movie, and they also ripped off the ending to Blair Witch just for good measure.  Overall, I'm somewhat amazed I stayed awake through the whole thing.  The cinematography was the best part, there was some beautiful jungle scenery and it didn't feel as if the whole thing was taking place on a sound stage.  The giant monkeys were bargain basement CGI, but we saw very little of them.  Mostly just red tinted POV shots.

Rambo  (2007)   ***1/2 out of ****
The Terminator   **** out of ****
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (theatrical cut) ***1/2 out of ****
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines   *** out of ****

SLEEPER (1973): Health-food store owner Miles Monroe (director Woody Allen) is accidentally frozen for 200 years and wakes up in a weird future dystopia where Diane Keaton is not considered too annoying to be a female lead. It's a lot of fun as a collection of one liners ("I haven't had sex for 200 years... 204 if you count my marriage") and slapstick bits that recall the great silent comedians, though the plot is little more than a framework to hang "bits" off of.  LESSON LEARNED: 166 years in the future, cars will look like those plastic eggs they sell pantyhose in.  4 of 5 slimes.

EXCALIBUR (1981): A gory, sexy, beautifully photographed epic retelling of the legend of King Arthur and Merlin (a memorable comic/tragic performance by Nicol Williamson).  An A-movie cast and budget but with the heart of a B-movie, it bulls its bloody way forward, driving the helpless audiences before it.  LESSON LEARNED: In the Dark Ages, sperm were so powerful they could easily penetrate plate mail armor to father an heir. 5 of 5.

THE CREEPING TERROR (MST3K version):  The movie features a Chineese-dragon style alien  monster that may have been made out of discarded mattresses.  It truly does creep, VERY slowly, so slowly in fact that it is totally incapable of arousing terror.  "Didn't anyone in the 50s ever think of running?," Mike wonders, although a brisk trot or simply not climbing directly into the monsters' mouth should be a sufficient escape plan.  The monster attacks on their own are hilarious, and the bots commentary helps through the slow patches, of which there are many.  Host segments, which include the Mads doing laundry and Mike listening to the film's music on a high-end stereo system, are nothing special.  4 of 5.

Sorry, Torgo, I have to admit I'm skeptical of that rating without further explanation...

Nightwatch (the Russian one)

This was a weird arse movie.  I'm still not sure whether I liked it or not.  The story was a little slow and hard to follow because not much was explained.  When I thought about the plot after it was over, I got it, but it was hard work watching it.  The dubbing kind of put me off as well and the subtitles weren't that great.

The sfx were amazing and much better than I thought the Russians could do.  But I didn't realise the movie biz in Russia even existed.

All I can say is, I'm quite mystified by the whole experience.


Pan's Labyrinth
This was a wonderful movie. Even though it had subtitles, I liked this one better than Nightwatch.  The story was well done and the little girl who played Ofelia did a great job.  The Captain was a prick and played the part well, and the movie ended quite satisfactorily for me.  I felt emotionally fulfilled and it stayed with me for a few days.

It was beautifully shot and the story moved along at a decent pace, so I didn't feel bored or restless.  I wasn't sure if I'd like this movie because it got such a great rap from so many people.  That's usually when I find that I don't like the movie at all.  But I was pleasantly surprised and I thought "del Toro has done it again!"

This one I can highly recommend.

I was short on time and didn't have a chance to explain.

Anyone wanting a return to the full blooded (and bloody) action flicks of days gone by will love this one. If avoids the pitfalls of the 2nd and espcially 3rd Rambo films and like Rocky Balboa it bookends the series in great fashion.

The story was well done, Stallone's performance was cold faced but nuanced when need be (well, as much as  a Rambo movies calls for), the action scenes were extremely well orchestrated and the last 30 or so minutes of the movie is gory balls to the wall action that I haven't seen like that in quite some time.

Hope that explains a bit!

Didn't mean to challenge you Torgo... your tastes seem to match mine most of the time.  You also do I nice job summing up why you liked a movie in a few sentences, and I missed the commentary.

It seemed to me that if RAMBO was a ***1/2 movie, that would make it the best of the series by far.  Sounds like you thought it was.  I may check it out when it comes out on DVD.  Thanks for elaborating!

I didn't take it as a challenge, no worries.  Yes, I do think that it's the best of the series.  Whereas I thought that Rocky Balboa was the 2nd best of the Rocky series with the original being the best still.

What about 4?  That had Drago.  He owns.   :buggedout:

Moontrap - Bruce Campbell and Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek) battle alien robots on the moon.  I love this movie, it's weird, doesn't take itself terribly seriously, and really manages to create an atmosphere of desperation when the nearly helpless earthlings are stranded on the moon. 

Ninja 3:  The Domination - A dead Ninja possesses the sole of a hot babe, and she goes on a killing spree, taking out all the cops who killed the Ninja.  She also dates a cop, and he can't figure out that his girlfriend is killing all his friends.  It's part Ninja movie, part Exorcist, with a bit of Flashdance thrown in on the side.  A seriously silly, enjoyably bad film.

Manticore - a Sci-Fi Original with that guy who played Chakotay on Star Trek Voyager as an Army Sergeant in Iraq.  His squad is sent to investigate the disappearance of a reporter in a remote town, but they run into the Manticore, a giant CGI dog with wings thing.  Not bad for a Sci-Fi Original.  The ending is sure to make anyone chuckle, but it has the requisite amount of bad CGI explosions, people running around scared, and occasional Manticore attacks.

The Devil's Rejects- Great movie.  I loved House of 1,000 Corpses, so I wanted to see this.  Great soundtrack, action, etc.  Rob Zombie is a good director in my opnion.  He's improved, House was okay, this was an improvement.

The Mighty Ducks- **.  Classic movie in my opinon. 

THE KING OF KONG: A Fistful of Quarters   **** out of ****

The best documentary that I've seen in quite some time.  I'm an old school gamer myself but nowhere even remotely close to the  level that a lot of the guys in this movie are.   Steve Wiebe's family seems really cool BTW.  He's actually  someone that you can really get behind in this flick in his quest to prove himself the king of the game Donkey Kong by breaking Billy Mitchell's long standing 1982 record on the game.  Billy Mitchell BTW I had heard of before when he played the 1st perfect game of Pac-Man back in 1999. I just didn't realize that he was as big of a pompous narcissistic jerk as he was in real life.  This is definitely a case where truth is stranger than any fiction.

THE DEAD ZONE: High school English teacher Christoper Walken falls into coma while sporting an awful bowl haircut, and wakes five years later with a slightly better haircut.  Oh, and the ability to tell ironically tragic futures. A nicely doomed performance by a bedraggled Walken and a strong finish make this psychological horror loom in the memory longer than it perhaps deserves.  3 of 5

FIVE EASY PIECES: Nicholson mesmerizes as a musical prodigy who seems to prefer the life of a drifter in this subtle meditation on talent squandered---or on the tragic inability of talent alone to secure happiness. Angry, angsty and extremely literate, it's far more than a memorable chicken-salad joke.  5 of 5.

BLOODLUST (MST3K version): The main film is another uninspired MOST DANGEROUS GAME ripoff, with a Vincent Price wannabe and his gang of "counter workers from Long John Silvers" using a teenaged Mike Brady and his friends for crossbow target practice on a deserted island.  The gangs riffing makes it barely watchable.  The host segments are nothing special either: Tom psychoanalyzes Crow, Dr. Forrester receives a visit from his mother in Deep 13 (she's more interested in tequila shooters with TV's Frank), and the three sketches involving a veggie stand, a square dance and a murder mystery dinner theater go nowhere.  Not one of the premier episodes. 3 of 5.       

The Marsh with Gabrielle Anwar.

This movie was good in principle.  A children's writer suffers from recurring nightmares which are getting worse.  She takes a break at an old house in the country surrounded by a marsh where scary supernatural stuff starts happening. She has to figure out why.

I was very disappointed with this movie.  It was slow and cumbersome and Anwar looked like she had taken a very high dose of sedatives and botox.  She moved around the movie like she was in a trance and her facial expression didn't change.  Even when spooky stuff started happening, she didn't blink.  Talk about phoning in a performance.

I got the feeling that there were scenes cut out that shouldn't have been because the story forced you to imply things that you really had no way of knowing if you were 100% correct or not.  The assumptions I made fit in with the story, but I could have come up with any number of them and still been right.

The ending was satisfactory, but there was no twist and no "ahhh!" moment were things finally click into place.  I found out and then thought "where did I put my knitting again?"

The special effects were well done and there were some moments that made me jump, but on the whole it was a good story that wasn't told well.

Creep

Excellent British film from the maker of Severance, Christopher Smith.

Kate (Franka Potente) is a German girl in London who goes to the underground to catch a train home after a party.  But she falls asleep on the platform and gets locked in.  She then finds herself in nightmare with something nasty after her and she has to stay alive until morning when the underground opens for business again.

Really great creepy atmospheric movie.  Right up there with Dog Soldiers, Severence, 28 Days Later etc.

Highly recommend it.

Watched Night of the Living Dead yesterday, think I'm gonna watch Slither tonight.

Bride of Chucky- Pretty decent sequel in the Child's Play franchise, and definitely a step up from Child's Play 3.  By the fourth flick, they pretty much needed to add the humor, because, in my opinion at least, killer dolls only go so far in the 'fear' department.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow **** out of *****

Am I the only person who likes this movie?  It's pure fun and has an old school sci-fi plot.  Sure, it's all green screen and CGI but it never pretends to be anything but what it is.  I wish they would have made a trilogy or series of Sky Captain movies....Oh well, at least I have one.

 I saw this one originally in theaters and I also subsequently purchased the DVD later on.

Very underrated IMO.  I enjoyed the hell out of it as well.

Maybe it was because I watched it while really, really tired, but I got little out of it.  The scenery was beautiful, but I couldn't make head nor tail of the plot . . . .

Give it another shot.  It's a fun action adventure movie with great production design.  It's the type of film Lucas and Spielberg forgot how to make.

I watched Fistful of Dollars for the first time yesterday, and it was pretty darn good.  Earlier today I watched Four of the Apocalypse which wasn't quite so good, but it's unique enough to watch if you're into Spaghetti Westerns.  I plan on watching For a Few Dollars More tonight.

Slither kicks arse!   :thumbup:      :teddyr:

Since I haven't posted in three weeks, since I couldn't sit, I watched some movies in my spare time and I watched quite a few.

Superman III *** out of ****

It was corny at times, but I enjoyed it for the most part.

Showgirls **** out of ****

It was so bad at times, but I just loved it though. 

Flesh Gordon * 1/2 out of ****

I watched and really couldn't stand it.  Maybe it was just all the nudity that was in the film that made me dislike so much.  I though at first I was watching a porn film by mistake.

Bully * out of ****

I agree with Indianasmith on this one.  I really ended up not liking it at all.  I got tired of seeing rape and pubic hair every 5 min and the use of the f word like it was going out of style.

Kids * 1/2 out of ****

Not as bad as Bully but still not enjoyable.  It was heavily over rated imo

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ** out of ****

It was funny how bad this film turned out, and it had such great potential.  I'm considering giving it the MST3K in the near future.  Other than that I still enjoyed it.

The Ladies Man (2000)  ** 1/2 out of ****

Another SNL skit made movie.  It was decent, but had a lot more potential.

Superbad Unrated *** 1/2 out of ****

Funniest movie that I have seen in a long while.  At times I think it could have been better, and I though there would have been some more nudity in it, but I was mistaken.

Lawnmower man 2: Jobe's War ** 1/2 out of ****
 
It was funny that they showed the lab being destroyed from the first film, but I guess they missed the part that Jobe's body becomes flat and that he took over the cyber world.  It was bad at times, but I think if Jobe would have never come in a physical body like he did, it would have probably made the film better.

Austin Powers *** out of ****

I loved the film when it came out, and it was years since I seen it last, so I had to watch it again.  It was funny in 97 and today it's still pretty good.

Austin Powers 2 ** 1/2 out of ****

Good, but not as good as the first.  Some of the jokes were funny, but some seemed forced to be done.

Tootsie **** out of ****

I enjoy Dustin Hoffman as an actor.  The cross dressing idea to get a part was very funny and I really felt like that if I didn't know that he crossed dressed as a women to get a acting part, I really would have though that his character was a women, not a many trying to be a woman.

I just finished the first disc of Season One of Stickin' Around.

I saw this cartoon when I lived in Canada a few years ago and it was hilarious!  I didn't know it was available here so when it came in the mail I was looking forward to much enjoyment.

Alas, it was over all too quickly, but the second disc of season one should be arriving any day.

This is the only time Rambo ever interested me, guess i'm just not a big fan...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n1hKQULa9Y

The Simpsons Movie (2007)-Had its moments that had me laughing and probably alot better than any recent episodes. Just wish they would keep the quality for the show.

3.5/5

BANANAS (1971): Trying to get over his breakup with Lousie Lasser, nebbish Fielding Mellish (Woody Allen) winds up in the fictional banana republic of San Marcos, eventually (and reluctantly) rising to the position of El Presidente. A minor gem from back in the day when Woody wanted nothing more than to make the audience laugh by any means possible (witness the Howard Cossell "Wide World of Sports" segments that bookend the movie).  4 out of 5.

CLOVERFIELD (2008): A jerky, panicky camcorder captures a gargantuan reptilian beast's rampage through the streets of New York City. Cleverly assembled and with unusual character depth, but those qualities aren't huge assets in a giant-monster-eats-Manhattan movie.  3.5 out of 5.

FEMALE TROUBLE (1975): The criminal career of Dawn Davenport is documented in an attempt to prove the thesis "crime equals beauty," in typically gross Waters fashion featuring psuedo-rape, tacky wallpaper, child abuse, absurd makeup, a woman imprisoned in a bird cage, beehive hairdos, mainlining eyeliner, Divine as a go-go dancer, implied paedophilia, puke, murder, and Edith Massey's saggy naked breasts.  Waters holds up a distorted lens to the unique stylistic and moral ugliness of the 1970s and creates a uniquely nightmarish world.  If you only see one early John Waters movie, make it this one.  (By the way, you should make it a point to only see one early John Waters movie).  3 out of 5.

THE MACK (1973): Returning from prison to the streets, Goldie decides to create a pimping empire, fighting racist cops, a drug dealing kingpin, rival pimps and his socially conscious brother along the way. Despite the injection of fresh blaxploitation themes into a tired rise and fall of a crimelord script, the film winds up more cliched than campy. Exceptional for the sartorial pimpwear and occasionally funny musings on the mackin' life only.  2 out of 5.

STORM WARNING  (unrated)  *** out of ****.
Nasty and mean little piece of survivalist horror from the director of such turds as Urban Legend and Valentine. Needless to say I wasn't expecting much but this movie (while it takes a while to get going) eventually turns into one of the most mean spirited type revenge movies that I've seen in a while.  The gore is really quite brutal and I was pleasantly surprised at the viciousness of some of them. While nothing original worth checking out for horror fans into extreme gore/violence.

The Breed (exec prod Wes Craven)  Some mild spoilerage!




Anything with Wes's name is usually pretty good.  But this was disappointing.  I expected it to be in line with Freddy Kruger, but it was just a drama.

Nice little plot about mutant dogs attacking a bunch of 20 somethings on a some island somewhere.  But the dogs were just survivors, albeit a little vicious.  They weren't superstrength or anything like I expected.

And what's with the dogs biting those few people?  They felt "weird" but didn't change or mutate themselves, apart from having hair trigger tempers.  And what's that all about them finding a doctor to "cure" them when they got back to civilisation?  Cure them from what?  Bad tempers?   :question:     There weren't even any physical changes, no extra limbs, no fangs, not even an oddly coloured iris or two.

