Recent viewings

[lester1/2jr]

Babes in Toyland (1934) - there's trouble in Mother Goose Land. the evil guy Silas Barnaby has designs on Little Bo Peep

(Can you blame him?)



He's also twisting the arm of the old woman who lives in a shoe to pay her mortgage and those are connected somehow I can't remember how. Laurel and Hardy, the three little pigs (who are little kids dressed in terrifying pig costumes), and a weird mouse that is actually a monkey in a mouse outfit have to try to right all the wrongs so Bo peep can marry her actual boyfriend: Tom Tom the piper's son.

I really liked this. Laurel and Hardy aren't exactly hysterically funny but they are charming in their own way and all the surreal characters and weird costumes were fun. It's certainly a lot better than that weird TCM movie where the people are wondering around the forest and one of them has a deers head.

5/5

[alandhopewell]

EMPTY ROOMS (2012)

     I found this in one of those Echo Bridge "Big Box Of Horror" sets....

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     A single mother with an autistic son moves into a VERY haunted house. Not bloody, some nudity, but rather story-driven, with characters I found myself caring about, particularly Jonah, the son. I recommend this.

     Also, this gem....

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     SHOOT OR BE SHOT (2002)

     Shatner The Incredible plays an escaped mental patient who holds an indie film crew hostage, so they'll shoot the movie he's written. ('Nuff said!)

[FatFreddysCat]

"Jurassic Attack" aka "Rise of the Dinosaurs" (2013)

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A helicopter crash strands an elite Special Forces unit in an uncharted corner of the South American jungle where time stopped 65 million years ago and (extremely poorly CGI'd) dinosaurs still roam. Now they need to figure out a way to escape before they all become Dino Chow. By now you've probably already guessed that this was yet another slab of cheap 'n' cheesy SyFy creature feature schlock.

My 9 year old found this DVD on the "sale" table at our public library this afternoon. We paid a quarter for it. For that price, we couldn't pass it up!  

[javakoala]

"Jurassic Attack" aka "Rise of the Dinosaurs" (2013)

! No longer available

A helicopter crash strands an elite Special Forces unit in an uncharted corner of the South American jungle where time stopped 65 million years ago and (extremely poorly CGI'd) dinosaurs still roam. Now they need to figure out a way to escape before they all become Dino Chow. By now you've probably already guessed that this was yet another slab of cheap 'n' cheesy SyFy creature feature schlock.

My 9 year old found this DVD on the "sale" table at our public library this afternoon. We paid a quarter for it. For that price, we couldn't pass it up!  

The kid has a good eye for crappy films. Excellent parenting skills!! 

[javakoala]

Shoot First, Die Later (1974)

Another "poliziotteschi". Fernando Di Leo directed his screenplay for this tale of a police lieutenant who is taking pay offs from the local mob. Soon, his corruption begins to affect all those around him. An oddly dramatic film with occasional dashes of action. Luc Merenda does a decent job as the lead character but he seems to only have two facial expressions: one is serious and the other, a smirk.

Still, fairly solid production with great direction (better than a lot of these things got) and a good bit of human drama as well. Fair warning -- PETA would not like one scene in this film.

3.5/5

[javakoala]

Kidnap Syndicate (1975)

Another Fernando Di Leo film starring Luc Merenda. Two young boys are kidnapped right in front of their school. One kid is from a rich family, and the other kid only has his dad who runs a motorcycle repair shop. The film takes a sudden brutal turn before falling into a fairly cliched second half. Merenda manages a couple more facial expressions in this one, so it is always great to see an actor grow from film to film.

James Mason plays a very cold-blooded father, and you'll grow to intensely dislike his character, but you have to respect his acting, especially when stacked against Merenda.

Not the best Eurocrime film, but worth watching if you have nothing else that needs doing.

2.5/5

[Rev. Powell]

PATERSON: Paterson wakes up every morning, goes to work, listens to passenger's conversations as he drives his NJ Transit bus, scribbles a few lines of poetry in his notebook at lunch, goes home to his girlfriend, walks his dog, stops in the neighborhood bar for a beer, then wakes up and does it all again the next day. Jim Jarmusch's movie about a poet seeks the simplicity of a William Carlos Williams poem; in it's unassuming way, it's near perfect. One shootout, but it's weak. No blood. No topless scenes. Poetry fu. 4/5.

[javakoala]

Da Corleone a Brooklyn (1979)

The title means "From Corleone to Brooklyn".  Umberto Lenzi's sloppy work is all over this one, but then, I'm sure his budget was pretty low. Slow tale of an Italian cop trying to get the one person who can take down a major Mafia player to New York. Kind of an early "Midnight Run". Except the cop seems to keep putting innocent people in harm's way with every misstep he takes. And it isn't a comedy!

Pretty bland stuff. Re-watch "Nightmare City" instead.

2/5

[javakoala]

The Italian Connection (1972)

Cracking great Fernando Di Leo tale of a small-time pimp set up to take the fall for a huge missing shipment of heroin. The film starts you out with two New York hit men (Henry Silva and Woody Strode) sent to Italy to make a gruesome example of the pimp. As the story grows, the point of view shifts to the pimp Deluca who has no idea why the whole town is suddenly hunting him down.

