Recent viewings

[RCMerchant]

FRONTIERS -Some french skinheads pull a heist in Paris and escape out into the country. They hold up in an Inn  by a psycho cannibal nazi clan. Pretty grusome and relentless. Pretty far out. I saw this on ON DEMAND.

[Joe the Destroyer]

Final Destination 2- My second or third watch of it.  Still fun to watch, but not as much for the death scenes as the foreshadowing.   

[indianasmith]

Final Destination 2- My second or third watch of it.  Still fun to watch, but not as much for the death scenes as the foreshadowing.   

Definitely a case where the sequel outshone the first film!! The airbag scene was my favorite, although the falling glass was pretty cool too . . . .

[Joe the Destroyer]

Marley and Me- It was cute.  I think the main thing that helped me enjoy it is having had a dog that I was very close to about ten or so years ago.  It brought back a lot of my memories of him. 

Final Destination 2- My second or third watch of it.  Still fun to watch, but not as much for the death scenes as the foreshadowing.   

Definitely a case where the sequel outshone the first film!! The airbag scene was my favorite, although the falling glass was pretty cool too . . . .

Agreed.  I like the first one, sort of, but the second one was a lot more fun to watch.  As much as I don't like films that get far too many sequels, I'm still looking forward the upcoming FD movie.

[lester1/2jr]

The Yardbirds (2001)  This was a good documentary with lots of information, interviews with band members and live performances from the two main stages of the yardbirds existence which were their earlier blues based sort of smaller rock n roll sound to their later psychedliec / pop style.    This trajectory was mirrored by hundreds of garage bands throughout the world, the constant being aggressive playing and expanding volume and usually chemical influenced craziness.  They never had the sort of conceptual approach that the beatles and rolling stones had, they just kind of played. Thus,  I thought the comparison to Booker t and the MG's was particularly apt.  just over an hour  If I had made this I would have focused more  on the larger phenomenon of garage rock itself rather than the depsressing stuff about them not making it very big and so forth.  4/5

kraftwerk and the electronic music revolution-  Kraftwerk, kraftenwerken  hein.  Remember "Autobahn"?  fun fun fun on the autobahn.  You may not have known these guys basically invented electronic music.  if you didn't you will defiantely know by the end of this 3 HOUR documentary about the group , the german music scene in the early 70's (commonly dubbed "krautrock"),  and eventual conquering of the charts by blips and drum machines in the 80's.  You have to be interested in german music to watch this.  If your tastes go more to prog rock and experimental craziness the first half with clips of Can, Popul Vuh and Karlheinz Stockhausen will probably do mroe for you than the latter 80's laden half where we see the technological evolution of synthesizers and so forth and gradual integration into mainstream music, mainly dance music.    I like Kraftwerk but one critic comparing Trans Europ Express to the Beatles and Burt bachrach crossed the line into "oh come ON" 5/5

[Cthulhu]

Jason and the argonauts-Harryhausen at his best.

[Torgo]

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE   *** out of ****. Super violent, over-the-top action fun.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN  ***1/2 out of ****.  Ahnold at his early best. 

CONAN THE DESTROYER  *1/2  out of ****. Still a pointless piece of crap.

[Jack]

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - usually these bad movies grow on me the more times I see them.  Not so here.  You've got boring parts, then you've got special effects parts, repeat a few times until finished.  They take the old cliché of not killing the bad guy until after you've made a little speech, and overuse it to extreme levels.  The bad guys don't kill the good guys either.  Hell, the movie could have been cut in half if someone would just pull the freakin' trigger!  Not to mention that the plot was absurd - we find out that the bad guy is actually the one who brought all the good guys together to oppose him - yeah, that was a brilliant idea.  Oh, and not only does Venice have streets, but if you blow up one building, all the rest will fall down like a house of cards.  And the little canals are apparently deep enough to run a huge submarine into them.  And one of the guys is stuck in the car, upside down, only seconds before a missile hits it and causes a huge explosion.  But he survives.  2.5/5.

[Doggett]

Idiocracy.
A librarian and a hooker go to the future where everyone is really stupid.
It's okay but I was expecting better from the guy that made Office Space
3/5

[lester1/2jr]

I liked idiocracy mainly for the great premise.  the hooker was badly miscast and not funny

[Joe the Destroyer]

The Devil's Nightmare- Average.  I think what I mainly didn't like was the first half, but the sexy and malevolent villain and the strong second half saved the movie.  And alas, there's no "thumbs in the middle" sign.

Mirrors- Not bad, but could have been better.  Essentially feels like The Ring, except with mirrors in place of a video tape.  It does have some pretty decent scenes, and Sutherland is still awesome, but depends too much on cliches and "gotcha" scares.  Then again, there is the bathtub scene...  Still, I think I like Aja's previous films better.   

House on the Edge of the Park- I had high hopes for this film, and came out pretty disappointed.  A lot of people compare it to Last House on the Left (it even has David Hess), but it felt less like an effective video nasty and more like an effective softcore porn.  No thank you, I've seen better and more intense screwed-up people films.   

[Jack]

Laid to Rest (2009) - A girl wakes up in a coffin, having no memory of how she got there.  Once she escapes, she befriends a good-old-boy, along with a computer nerd, and they're chased around by a slasher - Chrome Skull.  He's like a more intelligent version of Jason, and wears a chrome mask.  The movie had sympathetic characters, and the plot moved along at an okay pace.  If you like gore, this is definitely your movie.  There's a great quantity of high quality icky stuff.  Unfortunately, although the characters are sympathetic, I couldn't really relate to any of them.  The main girl may have amnesia, but she also acts almost semi-retarded.  Every single thing these people do is completely moronic, I haven't seen so much idiocy on display in quite a while.  The killer doesn't seem to have any connection to his victims, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  So story-wise it's pretty disappointing.  And it could have certainly used more nudity.  3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974) -  eh.  I could take or leave this installment of the cheerleader series.  I certainly had high hopes with Jack Hilly (Coffy )  producing but it doesn't jump out of the screen and around the room like the other two "the cheerleaders" and "revenge of the cheerleaders"    The lead was well chosen and I liked Rainbeaux Smith adn the creepy campus radical guy but this is more of a mainstream sort of drive in thing with exploitation overtones.  too racy for one, not racy and crazy enough for the other.  They should have played all the moral hooey for laughs, had more vans and wacka wacka guitars and so forth.  kind of depressing really. 3/5

[Joe the Destroyer]

Role Models- Decent, formulaic comedy with plenty of laughs.  For once, I don't totally hate Sean William Scott, even though he wasn't bad in Evolution.  Worth a watch. 

Balls of Fury- Some good chuckles, but missing one important thing: feeling.  I don't mean emotion, I mean the film just felt too much like a genre exercise.  Worth a cheap rental, maybe. 

[InformationGeek]

Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure

I really felt like I was going crazy during the entire movie.  This was biggest acid trip of a movie out there.  I don't care what you say, this is the most insane movie you will ever see.  DON'T DENY IT!  WE ALL KNOW IT!!!  Sorry about that... a bit of a breakdown... anyways, the movie still had its moments and was visually pleasing when it wasn't tearing away at my sense of normality.