I kept waiting for something gory or horrific to happen but the movie was over before I knew it.  If you're looking for something as a first step to horror this one is a nice intermediary between regular drama and supernatural/horror themes.  But if you're looking for killer mutant creatures (like I was) - forget it.

Lewis & Clark & George  *1/2 out of ****
Rose McGowan topless!  That's pretty much all this atrocious 1997 Tarantino ripoff has going for it. It's about two male low life's who break out of jail and go in search of a fabled gold mine. They run into an astonishingly sexy mute woman played by Rose.  Her performance is actually really good as she doesn't have to say a word and has to play the role to the hilt with her facial expressions and amazing body. But other than her this movie is just plain painful to sit through.   

UHF- Such a good movie.

Just watched the Spaghetti Western Keoma featuring Franco Nero as a half-breed with a lot of hair and an Italian accent.  It's famous for its crazy soundtrack that prominantly features awful singing that describes what's happening or what characters are feeling.  At first I wasn't too bothered by it (reminded me a little of the band Comus) but as the film goes on the singing becomes intrusive.  Otherwise, the soundtrack sans vocals is very cool. 

Regardless of the music, it's a decent and entertaining film.

THE DECAMERON (1971): Pier Paolo Pasolini stitches together nine stories from Boccacio's "Decameron", focusing on the bawdy and anti-clerical. Slow and arty, and several of the tales fizzle at their climax; rarely have graverobbing, infiltration into a convent of sex-starved nuns, and dong shots been made so boring.  LESSON LEARNED:  In 1971, men would sit through almost anything if they thought there was a chance of seeing a boobie.  2 out of 5.

BLOOD SIMPLE (1984):  When a Texas roadhouse bar owner hires an ethically challenged cowpoke detective to spy on his cheating wife and her bartender boyfriend, jealousy, greed, mistrust and fate cause events to spiral into a crazy, bloody finale. The opening scene, shot from a low angle against a rain-spattered windshield as blurry headlights rush towards the viewer, sets a tone of unease that never eases up.  LESSON LEARNED: Never hire a hitman who works out of a Volkswagen Beetle and wears a canary suit with a cowboy hat.  5 out of 5.

Venom - an old voodoo lady gets killed while transporting evil snakes.  A guy tries to save her and ends up getting bitten by the snakes, which turns him into an evil zombie sort of dude.  He stalks some hot babes and their boyfriends around Louisiana.  Not bad, the plot was pretty thin but the pretty girls made up for it.  The ending is just hilarious.

Boa - stars Dean Cain, and if it's not a Sci-Fi original, it should be.  Giant boa gets loose at a maximum security prison on the south pole.  Cain and his dwindling band of co-stars get chased around until the comical climax.

Boa vs. Python - ahhhh, Angel Boris.  She's so cute!  You get to see her topless in this one, or at least you would if you purchased the actual DVD.  I've just got a recording from the Sci-Fi channel.  Some guy gets a giant python and him and his buddies are going to hunt it.  But it gets loose so the CIA guy gets a giant Boa to track it and kill it.  Cute blond chick accompanies the Boa, along with that smart-aleck scientist from Stargate Atlantis.  Pure cheese, I enjoyed it immensely.

The Jerk (1979)

Steve Martin at his finest. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. He plays a young man who finds out he's never going to turn black like the rest of his family, so he goes out into the world to make a new life for himself. The sniper part was quite good.

"He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!"

The Constant Gardner - Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz

This is slow moving at the beginning but actually turns into quite a nice little story.  It's a terrible subject that I didn't even know existed and I hope the movie makers are just twisting it for drama's sake.

Ralph and Rachel are husband and wife who go to Africa for his Ralph's work, he's a British diplomat of some sort.  Rachel gets involved with the AIDS effort and helps an African doctor distribute medicine amongst the poor.  Medicine that gets donated "generously" by pharma companies.

There's a lot of betrayal and murder and experimentation on the disenfranchised of African society (ie, the unimportant ones).  Ralph's character is very boring and painfully shy at first, but he really comes into his own as the movie progresses and finds a strength and dignity in himself he didn't know he had.

You definitely need time to get invested in this movie to do it justice.  So don't look at it as a throw away 2 hours or so.  I really enjoyed it much to my surprise but I wouldn't buy it or watch it again.  It's a little too heavy for my comedy and horror soaked brain to deal with.

Hatchet (Unrated Version) an excellent horror movie. Its got a gnarly villain, probably one of the best villains I've seen in a longtime. The kill scenes are just absolutely amazing, I really hope they release this flick in HD. And most important thing about the brand of horror found in Hatchet is that it dosent it take itself too seriously. I'm not saying its campy it just that its not pretentious

I also saw He Was A Quiet Man recently...I really liked this movie as well. The DVD has several alternate endings which is usually something that urks me about films vs DVD releases. But for this type of movie its perfect. This is one of those flicks that really makes you reflect on the nature of perception and thats why I like it most. I dont want to give away any plot elements cuz this is really a movie  about the individual drawing his own conclusions based on the versions of Reality presented.

National Lampoon's Vacation *** 1/2 out of ****

I got the good laugh that I haven't had in a long time.  One of the funnier films that I've seen in my day.

National Lampoon's European Vacation ** 1/2 out of ****

I enjoyed some parts of the films, but though it was slightly overrated.

National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation *** out of ****

Much better than EV in many ways.  The acting was top notch and it was very enjoyable to watch.

Vegas Vacation was very underrated in my opinion.  In fact I'd say European was the worst of the bunch.

I still have yet to see the Direct to Video film Christmas Vacation 2.  Vegas Vacation was good to watch, and I saw a little bit of myself in that movie.  Watching Clark gamble his family's savings away is something that almost happened to me.  Some time ago I went to a casino and I didn't have much money at the time maybe $300, and I nearly ended up gambling it all away. 

I tend to get out of hand with that kind of stuff at times, so that is why I rarely gamble or play the lottery.

If you take Christmas Vacation 2 into account, then that'd be the worst.

I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember not really liking it initially.

But of the big screen films, European is the worst.

I only went gambling once.  Broke even about.

Run Fatboy Run **1/2 out of *****

I've been waiting for this to come out in the States but it never did...Now I know why.  I'm a big Simon Pegg fan and I'll watch anything he's in because he's one of the funniest guys in the biz right now (IMO).  I love his sad-sack persona but he turns it up to 11 in this movie.

Plot-wise, it's you're standard 80's-90's type comedy.  Boy loses girl.  Girl gets new boy.  First boy tries to win her back by competing in a physical contest with the new boy.  New boy proves to be a douche.  Boy gets girl.  The End.

There are a couple of funny parts but there are a few gross-out jokes that seem out of place for a Pegg film.  That kind of stuff is better suited for Sandler or Ferrell.  I'd say rent it if your a Pegg fan...if not don't bother.


Live Free or Die Hard ***1/2 out of *****

This was a fun action romp.  I liked it.  Yeah, computers can't do all the stuff the bad guys do in the film but, hey, it's a Die Hard movie.  Realism, isn't really what they were going for.  Bruce Willis still can pull off the grizzled action hero roll.  Turn your brain off and enjoy.  Film loses points because it's PG-13.

The unrated version is much better than the theatrical version. John McClane is funnier when he's excessively profane.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy- ***.  Hilarious movie with Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate, and a slew of cameos from the "Frat Pack."

Don't know how anyone can not laugh during this.

Zoolander

It took me a long time to "get" this movie.  I didn't understand why it was so funny.  To me, it was just a documentary on the fashion industry.  Now that I'm hip to message, it's a fun bit of whackiness to while away some time.

The first time I saw it I didn't think it was funny.  I saw it a second time with one of my friends and it was hilarious.  Many people seem to have the same experience.

Zoolander is such an outstanding movie.  Hilarious.  Loved it the first time I watched it, but then again, I'm a big Stiller fan, and the fact that Will Ferrell, Jerry Stiller and Owen Wilson are in it only made it funnier.

Species - fun Alien type movie, good cast, interesting story, and Natasha Henstridge topless.  Rather light-hearted and gruesome at the same time.  Monsters by H.R. Geiger.

The Librarian:  Quest for the Spear - A TNT original.  Totally cheesy Indiana Jones style movie.  Bob Newhart is a kick-ass marine, gotta love it.  At one point our heroes are in an ancient Aztec complex, and arrows are flying out of the walls.  They need to get past the arrows, and they figure out that the arrows come out with a ONE-two-three ONE-two-three rhythm.  The same rhythm as a waltz.  So they actually waltz their way through.  It's goofy as hell, but a fun watch.

Raptor - Jim Wynorski swiped a ton of footage from the 3 Carnosaur films and made a fourth film out of it.  It's actually better than the first three in my opinion.  Mad scientist creates dinosaurs and they roam free killing people in reused footage.  Favorite parts:  three different commando teams are called in, the first in black uniforms, the second in camouflage, and the third in red raincoats.  The battle at the end has a guy fighting a T-rex with a Bobcat front end loader, that changes into a much larger forklift in every-other scene.  It also suddenly becomes night at one point in the movie.  Oh, who am I kidding, my favorite part was Melissa Braselle in her undies  :teddyr:

ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL   ** out of ****
This movie couldn't decide on what kind of movie it wanted to be. It's part art school parody, part triangle romance and part murder mystery.  The movie really seemed liked it thinks that it's more clever than it really is in a lot of scenes.  The acting is good but the plot is just a complete mess at times.  Sophia Myles looks great in the nude BTW.   :tongueout:   

The Son of Monte Cristo (1940): Dashing Edmund Dantes Jr. (Louis Hayward), the son of the famed Count of Monte Cristo, uses the masked guise of the Torch to come to the aid of his beloved the fair Zona (Joan Bennett), royal grand duchess of Lichtenburg in an attempt to rescue both her and her country from falling into the hands of a determined dictator named General Gurko Lanen (George Sanders) who would be king and force poor Zona to be his queen.

While this is pretty typical fare of its type, that doesn't make this swashbuckler any less entertaining. This certainly manages to capture one's interest and imagination throughout, its supporting players even proving more than up to said task particularly Ian Wolfe as Stadt and Montagu Love as Baron Von Neuhoff. In the end, while this does deliver the expected goods in terms of lush scenery, a dashing daring do lead hero in Hayward and a devious, devilishly clever lead villain in Sanders, exciting climactic swordplay and further action and intrigue and even perhaps some symbolism of the political intrigue at work in the world at the time this was filmed, it really offers up very few actual surprises and proves far too predictable overall. Regardless, this proves a most enjoyable film experience.  *** out of ***** stars.

MEET THE FEEBLES (1995): Peter Jackson's notorious sick joke Muppet Show parody, with a rabbit MC who fears he has AIDS, a heroin addicted Vietnam vet frog knife-thrower, and a rat drugging and date-raping a poodle.  I first watched this years ago and hated it.  I found the irony far too cheap and the jokes not nearly funny enough to compensate for the meanspiritedness.  On second viewing the shock value was gone and I was able to appreciate a few of the jokes, especially the "Lyndon Johnson bad egg!" sign and the sodomy song.  And by the climax (if you can make it that far) it becomes so wacky and extreme that you have to buy in.  Definitely a bad movie, but others seem to think it's a lot funnier than I do.  Among obscene puppet shows it's a touchstone movie, so I can mildly recommend it to bad movie fans who are sufficiently jaded, but I also sympathize with "normal" people who want to hold up a crucifix to this movie.  3/5 slimes.

MILLER'S CROSSING (1990): Scheming Irish consigliere Tom (Gabriel Byrne) gets caught in the middle of a gang war in Chicago in 1929 in this reverent homage to 30s gangster films.  Directed and produced by the Coen brothers, with an intricate slinky script and a cast of colorful Windy City lowlifes played by Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro, Steve Buschemi, and character actor Jon Polito in his finest moment as an ethics-obsessed fight-fixer, this should have been a masterpiece on the level of THE GODFATHER or CHINATOWN.  The only reason I can see that it isn't is that we're asked to accept a morose Gabriel Byrne (who does little more than slug back whiskey and get slugged in the gut by various thugs) as the hero.  4/5 slimes.

CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH 3: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE SUBHUMANOID (1994):  After about a ten minute recap of the first two movies, we find that the last subhumanoid on earth has an evil twin brother trained by a corporate genius and a sexy mad scientist with a Marge Simpson hairdo.  In typical late-Troma fashion, the wild plot and twists on B-movie cliches could have been a lot of fun if played relatively straight, but juvenile fart humor, knowing winks to the camera, senseless references to other Troma movies, and silly falsetto voices added to the soundtrack in postproduction sap most of the fun out of it.  Ron Jeremy has a cameo and is by far the most accomplished actor in the cast.  There are plenty of boobies to look at, though, and that counts for something.  Lloyd Kaufmann used to make these things for about $25, then sell them to Cinemax for $75---a 200% profit!  2/5 slimes.

There Will Be Blood -- I watched this late at night and it ended sometime after 4am, so I was kind of tired, but it held my interest.  I didn't like it as much as I had hoped to but it's certainly unique and worth seeing.  There're some strange and wonderful scenes, it looks pretty, and it's well-acted.  I think Day-Lewis earned his Oscar.  However I think it's a little longer than it needs to be.

American Kickboxer 2 ** 1/2 out of ****

It was cheesy at times and Dale Cook really over acted his part too much.  The fight scenes were good for the most part.

The Protector (Jackie Chan US version) ** 1/2 out of ****

When I rented this I though this was the version that I heard was supposed to be really good.  Found out that this was the mediocre US version.  The fight scenes were okay, but I've seen better.  The acting at times is just stupid, especially Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, who looks like he got the thousand yard stare the entire film.   

"bela lugosi meets a brooklyn gorilla"  ****

ultra retarded but entertaining.  "being here really makes ya feel full a pepsi!"

SEX & LUCIA  (unrated version)  *** out of ****.
Extremely erotic and well acted Spanish movie that is probably most well know for featuring full frontal Paz Vega nudity.  :tongueout:  The downside to this movie that thematically and plot wise it tries to bite off a bit more than it can chew and during the 2nd half of the movie gets weighed down by what is fact and what is fiction in terms of what happens to the characters.   But it is still well worth a watch by anyone wanting to see something truly original and genuinely erotic to the hilt.

This is what Paz Vega looks like BTW for the uninitiated. 
(http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p202/Apollo3000/paz-vega_09.jpg)

She's a great actress BTW in addition to being stunningly beautiful.

 

Captain Kidd (1945): Fictionalized account of Captain Kidd has him looking to gain entry into favored English society after tricking the king to commission him as escort to a ship coming from India loaded with treasure. Of course, Kidd (here played with gusto by Charles Laughton) has his eyes set firmly on gaining much of said treasure for himself without the king even realizing what's he done.

Despite Laughton's best efforts and boisterous acting performance and an all star cast including Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, John Carradine and even Henry Daniell in a short role as the King, this never rises above being just average at best. In terms of a swashbuckler, this has one sword fight that's much too short. In terms of action of the high seas, the sea battles prove all too brief. Mostly this features talking between characters to further advance the plot. In short, there's way too much posturing and talk and nowhere near enough action. Overall, it's surprisingly dull.  ** out of ***** stars.

30 Days of Night ***1/2 out of *****

An enjoyable vampire flick.  Lots of blood and an interesting take on the vampire myth...although the plan to kill all the vamps at the end was kind of a cop-out but in a movie like this you have to shrug your shoulders and go with it.  There are homages to movies like Evil Dead/Army of Darkness and The Thing (among others) but they aren't in your face.  A student of horror movies should be able to pick them out.   :teddyr:  Props to Ben Foster as the Renfield character.  (The head vampire looked like my step-dad when I was a kid...minus the fangs, black eyes and bloodlust.  So that was kind of weird for me on a personal level).

