Recent viewings

[Jack]

Polymorph (1996) - Some drug dealers have a big stash of coke in a small house in the woods.  A scientist in the area has also discovered some green goo from space, which takes over people's bodies.  He calls a couple of his students to help him investigate, and the students bring their girlfriends along.  Before long it's a fight for survival with the drug dealers teaming up with the students, and the green goo doing its whole "polymorph" thing.  This is all very cheesy and can't be taken seriously.  Dopey fun, would have been even more fun with a bit of nudity, but noooooooo.  3/5.

Stupid Teenagers Must Die! (2006) - Some kids get together at a haunted house for a séance.  This is supposed to be a parody of '80s horror movies.  I guess.  I only made it about 20 minutes into it before I decided that I had better things to do with a Monday evening.  The characters are idiotic cliches, and as far as the quality of the filmmaking, good god.  I've seen videos of people's Thanksgiving day dinner that were done far more professionally.  That is NOT an exaggeration.  It looked like it was done on a camera they got on clearance at Wallmart for $100;  they had no tripod, obviously.  They had no lights, they had no color (?), the whole thing bordered on being in black and white.  A good portion of the dialogue was unintelligible.  Just an ugly, annoying and extremely trite bit of bilge.  1/5.

[Doggett]

Coraline.


A girl moves to remote are where her parents seem to preocupied to give her any attention. There's a circus perfomer who lives above her and two aging female trapeeze artists below. She makes a friend who seems very wary of the building she's in...

In her boredom she discovers a small door that seems to lead a world where she can have all the fun and attention from her parents she craves. And she can stay there too.

If she chooses buttons for eyes...

Great animation, great voice acting, great story. Its wonderfully spooky and turns very dark.
A wonderful film really.

4/5

[Flick James]

Top Secret! (1984)

I’ve recently discovered a number of old VHS tapes and a player that works. So I popped in Top Secret! I sure do miss this film. It’s one of those films that takes me back to a specific time and set of events as a young teenager. That, and it’s hilarious. This has got to be one of the funniest comedies of the 1980’s, IMHO, and entirely underrated. It’s a spy movie spoof that also manages to stick in parodies of rock and roll, the surf and beach movies of the 60’s, Pac Man and The Blue Lagoon. The number of quality gags outdoes many other comedies since. The scene with the Swedish bookstore owner that was shot entirely backwards with a single panning shot was pure genius, as was the underwater fight scene. When I was in the middle of watching it I found myself wondering how this movie didn’t get better recognition. It managed to be whimsical, low-brow and sophisticated all at the same time. And it’s all that AND Omar Shariff. I give it a solid 4.8/5. 

[Jack]

Blood Gnome (2004) - A woman in the BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) community has this monster in a box.  Huh, that sounded kind of dirty, didn't it?  Anyhow, the monster has lots of little monster babies, and she's using them to kill other people in the BDSM community.  I'm not real clear on why she's doing that - she's just bad I guess.  A police photographer investigates, but nobody believes him because he had a mental breakdown a couple months earlier, and they all think he's flipped his lid or something.  As you can probably guess, this is all pretty cheesy and involves a large amount of nudity.  Wasn't too bad overall, the characters were fairly likable and the little monsters were kind of okay looking.  3.5/5.

[Flick James]

Blood Gnome (2004) - A woman in the BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) community has this monster in a box.  Huh, that sounded kind of dirty, didn't it?  Anyhow, the monster has lots of little monster babies, and she's using them to kill other people in the BDSM community.  I'm not real clear on why she's doing that - she's just bad I guess.  A police photographer investigates, but nobody believes him because he had a mental breakdown a couple months earlier, and they all think he's flipped his lid or something.  As you can probably guess, this is all pretty cheesy and involves a large amount of nudity.  Wasn't too bad overall, the characters were fairly likable and the little monsters were kind of okay looking.  3.5/5.

Cheesy with a large amount of nudity, ay? That sounds terrible.

[lester1/2jr]

great title

[Jack]

Cheesy with a large amount of nudity, ay? That sounds terrible.

I know, I hate nudity - it's so degrading 

[Doggett]

Superman III

Its pretty good.
Supes takes on a Lex Luthor type villian, a super computer, and his evil self.
Annette O'Toole as Lana Lang is really great.


The film suffers from some terrible "comedy" moments, though.



3.5/5

[Jack]

30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007) - A submarine gets pulled to the bottom of the ocean by a giant squid, so Lorenzo Lamas is called in because he's got some minisub that can go down to 30,000 leagues or whatever.  Who's in charge of this rescue effort?  Why, that would be Lorenzo's ex-wife of course.  She's really far more of a b***h than she needs to be.  Real edge-of-your-seat stuff wondering if these two will get back together over the course of the movie    Anyhow, Captain Nemo shows up in his gigantic sci-fi CGI submarine and takes Lorenzo & company aboard.  Probably the biggest failing of the movie is that there's no sense of awe or wonder at Nemo's Nautilus - they may as well have been picked up by a Russian sub for all the excitement it evokes.  So this thing runs the predictable course to the big explosion at the end.  Character development is poor, which really kills any interest I might have had in the outcome.  Most of the CGI isn't too bad, though towards the end it's good for a laugh.  3/5.

[ulthar]

BEAU GESTE (1939)

THE BLACK STALLION (1979)

MARMADUKE (2010)

[indianasmith]

Last night I watched BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY, a low budget mess about a small town overrun by vampires.  My gosh this movie was bad!  First of all, the dialogue is just flat out disgusting.  It's like the script was written by a couple of foulmouthed 8th graders determined to use every word their parents hate AT LEAST one time in each sentence.  The effect is intended to be comedic but it wears thin really fast! There is gore everywhere, which is OK, and a thin smattering of nudity (not much, actually!), and a pretty incomprehensible story line.  A chain of big box stores called Consumart is actually owned and run by vampires intent on taking over America one small town at a time.  The best part of the whole DVD was in the Extras menu, where they have a Consumart Employee Orientation video.  It was about 10 minutes long and was funnier and more clever than the whole movie, especially the  written instructions for the course teachers that flash on the screen periodically ("Take a moment to talk to all female trainees about how sexual harassment makes them feel.  Then chase them down and devour them" was one choice example.)
  Overall, this was a steaming pile of cinematic excrescence, but if you have a high tolerance for profanity and very explicit sexual dialogue, it has a few amusing moments.

[InformationGeek]

The Emperor's New Groove:  This is one of my favorite Disney films and still after repeated viewings, I'm still having tons of fun watching.  The jokes are still clever, the voice acting is still enjoyable, and the animation looks great.  This has to be the funniest Disney movie they have ever made.

[Doggett]

Seen a few recently. I'll keep it very brief:

Dark City
4/5

2012
2.5/5


Book of Eli
3/5


DeadGirl
2/5


Sherlock Holmes.
3.5/5


Anvil: The story of Anvil
3.5/5

[3mnkids]

The wolfman(2010)~ Im kinda tired so im just gonna say this... I didnt care for it.   

[Silverlady]

BEAU GESTE (1939)

THE BLACK STALLION (1979)

MARMADUKE (2010)

Saw The Black Stallion a long time ago. Can't really remember much about the movie, but I do remember the boy riding the horse across a sandy beach. I do remember that the photography was gorgeous.