Recent viewings

[ghouck]

Nacho Libre
1/5
never again...

A '1' is giving it tons of leeway. That movie is why the decimal system was invented.

[Doggett]

Nacho Libre
1/5
never again...

A '1' is giving it tons of leeway. That movie is why the decimal system was invented.

He's right 
0.0000001/5

[Jack]

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) - Keano Reeves comes to Earth and threatens to kill everybody because we haven't been hugging the trees enough.  If you've seen the trailer, there's not much point in watching the movie - there's no added drama, character development or entertainment value, it's just a whole lot longer.  2/5.

[indianasmith]

I saw an interesting vampire movie called BLED this weekend.  Kind of different . . . vampirism spread by hallucinogenic sap from some weird tree, which transports you to an alternate dimensions, where the vampires can apply suckage to your neck.  The hook is, sniffing the fumes of the sap heightens the creative juices (main characters are all artists).  Like I said, a little different, but not great.

[Joe the Destroyer]

Zombie Holocaust- Yeah, I own the DVD.  I just decided to rewatch it.  I like it, but I realized a few things about it: 1) Zombie Holocaust is a misnomer.  There's like what, five zombies in the whole movie?  And the cannibals are a hell of a lot creepier in it.  2) It's essentially Zombi 2 with better pacing and a somehow worse script.  I usually suck at riffing movies, but I was riffing into this one pretty good today.  Still an awesome flick, though. 

Saw 5- Alright, my terrible, dark, secret is that my guilty pleasure is torture porn.  I've seen enough of them now that they don't make me as tense as they used to.  Anyway, I expected to hate Saw 5, but I wound up liking it more than the last one.  It's decent if you like the Saw movies.  I just really hope that Saw 6 will be the last one like they're saying it is.  I think Saw 2 was pushing it, and if I see Saw 7 come up on IMDb, I'm probably going to wind up choking on my own vomit. 

I'm torn between watching more awfulness tonight, or just playing Lost Odyssey.  I think I may continue watching My-HiME, and then watch Gothic on the Horrorlicious movie pack since I don't plan on going to bed for a few hours.  The only thing that sucks about being a supplemental worker is having to have no concept of a sleep schedule, if you want to actually make enough money to live.

[Joe the Destroyer]

Gothic- See topic on Bad Movies board.  I was leaning toward  when I first saw it, but ultimately I have to say  .

[Jim H]

Undercover Dragon...  3/10.  From two of Hong Kong's best resident action directors, Gordon Chan and Dante Lam.  Apparently, they should stick to action, and avoid comedies.  Then again, even Beast Cops (which they also co-directed) was funnier than this one, and it's a pretty brutal police action/drama.

Ronald Cheng, the lead, is OK.  It's clear he CAN be funny, as the handful of scenes that are funny are mostly due to him.  But he is no Stephen Chow, who can elevate the material he is in.

Just not funny, and the storyline is very thin and weak.  There are also a few jokes that only Hong Kong cinema fans would get, so for those unfamiliar I'd rate it even lower.  The only completely successful scenes are the action sequences - and there are only three, one of which is about 5 seconds long. 

2000 AD - also directed by Gordon Chan.  6/10.

Well, it's better than Undercover Dragon.  The action sequences are quite good, particularly the shootout in the car park (probably the best shootout HK has produced, outside of Jonnie To films, in the past 10 years).  But, there aren't quite as many of them as I'd like.  Main character is fairly likable, and the storyline is competent.  Feels maybe 5 or 10 minutes too long at 1 hour and 45 minutes.  Also, the ending is quite weak.  A better ending probably would have brought this up to a 7/10.

[Ash]

Saw 5- Alright, my terrible, dark, secret is that my guilty pleasure is torture porn.  I've seen enough of them now that they don't make me as tense as they used to.  Anyway, I expected to hate Saw 5, but I wound up liking it more than the last one.  It's decent if you like the Saw movies.  I just really hope that Saw 6 will be the last one like they're saying it is.  I think Saw 2 was pushing it, and if I see Saw 7 come up on IMDb, I'm probably going to wind up choking on my own vomit. 

What a lot of people don't realize is that the Saw series was written to be one huge gigantic story comprised of 6 films.
I've heard so many people compare the Saw films to the Nightmare on Elm St. or Friday the 13th franchises.  They believe that each movie doesn't really have anything to do with the previous ones.  They're totally wrong.
The writer intended all along for it to be comprised of six movies.