Total Recall (Blu-ray) ***1/2 out of *****

Yes, the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi opus...in HD!  HD is great, IMO but some movies (usually older FX heavy ones) suffer because you can see how they accomplished each stunt/effect.  Total Recall has/had some great effects shots but 99% of them are animitronic and you can tell...really good animitronics but animitronics nonetheless.

It's kind of dated as well.  It's the future as it would be if the 80's never ended...which is both cool and lame at the same time.

But despite most of it's "flaws", it stands as a rollicking sci-fi piece of it's era.  The makeup work by Brian "The Thing" Bottin is top-notch.  The plot is rather cool if you think about it.  Matter of fact, the entire movie itself plays out like a memory implant.  It seems like kind of a high minded concept for a movie that features Arnold stabbing people in the neck with part of a chair he was tied to.  Recall features my favorite Arnold one-liner:  "See you at the party, Richter!"

Chasing Amy- ***.  Guy likes girl, girl likes girls, what to do here?  Then we find out about a hidden past, the obligatory Jay and Silent Bob cameo, and a great performance by Jason Lee.

Epic Movie - Unrated

This had some really funny bits and really lame bits.  But it was a relaxing waste of a couple of hours and great way to unwind after the hassles of the work day.

Jayma Mays played the ditzy Lucy so well and was a pleasure to watch.

Robot Jox - hadn't watched this in years, I'd forgotten how fun it is.  In the future, "war has been outlawed", and they instead have guys pilot these gigantic robots and fight each other.  The robots are just cool as hell, and the story is interesting and filled with little subplots.  I'd heartily recommend this one to everybody here.

Grim - now here's a great cure for insomnia.  A monster lives in a cave.  No explanation whatsoever is given for it.  Some people go into the cave.  They spend a good hour talking about stuff that doesn't advance the plot one iota.  Despite all this talking, no character develops even the slightest bit of personality.  Eventually the monster grabs one of them.  We get about ten minutes of the monster looking menacingly at his victim, then dragging her through the caves.  Lots of red tinted POV shots, occasionally even with a fish-eye lens.  The other people don't realize a monster has carried off one of their party, they think she just wandered off.  So the prattle continues unchanged.  I can't believe I stayed awake until the end.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie ** out of ****

I wasn't expecting much going into this film since it's Power Rangers and I stopped watching that show like 10 to 13 years ago.  It was an ok film, but I probably would have enjoyed it more if I was little kid again, but alas I am not a kid anymore.  It was corny as ever which I didn't like too much, for this film.  I finished it, but I don't think I could watch it again.
 

I felt it was a 4 star movie, personally.  Only thing that would've made it better was if the zord fight at the end of the flick was a person in a costume like the show as opposed to badly drawn CGI.  But the pink ranger was hot.

I'll agree with you on the ending on that one.  Your right the Pink Ranger was hot.

The Time of Your Life (1948): Nick's Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace sure attracts some strange and eccentric characters, some looking for employment but many just looking for entertaining ways to pass away their day.

This film proves surprisingly charming and endearing most likely because it rings true. The bizarre set of characters that occupy Nick's dive seem all too plausible in some weird fashion. Maybe it's because so many eccentric characters seem to populate our world today that makes me think this one ahead of its time. James Cagney steals the show here as Joe, a man whose hobby is people but really it's the interaction between all these different slices of life that grabs the viewer's interest. *** out of ***** stars.

A Farewell To Arms (1932): Gary Cooper stars as Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during World War I. There he meets and falls in love with a nurse named Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes) but the war looms heavy over the couple's chances for happiness.

While this movie feels a bit dated and the war scenes go on too long and seem to be too darkly lit, this is epic romance that ultimately proves hard to take one's eyes off. You root for the characters and want to overcome the odds despite all that stands in their way making the final reality of what ultimately happens all the more potent. A real tear-jerker for the soft hearted this one. Great romance! Let's love tonight for we may not have tomorrow...the harsh reality of war. *** out of ***** stars.

I should note that the version of A Farewell to Arms (1932) included in the Family Classics 50 Pack from Treeline is the edited 79 minute version. Really would like to see the original in its time quite controversial original 89 minute version of that one.

The Flesh Eaters (1964) - three people have to make an emergency landing at a remote island, and encounter a scientist who is conducting some sort of research.  There's some glowing, flesh-eating stuff out in the water, and maybe the scientist is involved with this stuff in some way?  This was a really enjoyable film.  I love the characters, they've got a drunken Hollywood starlet, her secretary (ooh what a body!) and the no-nonsense pilot.  Just a good fun drive in feature, luckily there's an excellent DVD of it available that I plan on picking up very soon.

Dangerous Worry Dolls - this is Full Moon's latest movie, I give it a bit "meh".  A women in prison flick with very little nudity (the trailer made it look really sexy, but of course ALL the sexy bits are in the trailer), it's got the typical nice girl being abused by her fellow inmates, raped by one of the guards, and treated badly by the warden.  Her daughter comes to visit and gives her some "worry dolls", she's supposed to tell them her worries, put them under her pillow, and when she wakes up in the morning all her worries will be gone.  Well, one of them crawls in her ear and sets up housekeeping in her forehead, creating a great big zit.  She takes revenge on everyone who wronged her.  In addition to the lack of anything sexy that I hadn't already seen in the trailer, the movie really lacks an ending (the big fight between our lead girl and the nasty inmate takes place off camera).  Might be good for a rent, but don't even consider paying full price for the DVD like I did.

That movie was blood-chilling to me as a child.  The flesh eaters turn people into skeletons!  I still remember being terrified when the silly beatnik was almost eaten (though the organisms only get his sandals).  Wrote a review for this one a while back.  The DVD is, as you said, excellent for an old b-movie.

Apparently the director felt a guy in a suit was cheesy and would've detracted from the flick.  The CGI wasn't done well.  Part of the camp factor of the show was the costumes, effects, etc.  As for the pink ranger, she was hot, but I'm not sure if I like her or her blonde replacement better.  If you haven't seen her look her up.

BARTON FINK (1991):  After one successful Broadway hit, pretentious playwright Barton Fink (John Turturro) moves to Hollywood and is assigned to write a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery.  He holes up in an eerie art deco hotel with bellhop Steve Buscemi and boisterous next door neighbor John Goodman.  Fink encounters Hollywood phonies and drunken Southern novelists as he suffers an increasingly severe case of writer's block, and things start to head into ERASERHEAD territory halfway through the movie.  This thing reverberates with anyone who's ever suffered writer's block or artistic self doubt.  It's my favorite Coen Bros. film, pending viewing THE BIG LEBOWSKI and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.  5/5 slimes.

DEADLY PAST (1995):  This is a movie that asks the question "can you build an entire 90 minute plot around fashion model Carol Alt's hooters?," but gets an incomplete for using stunt breasts.  All these made-for-late-night-pay-cable erotic thrillers were horrifyingly predictable and dull and usually promised lots more sex than they delivered.  This one is no exception.  There's one laugh out loud moment as the "heroes" make their "thrilling" escape across a border guarded only by an English billboard proclaiming "Welcome to Mexico!"  1/5 slimes.   

13 TZAMETI (2005): This is a very worthwhile, intense thriller, about which the less you know going in, the better.  The trailer gave away too much.  Suffice it to say it's about a desperate, poor Georgian immigrant in France who takes a bad gamble and finds himself in a very bad place at a very bad time.  A bit slow to start and lacks a "goctha!" stinger ending, but the middle section is about as tense as you'll find.  4/5 slimes.

Hmm, I don't remember her blond replacement for the pink ranger.  That is something I will have to research to find out.

Edit:

After some research I found who you were talking about.  Her blonde replacement was Catherine Sutherland.  She is quite attractive IMO.

She's blonde and Austrailian, and I like that. :buggedout:

Karma for you on that one. 

Wedding Crashers- ***.  Saw this in theaters when it was initially released and haven't thought about it in a while.  Recently saw it on tv and have to say that Vince Vaughn is really hilarious in it, and Isla Fisher, who plays his love interest, is really cute and funny.

Halloween (2007)- Unrated directors cut- Two and a half stars.  With remakes/reimaginings you either are completely disappointed or really pleasently surprised.  Halloween is such a loved classic that most were disappointed but I watched it with an open mind and felt it was good.  I saw it in theaters and saw some scenes in the directors cut that obviously weren't in the theater version. 

One question I have, and I hope somebody can answer this, is Michael back to kill Laurie or just be with her cause he loves her?  How does he know it's his sister, as he hasn't seen her since she's 2 years old and he's had no contact with her?  I'm not sure if it's explained much in the original either, as he just randomly shows up.  In Rob's version he kinda leaves it open as he's there cause he loves her, cause he gives her a baby picture of her and him and drops his knife.

Thank you.

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934): Sir Percy Blakeney is leading a secret double life. Pretending to everyone in the public eye, including his own wife, that he is a silly British fop, he is in reality the dashing Scarlet Pimpernel, a man devoted, despite the threat to his own head, to helping free the innocence condemned to the guillotine during the French Terror!

Overall this is very well done and features a very capable cast particularly lead Leslie Howard in the challenging dual role and Raymond Massey, who has a great turn as lead villain/spy for the French Republic Citizen Chauvelin for which he seems perfectly cast. Merle Oberon too does quite well and looks quite fetching as Blakeney's befuddled wife.

The problem with this is it feels a bit too static, a bit too talky as was often the case with many early sound pictures. There's just a bit more exposition at times than really seems necessary. This slows the action down a bit to the point things actually get a little dull on occasion. That said, there's enough fun to be found in this one that makes it well worth watching especially those scenes featuring Howard's Blakeney, especially when he uses some means of disguise or another to fool those pursuing him or uses his foppish charm to throw Chauvelin off his trail. *** out of ***** stars.

The Black Pirate (1926): Douglas Fairbanks Sr. stars in this exciting, action-packed swashbuckling pirate adventure yarn, as a young man seeking revenge on a band of pirates after they ransacked and destroyed his ship, killing his father. In trying to achieve his goal, he tricks the pirates into thinking he wants to join their band. Will this ruse work?

This delivers all the thrills and cutthroat pirate action anyone could ever hope for and even more. It has all the elements one looks for and wants from today's big blockbusters: impressive stunts mostly performed by Fairbanks himself, sword fights, pirate treachery, explosions, daring underwater scenes, a damsel in distress, the works. There's a few plot holes and questionable plot twists here and there but it all holds up incredibly well after all these years although in today's world lead actress Billie Dove would have been given more to do. That's a minor nitpick at best. If you like pirate yarns, check this out. Believe me, they just don't get much better than this.  **** out of ***** stars.

I recently picked up my boxed set of Star Trek Voyager that was on layby.  The box is HUGE and heavy and I started watching season one last night.  Got through 4 eps before tiredness and the late hour got the best of me and I had to go to bed.

For something made in the 90s, it hasn't dated at all like Next Gen has (for me anyway).  I thought there would be lameness and cheese, but it's free of all that.  This weekend will be a Voyager fest of massive proportions. 

My son is very excited because he was only little when it was on and he doesn't remember most of the episodes.  Of course, the season when Seven of Nine comes in is the one he's waiting for   :teddyr:

Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936): A nine year old Brooklyn boy nicknamed "Ceddie" (Freddie Bartholomew), beloved by all who know him due to his kindly nature, finds himself in for a most unexpected change of lifestyle when he learns he's to be heir to the estate of his grandfather (C. Aubrey Smith), a British Earl and has to move in with him. A bigger challenge for the boy to overcome though is to bring down the barrier between his stubborn, set in his ways grandfather and Ceddie's mother "Dearest" (Dolores Costello), who the Earl resents his son marrying as she's an American.

This one really grabs you by the heartstrings and doesn't let up. Freddie Bartholomew is simply wonderful as "Ceddie", wonderfully capturing his character and winning over the viewing audience's hearts in fairly short time, no easy feat for a child star. C. Aubrey Smith too is just marvelous as the crotchety old grandfather who finds his stubborn, hard-hearted, icy exterior being worn away just by being in the presence of such a terrific young lad who loves him unconditionally. Dolores Costello too was nicely cast and delivers the goods when she's called upon to do so. It's the likable performances given by these stars that make this a real winner in that we're truly made to care about these characters and what happens to them.  ***1/2 out of ***** stars

The Eagle (1925): Russian lieutenant Vladimir Dubrovsky (Rudolph Valentino) vows vengeance against a man named Kyrilla (James A. Marcus) after Kyrilla used treachery to steal Dubrovsky land, which left his father a dying, ruined man. Eventually hiding his face under a mask and assuming the identity "The Black Eagle", he and his band of followers set out to bring down Kyrilla. However Dubrovsky has even more reason to hide his face because having offended the Czarina of Russia by spurning her affections, she has issued a warrant for his arrest dead or alive for desertion from his regiment. Further complicating Dubrovsky's plans is he unexpectedly winds up falling in love with Kyrilla's daughter Mascha (Vilma Bánky).

Well it's certainly unpredictable, you have to say that. This one certainly has plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing what might befall our hero next. Valentino it cannot be denied is excellent in the lead role as an heroic bandit with irresistible charm. This does deliver romance and some tense moments for our ill-fated lovers. The problem here is that really "The Black Eagle" never quite seems to deliver the goods when it comes to action, his most impressive moments firing a shot at a key moment and as expected coming to the rescue of his damsel in distress time and time again. Also the ending doesn't quite seem to ring true given previously established events in our story. Still certainly not bad of its type, just a straightforward romantic adventure, almost fairytale-like, in a fashion. *** out of ***** stars.

30 DAYS OF NIGHT   **1/2 out of ****.
While being skillfully made and acted, the filmmakers took what at the most should have been an 85 minute movie and stretched it out to 1 hour and 52 minutes instead.  There's only so many scenes you can watch of the same characters running from one building to another before it gets extremely repetitive. Some of the dialogue was pretty bad as well though the actors did a good job with what they were given.  The ending in particular was pretty bad in addition to the script having some characters do some extremely stupid things. But even with those multitude of problems, it's still worth a rental for fans of vampire movies or horror movies tired of PG-13 rated crap and wanting some blood in their movie diet.  The skillfull direction really keeps my rating from sinking any lower.     

It's a good rental for horror movie fans that are looking for modern R rated fare.  I liked it more than I hated it.

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966):  The universal theme of a man standing upon his principles, even at the risk of his life, is so moving and well-executed that people tend to forget this is a dialogue driven historical drama concerned with sometimes arcane points of 16th century religious politics.  It's also a mobbing tribute to the power of the rule of law.  A fantastic job by Paul Scofield, who played the part on stage.  With Orson Welles and a young John Hurt in memorable roles.  "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"  5/5.

RAISING ARIZONA (1987):  The Coen brothers' funniest movie, and one of their best overall.  When a good-hearted ex-con H.I. (Nick Cage) and an emotionally needy ex-cop Ed (Holly Hunter) find they are infertile, they hatch a plan to kidnap one of an unpainted furniture magnate's quintuplets.  But raising a critter is harder than expected for a screwed up young couple, especially when they also have to deal with H.I.'s old jail buddies and a bounty-hunting biker with supernatural powers.  Full of hilarious exchanges and choreographed mayhem.  "It's a crazy world."  "Someone ought to sell tickets."  "Sure, I'd buy one."  5/5.

Just saw 30 Days of Night on DVD so I dont know if it was unrated or not, but geez what a freakin gore fest this movie is. If you like Vampire movies you'll love 30 Days. We're not just talking 2 holes in the neck, theese guyz will bit you in the face, rip your neck out and disembowel you, just for starters. This movie was very intense and is only recommended for those who are not faint or heart.

