Recent viewings

[Jack]

Clonehunter (2009) - so in the future this bounty hunter guy and his fairly hot partner get called to a planet where the guy who runs the place wants them to track down his clone - he wants to transfer his mind into the much younger clone so he can live longer. Things get pretty complicated along the way. The lead guy is just a dud, not leading man material in any way, and he only survives until the end of the movie because people show up to save him just in the nick of time - about 6 times. The story was vaguely interesting, though "vaguely" might be too strong a word. Lots of Z grade special effects and half the scenes are filmed with a green filter or whatever. The cute girl was basically the only thing this movie had going for it. 2.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

THE WORLD'S END (2013): Emotionally immature, middle-aged Gary gets the gang back together to complete the epic pub crawl they failed at as teenagers, and won't be stopped even though it seems that something supernatural is happening in his old town. Nick Frost defers to Simon Pegg's maniacally immature Gary, but it's still a typically funny outing for the comedy duo and a fitting end to their unofficial "Cornetto" trilogy. 4/5.

YESTERDAY WAS A LIE (2008): A female gumshoe investigates a physics professor and a sultry torch singer for clues as to why she's trapped in a dreamlike film noir world. This movie is full of half-sketched abstract ideas about Jungian psychology, Surrealist aesthetic theory, and fringe quantum physics theories, this feels like it was written during a semester where the writer has yet to decide on a major; unfortunately, he slept through the character development lecture in his creative writing course. The director clearly has a thing for blondes with large breasts, which is a bonus. 2/5. 

[JaseSF]

500 MPH Storm (2013): Attempting to create a new clean source of energy, a science experiment involving shooting a beam into the clouds, also using a nuclear reactor, unexpectedly disrupts the weather creating a series of hurricanes and deadly tornadoes that whip across much of southern North America. A small group of scientists involved with the experiment race against time to try and stop it before the hurricanes merge with one another creating a deadly hypercane capable of producing winds up to 500 MPH.

This Asylum movie which seems to be a quick cash-in attempt on the then presumably in development Into the Storm is incredibly dumb even for a disaster movie. The CGI fails to be anything near convincing (here it looks very amateurish in fact), the film's few practical and sound effects being more effective. The same settings are used repeatedly throughout the film representing different locations, primarily a seemingly abandoned warehouse which we see again and again supposed to represent many varied different locations. The characters are for the most part annoying especially Bryan Head as the film's hero Nathan Sims' (Casper Van Dien) son Johnny who comes across as particularly whiny throughout this film. We're expected to suspend our disbelief as viewers way too much during this one to the point of ridiculousness. The dialogue is cringe-inducing in its dumbness and downright laughable and will have you questioning if you actually heard that right. Yet this doesn't prove much fun. It's nothing you haven't seen before and what you have seen before was done way better.  * out of ***** stars.

Apocalypse Pompeii (2014): During a field trip to historic Pompeii, Lynne (Jhey Castles) and Mykaela Pierce (Georgina Beedle) and others on their trip find themselves faced with impending doom when Mount Vesuvius unexpectedly erupts. Mykaela uses her book knowledge of volcanoes to help lead the others while her Dad Jeff Pierce (Adrian Paul), a former soldier turned security expert, plots an unlikely rescue effort involving the theft of an Italian military helicopter from under the nose of an old ally named Col. Carlo Dillard (John Rhys-Davies).

Incredibly dumb disaster action film from the Asylum as they attempt to cash in on the release of Pompeii from the same year. In order to enjoy this at all, one has to overlook the unconvincing CGI FX (the few practical effects are done better), the ridiculous plot devices such as people being vaporized by an invisible gas yet it doesn't affect anything else around them, lava pursuing people even up stairs, helicopters being able to fly in an area near an erupting volcano, the bad acting from all involved except for a few moments where Rhys-Davies gets to do a little scenery chewing, etc. Dumb and forgettable overall. The trailers for Asylum films are usually way better than their films. Still I'd imagine Andrew would have some entertaining "Things I learned from this movie" for this one and 500 MPH Storm. * out of ***** stars.

[Jack]

Enigma (2009) - an alien prisoner is being transported on a dilapidated cargo spaceship, but it gets loose and kills everybody. This is revealed to us at the beginning, then we watch the movie which is very unconvincingly supposed to be from security footage. I almost thought this was intended for little kids as you've got a cutesy little CGI space pet like that goofy thing in the Lost In Space movie, and the dialogue and acting just reek of "ages 12 and under". But then there's some moderately gruesome killings so...whatever. They threw in a twist at the end that still left half the main plot unexplained, and the rest of it didn't make much sense either. The best part was that it was only 42 minutes long. 2/5.

[Alex]

Had a bit of a Christopher Lee fest over the past few days with Taste the Blood of Dracula, Scars Of Dracula (not the best of his Dracula films, but I have them on DVD) and The Man With The Golden Gun before deciding I needed some 80's cheese and since I'd saw a post about it recently decided to watch Rage War (The Dungeonmaster) & From Beyond. Since I am off work today its going to be The Unnamable (currently watching), then see if I can find the sequal.

[Jack]

Space Milkshake (2012) - so there's this small space station that cleans up garbage orbiting the earth, and they bring aboard some glowing box which causes all life on the planet to vanish. Silliness follows. This was a "comedy" but I found it more amusing than funny. Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1) co-stars. I guess it depends on your sense of humor; some might find this hilarious but I only found it cute. It's not really bad or anything, just instantly forgettable. 3/5.

