Recent viewings

[316zombie]

after what i was told about the cat death scene, there is NO WAY i'm gonna watch shape of water.

[lester1/2jr]

Happy Death Day - kind of clever but ultimately not super compelling horror movie that mixes a little too much American Pie into the mix, at least for my taste. The gimmick is it's groundhog Day but a horror movie. The lead actress, some lady who looks like amber Heard, dies again and again and wakes up in the same dorm room until she can figure out who is killing her. The person killing her is wearing a pig mask of some kind, so that's the iconic killer there.

As obviously unoriginal as it is, it works as a concept. the problem is there's just not enough horror and the teen comedy bits aren't that funny and of course there's no nudity or anything as is the standard nowadays.

a decent effort but ...next!

3.5/ 5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Beerfest" (2006)

To defend their family's honor, two American brothers form a team of fellow slackers and head to Germany to take part in a super-secret international beer drinking competition. So basically this is a drunken, slapstick version of "Fight Club." A raunchy, funny as hell, dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks comedy that's best enjoyed with a few beers in hand!

[Rev. Powell]

RIFFTRAX: FINAL JUSTICE: A re-riff of the MTS3K version of the Joe Don Baker movie where he plays a loose cannon Texas Apache sheriff tracking a mafioso in Malta. Not as funny as the first one, which I thought was just an average episode anyway, but it's not unpleasant to see the entire unedited movie (including the boobies!) My favorite part was a chase where Joe Don grabs a pistol, fires a couple of times, later looks in the barrel to see he has all six bullets left, fires once, says he only has one bullet left, never shoots again, and then later says he's out of bullets. Amazing continuity! 3/5.

[Rev. Powell]

DARK CITY (1998): A man wakes up with no memory to discover he has apparently committed a murder (or been set up), then finds out things are even stranger when he realizes he is living in a city where everyone's memories are erased every night by mysterious men in black who all look like Max Schreck. Extremely stylish sci-fi mindbender from Alex Proyas with references to silent films and film noir; I wouldn't say everything works (not a fan of Keifer Sutherland's annoying out-of-breath line deliveries), but I sure wish there were more Hollywood sci-fi movies with this level of ambition and originality. 4/5.

[indianasmith]

This weekend my wife and I watched C.H.I.P.S. - the new action movie based on the old TV series.
It was AWFUL.  I mean, it took a fun 70's-80's cop show and turned it into a grossout, juvenile comedy with one bad sex joke after another.
Not that I mind the occasional grossout, juvenile comedy IF they are funny.  This one wasn't!!  My wife has a lot higher bar for profanity and sex talk than I do, and I kept waiting for her to change the channel or suggest something else, but she watched right along with me, even though she commented at the time that she didn't know WHY she kept watching.  This movie is either bad movie gold or just a bad movie, I am not sure which!  2/5

[lester1/2jr]

Naked Gun 2 1/2 - it was funny

[lester1/2jr]

Christine (1983) - Can you believe I'd never seen this King/ Carpenter VHS rental classic? It happens. A bookish nerd is transformed by the purchase of a crappy 57 Chevy (well I guess they can't really be crappy, but in bad shape) but is he going too far with the whole thing? No, he ends up returning the car and getting a job at the library. No I'm kidding

The teen movie aspect takes up the first half hour at least and Carpenter, while competent, is no John Hughes. Whatever, it's still good, not perfect though and the ending could have been a little more dynamic it's obviously a must see/ know, about unless you want to be like the pre transformed kid

4.5/ 5

[316zombie]

holiday inn. yes, i am a big ole sap for bing crosby AND fred astaire.

[AoTFan]

For my Bday, my sis and her fam got together and we went and say Ready Player One.  It's the new Steven Spielberg movie based on the book (which I can't believe I'm saying this, but I haven't read, despite it being on my "Hey, this looks cool, let's pick it up sometime list!")  The story centers are a dull, listless, overpopulated future where pretty everywhere feels so down about how things are going they spend most of their time in Oasis, a virtual reality massive multiplayer online world.  The main character becomes obsessed with finding an "Easter Egg" that the game's later creator left somewhere in the program.  Whoever finds it will inherit the game creator's massive fortune and become OASIS's new controller.  Along the way is his gang of friends and a red haired, pixy avatar girl (?) that he meets in the game near the beginning of the movie.