On a completely differnt note , I also saw City of Men theatrically recently, excellent. Just as good if not better than the original. Completely makes we want to go back and watch the show. Well writen, directed, acted, just all around solid.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN  **** out of ****.
I originally gave this movie 3 1/4 stars as I had an issue with the scene at the end of the movie between Tommy Lee Jones and his on-screen wife while being well acted questionable to the point of the movie.  Upon watching this fantastic movie on DVD again last night, the ending made complete sense now, hence I increased my rating to a perfect 4 stars.  The ending is still highly subjective to each viewer and I won't take the time to explain my new feelings about it as the movie was made to be pondered and for each person to take something else from the ending from another person.  I just can't believe how well made this movie is. Easily the Coen Brothers best movie to date IMO.

HITMAN  (unrated)  *** out of ****.
While this movie is a narrative mess throughout most of it's 94 running time, it's still highly enjoyable. The action scenes are very well executed and avoid the quick cutting the ruins a lot of modern action movies.  Acting is solid enough throughout and the female companion to our title character is one of the hottest women that I've seen lately in recent movies. Just try not to think about the movie too much and just set back and let the action set pieces wash over you and you'll like it. The unrated DVD is about a minute longer and features a bit more blood/gore (especially in the arm chopping sequence) as well as a longer torture sequence with female full frontal nudity that wasn't present in the R rated theatrical cut.     

Just started Season 4 of Star Trek Voyager.  I'm really surprised by the number of episodes I HAVEN'T seen.

Also, Tobe Hooper's Malevolence.  This was actually quite good.  The film looked dirty and freaky and had some genuinely scary bits and even though I could see them coming, it still made my heart leap out of my throat. 

Ice Queen.  Don't bother with this one, it's lame and very unscary and the Ice Queen herself looks like Pamela Anderson on a PCP rampage.

That could  be a highly entertaining movie actually..........   :teddyr: :tongueout:

PLEASURE IN PARADISE (1992):  Softcore porn trash with moderately attractive people and a lame stab at a real-estate-developer-tries-to-steal-unknowing-innocents-inheritance plot.  Perversely pleasurable to fast-forward through the lengthy sex scenes to get to the plot, watching the lead actresses (obviously strippers thinking they were getting their big shot in Hollywood) desperately try to sell dialogue that was probably written on a cocktail napking the night before shooting began.  I put a more thorough plot synopsis in the movie reviews section.   

1/5. 

DONNIE DARKO (2001):A demonic bunny rabbit tells disturbed teen Donnie that the world will end in 28 days.  A loveable jumble of a plot bringing in teen alienation, sci-fi wormholes, parodies of John Hughes teen flicks of the 1980s.  Could have been great if it had been less scattershot, but Frank the Bunny is really scary. 

4/5.

DEAD OF NIGHT [AKA DEATHDREAM] (1972):  After being informed by the army that their son had died in Vietnam, the boy suddenly shows up at the family's door, a little bit changed... People seem to like this for some reason, but I found it dull, badly acted and suspense-free.  It might have worked better if there had been an attempt to create some sympathy for Andy, the returning zombie veteran.  I wonder if returning Vietnam vets appreciated being portrayed as antisocial, soulless killing machines.   

2/5.

Toxic Avenger Part II  ** 1/2 out of ****

Wasn't bad but it still wasn't as good as the first film was.  I think the idea of Toxie going to Japan was a good idea but could have been better.

Toxic Avenger Part III *** out of ****

I personally liked this one better than Part II.  I liked the idea of how Toxie was taken in by evil and show that's no matter how good someone is, they can still be deceived by evil into doing evil things.

Toxic Avenger Part IV ** out of ****

Personally I didn't like this as much as I thought I would.  I did like having Sgt. Kabukiman in the film which I though was a good addition to the film.  The whole doppleganger alternate universe story was nothing impressive to me.  I though the fight scenes were okay but could have been better.


Too Wong Foo, Thanks for everything Julie Newmar ** 3/4 out of ****

I though this was actually a decent film in it's own right.  It is odd seeing actors who play more macho roles in films doing drag queen in this film.  In my opinion everybody played their parts very well and the script was well written.

GHOST DOG: WAY OF THE SAMURAI ***1/2 out of ****.
Probably my favorite Forrest Whittaker performance to date. A very quirky movie that is unlike almost any other that I've seen over the years.  The movie has a really offbeat feel that will not be to some people's liking, but for those who appreciate original independent cinema will probably love it. the only place the movie falters for me is the ending. While it's the only logical way that the film could have ended, it just misses some of the emotional punch that I feel that it could and should have had.

I bought Volume 1 of Beavis and Butthead for my son last night.

These guys are hilarious, although I can only watch about an hour of them before I have to go to something else.  My 16 yo son, however, can watch them endlessly.  I woke up this morning to laughter from behind his closed bedroom door.  B & B at 6 am is a little much, in spite of their humour.

An unfortunate side effect is that my son, with his gift for mimicry, is now walking around the house pretending to be Cornholio, complete with vocal spasms and weird bursts of nonsense phrases.  Of course there's only so much I can deal with before it's, "ENOUGH with Cornholio, already!"

Returner- Sat through most of it until my DVD player decided to start frying.  Despite the English acting, I think I actually like the film.  Surprising, considering how badly bashed it was.

The Cutting Edge - hadn't watched this in a long time and had forgotten how excellent it is.  A snotty figure skater (Moira Kelly) has pretty much gone through every male partner who's willing to tolerate her, so her coach decides the only option is to recruit an ex-hockey player (D.B. Sweeney) to skate with her.  Many hundreds of insults follow, while their romantic relationship grows and their quest for Olympic gold is pursued.  Just a fun, fun movie.  Lots of humor, great characters, did I mention it's fun?

Deathlands - Sci-Fi Original I believe.  After WWIII, everything has way too much contrast and all the colors are way over saturated.  As annoying as it is to look at on the TV, I can only imagine the horror of living in it.  Anyhow, a small group of people are roaming the Deathlands:  Guy with a secret past, hot babe, "mutie" boy (white makeup), and a guy who looks like he'd be at home tying fishing lures.  They find out about the secret past of the "guy with a secret past", he's the son of the ex-ruler of some hell hole, and his evil brother and sister-in-law (Tracy Lords) just need to be taken down.  It actually wasn't too bad for the most part, though the climax was overly stupid and the epilogue dragged on a bit as if they were expecting this to be the pilot for a TV series or something.  Hot babe looked really, well, hot.

The Night Before - '80s comedy starring a surprisingly human (pre-matrix) Keanu Reeves, and Lori Loughlin (Ahhhh, I love Lori).  Lori loses a bet and has to go to the prom with the school nerd (Keanu).  On the way there, they get lost and end up on the wrong side of the tracks.  Low on gas money, they end up at a bar and the bartender spikes Keanu's drink.  The rest of the story is told through flashbacks.  A drugged up Keanu sells Lori to a pimp, insults the pimp and has a showdown scheduled for dawn, has his car stolen, and overall has a rather bad night.  Now he has to save the girl, get his car back and deal with the pimp.  And get Lori back home before her father - the chief of police - finds out about any of this.  Overall it was mildly amusing, though it did get downright funnhy at the end.  I've always thought Lori has excellent comedic timing.  Worth a watch if you're a fan of '80s comedies, or a fan of Keanu or the lovely Lori Loughlin. 

Hey Torg, have you seen Suziki's BRANDED TO KILL (1967) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061882/)?  It's a surreal, B&W movie about a Yakuza hitman, and Jamursch lifted a couple of scenes verbatim for GHOST DOG.  Highly recommended.

 :bouncegiggle:

That's great.  I remember when I was a teenager doing that all the time.  It's still hilarious today but in small doses.  Too bad they didn't have the music videos included in the episodes.  That was really the point of the show...you know, back when MTV used to these things called music videos.

Had a 50's movie fest this weekend:

Queen of Outer Space
Forbidden Planet
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Revenge of the Creature
Missile to the Moon
War of the Worlds
Attack of the Puppet People

Weekends are never long enough.  :teddyr:

MISSLE to the MOON-Is it me,or do the rock monsters look like an army of evil Gumbys?

Watched an old film noir last night called the RED HOUSE,with Edward G. Robinson. WOW!!! Whatta great picture!!! Almost a horror film! And a young Rory (MOTEL HELL) Calhoun is in it too! Highly recommended!  :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Lethal Weapon **** out of ****

I truly loved this film.  All the action and story fit in nicely and make for an excellent movie that I enjoyed with all my heart.

Pink Flamingos * out of ****

I felt so dirty after watching this film.  I struggled to finish the film and I watched the whole thing, now I wish I hadn't seen the film.  This was one of the most disgusting things I have ever watched in my life.

This film is not yet rated **** out of ****

I'm not a huge documentary fan, but I really enjoyed this one a lot.  It did catch me off guard on how biased the MPAA is towards the big name film companies. 

I hear that.  I like the lads, but only in small doses.  However, I can watch Daria til the cows come home. 

In the DVD pack it has some of the music videos with them, and they are hilarious in themselves.  There is more obvious comedy and less of the staring-into-space-laughing like on the actual episodes.  And the thanksgiving special is comedy at it's finest.  I have to say Beavis is my favourite of the two.

Wallace and Grommit and The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit.
Love Nick Park's work with the Wallace and Grommit movies.  This one is hilarious and I never tire of watching it. Lady Tottington is brilliantly voiced by Helena Bonham Carter and is a toff clueless upper crust British character of the finest calibre.

Season 7 of Star Trek Voyager.
This is my favourite of all the Star Trek franchises.  Can't say enough great things about it - the scary and wonderfully rendered Borg, Seven of Nine, cute Chakotay (of course!), and Captain Janeway.  I would follow her into the delta quadrant any day.  She's exactly the kind of leader worthy of a following.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas
One of Jim Carrey's best movies and fine retelling of the Dr Seuss classic.

Superman II (Original version, not the Richard Donner cut), ** out of ****

I didn't like the original version of Superman II, I felt that the pacing was was really off at times.  I also didn't like how some of the various scenes played out, like the whole Lois finding out Clark is Superman in the hotel, I felt the RD cut did a far superior job with that how Lois found out Clark is Superman.

"A league of ordinary Gentlemen"


hilarious documentary abuot the (sucesful?)  revival of the Professional Bowlers Association a few years back

Police Academy 1 *** out of ****

Very funny film to watch.  I haven't laughed that hard in a long time, so it was good for me to see it.

Moonbase - Watched this again last night and enjoyed it.  Some convicts escape from an orbiting prison, and make their way to a garbage dump on the moon.  Shortly afterwards, a shuttle of military people arrive to retrieve some sort of super bomb that's stashed away in the dump.  The lead garbage guy's ex-girlfriend just happens to be along.  It's cheesy, set in the basement of some building, and the special effects are less than stellar, but the acting is okay and I liked the characters.  The lead bad guy introduces himself as the "Horseman of the apocalypse".  Later someone says "Um, excuse me, Mr. Apocalypse?"   :smile:

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007 remake) - This is one of the best horror movies I've seen lately.  Some National Guard recruits are supposed to deliver supplies to some scientists, but the scientists are missing and they go into the hills (which have eyes  :teddyr: ) to look for them.  I liked the characters, especially the sergeant who berates his troops in the most entertaining of ways.  Great suspense, some really gory kills, and the hot babe was really hot.

Snakes on a Plane - Well, it was exactly what I expected (There are snakes, on a plane, Samuel L. Jackson says Motherf***er), so I was neither pleasantly surprised nor especially disappointed.  Ho hum.

Alien Incursion - Some giant space monsters are loose in the woods, threatening some poor campers.  As if that's not bad enough, some black ops military guys are out there too, and they'd be perfectly happy to kill everybody just so long as they get a specimen to take back.  It was entertaining in that they turned all the usual conventions on their head - the b***hy woman lives almost to the end, the hero woman gets killed, the military guys are somewhat competent.  Unfortunately the alien creatures are bargain basement CGI and downright silly looking.  It also starts out being very silly but then decides to be dark and serious by the end.  Overall, not too bad.

Beware - ahead be spoilerage!



30 Days Of Night
Loved, loved, LOVED this movie!!  Creepy, desolate atmosphere.  I just love horror stories set in the snow (The Thing, Alien -v- Predator).  Strong, well rounded characters.  Snappy dialgoue.  Logical plot development.  No stupid decisions by characters.  Creepy, nasty, scary demons.  Lots of gore but within the bounds of the story.  Good ending, but surprising.  I didn't expect the main character to sacrifice himself the way he did.  But it left room for a sequel, so looking forward to that if it ever happens.  I also wasn't upset that we didn't get any background story on where the demons came from, how they came into being, who they were before.  Normally that bugs me, but this time - no problem.


Blades of Glory
Will Ferrell is a hit or miss affair with me.  Stranger Than Fiction was brilliant, but The Legend of Ron Burgundy wasn't.  But this was completely hilarious.  And I was pleasantly surprised.  It was very Zoolander-like, but with Ben Stiller as one of the producers, I'm not too surprised.  Jon Heder was great as the wussy guy.  Ferrell did a wonderful job as the over the top Chazz Michael Michaels, but he wasn't dicky with it.  Just funny. 

I highly recommend both movies

Knocked Up: Unrated *** out of ****

A Clockwork Orange **** out of ****

A truly interesting film to watch.  I was engrossed the whole time by how good the film was.  It was better than the used the ending for the US version of the book instead of the original ending which I don't think would have worked at all for the film.

"Hercules In New York" - Bland early vehicle for one 'Arnold Strong' as the classical hero. He defies the will of Zeus by descending to the Big Apple circa 1969 and causes chaos. This is rather dull but some set pieces like the athletics scene, the bear fight and the chariot chase have a certain camp charm lacking in the dud characterisation.

"King Of The Zombies" - The Third Reich joins forces with the walking dead in this charming forerunner to Scooby Doo. Wide-eyed funnyman Mantan Moreland totally steals the show as Jeff, the jittery manservant to hero Bill Summers (John Archer).  His best scene is probably when Momba the butler attempts to zombify him by hypnosis. The crazed plot revolves around spy Dr Sangre using zombies as data carriers for Nazi agents. Hero Bill Summers and pilot Mac McCarthy along with Mantan crashland on his island (right inside the cemetery!) and are drawn straight into his diabolical scheme. Great fun if VERY dated!

Meet the Feebles

Oh dear.   :buggedout:

This was.......interesting and amusing in a completely gross kind of way.  I wasn't expecting Shakespeare, but it was done very cheaply and had a raw unpolished aspect to it.

I didn't find it consistenly funny.  But it was good to see Peter Jackson going all out without any concessions to decency or good taste.  All social taboos were completely smashed and steamrollered over.  I would really like to see what he could do now with a bigger budget and better production guys.

I found the characters difficult to understand.  The sound wasn't clear and it seemed like the dubbing was a little off in some parts.  But the songs "Garden Of Love" and "Sodomy" were funny and entertaining and it was worth watching the movie for those alone.

The ending was interesting and a nice little wrap up of the story.  If you have "out there" taste in movies, I recommend it.  But the fact that my 17 year old son didn't like it or find it funny, says volumes about how bad it was.

I have some catching up to do.

LIPSTICK (1976): Annoying and cynical attempt to exploit the injustices of pre-rape shield law trials by showing a graphic rape and an adding an implausible courtroom drama.  Starring the supremely untalented Margaux Hemmingway.  Dino de Laurentiis, leave the exploitation films to the low-budget folks! 1/5

FARGO (1996):  Everyone probably knows this kidnapping-gone-wrong black comedy from the Coen brothers.  Great roles for William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi, and the role of a lifetime for Frances McDormand as the pregnant cop.  5/5

LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGESE NUN (1977):  A really odd nunsploitation movie from Jess Franco.  This has a standard type of women-in-prison plot, only set in a convent with devil worshipping nuns.  Very heavy on sex, nudity and sadomasochism.  But, considering it's from Jess Franco, it's technically amazing, with great costumes, locations, and sacred music that's used both atmospherically and ironically. 3/5.