[Newt]

Space Milkshake (2012) - so there's this small space station that cleans up garbage orbiting the earth, and they bring aboard some glowing box which causes all life on the planet to vanish. Silliness follows. This was a "comedy" but I found it more amusing than funny. Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1) co-stars. I guess it depends on your sense of humor; some might find this hilarious but I only found it cute. It's not really bad or anything, just instantly forgettable. 3/5.

I love this one!  I may be easily amused.  Agree that it is low-key, mostly, but it grew on me - have watched it multiple times.  What's not to love about George Takei's performance?     Or Billy Boyd's?  My mind might be playing tricks on me but I thought I detected a few 'in jokes' going by.  Might be the effect of too many viewings of such stuff.

[lester1/2jr]

Jack are you on some kind of space station kick or is it just coincidence

[Jack]

Jack are you on some kind of space station kick or is it just coincidence

I got yet another 30 day free membership to Amazon Prime so I'm checking out all their sci-fi movies as fast as I can 

[indianasmith]

Over weekend I watched SPEAK NO EVIL - a single mom's daughter disappears from her home in a small New Mexico town.
Law enforcement is playing the "blame the mom" game until suddenly every other child in town also disappears as well.
Then it's a full scale panic, until suddenly all the kids come back at once.  But they come back . . . changed.  And hungry.
This is a nicely creepy film with strong occult overtones, quite well done overall.

Then last night I watched AVENGED.  A beautiful deaf-mute is driving across the desert to spend the weekend with her fiancée when
she encounters a gang of rednecks tormenting two young Native Americans.  She tries to save one of them, but the gang kills the young Indian and then kidnaps and gang-rapes her.  After they are done, they stab her and leave her for dead in the desert.  An Apache medicine man tries to save her life, but she is too far gone.  However, the vengeful spirit of a long-dead Indian chief possesses her and sends her on a quest to nail some redneck scalps to the wall.  Very gory and well done overall, but the villain's blatant racism belongs more in the 1950's than in the 21st century.  I find it hard to believe such an openly racist community could exist in today's America (and I am from the South!).

[indianasmith]

Yesterday I rented two movies: One from "Midnight Releasing" (the new incarnation of Brain Damage Films) and one from The Asylum.
First one I watched was called AMERICAN BACKWOODS: SLEW HAMPSHIRE.

MR is returning to the formula that made Brain Damage films so much goofy fun:
Bad acting, LOTS of cheap gore, incomprehensible plots, and tons of totally gratuitous nudity.
Four college friends are trying to find a remote strip club along the Canada/Maine border when they
get kidnapped by a bunch of murderous homosexual rapist hillbillies.  Then the hillbillies are attacked
by a group of Viking cannibals who apparently have been living undetected in the woods since Lief
Erickson dumped them there in the 1100's.  Then the Vikings get attacked by Sasquatch.
And they keep having daydreams about the strip club the whole time, mainly to throw in nudity since
the actual cast is mostly male.

What can you do with such goofy nonsense except give it a 5/5 and say: "WATCH THIS!!"

[JaseSF]

Encounters of the Fourth Kind (1989): TV documentary style short film hosted by Roddy McDowall that examines reports of alien abduction encounters with a particular focus on Whitley Strieber's book Communion and an upcoming film adaptation of said book.

The reports of alien abduction cases and the testimony of those who wrote books/magazines about these experiences proves far more interesting than the quasi-advertisement segments for the upcoming film adaptation of Strieber's Communion. All in all, there's little here those who've examined this phenomena haven't heard or seen already. The scenes of the film adaptation we see make it look rather cheesy although it was cool to see a much younger Christopher Walken who starred in the film. McDowall's presence makes this a little better than it would have been without him. *** out of ***** stars.

[etmoviesb]

Thermae Romae [2012], it exposes itself as a very silly movie: a serious ancient roman architect lose his job because he prefer traditional solutions while times are changing fast. He's trying to recover from the job loss when he finds a way to visit modern Japan and there he gets ideas to improve Rome baths and life.

Sounds silly? Of course it is. As such I was expecting 100% comedy, but it is actually very nice mix of comedy, love, and interesting thoughts about Japanese and Roman culture. In some scenes I really felt touched. It is strongly suggested.


Note: there is no modern politically correctness nonsense. Examples include: the main character treats every non-Roman pretty much as slaves; he is really a tough no-nonsense person; the deuteragonist (a modern Japanese lady) gets unfairly fired because a mysterious man appeared in her workplace.

In my opinion it is a plus, but some people might dislike it.

[indianasmith]

Oh, Asylum, how I love you!

Who else would make a movie called FLIGHT WORLD WAR II?

A 727 en route from Dulles to Heathrow flies through a weird electrical storm/temporal anomaly and emerges over the French coast in June of 1940.  The Germans are driving the English from the continent, having somehow gotten ahold of jets and air-to-air missiles several years ahead of schedule.  The pilot decides to save the Allied cause by donating the plane's sophisticated radar system to the Brits.

This was far better than it had any right to be.  Excellent acting and character development made up for the ridiculous plot.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Batman Begins" (2005)

http://youtu.be/hmjqFAiLdG8
	Small | Large

Ten years ago this week (has it really been that long?), Christopher Nolan brought Batman back to the big screen in a very big way and kicked the feeding frenzy for comic book movies into high gear. I still like "The Dark Knight" w/Heath Ledger as the Joker better than this one by just a smidge, but at the time of its release, "Begins" was the best damn Bat-Movie ever and it is holding up very well.