Recent viewings

[JaseSF]

We Were Soldiers (2002): Caught this on the History Channel recently. I got the impression this film is pretty faithful to its real life source event which is the Battle of la Drang in November 1965, the first major engagement of American forces in the Vietnam war here focusing on the 7th Cavalry led by Lt. Col. Hal Moore (played here by Mel Gibson).

Overall it's a really moving, action packed in your face film that doesn't pull any punches with regards to the harsh reality that war is absolute hell for those in the battlefield and seems more realistic than most in its portrayal. It presents its soldier characters as real-life soldiers, men ordered to do a job even in the face of impossible odds as they're basically ordered into an obvious ambush attempt by the North Vietnamese. There's little in the way of true heroics here, just men doing the horrible job of killing as ordered and struggling in the face of the horror of it all while just trying to survive. It also proves surprisingly sympathetic to both sides of the conflict showing the North Vietnamese as real human beings, soldiers too just doing their jobs as ordered. Mel Gibson as Lt. Col. Hal Moore doesn't seem quite right for the role but does an admirable job of playing the character far better than I expected he could. ****1/2 out of ***** stars

[Flick James]

We Were Soldiers (2002): Caught this on the History Channel recently. I got the impression this film is pretty faithful to its real life source event which is the Battle of la Drang in November 1965, the first major engagement of American forces in the Vietnam war here focusing on the 7th Cavalry led by Lt. Col. Hal Moore (played here by Mel Gibson).

Overall it's a really moving, action packed in your face film that doesn't pull any punches with regards to the harsh reality that war is absolute hell for those in the battlefield and seems more realistic than most in its portrayal. It presents its soldier characters as real-life soldiers, men ordered to do a job even in the face of impossible odds as they're basically ordered into an obvious ambush attempt by the North Vietnamese. There's little in the way of true heroics here, just men doing the horrible job of killing as ordered and struggling in the face of the horror of it all while just trying to survive. It also proves surprisingly sympathetic to both sides of the conflict showing the North Vietnamese as real human beings, soldiers too just doing their jobs as ordered. Mel Gibson as Lt. Col. Hal Moore doesn't seem quite right for the role but does an admirable job of playing the character far better than I expected he could. ****1/2 out of ***** stars

Not in the top 5 military movies of all time, but definately very good. Hal Moore was a badass. Willem Dafoe's character in Platoon makes reference to la Drang, to suggest his character was in it, talking about how the crossfire cut them to pieces. Although if memory serves his character got the year wrong and placed it in '66. An unimportant detail, I guess. It's not one of those battles that is popularly associated with Vietnam because it doesn't have the 'Nam caricature characters you usually see. It was too early for that. La Drang was the battle that brought Vietnam to everyone's attention. I give it 4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

MALICE IN WONDERLAND (2009): Alice loses her memory and enters a psychedelic Wonderland of quirky lowlife London gangsters.  The quirky gangsters have a definite Guy Ritchie feel to them, but the clever, wordplay laden script is the main star; check out the unexpected way Alice steals the tarts.  3/5.

Warning: That film contains traces of Danny Dyer. 

  yeah, I tried to watch it a week or so ago and he just.. ugh, runs it for me. I have tried to like the guy and in a couple of roles he's not bad but overall he's an overrated hack.

He's funny in Doghouse.


And....

Nope.
Doghouse. Thats all.

I'm guessing Dyer must be the guy who plays the White Rabbit character.  He wasn't fantastic but I didn't see anything wrong with him, except that his Cockney accent was so thick I couldn't understand what he was saying half of the time. 

[Jack]

Zombie Wars (2006) - Zombies have taken over the world, and the surviving humans have formed paramilitary groups and live in small camps.  A guy from one camp is taken prisoner by the zombies, and put into a farm where they breed and raise humans for food.  Eventually the other people at his camp organize a rescue effort and get to the bottom of how the zombies were able to set up a breeding farm.  This was very low budget and couldn't really be taken seriously.  The zombies were just guys with white face paint who walked around saying "grrr" a lot.  It was also pretty boring.  But there were a couple of babes in it - though no nudity, which it could have really used to distract viewers from how dull it was.  The acting and story were actually moderately good (well...fair.  Sort of.), and it eventually drew me in with its zero budget charm.  2.5/5.

[Sleepyskull]

A few nights ago I watched: A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988).

Like the previous 3 I thought this movie was great! It did lose some of its charm compared to the previous 3 , but only a minute amount.

Overall a very enjoyable film!

10.8 out of 13 stars

[Vik]

I thought the second of the series was horrible in a negative way.

[Sleepyskull]

I thought the second of the series was horrible in a negative way.

I can definitely understand why you feel that way, as it does have a very odd (not sure if "odd" is the right word) overall feeling to it. I've only seen the first 4 NOES movies, but as far as I can tell none of the others play out the same as the second. i still found it very entertaining though. My favorite scenes involved the school bus. I had a very long bus ride to and from school and I hated it, so I loved those scenes.

[lester1/2jr]

Pretty Poison (1968) this is not quite as out there as the other Tuesday Weld movie I've seen "lord love a duck" but it's similarly eccentric. It's the type of thing you'd tape off TCM at 3 am or thistv in primetime. It isn't a great movie but it's got some interesting ideas. Anthony Perkins is a psycho again, this time one who was just let out of a correctional mental facility for burning down his aunts house at age 15 (with her in it). He sees the beautiful Tuesday Weld leading a high school marching band with the scepter thing and huge hat and becomes infatuated. He uses a clever ruse of him being a CIA agent and saying like "take this and meet me at the movie theatre at 7 oclock, I can't explain now" and they get together.

