Recent viewings

[Gabriel Knight]

DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965)

Aboard a British train, mysterious fortune teller Dr. Schreck uses tarot cards to read the futures of five fellow passengers.

Crazy and crappy but quite fun, this movie is made of five anthology short stories, with extremely cheesy plots and, for the most part, bad acting and special effects. If you're getting into this fooled by the credits like I did, you're going to be disappointed: Christopher Lee plays a single one of these shorts, which is by far the best of them all, hands down (pun intended!). Peter Cushing is the mysterious Dr. Schreck who only shows up during the transitions, which ironically are the best parts of the movie: I wanted to see more the reactions of the passengers than the stories themselves. The ending is great too, althought it gets a little bit predictable after the second fate is revealed.

Overall, a cheap, fast, and fun movie, but no masterpiece. Watch it for that great Lee + Cushing talking that never gets old. 7/10

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Great Alligator"
(1979, aka "Alligator," "The Great Alligator River," and "Caiman," among other titles)
The grand opening of a safari-themed resort hotel somewhere in the tropics is threatened by the sudden appearance of a giant man-eating alligator.  The critter was summoned by the p**sed-off local native tribe who worship it as a God and want the stupid white people to go away. Lots of predictable water logged chaos ensues, and some familiar faces like Mel "Nightmare City" Ferrer and Barbara "The Spy Who Loved Me" Bach try to stay off the menu.
...so yeah, this is a pretty typical Italian monster mash, composed of bits stolen from "Jaws" and "Piranha," mixed with the then-popular cannibal/savage tribe genre. It's got the usual cheap special effects (the alligator looks like a rubber bathtub toy), comical dialogue, and awkward dubbing. It's not the worst spaghetti creature feature I've ever seen, but it's certainly not a must-see either.

[Svengoolie 3]

"Contagion" starring Ben affleck. A pretty realistic view of a spontaneously produced super plague being created and spread in today's world, along with a fairly realistic view of the reactions of government,  society and people as a whole.

[Rev. Powell]

BERLIN ALEXANDEPLATZ (1931): The first adaptation of Alfred Döblin's classic novel condenses it into a simple crime story: Franz Bieberkoff is released from prison, tries to go straight, but is quickly sucked into the underworld. Compared with Fassbinder's miniseries, this one follows the plot all right (though with a silly "happy" ending), but that's the only thing it achieves.  2/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Lords of Chaos" (2018)
Dramatized re-telling of the saga of Mayhem, a group of Norwegian teens whose obsession with creating the most extreme, nihilistic, anti-Christian music ever spills over into a series of church burnings and murders.
If you can get past the fact that these "Norwegians" all speak perfect American-accented English (haha), this is a pretty decent, gritty drama that doesn't shy away from the ultra-violence and features an excellent performance by Rory Culkin (yup, Macauley's brother) as the ultimately doomed Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth.
Anti-social fun for everyone!

[Rev. Powell]

TRANSIT (2019): Fleeing a German invasion of France, Georg assumes the identity of a writer who has transit papers to Mexico. The twist here is that this story invokes WWII, but is actually set in the current day; it works better than you might think, putting you into the shoes of the refugees rather than allowing you observe it as a historical lesson. 4/5.

[Svengoolie 3]

"Lords of Chaos" (2018)
Dramatized re-telling of the saga of Mayhem, a group of Norwegian teens whose obsession with creating the most extreme, nihilistic, anti-Christian music ever spills over into a series of church burnings and murders.
If you can get past the fact that these "Norwegians" all speak perfect American-accented English (haha), this is a pretty decent, gritty drama that doesn't shy away from the ultra-violence and features an excellent performance by Rory Culkin (yup, Macauley's brother) as the ultimately doomed Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth.
Anti-social fun for everyone!

Is this a christian propaganda film?

[FatFreddysCat]

"Lords of Chaos" (2018)
Dramatized re-telling of the saga of Mayhem, a group of Norwegian teens whose obsession with creating the most extreme, nihilistic, anti-Christian music ever spills over into a series of church burnings and murders.
If you can get past the fact that these "Norwegians" all speak perfect American-accented English (haha), this is a pretty decent, gritty drama that doesn't shy away from the ultra-violence and features an excellent performance by Rory Culkin (yup, Macauley's brother) as the ultimately doomed Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth.
Anti-social fun for everyone!

Is this a christian propaganda film?

Haha! I wouldn't say that. More of a "Don't be a douche-y edgelord teen" propaganda film.

