Recent viewings

[moman]

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - 4.5/5, very fun movie to watch

[Jack]

The Faculty - Watched this again for about the 7th time last night.  It's an Invasion of the Body Snatchers plot set on a high school campus.  Really, really good characters - sort of got a Breakfast Club thing going, but without any of the cheesiness.  Nice dark humor throughout, really added to the entertainment value.  Plot had plenty of stuff going on which kept it interesting.  One of those movies that sits on the shelf forgotten about, but every time I watch it I'm just amazed at how well done it is. 

[Torgo]

THE INCREDIBLE HULK  (2008)   ***1/2 out of ****.

A big improvement over the 2003 Ang Lee film.  Great effects, great Hulk Smash action, across the board good performances and quick and taut pacing.   As good as Iron Man IMO.

[Monkeyface]

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - 4.5/5, very fun movie to watch

One of my favorites, along with Snatch!  Has anyone seen Revolver yet?

[Jack]

Nightmare - this is from the Hammer Horror pack.  Every one I've seen so far has been very good, but this one was awful.  Some woman is having nightmares, her mother went insane and now she's bound and determined that she's going insane as well.  All day long people tell her she's in good health, etc.  Then she goes to bed and has a nightmare about her insane mother, and wakes up convinced she's going to go insane as well.  Then all day long people tell her she's in good health, etc.  By about the fourth repetition of this cycle, I could barely keep my eyes open any more.  This woman isn't the least bit sympathetic, she's just pathetic. 

The Hollow - sort of a Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the teenage version.  The main girl is completely unlikable, the epitome of what gives teenage girls a bad name.  She's got a boyfriend, but then some new guy comes along and she's all over him in a heartbeat.  Boyfriend can go to hell.  Some headless horseman dude is menacing people in a graveyard, and Stacey Keach apparently needed more money to buy coke so he's in here as the drunken graveyard guy.  Bah, this was crap.  Dumb story, played like a Disney Channel movie except it had three swear words which got it an R rating (huh?).

[Rev. Powell]

MAD LOVE (1949): Demented surgeon Gogol (Peter Lorre) grafts new hands onto a concert pianist who is also the husband of the woman he loves. Trouble is, he chooses hands that once belonging to a murderer. Lorre's hammy yet tragic performance is the main attraction here. 4/5.

THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936): A revenge-minded escaped convict lucks into a process for miniaturizing people, then controlling them with his mind. With it's shrunken murdering Frenchies and Lionel Barrymore in drag (!) this should have been a campy creep classic, but it flounders on the obtrusive subplot about the convict reconciling with his daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan). 3/5.

NEAR DARK (1987): A roving gang of psychotic vampires turn a young redneck into a fellow bloodsucker, but he doesn't take to the murderous nocturnal lifestyle as well as he might. For the first 2/3 this is an atmospheric and original tale about the internal politics of the clan, but for act three the director abruptly hits the reset button and turns it into a standard nosferatu hunt complete with randomly exploding vehicles.

MST3K: MONSTER-A-GO-GO: Wow, the underlying movie is a serious contender for the worst movie ever.  Bad acting, sound, lighting, makeup, and a plot where nothing happens.  In the infamous ending, ('SPOILER') the monster simply disappears without any explanation (/SPOILER).  I wouldn't want to sit through this without the quips.  Funny host segments as usual during the Joel Hodgson era; my favorite is when Gypsy doesn't "get" Crow.   4/5.

MST3K: RING OF TERROR:  Another horrible movie.  In this one a med student in his 40s appears to be very slightly afraid of corpses.  After an endless hour he finally dies of fright when grave-robbing in a fraternity stunt.  Not totally technically inept, but the story is dull and dumb.  Also includes a Phantom Creeps short, which is a lot higher energy and would be fun on its own.  Includes the finale where Frank sings the unforgettable, "If Chauffeurs Ruled the World" ("I'd have the complete respect/Of everyone on the planet/Including intellectuals/Even David Mamet.")  Add the "MST3K Jukebox Volume 2" with 10 sings from the series--including "A Very Swayze Christmas", the only Christmas carol with its own a fight scene and the line "I think that jolly old elf better make out his will"--and it's a very fun disc overall.  4/5.

[JJ80]

-"Outland" - Sean Connery puts in a solid performance in this watchable sci-fi re jig of "High Noon". I thought that the basic concept of space gangsterism was reasonably well handled along with a depiction of the possible adverse psychological effects of living in space. That said, this is really just a tough crime drama with futuristic trappings. The special effects were actually quite effective, especially the miniatures of the settlement itself. The violence here was pretty strong with gory decompression deaths and plenty of shooting. (Oddly featuring shotguns not lasers). Steven Berkoff puts in a very intense performance as a miner who is driven homicidally insane by performance enhancing drugs supplied by his bosses.

