Watched a few movies this week:
Masters Of Horror: Incident On And Off A Mountain Road - These masters of horror dvds are really hit or miss. Thankfully, Don Coscarelli's (Phantasm) entry is quite good. It follows a young woman as she is chased and eventually captured by a mountain freak. There is also a storyline about her dating and marrying a survivalist which runs in and out of the story via flashbacks. Overall, not a bad episode. Has some decent scenes, but it tries to have a big twist ending which I saw coming from the beginning. Well worth watching, if only to see Angus Scrimm as an insane captive of the mountain freak.
8/10
Hardware - So someone brought this up a couple of weeks ago, here on the board. I had seen it probably 12 years ago or so on cable (edited,of course) and rather enjoyed it. I went ahead and threw down some cash on a bootleg DVD from Ebay, and I must say that it was even better than I remember.
The film is about Mo and his girlfriend Jill. Mo is a scavenger and goes into the radioactive desert to find scrap metal and such. He ends up buying a head and various parts of a robot from another scavenger and giving it to his girlfriend who is an artist. Soon though, the robot wakes up and reassembles itself with various appliances in the apartment and then proceedes to go on a rampage.
When I saw this on cable, I had no idea just how dark and sick the film was. The deaths are gory, and the peeping tom guy was pretty creepy. My only problem with the film is that it is a bit long, and just seems to keep going and going well after it should have. Overall though, it's one that should be seen. I have no idea why the Weinstein Bros haven't released this on DVD.
9/10
Tube - Picked this one up from deepdiscountdvd.com a couple of weeks ago without any previous knowledge of it. I figured for 5.00, I couldn't go wrong.
Tube is a Korean film that tries it's hardest to be a recreation of American action films. It's about a reckless cop named Jay who is on a never ending mission to kill a terrorist named "T". You see, T killed Jay's wife years ago, and Jay wants revenge.
He gets his chance when T hijacks a subway train and straps a bomb on it. Jay finds out from his girlfriend, who is on the train, and decides it up to him to stop it. From there, the film is 2hrs of pure action as Jay does his best to take out T and save the passengers.
I've read complaints about the film saying that it's too much like American mindless action films to be any good. This is certainly not the case. Tube is a hell of a lot of fun, and I enjoyed every second of it. Imagine Michael Bay could actually make a good action film. Then add John Woo as his co-director. The film would end up being Tube. Well worth a rental.
9/10
Cemetary Man - Got this one on Tuesday. I've been waiting years for this on DVD ever since I first saw it on Bravo many years ago. I won't go into the plot of this one, since Andrew has done such a fine job of doing that already:
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/cemeteryman/index.htmlI will say though that the DVD itself is..."meh". The sound is a bit up and down at times and the special features are crap. But, it is great to finally see Anna Falchi nude in digital clarity.
9/10
Running Scared - This film is probably the biggest surprise for me this year. Period. I rented it, not expecting much. I liked Wayne Kramer's previous film "The Cooler" but didn't think that Running Scared would be too good. Damn...I was wrong.
The film is about Joey Gazelle, a mob lackey in New Jersey. After a bloody shootout, in which a group of cops are killed, Joey is told to get rid of the gun used in the shooting. He proceeds to take the gun home and hide it in his basement. His son, and his neighbor's son, see him hide the gun there. A couple of hours later, they hear gunshots next door. His neighbor's son has stolen the pistol and shot his abusive father with it.
From there, the film is all about Joey trying to find the kid and the gun before the police or the mob do. That may not sound too exciting, but it sure as hell is. The kid gets mixed up with crack addicts, violent pimps and eventually the most evil couple of people you'll ever see in a film.
Running Scared plays out like an insane graphic novel. The situations are nearly unbelievable, but work within the film. It's gritty, dark, violent and bloody. One of the situations that the kid gets into actually gave me nightmares the night I watched the film. Anyone who has seen Running Scared will know exactly which one I'm talking about.
The biggest surprise of the film for me though was Paul Walker's acting. I've never really thought of him as an actor before, just some pretty boy they put in films to make bank. But, here he does a fantastic job. Hopefully we'll see more of this from him in the future.
10/10!