[indianasmith]

MY COUSIN VINNY - There are a handful of movies which, if they are on TV, I will tune in and watch till they are over, and this is one of them.  I meant to go to sleep at 10:30 last night, saw this was just starting, and watched it (AGAIN) to its conclusion.  Simply brilliant, Marisa Tomei is gorgeous and hilarious, and Joe Pesci is downright brilliant as a wisecracking Brooklyn lawyer defending his young cousin who are falsely accused of murder in Alabama.

[Svengoolie 3]

MY COUSIN VINNY - There are a handful of movies which, if they are on TV, I will tune in and watch till they are over, and this is one of them.  I meant to go to sleep at 10:30 last night, saw this was just starting, and watched it (AGAIN) to its conclusion.  Simply brilliant, Marisa Tomei is gorgeous and hilarious, and Joe Pesci is downright brilliant as a wisecracking Brooklyn lawyer defending his young cousin who are falsely accused of murder in Alabama.

Is that the one with Fred gwynne as a judge?

[BoyScoutKevin]

MY COUSIN VINNY - There are a handful of movies which, if they are on TV, I will tune in and watch till they are over, and this is one of them.  I meant to go to sleep at 10:30 last night, saw this was just starting, and watched it (AGAIN) to its conclusion.  Simply brilliant, Marisa Tomei is gorgeous and hilarious, and Joe Pesci is downright brilliant as a wisecracking Brooklyn lawyer defending his young cousin who are falsely accused of murder in Alabama.

Is that the one with Fred gwynne as a judge?

Ye-es!
And that would be his last theatrical film.

[Gabriel Knight]

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1995)

A small town's women give birth to unfriendly alien children posing as humans.

I'm always advocating for imagination and creativity, so for that reason I'm usually against remakes. In some cases I understand, for example with THE THING. It's the same story but told different, not to mention, closer to the source material, so I can accept that and actually enjoy it - in fact, that remake is one of my favorite Carpenter's movies. But then we have situations like VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, when there's really no point in remaking it because it's pretty much the same thing. I haven't watched the original but as far as I know, it's the exact same plot, even the ending is the same.
Still, while not one of Carpenter's best (I reserve that IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS), it's a very entertaining and atmospheric movie, with his trademark music that instantly puts you in the right mood. Some scenes are really shocking, like the barbequed guy or the hand-in-boiling-water, but what makes the movie for me is the incredibly role of Lindsey Haun as Mara, the leader of the gang. That pale, emotionless expression, and the perfect use of words makes her a creepy little bastard. One of the final scenes in which she says "dad" and pulls of a sarcastic smile is amazing, and only works in that particular context. I mean, just look at that smirk: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bc/3f/a9/bc3fa9c352d0bd52dd031c607def8634.jpg
Christopher Reeve and Mark Hamill are also great, sadly the rest of the cast is pretty much filler, especially Kirstie Alley who, if you pay attention, you may as well remove her completely from the plot and it wouldn't make any difference.

Overall, a fun and engaging, yet pointless, film. Good for some chills and awesome child acting, but you will probably forget it by the next weekend. 7/10 

[indianasmith]

THIRTEEN DAYS (2000)  A brilliant re-telling of the events surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Bruce Greenwood doing a convincing turn as John F. Kennedy and Kevin Costner as his advisor Kenny O'Donnell.  Well acted, incredibly tense, this film is a grim reminder of the closest that the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to nuclear war.

[Rev. Powell]

BETWEEN WORLDS (2018): The movie that offers the moral dilemma: are you really cheating on your psychic girlfriend if you're sleeping with her teenage daughter while her body is inhabited by the soul of your dead wife? This preposterous B-movie is pure dumb fun, and perfect for the uniquely deranged talents of Nicolas Cage. 3/5.

[Svengoolie 3]

COHERENCE. An intellectual movie. It's not for action movie fans. A comet passes closer to earth than it ever has. Things that have only been theoretical become real. Like alternate realities. A group of friends find themselves in the twilight zone and things don't go smoothly. Some people find out that the results of their previous choices can follow them across realities.

If you've ever made choices that didn't turn out so good and wish you were in a universe where things went better this movie will really depress you. But it's an intelligent movie for thinker types. It's also a hand cam movie meant to give a real FP perspective.

One thing they did wrong was at times I was almost shouting at them to turn on the radios, but they didn't. One slightly dumb thing in the movie.

rented it on amazon as the only viable way to see it.