-"The Return Of The Incredible Hulk" - I thought that this T.V movie was surprisingly good given the obvious limitations of the acting, writing and effects. Here the Hulk faces both viking warrior deity Thor and a criminal gang whose members include Tim Thomerson in a decent part. Bill Bixby and Lou Ferringo do well in their trademark parts and there are plenty of wild 'Hulk Outs' including a highly destructive tussle between Thor and the Hulk. The cheesy scene where Thor parties in a biker bar is actually a highlight of the movie.

[glidewell]

If you spent any amount of coherent time in the 80's I suggest you check out The Lather Effect, definitely one of the biggest suprises for me of the year so far. I was expcecting absolutely nothing from this movie, and it f-ing delivered. Performances are spot on and the  feel of the movie  just rocks!!! Long live the 80's man!!!!!

[JJ80]

"Psychomania" - Mad, bad British biker horror filled with bizarre scenes and imagery. A group of posh thugs terrorize a rural section of England while the leader's mother dabbles in the occult. The gang makes a pact with a satanic frog idol and commit suicide in various graphic ways to gain invincibility complete with homicidal superhuman strength! They end up *Spoiler* becoming part of the scenery at an ancient stone circle. 
  Not really a terribly good film with pretty horrid characters but eccentric enough to be genuinely memorable. The eerie opening with bikers riding in the stone circle was the films best scene. I did notice John Levine (Dr Who's Sergeant Benton) as a Policeman at one point.

"Troll" - A true "Bad" movie which comes across as a curious amalgam of "Gremlins", "Poltergeist" and "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers". A furry but malignant Troll creates a hoard of his brethren complete with a sylvanian habitat in the basement of an average American apartment block. Almost a children's film but with a bit of nudity and suggestive content. I enjoyed the silly but enthusiastic performances but the 'special effects' were poor even for 1985/6. The animatronic trolls looked like parts of a weird Christmas grotto and the visual effects were fifties/sixties standard. Competent enough fun which passed the time agreeably enough.

[Rev. Powell]

THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1968): A jaded playboy businessman (Steve McQueen) expands into masterminding heists for kicks, and bumps into a sexy tough-cookie insurance adjuster (Faye Dunaway) who's investigating his latest crime.  Are they falling in love, or just playing cat and mouse?  Cool performances from sexy leads, a masterful seduction over a chessboard, and hip "mod" direction from Norman Jewison (featuring gratuitous split screens and a martini-jazz soundtrack) make this an irresistibly fun time capsule.

[Torgo]

WANTED  *** out of ****

WALL-E  ***1/2 out of ****

DEAD ALIVE  (unrated)   ***1/2 out of ****

DAY OF THE DEAD   (1985)  *** out of ****

[Rev. Powell]

THE NUN (2006):  The aquatic (!) spirit of a dead nun returns to haunt and kill her now middle aged former students and the photogenic teens investigating the slayings.  Well made and plotted, but unfortunately it's none too scary rather than nun-too-scary.  (I know...) Seriously it's not as bad as people seem to say, but like everything Brian Yuzna's involved in it leaves me a little cold.  2/5.

[indianasmith]

Let's see - I watched one of the AFTER DARK HORROR FEST movies this week entitiled TOOTH AND NAIL - post apocalyptic survivors hiding in an abandoned hospital fighting off a cannibal tribe called the Rovers.  Pretty lame but better than the other ADHF film I watched a few weeks back, UNEARTHED.

Tonight I tried to watch a movie off my Mills Creek VAMPIRES AND MORE 20 pack called AFRICAN VOODOO EXORCIST or something like that.  Instead I wound up catching part of a movie called MURMUR OF THE HEART on IFC, about a 14 year old French boy who falls in love with his mother.  It was made about 1972 or so, which, added with its French origins, made it very, very weird.  The mom was hot though.

[Rev. Powell]

HIGH TENSION (2005):  A young student with a butch haircut (no points for guessing what that subtly reveals about her character) travels to a school chum's country home, where a French redneck (or something) starts chopping up the family. Not really a thriller as the title suggests, but a slick slasher movie.  I hate twists that don't play fair with the audience, but there are still some nice thrills.  It's one of many "love-it-or-hate-it" movies that I'm pretty much neutral about.  3/5.   

[Rev. Powell]

THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN (1960):  A master safe-cracker is busted out of jail to help rob banks, but has ideas of his own.  An interesting mix of invisible man and caper flick, with lots of double-crosses among the gang and scenes of characters grappling with air.  Fun and fast--it's only about 60 minutes.  From underrated B-movie master Edgar G. Ulmer (THE BLACK CAT, DETOUR).  3.5/5.