SPIDER BABY (1968):  A family of three childlike adults, one of whom is obsessed with spiders,  is taken care of by family chauffeur Lon Chaney Jr. in a dilapidated house, until some outsiders come calling.  The unsettling atmosphere created by director Jack Hill is utterly unique and almost impossible to convey: horrifying, surreal, humorous, touching, and supersaturated with sublimated sexuality.  A cult classic that you definitely need to see if you haven’t already. 5/5.

THE DEVILS (1971):  In 17th century France, a hunchbacked nun accuses a chick-magnet priest of being a warlock. "Based on historical fact," like the little known historical fact about the famous 17th century rock-n-roll exorcist with the sleeveless vestments and lavender-tinted John Lennon granny glasses.   Fun if you take it as a surrealistic "nuns gone wild" comedy, rather than as the metaphor for "authentic" religious faith director Ken Russell sometimes seems to be preaching.  3/5.

TEENAGE TUPELO (1995): This John Michael McCarthy released-to-video feature is one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.  The story involves D’Lana, a young woman in 50s Tupelo, MS who gets pregnant by a no-good rockabilly singer, and is also a dead ringer for fictional sexploitation star Topsy Turvy.  There’s also a girl gang called the Manhaters, disgusting “birth of a baby” footage, and a film inside the film called “Trashus Trailerus” which involves nuclear weapons and edible panties.  And supercool rockabilly throughout by a band called “Imapla.”  This is really a surrealist tribute to sexploitation films of the 40s-60s. 4/5, for oddity value alone. 

SCREAM DREAM (1989): Shot-to-video horror about a heavy metal band fronted by a Satan-worshipping witch.  Some boobies, but not nearly enough to make this dreck watchable.  When wannabe scream queen Melissa Moore is by far the most accomplished actor in the cast, you know you’re in serious trouble.  SKULL.

PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (1985):Bowtied man-child Pee Wee loses his bike, and travels across America to find it, encountering a bizarre cast of characters.  Pee Wee's voice and mannerisms can be grating to adults, but debuting director Tim Burton manages to keep things interesting for all ages with incredible detail, visual style, and sophisticated two-layer humor.  4/5.

EVIL DEAD 2 (1987):  Another one most people here are probably intimately familiar with.  I showed it to my 60 year old mother, who loves old Universal horror movies and hates nearly everything done in the horror genre after HALLOWEEN.  She loved it.  5/5.

GRASS (1999): Documentary detailing the American government's often absurdly hyperbolic campaign of misinformation about marijuana.  The archival footage and clips from REEFER MADNESS and other (non-government sponsored) exploitation films are often hilarious, but if you lack a sense of righteous indignation over pot prohibition, the joke wears thin before the movie ends.  With celebrity stoner Woody Harrelson narrating, it’s obvious that the filmmakers aim is to preach to the potsmoking choir.  3/5.

Fragile with Calista Flockhart

This was a good old fashioned ghost story.  Good pacing and scary creepy atmosphere and believeable characters.  And any movie that has that Aussie hunk Richard Roxburgh is always gold. 

Die Hard 2 *** out of ****

Die Hard: With a Vengeance *** out of ****

 

"Dual Alibi" (1946) - Interesting British 'Noir' thriller about twin circus acrobats (both played by Herbert Lom) who plot revenge after they are swindled out of an immensely valuable winning lottery ticket by a crooked promoter and his girlfriend. Told in flashback we don't discover which twin fired the fatal shot until the end. Unusually the film allows the plot's murderer to survive (albeit as a physical and psychological wreck) and cheat justice in a trial. No classic, but well acted and strongly atmospheric if lacking in visual appeal aside from a nicely done montage sequence when the circus employees first learn about the winning ticket.

Just finished watching the first of like 10 maybe 15 DVD's I have, but have yet to make time to view. So I watched Wrestlemaniac first, simply because it has been sitting on my shelf by far the longset. I can honestly say that this movie was'nt that bad at all dude. It had freaking gnarly kill scenes, it had porno chicks all over the place and rogue lucha libre stars. For what it was worth, this film definitely shocked me, hopefully the others hold up the way this one did. Up next just to name a few i got Southland Tales, Revolver, The Lost, I am Legend, No Country, Tripping the Rift and a bunch of other stuff.

The Return - Sarah Michelle Gellar wanders around Texas looking really confused.  After 45 minutes I had to turn it off, I was bored out of my freakin' skull.  Couldn't have cared less about the character (there was only one), and there was no plot. 

300 - Wow!  Marvelous Hollywood-ized story of tremendous courage in the face of insurmountable odds.  Some of the fight scenes were truly amazing. 

The Shaft - New York's Millenium building has a problem:  it's elevators are killing people.  Could it be haunted (rumor has it that Manhattan was built upon ancient Indian burial grounds)?  Or maybe it's terrorists?  Or maybe, just maybe, the computer for the elevators was designed by a guy who used to work for the military, building computers controlled by living brain tissue, until they went out of control?  Well, obviously it's choice #3.  I really enjoyed this.  The plot is utterly absurd, but the team of the the elevator repairman and the reporter (Naomi Watts) were fun to watch, and the plot moved along well, building to the ludicrous conclusion.

Star Wars Attack of the Clones - well, considering that it was apparently written by a sixth grader, and the acting would have made Ed Wood proud, it actually wasn't too bad.  There was usually enough stuff flying around or blowing up to keep me entertained.  It brought back some of the Star Wars fun that was missing from the first and third installments in this trilogy.

Holy Crap, I was totally not expecting this but I randomly figured I'd watch a few minutes of a documentary called Steep that I would care much about while I ate my dinner before I put in No Country. And I eneded up watching all of the documentary. If you've never heard of it Steep is this new extreme skiing documentary they just released. And its freaking dope man. This is one of the freshed Skiing/Snowboarding flicks I've ever seen. It was exhilarating, death defying, action packed, inspiring and so much more. I really wasnt expecting this. You guys gotta check this one out, makes me want to go play with fire or dodge cars on the freeway or something, man I'm pumped now.

JFK **** out of ****

This film has now become one of my all time films to watch.  I really enjoyed it from start to finish and the entire investigation process was interesting as well.

Near Dark

This was a great little vampire movie far removed from the usual vampire genre.  Lance Henricksen and Bill Paxton are always a delight to watch.  I love it when Lance is being menacing and scary and Bill is being manic and violent.

Highly recommended.

It's a little too tin-foil hat for me but not a bad flick.

For a movie like this I like last year's Zodiac.

"who wants to kill jessie?"


this was the second czech movie from the 60's I've seen and it was less annoying than the other one "daisies" .    cartoon characters come to life and romance and hijinks ensue.  both films feature a generally experimental approach to filmaking, especially visually

THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN (1963): They did do that thing the title says they did. But when they filmed it, it turned out to be too short, so several years later unrelated parties filmed some extra barely related spy footage and tacked it on to the beginning of the original. The result is one of the most boring and confusing movies ever made, with only some outstandingly hammy acting by Hitler's mute head (carefully preserved in a spacious jar) enlivening things at the very end.  I mean to do a full reader review of this next week, God help me.  1/5 slimes.

THE GREAT YOKAI WAR (2005): Aided by friendly Yokai (spirits), a cowardly boy must overcome his fears to avert the destruction of Tokyo. Fun and visually impressive family fantasy from "extreme" Japanese director Takashi Miike; the best part are the dozens upon dozens of Yokai, each unique, from a turtle man to a woman with an infinitely extensible neck to a living umbrella. Amereican kids would love it, except for the subtitles.  My first Miike movie, and his visual sense is exciting even if this subject matter isn't typical.  4/5 slimes.

THE RED BALLOON (LE BALLON ROUGE) (1956): A red balloon follows a 6 year old boy around Paris. This short, simple, essentially silent fable about friendship is universally beloved for good reason.  Only 38 minutes.  If your cable system offers on-demand movies, this is available free this month from Turner Classic Movies. 5/5.

PEEPING TOM (1960):  A shy but demented cameraman is obsessed with the idea of documenting fear, and takes it upon himself to gather the footage he needs. This pic is as much an intense character study as a stylish thriller; it was Powell's audacity in forcing the audience to understand and even sympathize with the killer, rather than the perverse depiction of voyeurism, that destroyed the director's career.  5/5 slimes.

Flash Gordon
Flash - ah ahhhhh - saviour of the Universe!  I totally forgot how over the top everything is in this movie.  Including the fact that Dale and Flash were engaged two minutes after getting captured.  And they didn't even know each other!  My 17 yo son now counts it as one of his favourite movies.

Thir13en Ghosts
I haven't seen the original, just this one with the lovely Shannon Elizabeth.  I fell in love with the all glass house and the ghosts were pretty scary too.  One of my faves.

Jaws ** 1/2 out of ****

It was an okay film, but I though it was a bit overrated.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of quarters **** out of ****

Once upon a time in America *** 1/2 out of ****

Jack Ketchums, The Lost. Such a perfect title for this film cuz its titular character Ray Pye is such a vehement looser. This movie is scary in ways rarely seeen on film. Its Silence of the Lams sort of scarry, Damer scarry, Jaws scarry, Its the fact that this ish is real that really delivers and drives the story home. I literally sweat  during sequences in this movie. Definitely watching this one a second time  but with the lights on for sure.

__________________________________________________________________________

I was able to find this trailer  on YT...jeez you have no idea how hard it is to search for something with a name as generic as "the lost"...but this did turn up and I'm pretty sure that its the official trailer:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5uKmN3mwQ0

bedtime stories-  wacky way out there soft core starring illona Staller aka Ciccolina, italian porn goddess turned politician.  it's really something else.  Shee wears this crown thing all the time and dresses in a little piece of fabric she lifts up constantly.  the dress is as thin as the plot, which is about a dirty radio show she does, kind of like sassy sue or whatever.  she performs some ridiculous pop songs, seduces a very skinny guy, gets saved from a gang rape by a ventriloquist lesbian and carries a dirty looking blue teddy bear.  You'd think Italy was heaven watching this and it may well be I've never been there.

Lone Wolf mcquade-  if you haven't seen many chuck norris movies and don't know where to start definately check this out.  the cliches are piled on pretty high, but it kicks ass.  straightforward in way they don't make anymore.  bites heavily from spaghetti westerns and Bruce Lee in places.  featuring Billy Dee Williams and David Carradine. 

Tinman - the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries.  Loosely based on The Wizard of Oz.  This was actually pretty good.  Some girl and her parents are swept away by a tornado to "the O.Z." or "Outer Zone".  Girl sets off to search for her parents, meets some people, has a series of adventures and a few too many flashbacks, and discovers all sorts of stuff that deepens the plot.  My favorite part is the evil sorceress:  She's hot, wears this crazy gold outfit, and gets all the best lines.  Would have been a somewhat boring movie without her.

Within the Rock - there's a runaway moon hurtling towards Earth (Doing about warp 9 judging by how fast it's whippin' past other stars).  A team of miners is sent to drill tunnels into it, after which they'll set off some C4 next to the reactor, which will turn it into a nuclear bomb and the explosion will be routed through the tunnels, causing the moon to change course (by about 45 degrees).  But little do they know, there's actually a big scary monster imprisoned "within the rock".  Yup, they unknowingly release it, mayhem ensues.  This could have been a fun cheese fest, but never really achieved that lofty goal.  The heroine is unlikable, the other characters...seemed like the writers were just sort of stewing around and never did figure out what to do with these people.  There's a tough girl who starts pouring out her heart to the heroine;  she's not really tough, she's a delicate little flower!  I thought they were going to start kissing or something.  Overall, I paid 85 cents for the VHS tape, and got my money's worth.

Pan's Labyrinth - some critic somewhere said this was good, so I watched it.  It was enjoyable.  Spanish film, hope you like subtitles.  In WWII Spain, a young girl and her mother move to a military compound where mom's new husband is in command.  He's a real SOB, killing rebels without mercy and that sort of stuff.  Half the movie is about the husband and his military exploits, the other half about the young girl and her fairy tale adventures with fairies and fauns and the quests they send her on.  I actually liked the military stuff better than the fantasy storyline.  Overall, pretty cool, nice downbeat ending you never get with American films.  High production values, well developed characters, the whole deal.

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982): A doctor and his new girlfriend investigate a Satanic plot to place devices in kid's Halloween masks that either blow their heads up or turn them into a mass of snakes and cockroaches.  This mix of the imaginative, the inept and the downright silly turns into good dumb fun by the third act, but there are lots of horror-movie cliches to wade through first to get to the good stuff.  3/5.

RABID DOGS (1974): Fleeing a bloody payroll heist, three criminals abduct two adults and an unconscious, possibly dying child. Basically a five character hostage drama set almost entirely inside a cramped car, strong characterizations make this involving despite plot holes and a too-obvious twist ending.  Mario Bava directs.  Beware the inferior re-edited, re-dubbed version entitled KIDNAPPED, available on the same disc.  4/5.

THE INCREIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD (1957):  Three scientists and a gal reporter luck out when their errant diving bell falls near some underwater caves.  The undersea world they discover is hardly petrified and certainly not incredible. Remarkably action-free.  The aquatic documentary shown at the very beginning is actually being watched by characters in the framing story: in other words, this is that rare who's padding actually has its own padding. As much fun as the bends. 1/5.

MARVELOUS (2006):  When a mopey divorcee discovers she has mystical healing powers, her in-laws and various friends, hangers-on and manipulators ride her coattails to prominence as a cult-like figure.  Slow to start, abrupt to end, and sometimes too subtle where it should be outrageous, this celebrity satire nonetheless has an authentic bite, like a minor NETWORK.  3.5/5.

SOM AND BANK: BAGKOK FOR SALE [AKA ONE TAKE ONLY] (2006):  Drug runner Bank and teen prostitute Som, essentially orphans, develop a romance in the Bangkok underworld.  Fun as a seedy Bangkok travelogue, but everytime the underprivliged-teen-lovers-against-the-world drama starts to take off, director Oxide Pang Chun throws in another music video style dream sequence with thumping techno music to kill the momentum.  3/5

Poltergeist
Since everyone knows this movie, I won't do a mini-review.  I did think that it would be ho hum after not watching it for years, but the scare factor is still there.

Red Dwarf Season 5 - A classic in British humour.  I've seen all the eps before but because each season is so expensive, I'm having to buy them at the rate of one every few pay days.

Shrek - I love this franchise.  Mike Myers does a passable Scottish accent and the humour is excellent.  Can't wait to see Shrek 3.

The Gate - Oh, man this was LAME!  Stephen Dorff as a 10 year old, complete with a bad haircut and lame acting abilities.  He certainly got better as he got older.  I ended up fast forwarding through the odd plot.  Something about a hole in the backyard unleashing demons.  Thankfully after 90 mins you finally get to see the demons and all the action is contained in the last 15 mins or so.  They had the trailer for the movie in the special features.  Watch the trailer instead.  It's more action packed and you'll get a better wrap of the story.

It came! I watched it! ALUCARDA (1975)!

DAM! Really bizzare devil poosesion movie from Mexico. If you like the sound of screaming....really hysterical screaming,this is the movie for you.

 A girl named Justine is placed in a convenet where the nuns all dress in what seems to be filthy,bloody rags.Her roomie is a weird girl named Alucarda,who is obssesed with death. They meet up with some weird gypsies,rifle through what seems to be an old tomb,and both become possessed by demons.

Some really silly dialouge,weird imagery,and lotsa blood. LOTS of blood. It seems like someone is bleeding every other minute in this movie! Not quite the classic I expected,but a wild movie nevertheless.