Personally, I like all the Saw films.   

[Rev. Powell]

THE REFLECTING SKIN (1990):  A little boy in rural post-WWII America believes that his lonely widow neighbor is a vampire who is killing his friends and wants to kill his beloved older brother.  A literary and ambiguous slice of Midwestern Gothic that teems with unresolved metaphors.  Easy to like, easy to hate.   3/5.

[Jack]

Ghosts of Mars - Watched this for about the 4th time.  Hey, it's got Natasha Henstridge in it, and she gives a good performance.  Pretty well paced, good theme music, and I didn't think Ice Cube was all that bad.  Cheesy and silly, but fun.  4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

East Side story (1997)  -  Imagine having to work in a factory making shoes or tires all day then "relaxing" by taking in a musical all about the joys of working in a factory!!  You'd probably throw yourself into the stupid machine the next morning.  This is a very good documentary about the problem of making movies in communist countries.  They didn't have the resources of the west but that wasn't even their biggest obstacle.  The main problem was the censors, who insisted on making sure every movie has a communist message.  The problems are one that these movies were boring (the straight dramas were even worse than the musicals) and people didn't want to see them and two that it is hard for the writers and directors to come up with things that are interesting and also acceptable to the censors. Of course, if they were succesful the people who made them didn't make any money or get any priveleges for future projects, thus eliminating any incentives or intertia for any kind of movement.  "east side story" has lots of interviews with the actors and writers and clips of their works.  When the sentimentality starts to get a little thick there is a good interview with one women who talks about how she hated the movies because they were so fake and I would have liked to have seen a little more from the audiences perspective.    lots of interesting issues,  a little over an hour, from the makers of the amazing Klaus Nomi documentary "Nomi Song". 4/5

[Jack]

Witch Academy (1993) - Some hot S&M sorority babes are bored, so they invite a nerd girl over under the pretense of a sorority initiation, but actually they just want to be mean to her.  But then Satan (Robert Vaughn!) shows up, and turns the nerd girl into a hot S&M babe as well.  Pretty much nothing ensues.  Fred Olen Ray apparently thought that if he made the movie really, REALLY stupid, it would be hilarious.  For instance, the girls booby-trap the phone, so when one girl answers it, we hear an explosion and the house shakes.  She comes back with her clothes all torn up, and everyone giggles and giggles and giggles.  This happens at least four times.  At another point, they're trying to figure out who is possessed by Satan, so they do that blood test thing from Carpenter's The Thing.  Except instead of drawing a small amount of blood from each person, they fill up 5 quart ice cream buckets with blood!  This is hilarious because losing 5 quarts of blood would probably kill a person, but it doesn't!  Ha ha, ha freakin' ha.  The acting is intentionally horrible, way over dramatic.  I found myself unable to maintain even a minimum amount of interest in this thing, it just can't be taken seriously, and it is not funny.  It makes Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama seem like Citizen Kane in comparison.  But, it is full of hot babes in S&M outfits, and there are plenty of boobies to go around.  2/5.

[Rev. Powell]

THE DESCENT (2006): Six women become lost spelunking in a cave inhabited by vicious blind hunters. A unique setting for a horror film, and it's very exciting with fearsome lighting and editing once they finally get into the cave; but it's fronted by 30 minutes of backstory that never has any payoff, and there's barely a sniff of the cave monsters until the last half hour. 3/5.

[indianasmith]

I watched CRANK last night . . .  been seeing the trailer for ages now.  I actually liked it quite a bit - as long as you don't take any of it seriously, it is a fun testosterone flick, and Jason Stathem is a good action hero. The reality flaws are so enormous that WyreWizard's head would explode just watching it, though!   (I mean, a guy falls out of a helicopter 5000 feet up, breaks the bad guy's neck and makes a cell phone call on his way down, then lands on the roof of a car . .  . and BOUNCES??????? Come on!!!!)   Still, it was a lot of fun.

Looking forward to CRANK II - HIGH VOLTAGE when it comes out on DVD.

[Joe the Destroyer]

Inferno (1980)- Seen it before, decided to rewatch it.  Fun sequel to Suspiria, but not as fun or well made.  The film features a good amount of stylization and psychological horror, not to mention a hilarious death scene involving a burning curtain, but what it seems to be missing is a solid protagonist who's little more than just a wandering body.  Still a good flick.