Recent viewings

[bob]

This has the distinction of being the first John Wayne movie I've ever seen. Usually I don't like westerns, but this is different. Good story being told along with a twist at the end.

4.5/5

[Cthulhu]

Ils-2006
Wow. This one was really creepy. One of the best horrors of recent times.
There was only one thing that kinda p**sed me off.

SPOILERS:Why would you follow that kid? Are you f**king stupid?

That little thing aside, I highly recommend it.

[JaseSF]

The Goonies (1985): a young boy named Mikey (Sean Astin) and his quirky, somewhat eccentric young buddies Mouth (Corey Feldman), Chunk (Jeff Cohen), Data (Jonathan Ke Quan) and reluctant big brother Brand (Josh Brolin); a group that calls themselves "The Goonies" because they all live in the Goon Docks; set out on an unlikely adventure in search of hidden pirate treasure in hopes of finding the money to save their homes from foreclosure and from being turned into a golf course. Along the way they stumble across a bizarre family of ruthless criminals known as the Fratellis and are soon forced to deal not only with them but numerous booby traps along the way in their search plus even more surprises.

It was very nostalgic watching this again after all these years and it's still a movie that's just plain fun to watch. Sure it requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief especially during Mikey's appeal to get Andy (Kerri Green), Stef (Martha Plimpton) and his friends to continue in the face of early escape and again during the film's conclusion. Still this is great entertainment which holds up over the years surprisingly well, having a sort of timeless adventure story appeal. This is like Indiana Jones kids style with a little pirate, James Bond, a monster story and crooks on the loose adventure thrown in for good measure. **** out of ***** stars if you're young at heart.

[venomx]

Fun fact. Troy starts to smoke the 'Goonies map' on the uncut dvd. (store scene)

[JaseSF]

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939): an idealistic, honest young man and leader of a boy rangers club back home named Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) is appointed to the U.S. Senate, an unlikely choice who those in power believe they can easily manipulate and control. However Jefferson Smith is truly an honest man who believes in doing the right things, in standing up for truth and justice and dares to stand up in the face of threatening government corruption, even when it seems it's totally out to destroy him.

This was fantastic! Stewart's performance is phenomenal and his character totally won me over and had me backing him all the way. There's some nice support here from Jean Arthur as Clarissa Saunders, Smith's secretary and the woman who lets him in on to what's really going on with regards to the inner workings of the senate. Claude Rains also gives a compelling performance as Senator Joseph Harrison Paine who's cowtowed and caved in to corruption in order to further his own career but not without some very personal heavy costs with regards to being the man he himself believes he ought to be. A real classic! Everyone should see this one. ***** out of ***** stars.

[indianasmith]

I watched Liam Neeson's new movie, UNKNOWN, tonight.  It was not as good as TAKEN but still a pretty cool film.  Had the obligatory car chases and hand to hand combat scenes, and Neeson continues to get paired off with women 20 years younger than he is, but still pretty good overall.

[Jack]

976-Evil 2 (1992) - The dean of a college has been calling a 976 number to get his horoscope, er, "horrorscope" which has caused him to become possessed by some demonic force.  He's killing girls around the campus, but the cops manage to catch him and toss him in jail.  No problem for the dean though, he's a master of astro-projection, and continues his killing spree.  A young biker dude and a cute college girl team up to stop his diabolical plans.  This was pure '80s cheese (even though it was made in '92), really going off the deep end into complete triple-mozzarella territory at some points.    I enjoyed it - fun, likable characters, cheeseball villain, the plot moved along at a good pace.  3.75/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Trading Places (1983) - dated but compelling comedy that has a couple scenes where Jamie Lee Curtis is topless. This is the second Dan Aykroyd movie I've seen lately. The other was "The Great Outdoors" and this one I had sort of similar problems with but also enjoyed. The style of comedians back then is sort of slapsticky and stage bound for lack of a better term. Aykroyd seems like he's talking in not his real voice. Eddie Murphy's stuff is funny but reeks of minstrelsy. At first this kind of threw me but I ended up getting into it because of the compelling scenerio and Jamie Lee Curtis being topless.

Two rich guys with an interest in the nature vs nurture debate screw up one guys life so he goes from being super rich to poor and take a homeless guy and give him that life. Aykroyd's phony friends drop him like a hot potato and he ends up with hooker with a heart of gold Curtis and Murphy has his old house and butler. When the two guys describe their jobs as commodities brokers to Valentine ( Murphy) he goes "oh, so you guys are bookies" and like starts to be good at the stock market. The whole thing is probably left wing fallacies about privilege and the evils of business but who cares.


It's definitely very different from todays comedies, I don't know if people just talked differently back then or if now movies are more natural. Anyway, this was very popular and is well made and entertaining.

4.5/5

[lester1/2jr]

The Wraith (1986) - Wow. I think I had seen part of this before but never the whole thing. Wow. What can you say about it? It's a great B movie, one of the best of the 80's. Charlie Sheen is the new kid in town and as such the hottest girl in town who has a possesive boyfriend instantly falls for him. She is Sherilyn Fenn who is really really hot. I can't lie, I wanted there to be more of her and less of the cars but I was still way into this.