BEST SCENE: Justine is found in a blood filled coffin by one of the nuns....and the crazy demon girl slashes the poor Sister up with her fingernails like a wild animal! Lotsa blood and screaming ensues!
 

Beowulf (2007)  - Robert Zemeckis' 3D all CGI movie of the classic tale.  Didn't see any reason for this being all CG, but it was a pretty good film.

I Am Legend (2007) - Will Smith does an excellent acting job, but the stupid director went video game CG on the mutant/vampires and totally missed the point of the original story.

Damn, I just watched Jimmy Carter Man From Plains on DVD and I am so inspired, I like totally want to go and save a cat in a tree or something. Who would have ever thought that at 80 years old this guy would still give a crap about the world particularly in its current state. Not only that but maintain as much composure around so much controversy, this guy is a pro and truly a nobel peae prize deserving philanthropist.

Hands of Steel - A cyborg, created to kill a influential leader has a change of heart at the last minute.  On the run from his creators, he hides out in a roadside bar/hotel and earns his keep doing odd jobs and arm wrestling truck drivers that stop by.  A great entry in 80's Italian cinema; it borrows a few ideas from the Terminator and lifts the arm repair scene directly.

I thought it was really fun and enjoyed it the whole way through. 

seance on a wet afternoon (1964) -  suspension of disbelief and tolerance of showy british acting styles required, but overall good story about a phony medium who is also insane. 

CLOVERFIELD   *** out of ****.
Expected to hate it, ended up liking it. While the movie has some issues, its strengths outweigh it's weaknesses and it ends up being lots of fun.  The characters wind up doing some dumb things throughout the movie but I'm sure I would as well if I was trapped in a city with a giant 350 foot monster rampaging around.  Great extras on the DVD BTW.

12 MONKEYS   ***1/2 out of ****.
Terry Gilliam was working as a director-for-hire on this 1995 time travel/dementia sci-fi epic starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt.  The movie gets a little too out there at times but that's to be expected with a visionary and extremely quirky/non-conventional director like Gilliam at the helm.  Great stuff and a movie that sticks with you for a while after the 1st time you see it. I was lucky to see this in theaters originally.

Resident Evil - Extinction
Yet another fabbo offering in this wonderful franchise.  Stark and bleak with enough flesh eating zombies to keep your interest up.  I like the premise that the T-Virus destroyed everything on Earth, not just people.  I'm glad to see that they left things open for another film in the franchise.  Milla Jovovich kicks arse as usual and good old Aussie advertising commerial guru Russell Mulcahy is at the helm directing.  And the very yummy Oded Fehr makes another appearance as Carlos Olivera. :wink:

Interesting sidebar:  when AIDS first hit public awareness in the 80s and scared the bejeebles out of everyone, Russ did a commerical about protecting yourself against the virus.  It showed a bunch of people in a bowling alley used as ten pins, men, women, old people, kids.  And the Grim Reaper was the bowler.  He'd bowl the ball and all the people, including the scared and crying kids were knocked down dead.  Then they'd be dragged away like discarded pins and a new set of people would be set up.

It caused a huge stir back then and he was both villified for the violence and praised for his ingenuity.  When I see it now, it's nothing.  But back then the imagery was frightening and pretty gory.

He did well with this movie.  Tight direction, good story line, brilliant visuals and very scary even though it was shot in broad daylight in the desert.

Highly recommended.   :thumbup:

Man I feel really fortunate to have come across the quality movies I've been watching lately, they're has been a few duds in the mix but suprisingly alot of good ish has been coming out. Last Night I watched Revolver the Guy Rithcie movie. All I can say is that if you havent seen this go see it, its not what you'll expect it to be and the concept behind it is really f-ing poignant. This film really reps the conceptual evolution of man depicted thru the medium of film. I dont want to say too much, cuz well I really dont want to ruin this one. I think I'm going to watch Southland Tales next and then perhaps Val Kilmers new movie Conspiracy, which I heard was much better than its critical reception.

monster from the ocean floor (1954)-    a vactioning woman who looks like Grandpa al lewis from the munsters hooks up with a scientist who has a pedal powered one man submarine and they look for the monster, who resides at the oceans floor.  The scientist is a goofball and the monster is goofy but it's a fun movie that's like a tropical vacation.  spanish stereotype characters are in poor taste.

they dn't cut the grass anymore- ridiculous ultra low budget gore fest, filmed in a long island backyard.  There are some sort of cute LI ladies but they are largely ignored infavor of really long really cheap looking gore scenes.  the head weirdo lawn care killer guy is supposed to be from texas but the actor doesn't do a southern accent.  it's really weird.

That is from Nathan Schiff, the same guy who did "Weasels Rip My Flesh" - one of my personal demons.  From one of the interviews I've seen, he used to raid his mom's freezer for meat to use as special effects.

The "Weasels Rip My Flesh" review:
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/weaselsrip/

The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear *** out of ****

andrew-  the commentary track is preposterous

Tonight's eye fest is "Delta, Delta, DIE" and "Phil the Alien" this one should kill about 1,000,000 brain cells.

Kill Bill vol.1+2, I really liked it.

linda blair in "born innocent".  she's awesome.  the movie is real downbeat but good and has a great finale.  very edgy for tv and good quality print.

Le Pacte des Loups (aka Brotherhood of the Wolf)   Some of us have talked about this before. It is a unique movie.  If you haven't seen it, it's set in pre-revolution France. A beast of unknown origin is killing the citizens of the Gevaudan province so the king dispatches his Royal Naturalist/Taxidermist. Accompanying him is his Iroquois blood-brother Mani.

The two become imbroiled in political/religious conspiracy involving said beast. It features a unique beast, an incestuous brother, an undercover hooker working for the Pope, and everybody is kung fu fighting.

This movie has several genres thrown into the blender.  It is a monster, kung fu,  love story, political thriller.

It's good, if you haven't seen it do so, you won't regret it.

I just rewatched last night for the first time in about three years.

A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS (2006):  An autobiographical tale of shiftless toughs growing up on the mean streets of New York.  With Robert Downey Jr., Chazz Palmienteri, and a cast of exciting fresh faces, it's well acted but adds little to the genre.  3/5.

DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN (2005):  Someone knew I liked weird, bad movies and thought I should see this.  They were wrong.   It's difficult to explain the difference between a fun-bad and soul-destroying bad to people.  This is a confused mess that tries to be a revenge drama, romantic comedy, and uplifting spiritual tale all at the same time.  It also has the egotisitical screenwriter playing three roles, including a painfully unfunny gun-toting granny in drag.  Just a freaking mess.  AVOID!  SKULL.

SHUTTER (2004):  Thai ghost story about a photographer and his girlfriend who hit a young woman on a deserted road and flee the scene of the accident.  Soon, a ghostly female figure starts to appear in his photographs.  Very obvious and only mildly spooky for the first half, but it picks up in the second half after the identity of the ghost is slowly revealed.  Decent.  3/5.  This has been remade in English this year, but I have no faith in Hollywood to improve on the original.



 

Beware:  Some Mild Spoilerage Ahead




Dracula II: The Ascension

I didn't really like the first one, thought it was a bit lame.  So I wasn't expecting much from this one.  However, I liked the bejeebles out of this one!  It was entertaining and the story was pretty good.  The acting was well done and there was blood and stuff, but not heaps.  Just enough to be in keeping with the story.

Diane Neal (Law and Order SVU) was a nice surprise.  I especially liked the way they didn't cure her and she ended up a vamp.  Makes way for another film in the series.


Beavis & Butthead Volume 2

What can I say about these lovable idiots?  They have me laughing and shaking my head sadly all at the same time.  I also liked the interviews with Mike Judge and the list of music clips that the guys "narrate".  Highy recommended.

Waiting...- ***/****.  This is a comedy from 2005 starring Chi McBride (great actor), Luis Guzman, Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, Justin Long, Dane Cook and David Koechner.  Basically can be called "Clerks in a restaurant", but it very much hits the nail on the head as far as how it is in a restaurant, and that's coming from somebody in that line of work.  One favorite scene is when the restaurant is about 3 minutes from closing and the cooks are lined up counting down when 2 customers come walking in and the cooks start flipping out and cursing them to hell.  I've been there myself.  When you work a 10/11 hour shift and want to get home and that one or two last customers show up, you want to punch them in the head. :smile:

Killer Klowns from Outer Space ** 1/2 out of ****

It was funny at times, but I though it was an okay film.

Batman (1989) *** out of ****

The only complaint that I have is that I couldn't see Micheal Keaton as Bruce Wayne.  I just felt he couldn't capture the full essence of his character.

The Matrix   ***1/2 out of ****.
The Matrix Reloaded   **1/2 out of ****.
The Matrix Revolutions   *** out of ****.

FREAK OUT - British Gen X comedy horror slasher flick.

Per IMDB


IMDB says the budget was £30,000, where did the money go? The plot outline sounds far better than the movie actually is, it's worth is a look if you've been drinking all day.

I watched Wanted: Dead or Alive with Rutger Hauer and Gene Simmons. Nothing says 80's b action like ol' Rutger. He was fairly out of shape in this one, no Roy Batty abs for Nick Randall.
But it's a fun movie. Rutger delivers a heavy dose of justice and also has one of the coolest bad ass pads in cinema.

Isn't that the one where their killer in training goes rampaging through a crowd, and one of the guys yells at the other:

"He's killing a bunch of innocent Larry Hagman fans!"

and his buddy replies - "Dude, there ARE no innocent Larry Hagman fans!" 

I think I reviewed this one on here last summer.

I don't recall that line, but that is not to say it's not there. I sort of, kind of watched it. I had trouble paying attention to it, it had a few funny lines and a few funny moments, but nothing really all that memorable. It was a British film with only one American in it that played the sheriff, he did wear a cowboy hat so maybe it was the same movie. Larry Hagman ... cowboy hat ... possible. I'm not going to suffer through it again to fine out. :teddyr:
If this helps the killer dressed in a orange jail jumper wearing a hockey mask killing people with a spatula. Sounds funny right? Well it was only marginally humorous.

I just watched Freak Out as well, was OK but nowhere near as good as I thought it sounded.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park ** 1/2 out of ****

It was fine, the CGI work was really good, but I didn't like some of the script and I felt the kids that were int he film acted like movie kids.

Jurassic Park III ** out of ****

unneeded sequel.  Too short for it's own good and CGI was corny at times.

Apocalypse Now: Redux *** out of ****

It wasn't bad, I liked it, but it felt like it took forever to get to the ending.  The plantation scene was not needed in my opinion.

Friday the 13th Part VI ** out of ****

Corny as the series it, but not bad.  It's better than some of the previous films, but I don't think I'll watch it again.

The Simpsons Movie *** out of ****

I though it was quite good.  Not the funniest things I have ever watched but still enjoyable.  I wasn't super crazy on the idea of have the film be like a 90 min episode as much I though I would be.  Stewie Griffan: The Untold Story did a much better job with this premises years earlier.

 

the Seduction (1983)- starring Morgan Fairchild:   This was nominated for a few razzies in 1983.  Fairchild is sort of like a hot blonde female versin of the Tin man from Wizard of oz.  I know it's hard to picture but that's the best I could do.  it's a stalker thriller with some trashy interludes.  suspension of disbelief required. it's no "fatal attraction" but I enjoyed it andi it's an excellent print.

Is this the one with Andrew Stevens as the stalker and then Morgan ends up turning the tables on him?  It was pretty dumb as I remember. Morgan Fairchild was one of those plastic women.

Morgan comes across as plastic and sometimes even icy and aloof. I've talked to her on conference calls and thought she was actually just a calm cool character. She's pretty smart and has a decent sense of humor. She's just not much of an actress. Still, pretty MILFy if you ask me.

trek/ hammock -  yes that's the one.  the company that rereleased this also did "superstition" which is a very rare, watchable but somewhat laughable early 80's horror flick.  weird niches getting filled that's capitalism!  "I'm really in the mood for an ultra rare pretty bad but kinda good early 80's demento thriller starring someone from falcon crest or something"

OPEN YOUR EYES (ABRE LOS OJOS) (1997):  Well-scripted mindbender, remade as VANILLA SKY.  Nice dream imagery.  4/5.

CANDY STRIPERS (2006):  I thought this T&A horror might be fun.  Turns out I'm not 15 years old anymore.  2/5 if your mind is totally turned off or if you're a 15 year old boy, 1/5 otherwise.

THE EVIL DEAD (1981):  Classic "Spam in A Cabin" movie.  I'm shocked Andrew only gave this 2/5 slimes, but I'm sure he's taken enough grief for that over the years.  4/5.

IRMA LA DOUCE (1963):  Billy Wilder directs Jack Lemmon as a reluctant Parisian pimp?  Not as much fun as it sounds, and it's over 2.5 hours long.  3/5.

 

Filthy, Rich and Catflap

The Young Ones boys do it again.  Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmonson and Nigel Planer are hilarious as the Richie Rich the z-grade "celebrity", Eddie Catflap,the vicious, slovenly minder and Ralph Filthy, the alcoholic no hoper agent, respectively.

I got the complete series (only 6 eps!) on DVD on the weekend for $15.00.  Been laughing myself silly all weekend.

My wife and I watched Episode I of the second season of ROME Sunday night.  One of my favorite of the whole series . . .  Lucius Vorenus is a BEAST when he's ticked off!!!

Porky's Revenge ** out of ****

Not really funny at all.  There were a few times where it was funny, but overall just kinda dull.

Courage Under Fire: *** 1/2 out of ****

I really though this was an amazing film.  I really enjoyed how the same story was told slightly different by different people.  I also enjoyed the character development in the film as it really made the film come fully circle and seem very realistic.
 

Creature Unknown - some kids get together at a cabin to commemorate the disappearance of one of their friends.  They were going for a real Breakfast Club feel here, unfortunately I found all the characters completely uninteresting.  Even the b***hy girl didn't manage to annoy.  A guy in a rubber monster suit shows up and starts killing them.  In broad daylight, so no suspense or scares.  The female scientist who created the beast shows up and tries to help the kids.  Aren't scientists who create monsters supposed to be evil?  This one was good.  Would have been much better if she was evil.  There was a "shocking revelation" at the end. 

Cathy's Curse - from a Brentwood set.  A woman abandons her husband and child, dad shows up and grabs the girl, they drive until a bunny rabbit crosses the road.  They swerve to avoid it, car bursts into flames, they die.  Then a couple and their daughter move into the house, kid gets possessed by the spirit of the dead kid.  They do an amazing amount of housework, etc.  The second half wasn't all that bad, but after the first half it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. 

Cliffhanger - *** out of ****

One of Stallone's better action films, not as good as First Blood but still enjoyable to watch.

Once upon a time in the West ** 1/2 out of ****

I'm not super crazy for Westerns but I did enjoy this film.  The reason for the so so score?  The pace was so slow.  I didn't think it was needed to focus on two characters on the screen for 3 minutes before something happened.

I started watching Season 2 of Father Ted last night.

I'd forgotten how funny Irish priests can be.  If you haven't seen this show, I highly recommend it.

abdul the damned-  unique historically accurate but not very interesting.  from 1935, based on the fall of the sultan of turkey.  too talky, some phoned in art deco sets and weak busby berkely harem dancing

THE GENERAL (1927):  Buster Keaton's train chase movie.  More an adventure than a comedy.  I'm not sure this holds up as well as other classic silent movies, but it's exciting enough to keep most folks watching.  3/5, 4/5 if you have a love of silent films and stuntwork.

CLAVAIRE (2006):  Weird surrealistic French horror flick with serious pacing problems.  Some very nice scenes but overall tedious and queasy.  2/5 (though many consider it a skull).

