Recent viewings

[claws]

Dance of the Dead (2008) Blu-ray (Region B)

This movie is all sorts of awesome and oozing with references to Return of the Living Dead. They even threw in a slightly altered Night of the Comet quote.
Dance of the Dead is not just a rip-off but a nice homage while doing its own thing. 4.5/5

Amusement (2008) Blu-ray

Thrilling semi-anthology with a few twists and turns. Enjoyed the urban legend type of set up/story line. Looks pretty snazzy in HD. 4/5

[Jack]

Doctor Who:  Terminus (1983) - one of the Peter Davison episodes.  I think this is the first episode of Dr. Who I ever saw, way back when.  Turlough has sabotaged the Tardis for some reason that I guess you had to see the previous episode to understand.  This causes an emergency and the Tardis automatically docks with another ship - a huge freighter that, as we will eventually learn, is transporting the victims of a disease to an even more gigantic ship where they will be cured.  Of course there are many complications     Tegan and Turlough spend the whole episode crawling around in ventilation ducts trying to avoid the bad guys, while the Doctor and Nyssa deal with the bad guys more directly.  And save the entire universe in the process!  This was an okay episode.  Plenty of cheesy goofiness, but the plot kind of dragged and wasn't terribly interesting.  Still, I've had a crush on Tegan since the first time I saw her and Nyssa spends the episode running around in some sort of lingerie.  So it has its good points too.  3.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

SMASH CUT (2009): An incompetent horror director discovers he can make realistic gore effects by killing his co-workers and using their severed body parts as special effects.  This slasher spoof tribute to Herschel Gordon Lewis (who has a cameo) has a few moments of inspiration but is mostly predictable and low on laughs.  With porn star Sasha Grey (who keeps her clothes on, as does the rest of the cast), directed (in a more conventional way) by the guy who brought you JESUS CHRIST VAMPIRE HUNTER.  2.5/5.

[JaseSF]

Trip With the Teacher (1975): A small schoolbus troupe of young teenage girls and their teacher are terrorized by a pair of ruthless bikers.

This was surprisingly gripping and involving. It wasn't always convincing and there's a rather unbelievable plot twist or two along the way but in the end, this was a disturbing film as ought to be any film featuring a pair of older men preying on and plotting the rape/murder of young girls and their teacher. If it was meant to be exploitative, it certainly fails to titillate but succeeds in being repulsive, grimy, dirty, sleazy and gritty as some might well argue a grindhouse style film ought to be. It feels like watching a car crash, hard to watch yet also hard to take one's eyes off as one wants to see how it will all play out. The lead biker/killer/rapist/psychopath Al (Zalman King) gives a surprisingly convincing and brutal performance while Robert Porter offers good support as his reluctant brother/cohort Pete. Brenda Fogarty also gives a surprisingly compelling performance as Miss Tenny, the school teacher determined to protect the girls she's entrusted to look after but who soon finds herself beaten down by the brutality of the bikers. The young girls too are also surprisingly convincing as girls frightened and terrorized and act very much like real young girls do act. However the ending isn't fully convincing and doesn't quite seem to gel with the rest of the film. Still I'd give this ***1/2 out of ***** stars.

[lester1/2jr]

Where In The World is Osama Bin Laden? (2008)- This wasn't quite the home run that Supersize Me was, the box office is evidence of that, but it was pretty good. The opening montage was kind of annoying and heavy on net friendly animation and cheap comedy, but once it settled down it ended up being, again, pretty good, and a little bit daring.

The main thing of finding Osama bin Laden doesn't pan out, obviously. It's the journey not the destination though. So he goes to a bunch of places (Moracco, Afghanistan, some other place) and talks to muslims about stuff and comes away with a better understanding of them. There are varying degrees of modernity in the middle east but most muslims don't like US foreign policy and don't like Israel. This is a whole other ball of wax if we were to discuss it but that's generally how they feel. Here are two relevent things we learn: The US doesn't seem to be doing that great a job in Afghanistan. Also, our ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, is a bizarre north Korea type society that is behind it's neighbors in terms of everything and probably not a good ally really.

Morgan Spurlock isn't a middle east expert but he comes away with a good understanding of our predicament there: Muslims really don't want our assistence outside of maybe helping people in Afghanistan who have no schools or something and our whole current foreign policy is mostly counter productive.

4/5

[lester1/2jr]

Left Bank (2008) - Did someone here say something about this? I can't remember how I ended up qeueing it. it's pretty good, I liked it better than that big hyped french horror movie a few years ago with the lesbian.