Well-paced and brutal with a bit of social commentary tossed in. Oh, and Ulli Lommel is in here as a dancer at a club.

3.5/5 for solid entertainment and for seeing Henry Silva smile a couple of times.

[javakoala]

Execution Squad (1972)

Yeah, I know FatFreddysCat posted this one a little while ago. Personally, I found it to be one of the more politically motivated Eurocrime films that I've seen. Given the time and place it was made, it made for a rather stinging shot at some of the political trends in Italy. The director, Stefano Vanzina, opted to put his full name on this film instead of his signature name of "Steno" that he had used on films for decades because he felt the message should have a real name and face behind it.

Yes, it does tend to drag a bit due to the political posturing, but the film still manages to be both brutal and darkly humorous. And the ending leaves the viewer pondering bigger questions than the pros and cons of vigilante justice when law is mired in red tape and liberal roadblocks.

4/5 for being more than just a good story.

[Rev. Powell]

Yesterday's year-end award's consideration triple-feature:

FENCES: To outsiders, Troy Maxson seems like a charming, hard-working garbageman and family man whose biggest problem is his bitterness over finishing his ball-playing career before the major leagues integrated, but as the seasons go by fatal character flaws start to emerge. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis smile as the married couple trapped in an interdepence deeper than love, and August Wilson's dialogue (adapted from his own play) sparkles, making this a superior drama. 4/5.

HIDDEN FIGURES: The story of African-American women working in a still-segregated NASA during the early years of the space race, particularly Katherine Johnson, a math wiz who broke both the color and the sex barrier due to her ability to calculate complex trajectories before the mainframe computers were programmed for the task. It hits all the proper inspirational marks: light racism plus light comedy yields a light success. 3/5.

CERTAIN WOMEN: Three stories of women in Montana: a personal injury lawyer takes on an unhinged client, a couple buy a pile of sandstone from an old man who may not be all there, and a ranch hand develops a fixation on a recent law school graduate who's teaching an adult education course. The script is good at developing characters who could be interesting if they were given something to do, but every story is slow, pointless and anticlimactic. It's a masterpiece if your idea of a great time at the movies is staring at women wearing troubled expressions for 100 minutes. 1.5/5.

[indianasmith]

THE BRIDE (2016) - A mixup of AVENGED and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.
150 years after a renegade company of Confederates murder and kill an Apache princess on her wedding day, a couple Marco and Kira are ambushed at a cabin where they have gone for a romantic getaway just before their wedding.  The attempted kidnapping goes bad; Marco is killed and Kira is taken out in the woods and brutally raped and murdered. The thugs bury her directly underneath the "Blood Tree" where the Apache princess was killed, and now the ghostly Indian gives Kira the power to come back from the dead and seek revenge on these malefactors.  OK, it was kind of by-the-numbers, but I still enjoyed it.  Predictable, but fun.  3.5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Fearless Fuzz" (aka "Magnum Cop,' "Fearless," and "Fatal Charm," 1978)

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A down-on-his-luck Italian private eye (Maurizio Merli) is hired to investigate the kidnapping of a young girl. He winds up in Austria, where he gets mixed up with gangsters and a blackmail ring run by an aging stripper (Joan Collins!).
I had high hopes for this one at first, but it turned out to be a pretty dull Eurocrime entry. The first half of the movie is full of gags and wisecracks so it feels like a detective spoof, then it unexpectedly gets all dark & gritty in the second half with talk of child slavery and kids being killed.

...but hey, Joan Collins was still pretty MILF-y when she made this and she gets her boobs out twice, so there's that. Otherwise... not recommended.

[lester1/2jr]

Omega Man - Charlton Heston is the last man on Earth or so he thinks in this I am Legend version from the 70's. The chemistry between he and his love interest is particularly poor, but the movie is worth seeing. pale weirdies menace him outside his fortified apartment that he has to be safely inside at night but can leave during the day. a plague of some sort wiped out the world but he is
1. a scientist and
2. not a pale weirdy so his blood can be made into a thingy for everyone if they can all get it together somehow.

If only the romance aspect had been less cringey this would have been a classic. instead

3.5 /5
it also was pretty low budget and not a lot of interesting scenery, mostly just wandering around this destroyed city set like a bad late Death Wish sequal

[javakoala]

The Manhunt (1975) (aka Manhunt in the City)

A decent-looking entry by Umberto Lenzi, but the lead actor, Henry Silva, is too wooden and the script is a tad bit repetative, which drags the movie down. A young girl is shot and killed during a robbery. Since her last words were about a scorpion, her grieving father (Silva) begins his own manhunt after determining the police will likely never find those responsible.

Basically, it's "Death Wish" material with Silva getting beat nearly to death at every turn of his investigation. There is a fairly interesting twist at the end of the movie that almost redeems or destroys the movie, depending on your personal take.

2/5

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

A writer working on a screenplay gets pulled into a series of weird events after his not-so-stable friend kidnaps the dog of an even-less-stable crime boss.

If you've seen  Martin McDonagh's "In Bruge", you know you are in for a very twisted, dark-humored movie that has scenes of incredibly graphic violence mixed in along with solid performances by the actors. This time around you get Colin Firth, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, and even Tom Waits. Odd, tragic, and utterly hilarious film, often all at the same time.

Easily 4/5, perhaps even a half point higher after repeat viewings.