Despite being set the future, the whole film is chocked full of references to the past, mainly a lot of eighties pop culture, like movies, video games, etc.  If you've ever played an arcade or video game, odds are good you'll find something to like in the movie. 

I liked that film, but I can't help but think maybe they crammed a bit too much into one movie.  The major action scenes are so dense, I kept thinking, "What, was that....??" (fill in the blank with a pop-culture character I thought I saw a flash of.)  That I was taken out of the scene for a bit.

Still it was a lot of fun.

[Rev. Powell]

SURVIVE STYLE 5+ (2004): The stories of an abusive British hitman takes on several jobs in Japan with his interpreter by his side, a commercial producer with a strange sense of humor, a man who takes his family to a hypnotism show, three dopey teen burglars, and a man whose murdered wife keeps coming back from the dead intertwine. With its cross-culturally absurd humor, colorful retro-mod sets, and endless invention, this could easily become your favorite new Japanese cult comedy. For some reason it never got decent distribution overseas (despite having English actor Vinnie Jones and a hip rock soundtrack with acts like Cake on it), but people had recommended it to me for years, and it did not disappoint. 4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Bounty Killer (2013) - passably entertaining action movie that I probably would have liked a lot more if I saw it on VHS in 1994.

some light cosplay and comic relief via a fat guy liven up this post apocalypse Road Warrior ish scenerio. In the future white collar criminals are hunted down and killed for a reward by a shadowy left wing/ populist organization called the council. I think if I was living in an dystopia desert insider trading wouldn't be my number one concern, but these folks feel differently



I liked it but not as much as, say, Hell Comes to Frogtown

3.75 /5

[FatFreddysCat]

Woke up too damn early this morning so I killed some time with a couple of music docs on Amazon Prime.

"Inside Metal: The Rise of L.A. Thrash Metal" (2017)
The latest chapter of the "Inside Metal" series examines the challenges that bands like Slayer, Dark Angel and Hirax faced in the early '80s as they tried to establish a thrash scene in Los Angeles, the glam capitol of the world. Dave Ellefson and Chris Poland (Megadeth), Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel), Eric Peterson (Testament), Juan Garcia (Agent Steel), Ernie C. (Body Count) and many more tell some good stories, amidst the vintage clips and photos but there's really nothing here that long time genre fans won't already know. 

"Ramones: The True Story" (2005)
This cheap looking documentary covers the punk rock godfathers' first decade and consists mostly of vintage TV footage, with added commentary by Tommy Ramone (the only surviving original member at the time this flick was made), CBGBs owner Hilly Kristal, Ramones road manager Monte Melnick and art director Arturo Vega. This might not be a bad intro to the band for newbies but I'd say skip this and go for 2003's way more thorough End of the Century doc instead.

[Rev. Powell]

RIFFTRAX: SWING PARADE: A young woman gets a job singing at a nightclub that's about to be closed. The Three Stooges are dishwashers eventually pressed into service as waiters. Forgettable movie, not badly done, but forgettable; the riffing is fine (Larry Fine!) but the match between mockery and mediocrity deosn't work well this time out. The best part is Kevin Murphy's love song to Larry Fine, which plays overt the credits. 2.5/5.

[indianasmith]

I was up all night last night on caregiving duty, so I watched a couple movies in between helping my mother in law get out of bed to use the toilet:

THE LAST JEDI (2017) - Second viewing, and I totally loved it again.  Maybe I'm easy to please, but honestly, give me lightsabers and stormtroopers and some of those old characters I know and love and I'm a happy man! 5/5

EXECUTIONERS (2017)  Four female friends go to stay in a lake house for the summer, and three villains with painted faces show up for a night of mayhem and torture.  But when the girls turn the tables on their tormentors, they discover there is more to this than just random domestic assault!  Not bad, pretty brutal in places. 3.5/5