There isn't really any chemistry between he and Weld except when they take LSD together, then there is literally chemistry. Then there are some murders and it gets darker and crazier. I'ts the type of thing where there is a very cool movie in here somewhere but it doesn't quite come off. Still it wasn't a bad way to pass the time

3/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhBB3FgslI

Katyn (2009)- this was dull but historically relevant. Really, the last 10 minutes would have sufficed to make the statement but it was nearly two hours long. The Katyn massacre occured in 1940 when the soviets executed 12,000 polish military officers in the Katyn forest. Later, they tried to blame this on the nazis but too many Poles remembered.  I don't think the people who made this really care if anyone outside of Poland saw it or understood it they are just getting it off their chest and I can respect that. The acting is okay but it's by and large pretty dull. What you do see alot of is, under both the german and russian occupations, the brutality and all pervasive nature of collectivism .

3/5

[Doggett]

Dolls.

A bunch of people go to stay in a creepy old house during a storm.
Then they get attacked by dolls.
Its weird, sometimes it goes for chills and them stupid laughs (the laughs can be pretty funny). Still, it has some good moments.

The ending is Disney which makes it even funnier, I don't know if its intentional or not.

3/5

[Rev. Powell]

ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS [AKA GAMERA V. GUIRON] (1969): Two boys young boys fly in a spaceship to a hidden planet on the opposite side of the sun from us where two alien women want to eat their brains; *SPOILER!* Gamera saves them.  The Gamera series was hitting rock bottom at this point, with the monster battles becoming shorter and more ridiculous (this is the movie where the giant turtle takes a few spins on the gymnastics bar). More for lovers of bad movies than for kaiju fans.  2.5/5 (based on it's unintentional laughs).     

BURNING INSIDE (2010): An amnesiac wakes up from a coma and a person tragedy is revealed through a LONG series of surreal flashbacks.  Well-intentioned and well shot low-budget experimental horror (the makers were obviously aping the style of ERASERHEAD and BEGOTTEN), but it tries to cram 30 minutes of story into a 2 hour run time; although it gets better as it goes on, I guess most people will give up by the 45 minute mark, when nothing has really happened yet.  1.5/5.

[Doggett]

Cello/Chello hongmijoo ilga salinsagan (2005)


A korean horror flick that involves a cello teacher, who servivied a car crash, is suffering from strange experiences.
Yes, you've just guessed the ending.

Its well lit.
Its well acted.
Its well directed...if it was a tearjerker or a heart warming family drama. But not horror.

There's no real sense of dread in the film at all.
If it wasn't for the performances I would've switched off. Certainly not a bad film, but hardly scary. Maybe I just expecting too much from it.

3/5

[Jack]

Flesh Freaks (2000) - A college student goes to South America to work on an archaeological dig at an Aztec temple.  When he gets back to the US, his nosy roommate gets him to tell about his horrible experiences there:  they dug up a dead body and it came back to life, killing people.  I only made it about 1/2 hour into this.  It was absolutely awful.  Awful acting, awful script, and boring as hell.  I'd say it was a student film, but film students usually have access to moderately good video and audio equipment.  This looked like it was filmed with an expensive cell phone.  The audio was even worse, throughout the entire South American portion of the movie there's a lot of loud and extremely annoying wind noise through the microphone.  The best part was when a guy sat on a bed, and they must have had the camera sitting on the headboard, and it made the whole scene jiggle.  Finally, after watching an Iguana crawl around and a bird stand around for a good 5 minutes, then back to the loud wind noise, I just couldn't take any more.  1/5.

[3mnkids]

Rain Fall~~ hmmm, lets see. I think its about a guy trying to protect people from a bad apple in the CIA(Gary Oldmam).. I say I think because the movie is confusing as hell and the way its shot is just.... ugh, gave me a headache. Its awful.

Gary Oldman spends a large portion of the movie yelling, almost all of his dialogue is freaking yelling.    This movie is an absolute mess. A mess! I should have listen to my daughter when she said don't rent it, its going to suck.

AVOID

[3mnkids]

Cold Storage~ A young woman on her way to an acting gig in Tennessee gets in an accident in the middle of nowhere. A very creepy, lonely man finds her and takes her home. Problem is she's dead. He doesn't seem to mind and buys her a dress and talks to her, baths her, takes her out for a spin around town....It started out good with a couple of half wit hillbillies running through the woods and had a few other unintentional funny parts but overall it was just creepy and not in a good way. It also felt much longer than what it was. The two people who are looking for the woman are two of the dumbest characters I've seen. Stupid, stupid,people.

The horde(La horde)~ what do you get when you mix gangsters, cops, and zombies? The horde.    Some cops are going after some bad guys in an condemned building(there are a lot of people in this so called condemned building)when an epidemic starts.. a zombie epidemic. They dont really explain anything about the outbreak which is fine. Anyway, they have to work together to get out of the building.

Its funny as hell sometimes, very bloody and just good zombie fun. I loved it. 

[Jack]

Battle of the Bulge (1965) - One of my all-time favorite war movies.  All-star cast, great performances, great story.  Robert Shaw as Col. Hessler really steals the show.  Ah, the days before CGI was invented.  Real tanks (okay, they're not the right kind at all), driving across a real, snow-swept battlefield, making real tank noises (and not what some espresso-sipping Hollywood director thinks tanks sound like)...awesome.  Watched it on Blu ray, it looks as good, if not better than it probably looked on opening night 45 years ago.  Really amazing what they can do with film restoration these days.  5/5.