SILK (2006): Taiwanese story about scientists investigating ghosts.  Turns out ghosts are created by burying disturbed kids in strong magnetic fields.  Promising at first but gets tedious as it goes on.  Some nice images.  2/5.   

THE PRODUCERS (1968): Classic Mel Brooks farce starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder about two men deliberately producing a flop Broadway play (a musical about the life of Hitler) to bilk old ladies out of their investments.  Everyone should see this.  The play's director is a transvestite (shades of Ed Wood?) 5/5.

 

Frailty

Bill Paxton starred in and directed this one.  I'd heard lots of good things about it but it took me a while to actually see it.  Now I'm glad I did.  It was a great movie.

Paxton plays a single dad of two young boys who gets a vision from an angel telling him there are demons among us dressed as humans and they must be destroyed.  The emotional impact it has on his kids and himself is very real.  Paxton's directing hand is just right in this one.  It wasn't melodramatic and the sense of unease and dread builds subtly and you feel like you're sliding into madness along with the characters.

4/5 stars.

"Bandolero!" (1968) - James Stewart and Dean Martin play the Mace Brothers who are reunited after serving on different sides during the American Civil War. A passable western from Andrew V McLaglen with semi-interesting characters, picturesque desert scenery, and plenty of action including a massive shootout with a gang of Mexican bandits in the finale. However, the two attempted rape scenes on Raquel Welsh's character leave a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth. Andrew's old pal George Kennedy plays a decent but limited sheriff who chases the brothers and their gang after their failed bank robbery/near execution.

SHOWGIRLS  (NC-17 version)   *1/2 out of ****.

On a rating scale in terms of unintentional comedy, I would have to rate this movie a 3 1/2 though. Don't quite know what was going through director Paul Verhoeven's head when he decided to follow up his guilty pleasure Basic Instinct with this turkey.   So hard to take seriously, I can now only hope to think that they weren't really taking this as seriously as people thought that they were when making it.  Gina Gershon seems to be the only one in on the joke however as she gives a tongue in cheek performance that is quite fun and others should have taken a cue from while also looking absolutely ravishing (as usual). And say what you want about Elizabeth Berkley, but while miscast, dang it if she did look super hot IMO.

(http://images.zap2it.com/20050930/elizabethberkley_showgirls_240.jpg)

(http://www.cinemovies.fr/images/data/films/Pfilm34911753258782.jpg)

Watch at your own risk!

This is one of those films that if you take seriously you will miss just how funny it can be and it's not even trying.  I do agree with you about Gina Gershon being in on the joke, it just seems like she always had some kind of smirk on her face like she knew this film would be a big old turkey.  This film really deserves the MST3K treatment to probably enjoy it so much more. 

You know, when they show that one on TNT or USA, it is about 45 minutes shorter than in its theatrical version . . . and they STILL have to blur parts of some scenes!

LEPERCHAUN  3- This is the first time I have ever seen a Leperchaun movie. I didn't know whether to life or cry in anguish. My emotions ran the gamut of"Whatta pile of sh!t" to " gee-that's funny as hell...for some duma$$ reason!"

There's a 3 pack you can get for only 9.99 of the 1st 3 Leprechaun movies. I have thought about picking them up as they work wonders as unintentional comedy.

Dawn of the Dead  (2004 unrated version) *** out of ****.

This movie should have been a complete disaster but it managed to be a quite fun zombie romp that really has not much to do with the Romero original other than the mall setting, zombies (of course) and the title.    The uber cute Sarah Polley shines in the title role and Ving Rhames is his usual badass self. The running zombies are much more of an immediate threat but they lack much of the creepiness of the slow moving Romero zombies.  The gore is quite plentiful (more so in the unrated version) and there is even some female nudity thrown in to quench horror fans' demands.  The movie starts to  lose some punch a bit once they leave the mall, but still, this is a lot of fun for horror/zombie fans.

GULLIVERS'S TRAVELS (1996): Made for TV miniseries with Ted Danson as Gulliver.  Pretty entertaining, with good sepcial effects, and they say it's the most faithful adaptation of the book ever filmed.  4/5

AUDITION (1999): I finally got around to seeing this one.  Every bit as disturbing as I had been told.  Not perfect because of the (deliberately) slow start, but still lingers in the memory.  5/5 (for horror fans).

QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS (1947):  A "white goddess" movie: a group of civilized Europeans heads into the jungle to track down a missing Caucasian, who as it turns out is living happily in an all-female society of white female shipwreck victims.  Rudimentary storytelling arranged around avaiable stock footage.  Would have been prime MST3K material. 1/5, though the lame action scenes are stupid enough to provide some amusement.

MOON OF THE WOLF (1972):  This made-for-TV talkfest set in the Louisiana bayous has to be one of the most boring movies ever made.  The werewolf makeup is horrible, but only visible for about 30 seconds.  This is devoid of entertainment value.  Skull.

Man, I haven't watched anything in a while.  The last movie I watched was The 'Burbs and that was over a week ago, and before that it was Iron Man when it first opened.

Beowulf
Surprisingly, not as crappy as I expected.  The animation didn't hurt my eyes like A Scanner Darkly did and the story was fast paced enough that I didn't get bored.  I thought overall the story was a bit thin, but then I didn't expect miracles when I started watching it.

Overall, an okay kind of movie, but not good enough to purchase.



The Mothman Prophesies
This was on sale for $9 so I thought what the hell.  I had seen it before, but it was ages ago and I'd forgotten what happened.  I have to say that I enjoyed it immensely and it was well worth the money.  I like Richard Gere as an actor.  He does the emotional everyman thing very well and when he's tortured you can believe it.  It's made me want the buy the book even more than I did before.


Cloverfield
My son saw this in the cinema and raved about it.  I thought I'd hate it with the jerky camera thing that is inexplicably popular these days.  My tv is only 52 cm (20") as well, so I thought it would lose something.

I liked this movie a lot.  It wasn't as scary as it would have been on the big screen but that didn't detract from it.  Also, the jerky camera thing didn't bother me at all.  I thought the story was solid and the special effects amazing.  And the characters didn't do anything overtly stupid which was a refreshing change.  But I thought that everyone going onto the bridge to get out of the place was kind of dumb.  I've never been to New York so I don't know how the geography works, but it just seems common sense to keep away from any structure that's not stable and can kill you if it gets destroyed.

Overall 4/5 stars.

Friday the 13th part VII ** out of ****

I couldn't think this film franchise could get any dumber, sadly I was mistaken.  It was dumb on how Jason got revived AGAIN.

Friday the 13th Part VIII * 1/2 out of ****

Worse than the previous one.  Jason in New York and the 80's teenagers was just awful.

Ritual - one of those Tales From The Crypt movies.  A female doctor has her license suspended and the only work she can get is to move to Jamaica and be a personal physician for a rich guy's brother.  He believes a voodoo curse has been put on him, making him a zombie.  The doctor spends the movie investigating the island's voodoo culture and befriending the locals.  Fairly good overall.  The doctor was very likable and very, very hot.  The story moved quite slowly and was only moderately interesting.  The whole "This is Jamaica mon, we drink and smoke dope and have sex 24/7" was overdone to the point of annoyance.  But did I mention the doctor was hot?

Venom - some kids in Louisiana are stalked by a zombie killer dude.  If you've ever seen a slasher, you've seen this plot.  However, I though the characters were excellent - quite likable, decently developed, and sympathetic.  The atmosphere was another high point, out in the woods at night or in a creepy old house.  The zombie guy was creepy as hell, and drove this huge ugly truck that was almost a character in itself.  The directing was top-notch, well worth a watch.  Now I just have to buy the DVD again since the first one I bought is defective.  Got it used for six bucks, now I just ordered another used copy for seven bucks.  We'll see if that helps.  They want $26 for it new, so I'm still only up to half price.

How to make a monster - totally cheesy horror movie about some video game designers trying to finish a project on time.  There's the heartless manager, the hulking stupid guy, the a-hole intellectual and the shy nerd.  Their motion capture suit comes alive after a power surge and starts killing them.  But the real story is about the intern (Clea DuVall) who starts out all sweet and nice but eventually goes over to the dark side of nasty corporate culture.  Kind of hit and miss, the underlying theme was rather well done but the comically cheesy characters made it impossible to take anything seriously.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL  ***1/2 out of ****

Had a blast seeing this. IMO, it ties with Temple of Doom in terms of 2nd best of the series.  I heard some grumping and growling of some people who didn't like it but I had a great time watching and already can't wait for the DVD.

"the last laugh" (1924) -  by the guy who did "Nosferatu" Marnau.  It was good and unique in that there were no titles.  like, it was silent, but there weren't even any pieces of dialogue.  now thats expressionism!  ironically,  the plot was, I thought, exceedingly simple but then it would sort of have to be.  cool movie though

"africa addio"  (197?)  I really liked Farewell Uncle Tom.  this was of similar quality, but I had to fast forward through the scenes where animals were being killed.  I'm not an animal rights nut, I just couldn't take it, though it got it's point across.  it's very goodand the overall point,  that colonialism was bad but ending it brought new problems for africa, was made well, but having skipped so much of it I got a little lost.

EVIL (2003):  A movie about bullies in a Sweedish boarding school.  Not bad but very predictible.  For some reason it was nominated for a best foreign language film Oscar.  Must have been Sweeden's turn. 3/5.

SHE GODS OF SHARK REEF (1958): Two fugitives wash up on an all-chick, shark-worshipping island. Dumb but watchable due to nice scenery and surprisingly gripping underwater photography.  2/5.

UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929):  Everyone should see this once.  It's only 17 minutes long and it's of enormous historical importance.  5/5.

The Queen

I've always wanted to see this movie.  Helen Mirren as HRH Elizabeth II is just breathtaking.  The main reason I watched this movie is for the infinitely yummy Roger Allam, who gets HEAPS of screen time.  So not only candy for my eyes, but a truly good movie. 

This is the movie that just keeps on giving:

1.  Helen Mirren and cast all do a fabulous job.
2.  The story is interesting and quite touching.  I was crying in places.  Visually spectacular.
3.  The yummy Roger Allam is in it all formal and wearing a suit.... :thumbup:
4.  And the sticker price said $29.48, but when I got to the check out it was actually $12.99.  K-Mart, you rock!


And for a complete contrast:


Shoot 'Em Up
I LOVED this movie!  Clive Owen is to die for anyway and Monica Bellucci is gorgeous as always.  And Paul Giamatti is excellent as the bad guy.

Seriously, how could you NOT love a movie where there is only about 5 mins in total that doesn't involve guns and shooting and where Clive is giving it to Monica in full nudity whilst killing bad guys at the same time :buggedout:

THAT guy I'd love to meet!   :teddyr:

(out of 4 stars)

ROCKY  ****
ROCKY II  ***1/2
ROCKY III  ***
ROCKY IV  **1/2
ROCKY V   *1/2
ROCKY BALBOA  ***1/2 

KRULL (1983):  I rembered seeing this one about the Cyclops and the glaive from my childhood.  Turns out, seeing it as an adult I was a little shocked at how blatantly it ripped off STAR WARS.  Neither good nor bad, really, but has nostalgia value and it's intended audience of kiddies won;t notice the plot holes.  3/5

FIDO (2006):  The premise is the star in this light black comedy about an alternative past where brain-eating zombies are subdued and kept as slaves.  Very much like a 1950s sitcom, but with decapitations.  The human-zombie love stories are quietly disturbing.  4/5

ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968):  Some may think it's too slow, but this is probably the most horrifying expose of how difficult it can be for a Satanic cult to find a healthy white baby to raise.  5/2

Empire of the Sun: ** 1/2 out of ****

A good film about a about being a POW during WWII.  The only thing I didn't like about the film was that the pace of the film was so slow.  It seemed like it took forever for something to happen.

Tales from the Quadead Zone - A no budget flick filmed on a camcorder from 1987.  It has a Tales from the Crypt kind of feeling, composed of three different story each with their own twist.  Everything about it was awful, in the best way of course.

Equalizer 2000 - A post apocalyptic film where everyone is short on oil or water, but weapons are aplenty.  Enter the Equalizer 2000, an M-16 with a bunch of rocket launchers screwed onto the sides of it. Lots of costumes consisting of either Camouflage, Shoulder pads, black leather, or ponchos and jeans.

Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters - Originally a Filipino women's wrestling movie that's been overdubbed by Troma.

The Machine Girl - A Japanese schoolgirl avenges the deaths of her brother and his friend with a gatling gun attached to her arm.  It lives up to the hype.  Watch the trailer on youtube and you'll get a good idea of what you're in for.

KUNG FU PANDA    *** out of ****.

The plot is pretty basic and by the numbers for the most part but the action is extremely well done and Jack Black is great as the title character.  In fact, the action scenes in this animated CGI flick are more well done than a lot of recent live action films that I've seen in a few years.  while not the best animated flick ever, it's a lot of fun and is very funny. A good flick for the whole family to check out together. 

HULK (2003)    **1/2 out of ****.

In preparation for the release of the The Incredible Hulk reboot this Friday, I thought I would go back and re-watch Ang Lee's 2003 attempt at the character to see what my opinion was of it a few years after my last viewing of it.  While not quite the disaster that a lot of people make it out to be IMO, the whole is still not nearly the sum of the parts either.  While it's admirable that Ang Lee took a Greek tragedy approach to the material, this is still the Hulk we're talking about which is exactly the deepest character in the Marvel universe.  Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly look kind of blank throughout a lot of the movie like they didn't know what to do and Nick Nolte (while distractingly over the top) seems to be the only one trying to have fun.  Sam Elliott does his usual great work and the CGI isn't as bad as a lot of people made it out to be.  The CGI looks it's best during the desert scenes on up towards the end IMO.

Heatstroke - The Sci-Fi Channel knows how to make a movie full of babes in bikinis and tight tank tops, and still have it suck.  Some aliens (bargain basement CGI raptors) are on an island.  They kill anyone who steps foot in the woods, however no one is aware of their existence even though they've been there since the '70s.  Some mishmash of characters are investigating the aliens, and the writing has them all acting in the most unbelievable ways possible.  At one point an alien puts its clawed hand through a girl's back and out through her stomach, but due to her main character status, after 36 hours lying on a stretcher she makes a full recovery.

The Dark (1994) - Some giant mole creature is rooting around a cemetery eating freshly buried bodies.  A couple of ex-government operatives are after it, the main guy wants to capture it alive (it secretes a liquid that heals wounds), while the bad guy want to kill it because it killed his partner.  Good guy teams up with a waitress, and there are a couple of grave diggers for some light comedy relief.  Neve Campbell does a pretty lousy job as a local cop as well.  This is very character based, and the characters are pretty good, so that works all right.  No suspense or scares, meh...not bad to watch on a boring Thursday evening.

Backwoods - Spike TV original.  Take the various Hills Have Eyes movies, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wrong Turn, swipe ideas liberally from all of them, stew it up into a big low budget mess, and this is what you get.  Wasn't too bad at the beginning, but by the end it was an unintentional laugh fest.  Characters were undeveloped and the plot, well, it's pretty hard to actually get into this movie when you're constantly noticing which movies all these things were ripped off from.

Exorcist The Beginning - and ancient church is discovered buried in the sands of Africa (or someplace).  It was built long before Christianity came to the area, so it's all very mysterious.  An ex-priest is called in to investigate.  Very good characters and excellent atmosphere.  However the first part is all about this spooky church, but then around the halfway point it seems to shift focus to a demonic possession story, which is done fairly well but I liked the spooky church thing better.  The ending has CGI and is way overdone, which is a big black mark against the movie.  Overall however, I really enjoyed it.  One of the best jump scares in recent memory.