A cute female athlete overtrains amd passes out and decides to recover at her new boyfriends place on the Left Bank. I have no idea what the left bank is or signifies. I thought it was part of France but I think this movie is from Belgium. The guy sells cars and does not look like any car salesman you've ever seen. He looks like a barrista. Still, an athlete and a car dealer aren't very bohemian and they aren't going around doing paintings and so forth so they can be forgiven for looking like an American Apparel ad.

An Amityville horror / Sentinel (lol) type thing is going on in the basement, in which some sort of evil power is locked in a certain room. The girl is curious and then she starts getting weird dreams and you know, the evilness gradually seeps in to everything.

The pacing is interesting and very modern. The girl is nude sometimes and her body is supple if she is not super sexy. The story was not hugley original but they did a good job with it.

3.75/5

[claws]

No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (1990)

Two estranged martial arts trained brothers are tracking down the killers of their father. Big showdown in Florida.
Or at least I think they are pretending to be in Florida because its an Asian production trying to pass as American. Not your typical bad movie though. This sequel is surprisingly "decent" and delivers with good fighting, stiff acting and fun bad guys. The soundtrack rips off the Axel F. tune and there are a few over-the-top brutal scenes of violence.
Entertaining mix of cheese and kick-ass action but slow pacing in the first half hour seriously hurts the flow. 3.75/5 Cheese

[indianasmith]

I watched LEFT BANK last year.  Not terribly impressed, as I recall.  I did a minireview of it on here somewhere.

[Couchtr26]

Eden Log - French movie about the need for increasing power and a means to produce underground with dark consequences.  Not bad but reminds me too much of Pandorum.  Unsure which came first but saw Pandorum first. 

4/5

[indianasmith]

I liked Pandorum, but Eden Log did nothing for me.  Incredibly boring film

[Rev. Powell]

THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982): A meek Gelfling saves the universe by fulfilling a prophecy requiring him to heal the Dark Crystal.  A great looking movie, with advanced puppetry and brilliant colors; unfortunately the watered-down "Lord of the Rings" ripoff plot isn't half as interesting as the visuals.  3/5.

[Jack]

Daughters of Satan (1972) - Tom Selleck stars as an art buyer who's married to one of those half-there flower child type women.  She's being possessed (on and off) by the spirit of a witch who lived hundreds of years ago.  Her mission, should she become confused enough to accept it, is to kill good ol' Magnum and then, I dunno.  Nothing I guess.  Tom plays his usual personable character but his wife is about as exciting as watching paint dry.  The plot moved slooooowly.  Watchable as a movie, but makes an even better sedative.  2/5.

[JaseSF]

Kick-Ass (2010): A rather normal high school teenager named Dave decides to try and become a superhero, that he names Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson), like in the comic books he reads. However he finds the reality a whole lot different and a Hell of a lot more dangerous than the fantasy. In the end, he meets up with a Punisher-style vigilante named Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his young daughter/sidekick Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) who are determined to bring down the local mafia kingpin through any means necessary.

Actually this was pretty entertaining for the most part although I was bothered by the fact that Big Daddy and Hit Girl are actually in many ways just as brutal, if not even moreso, than the movie's villains. Still Johnson in the lead is a surprisingly likable everyman type character and Kick-Ass is something like a much less powerful Spider-Man. The movie is certainly something of a thrill ride and never gets dull but is a bit over-gory although it's probably just playing to current audience expectation in that regards. Overall I enjoyed it more than I didn't. *** out of ***** stars.

[Jack]

Tried watching House of the Devil (2009) last night.  Some college girl has a roommate she doesn't like so she's trying to find a way to earn money to get her own place off-campus.  She sits around doing nothing.  Then she goes out to lunch with her friend and they talk about nothing.  Finally turned it off after 20 minutes of absolutely nothing, as the girl was sitting in the bathroom being bored.

Also tried watching The Call of Cthulhu (2005).  2005?  It was some B&W silent movie.  Wasn't really in the mood to read a movie last night.  Only made it 20 minutes into that one as well.

Not a very successful movie night.

[lester1/2jr]

Romancing the Stone (1984)- Why did I rent this? Lately I have been renting all these movies I never saw and I don't really know where it's gotten me. Anyway, Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas look like a young white couple role playing all this. Columbia is like Epcot center or something. Is Spielberg involved with this? It has a faux Indian Jones wiff.

Kathleen Turner, who is pretty hot and a good actress and who Kate Hudson wishes she could be is a writer who gets wrapped up in a thing where she has to go to Columbia with a treasure map and slide down a thing and then Douglas slides down and lands in the position of giving her oral in the swamp hahaha. Yeah. The rest is a decent little yarn about finding a lost ruby and Douglas, who I mean what would he be doing in Columbia REALLY, and her falling in lerve.

it was a little lifetimey. It seems like it was geared to women a bit. It was okay but kind of besides the point in my life.

4/5