Charlie Sheen is ready to go head to head with the boyfriend who is the local "rocker" tough guy. He (rocker guy) has a clan of nutballs, two ridiculous hollywood "punks" and a geeky science nerd who helps them build sick cars for drag racing. As if this wasn't enough there is a mysterious guy in a crazy black car that is way sicker than any of theirs and also hates them for some reason. There is a significant car element to the story. I'm not into cars but it works.  

This is basically on par with Repo Man or Return of the Living Dead in an " 80's with really stupid punks" vibe and is similarly a classic though of a slightly different catagory, more of an out and out b movie. Certainly fans of stuff like The Hidden or that one with Joe Pesci will be into this and have likely seen it many times.

5/5

[JaseSF]

America's Serial Killers: Portraits in Evil (2009): This was a ten part mini-series TV style documentary series focused on serial killers and what makes them tick. It mostly focuses on the most famous American serial killers from H.H. Holmes and Jane Toppan up to Albert Fish, the Boston Strangler, the Zodiac Killer, BTK, the Green River Killer, Ed Gein, Robert Hansen, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Night Stalker, the Beltway Snipers, the Hillside Stranglers, the Freeway Killers, the Lipstick Killer and many more some more obscure than others. It features commentary from several experts including crime psychology experts Steven A. Egger, Jack Levin and Frederic Reamer, true crime writer Kirk Gill and modern day detective/investigator Steve Ainsworth. It makes for both fascinating and disturbing viewing as one might well expect and they cover far more ground that I expected them to. Although why they focus so much on non-American Jack the Ripper I'm not so sure. Still this was surprisingly well done for an effort from Mill Creek. There is however much too much repetition both in terms of stock footage used (they sometimes seem to lack footage with regards to some of those profiled) and the same psychological theories getting repeated over and over and they moved through the profiles covered. Still I guess that's to be expected somewhat. I was surprised to see them use so much footage from other films including a lot of footage from The Lodger (1944), Doctor X (1932), and even Nosferatu (1922), The Wolf Man (1941) and Dracula (1931) including footage from a few others as well. It works best when they tie in the Lodger footage with Jack the Ripper, the Doctor X footage they try to tie into H.H. Holmes doesn't work as well although it was neat seeing some of it show up. Also they do tie the classic monster footage into the discussion on how terrors moved from supernatural monsters to real life ones. Still there's a lot of stuff here I didn't expect to see including some very disturbing crime photographs and footage. Overall this was better done than I expected but wasn't up to the par of TV series such as Crime Stories or Crimes That Shook the World. ***1/2 out of ***** stars

[Rev. Powell]

A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975): In the post-apocalyptic future, a loner uses his telepathic dog to search for scarce females.  Strange, unique, and fun, with a perfect black finale; the implicit misogyny of the "pooches before cooches" message does take the movie down a notch, though.  4/5. 

[bob]

It's truely amazing just how much this movie made in 1940 kind reflects the economy today and how people are so desperate for jobs. I never read the novel so I'm not sure if the adpation from Stienbeck's novel is accurate, but this is a damn powerful film. 


5 out of 5 stars

[Flick James]

Black Death (2010) - I checked this out on NetFlix streaming. I wasn't too thrilled with it. I won't go into plot details as I'm just not too interested in doing so. My main takeaway was that it seemed like a movie that was trying to have a message of some kind, but I couldn't figure out what it was. 2.5/5

[Jack]

Growth (2009) - back in the '80s, a group of scientists were carrying out experiments on an island.  That didn't turn out so well - a few (dozen) deaths were involved.  Flash forward to the present, and a young girl has just inherited the island, so she brings some friends along to take a look at the place before selling it.  Yeah, there's some parasitic slugs that crawl under your skin and generally cause some problems.  This was pretty darned good!  The characters were very well done, entertaining and likable.  The story was told in an interesting way that kept me guessing about what would happen, and just what was actually going on.  Not in a confusing WTF? way, but in a good, suspenseful way.  Overall very good for a low budget horror flick (except for the rather questionable CGI).  4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)- This was a big hit with me and my friends when it came out but I hadn't remembered it at all. For all it's shortcomings, the idea of killer clowns, or klowns excuse me, invading Earth is fun and the clown costume/ special effects themselves are really great. It's like a comic book come to life.

A young couple follow a shooting star from make out point and discover a huge glowing big top. They get attacked by Killer Klowns but it no one belives them for a while blah blah. The dialogue and acting could be a lot better. The girl has to recite some pretty awful stuff, especially in the begining. It doesn't matter though. The plot and casting and everything else work well enough to be carried by the klowns.

What I like about movies like this is if they hadn't made it who would have? There are tons of action movies, kung fu movies, romantic comedies etc. How many movies are there about killer klowns from outer space? just this one.

4.5/ 5  I'm feeling stingy