Film Geek- 5/5  edgy, but not pretentious and embraces alot of what my generation (generation x) would have considered corny or sexist. Seinfeld/ Simpsons-like silly/ observational humor is what really carries it though.  Some amateurish acting aside I really enjoyed it but... don't want to say anymore for fear the director will somehow contact me and want to discuss this and other films.

some appreciation of "Happiness" or "Closer"  is probably advised

The Happening ** out of ****

Saw this yesterday with my date.  Didn't like the film too much.  Some miscasts mainly the female lead character who was played by Zooey Deschanel.  I've called her the thousand yard stare girl in this film.  It looks like she's not really focused on what she is doing in the film.  I also found the film to be predictable especially the ending.

Alien 3 *** out of ****

While not as good or or deep as the previous films I still enjoyed the film a lot.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - 4.5/5, very fun movie to watch

The Faculty - Watched this again for about the 7th time last night.  It's an Invasion of the Body Snatchers plot set on a high school campus.  Really, really good characters - sort of got a Breakfast Club thing going, but without any of the cheesiness.  Nice dark humor throughout, really added to the entertainment value.  Plot had plenty of stuff going on which kept it interesting.  One of those movies that sits on the shelf forgotten about, but every time I watch it I'm just amazed at how well done it is. 

THE INCREDIBLE HULK  (2008)   ***1/2 out of ****.

A big improvement over the 2003 Ang Lee film.  Great effects, great Hulk Smash action, across the board good performances and quick and taut pacing.   As good as Iron Man IMO.

One of my favorites, along with Snatch!  Has anyone seen Revolver yet?

Nightmare - this is from the Hammer Horror pack.  Every one I've seen so far has been very good, but this one was awful.  Some woman is having nightmares, her mother went insane and now she's bound and determined that she's going insane as well.  All day long people tell her she's in good health, etc.  Then she goes to bed and has a nightmare about her insane mother, and wakes up convinced she's going to go insane as well.  Then all day long people tell her she's in good health, etc.  By about the fourth repetition of this cycle, I could barely keep my eyes open any more.  This woman isn't the least bit sympathetic, she's just pathetic. 

The Hollow - sort of a Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the teenage version.  The main girl is completely unlikable, the epitome of what gives teenage girls a bad name.  She's got a boyfriend, but then some new guy comes along and she's all over him in a heartbeat.  Boyfriend can go to hell.  Some headless horseman dude is menacing people in a graveyard, and Stacey Keach apparently needed more money to buy coke so he's in here as the drunken graveyard guy.  Bah, this was crap.  Dumb story, played like a Disney Channel movie except it had three swear words which got it an R rating (huh?).

MAD LOVE (1949): Demented surgeon Gogol (Peter Lorre) grafts new hands onto a concert pianist who is also the husband of the woman he loves. Trouble is, he chooses hands that once belonging to a murderer. Lorre's hammy yet tragic performance is the main attraction here. 4/5.

THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936): A revenge-minded escaped convict lucks into a process for miniaturizing people, then controlling them with his mind. With it's shrunken murdering Frenchies and Lionel Barrymore in drag (!) this should have been a campy creep classic, but it flounders on the obtrusive subplot about the convict reconciling with his daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan). 3/5.

NEAR DARK (1987): A roving gang of psychotic vampires turn a young redneck into a fellow bloodsucker, but he doesn't take to the murderous nocturnal lifestyle as well as he might. For the first 2/3 this is an atmospheric and original tale about the internal politics of the clan, but for act three the director abruptly hits the reset button and turns it into a standard nosferatu hunt complete with randomly exploding vehicles.

MST3K: MONSTER-A-GO-GO: Wow, the underlying movie is a serious contender for the worst movie ever.  Bad acting, sound, lighting, makeup, and a plot where nothing happens.  In the infamous ending, ('SPOILER') the monster simply disappears without any explanation (/SPOILER).  I wouldn't want to sit through this without the quips.  Funny host segments as usual during the Joel Hodgson era; my favorite is when Gypsy doesn't "get" Crow.   4/5.

MST3K: RING OF TERROR:  Another horrible movie.  In this one a med student in his 40s appears to be very slightly afraid of corpses.  After an endless hour he finally dies of fright when grave-robbing in a fraternity stunt.  Not totally technically inept, but the story is dull and dumb.  Also includes a Phantom Creeps short, which is a lot higher energy and would be fun on its own.  Includes the finale where Frank sings the unforgettable, "If Chauffeurs Ruled the World" ("I'd have the complete respect/Of everyone on the planet/Including intellectuals/Even David Mamet.")  Add the "MST3K Jukebox Volume 2" with 10 sings from the series--including "A Very Swayze Christmas", the only Christmas carol with its own a fight scene and the line "I think that jolly old elf better make out his will"--and it's a very fun disc overall.  4/5.

-"Outland" - Sean Connery puts in a solid performance in this watchable sci-fi re jig of "High Noon". I thought that the basic concept of space gangsterism was reasonably well handled along with a depiction of the possible adverse psychological effects of living in space. That said, this is really just a tough crime drama with futuristic trappings. The special effects were actually quite effective, especially the miniatures of the settlement itself. The violence here was pretty strong with gory decompression deaths and plenty of shooting. (Oddly featuring shotguns not lasers). Steven Berkoff puts in a very intense performance as a miner who is driven homicidally insane by performance enhancing drugs supplied by his bosses.

-"The Return Of The Incredible Hulk" - I thought that this T.V movie was surprisingly good given the obvious limitations of the acting, writing and effects. Here the Hulk faces both viking warrior deity Thor and a criminal gang whose members include Tim Thomerson in a decent part. Bill Bixby and Lou Ferringo do well in their trademark parts and there are plenty of wild 'Hulk Outs' including a highly destructive tussle between Thor and the Hulk. The cheesy scene where Thor parties in a biker bar is actually a highlight of the movie.

If you spent any amount of coherent time in the 80's I suggest you check out The Lather Effect, definitely one of the biggest suprises for me of the year so far. I was expcecting absolutely nothing from this movie, and it f-ing delivered. Performances are spot on and the  feel of the movie  just rocks!!! Long live the 80's man!!!!!

"Psychomania" - Mad, bad British biker horror filled with bizarre scenes and imagery. A group of posh thugs terrorize a rural section of England while the leader's mother dabbles in the occult. The gang makes a pact with a satanic frog idol and commit suicide in various graphic ways to gain invincibility complete with homicidal superhuman strength! They end up *Spoiler* becoming part of the scenery at an ancient stone circle. 
  Not really a terribly good film with pretty horrid characters but eccentric enough to be genuinely memorable. The eerie opening with bikers riding in the stone circle was the films best scene. I did notice John Levine (Dr Who's Sergeant Benton) as a Policeman at one point.

"Troll" - A true "Bad" movie which comes across as a curious amalgam of "Gremlins", "Poltergeist" and "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers". A furry but malignant Troll creates a hoard of his brethren complete with a sylvanian habitat in the basement of an average American apartment block. Almost a children's film but with a bit of nudity and suggestive content. I enjoyed the silly but enthusiastic performances but the 'special effects' were poor even for 1985/6. The animatronic trolls looked like parts of a weird Christmas grotto and the visual effects were fifties/sixties standard. Competent enough fun which passed the time agreeably enough.

THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1968): A jaded playboy businessman (Steve McQueen) expands into masterminding heists for kicks, and bumps into a sexy tough-cookie insurance adjuster (Faye Dunaway) who's investigating his latest crime.  Are they falling in love, or just playing cat and mouse?  Cool performances from sexy leads, a masterful seduction over a chessboard, and hip "mod" direction from Norman Jewison (featuring gratuitous split screens and a martini-jazz soundtrack) make this an irresistibly fun time capsule.

WANTED  *** out of ****

WALL-E  ***1/2 out of ****

DEAD ALIVE  (unrated)   ***1/2 out of ****

DAY OF THE DEAD   (1985)  *** out of ****

THE NUN (2006):  The aquatic (!) spirit of a dead nun returns to haunt and kill her now middle aged former students and the photogenic teens investigating the slayings.  Well made and plotted, but unfortunately it's none too scary rather than nun-too-scary.  (I know...) Seriously it's not as bad as people seem to say, but like everything Brian Yuzna's involved in it leaves me a little cold.  2/5.

Let's see - I watched one of the AFTER DARK HORROR FEST movies this week entitiled TOOTH AND NAIL - post apocalyptic survivors hiding in an abandoned hospital fighting off a cannibal tribe called the Rovers.  Pretty lame but better than the other ADHF film I watched a few weeks back, UNEARTHED.

Tonight I tried to watch a movie off my Mills Creek VAMPIRES AND MORE 20 pack called AFRICAN VOODOO EXORCIST or something like that.  Instead I wound up catching part of a movie called MURMUR OF THE HEART on IFC, about a 14 year old French boy who falls in love with his mother.  It was made about 1972 or so, which, added with its French origins, made it very, very weird.  The mom was hot though.

HIGH TENSION (2005):  A young student with a butch haircut (no points for guessing what that subtly reveals about her character) travels to a school chum's country home, where a French redneck (or something) starts chopping up the family. Not really a thriller as the title suggests, but a slick slasher movie.  I hate twists that don't play fair with the audience, but there are still some nice thrills.  It's one of many "love-it-or-hate-it" movies that I'm pretty much neutral about.  3/5.   

THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN (1960):  A master safe-cracker is busted out of jail to help rob banks, but has ideas of his own.  An interesting mix of invisible man and caper flick, with lots of double-crosses among the gang and scenes of characters grappling with air.  Fun and fast--it's only about 60 minutes.  From underrated B-movie master Edgar G. Ulmer (THE BLACK CAT, DETOUR).  3.5/5. 

rev powell-  if you haven't heard it, check out Dusty Springfields version of "windmills of your mind".  It's much better than the version from TC affair.  it's on her album "Dusty in memphis" which is one of the best albums ever made in my opinion.

I'm definately in the "hated it" camp for high tension.



Land of Death (2003)-  one of Bruno Mattie's last films.  it's sort of predator meets cannibal holocaust but way too much army talk/ mission dialogue and not enough cannibals and hot native babes, though there is some.

Thanks for the tip, Lester.  Will check it out when I get the chance---which could be years given my schedule. 

MST3K: THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN: The experiment involves a movie where rogue scientists bring executed killer Lon Chaney, Jr. back to life.  The process involves his skin becoming hard enough to deflect bullets and makes him mute, meaning he can only overact with his eyes.  Not a particularly good or bad movie, but a pretty dull one, and most of the riffing involves getting bored at expository scenes.  The host segments aren't very memorable either, making for a fairly "meh" episode.  Devoted fans of the series would probably give it a 3/5, casual fans maybe a 2/5.

I saw a Vampire movie called DESERT OF BLOOD last week. It was pretty so-so - not terrible, but not that great either.  And watched 10,000 BC this afternoon.  It was VERY cheesy!

"The Hostage" - A rather basic little thriller about a young boy who hides in a removal van driven by a violent killer and his brownbeaten accomplice (Harry Dean Stanton) and is eventually taken prisoner. This was very average with relatively poor scripting and acting for the most part and actually felt like a TV movie. Still Don Kelly was rather good as 'Bull' the hulking murderer and Stanton is very effective. John Carradine has a decent part as a local drunk but disappears all too quickly.

Since i just registered, i'll just post all of the movies i've seen so far this Summer vacation and my thoughts on them:

Videodrome - Pretty cool, haven't seen much Cronenberg, but The Fly is still my favorite

Cube - Very involving and a good "mindf**k" experience. Definitely some bad acting and dialogue, but still, it delivered.

Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan - I still enjoy watching IV and VI more, but this one really is still the best ST movie with all of it's pathos.

The Signal - Kind of intriguing, but at the same time you could tell that the people behind it didn't exactly know what to do with their idea.

Scanners - I'm afraid i didn't really find this one that interesting. And the incredibly unenthusiastic acting didn't really help.

Inferno - I thought it was actually a pretty decent follow-up/spiritual sequel to Suspiria. Strictly a "for-the-fans" movie though, not good for a casual watch.

Opera - RULED. Probably my favorite Dario Argento film i've seen thus far.

Basket Case-  embarassed to admit I hadn't seen thisone before.  I thought it was great, definately one of the top super low budget horror movies of the 80's and not so low budget because the specialeffects were pretty awesome in places.  totally over the top and excellent.

Brute Force-  this is often venerated as a classic film noir but I found it really preachy and convoluted.  the writer was probably some kind of communist or something

MST3K: TORMENTED.  Another somewhat disappointing experiment.  The movie is a rare Bert I. Gordon movie with absolutely no giganticism.  It's a ghost story about a jazz pianist who stands by as his ex-girlfriend falls to her death off a lighthouse.  Her ghost then tries to wreck his wedding to his fiancee.  Riffing and host segments are uninspiring, although I liked the Mads drinking jacket (complete with rats and cockroaches to simulate the DTs).  Extras include a fairly pathetic segment with Mr. B.I.G. about the making of TORMENTED (not addressing the MST3k version) and the welcome wraparound segments from THE MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER HOUR.  For fans of the series only.     

Sphere - a huge spaceship is found at the bottom of the ocean - it's been there for hundreds of years.  Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson are called in to investigate.  Pretty good suspense and a plot that unfolds nicely, at least if you're watching it for the first time.  This was about my third time, and I just though a good half hour could have been lopped off the movie and it would have speeded things up nicely.

Doomed - in the future, Survivor will still be popular on TV (sigh...).  Prison convicts are dropped off on an island inhabited by zombies and if they make it to the other side, they get their freedom plus 50 million bucks.  This is all done in Survivor-like TV show fashion.  About the only thing this movie has going for it is a few hot babes in sweaty tank tops.  You could make a drinking game out of spotting when the patterns of sweat on the tank tops changes from scene to scene.  Notably, there's never any armpit sweat.  Those convicts may be killing each other and betraying each other at every turn, but at least they use antiperspirant.  Strictly run of the mill stuff.

Ghosts of Mars - Mars is colonized by a half million people or so, luckily one of them is Natasha Henstridge, because that's about the only reason I can see for going there.  Anyhow, ghosts get loose and turn the colonists into Road Warrior rejects.  Henstridge is a cop, and she and her team go to pick up some rapper, but get attacked by the Mad Max dudes.  Lots of flashbacks, they even toss in the not-nearly uncommon enough flashback-within-a-flashback.   Henstridge finally gives us a quick scene in her skin tight tank top and panties at the end.  Not a bad movie overall, one of those you can pull out of the DVD collection once a year when you're really bored.

Just watched the new Russian Film PHILOSOPHY OF THE KNIFE. Sort of a art film blended with interviews and a take on the history of the Japanese WW2 bio warfare unit 731. Very gory and very disturbing and difficult to watch. But at the same time, if taken in context a masterful film.

SLITHER   *** out of ****.

While the 1st half is better than the somewhat-problematic-at-times 2nd half, this is still a lot of fun.  Michael Rooker is a hoot (why doesn't this guy do more comedy?) and Elizabeth Banks is gorgeous and strong as well.  Most of the effects are practical and there are a few scenes involving CGI that still out like a sore thumb but don't really detract from things.  Pretty gory for a R rated movie at times as well. 

Total Recall ** 1/2 out of ****

I though it wasn't a  bad film overall, but a tad overrated.  I though the fight scenes were really well done, but just the story seemed goofy.  I didn't like how it left the ending open ended.  The effects also look stupid at times as well. 

the Klansman (1974)- I was really blown away by this.  the director made a bunch of Charles Bronson movies and doesn't shy away from violence and brutality.  The story really gives both sides of the story of the town so that yo uunderstand the motivations of the various players, even if you don't agree with them.  OJ kicks ass!!

BATMAN (1989)    *** out of ****

BATMAN RETURNS   ***1/2 out of ****

THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN  NO STARS out of ****