Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Jim H]

A GOOD WOMAN IS HARD TO FIND (2019) - Irish crime/drama film.  A young woman with two children and a recently murdered husband has to deal with circumstances around a drug dealer squatting in her home and and the scary men after him.  I don't want to say too much, it's better go in blind.  This is a solid drama and thriller, really nicely shot, with a genuinely excellent lead performance from Sarah Bolger and a good supporting performance from Jane Brennan.  It gets to be a bit too much in the climax, but it's well worth a watch and is free on Prime streaming right now.  8/10.

[indianasmith]

GHOUL SCOUT ZOMBIE MASSACRE (2018) - I wanted to close out this crappy year with a crappy movie, and boy did I pick a doozie!  This zero budget piece of dreck is floating around on Amazon Prime for free, and it was worth every penny I paid for it!  It checks off ALL the Bad Movie boxes - cheesy gore effects, copious nudity, homages to classic bad cinema (including VIDEODROME and BASKET CASE) as well as a really weird musical parody from YENTL.  Basically, a mad scientist wants to administer his secret serum to a bunch of young hipsters so he can turn them into sex slaves for his gay porn films, and he enlists his sister, who runs a reform school, to bring in four of her "Bad Girls" to pose as "Ghoul Scouts" to sell the serum in the form of cookies.  Yeah, it makes zero sense.  But it was just the kind of good, fun train wreck that the last night of 2020 called for.  1/5 on a regular movie scale, 5/5 on the Bad Movie Scale.

Indy sez check it out!

[lester1/2jr]

Passion (2012) - I didn't know Brian De Palma made a Devil wears Prada meets campy murder mystery starring Rachael McAdams but he did. Why did it end up on Tubi aka the Island of Misfit Movies? Well, for just that reason: it doesn't fit in. The mystery doesn't have the Fincher like layers we've come to expect from thrillers, the fashion aspect doesn't have enough Kardashian like insipid yammering and basically it's besides the point to where movies and popular culture were at the time and now.

I liked it though. The plot is very basic but the actresses are effective in their roles. I could see this being performed in drag in an off Broadway play or something. The lesbian assistant to the assistant was the hottest one. A fashion movie thats not very fashionable. *movie exec voice* " send it to tubi"



4/5

[Dr. Whom]

Tears of the Black Tiger (2000)

Best described as a spaghetti western, set in Thailand and made by Pierre et Gilles. This is the story of star crossed lovers Dum, a country boy and Rampoey, the daughter of the governor. He becomes the hitman of the feared bandit leader Fai, while she is given in marriage to an ambitious young police officer. Their love endures however, and they decide to elope. But at the crucial moment, he is too busy killing people and misses the appointment. This sets in motion a series of unfortunate events.

This is in equal parts homage and parody of the Thai melodramas and action movies of the 50s and 60s. It is mostly high melodrama, punctuated by insane shootouts. The whole is filmed in a highly stylised uber-kitsch fashion that makes Wes Anderson look like gritty realism. Your mileage may vary.

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: CITY LIMITS: This experiment is a pretty confusing post-apocalyptic biker movie; at one point, Tom says, "Can we stop to look out our scripts? Oh yeah, it does say Boy George rides in lobbing Molotov cocktails."  The movie's got a lot of familiar, embarrassed faces (James Earl Jones, Kim Catrall, Robbie Benson). It also contains one of my personal favorite host segments, an extremely silly parody of pop singer Morrisey. I hadn't seen this since it played on Comedy Central, and even then I didn't see it all the way through until last night. Turns out it's a middle of the pack MST3K episode, which means it's pretty damn good. 3.5/5.

[indianasmith]

THE LOBSTER (2019) In the near future, people who cannot find a suitable mate are condemned to be turned into an animal of their own choosing.  Colin Ferrell is a lonely divorcee with little emotion left; sent to the hotel where the operation is performed, he has 30 days to find a compatible mate or he will be transformed into a lobster.   This bizarre premise made for a fun, quirky film, albeit a bit slow-paced and pretentious.  I was really tired when I watched it, so I may have missed some of the nuances, but it did keep me awake for the most part.  3/5

[Rev. Powell]

RADIOACTIVE (2019): Biopic about the life of Marie Curie, two-time Nobel-prize winning discoverer of radioactivity, who's shown as arrogant but devoted to her almost-as-brilliant husband Pierre. A solid biopic, but I'm not sure visionary director Marjane Satrapi is a good match for the material--the drama can be a little too straightforward, and she tries to shoehorn in an unnecessary dream sequence or two, making me think her talents would have been better served in a less earth-bound project. 2.5/5.

[RCMerchant]

Fascism On A Thread: The Strange Story Of Nazisploitation Cinema (2020)
Interesting doc on a mostly reviled film genre.
Personally, I find most most Nazisploitation revolting. I like the Ilsa movies, just because I like Dyanne Thorne. But junk like GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY (1977) is not on my list of "need to see" films.
The BEAST IN HEAT (1977)  was so dam stupid and moronic that I liked parts of it.

http://youtu.be/YNhdXYh8HOM

[FatFreddysCat]

"Snake Eater" (1989)
Lorenzo "Falcon Crest" Lamas stars as a retired Marine special-ops badass who travels into the swamps of Louisiana to find his missing sister, who's been kidnapped by a family of psycho rednecks.
....soooo, basically this is "Rambo" meets "Deliverance," on a budget of about a hundred bucks. "Snake Eater" is a textbook example of glorious '80s direct-to-video action crap, with cardboard sets, ridiculous dialogue, and a cast with a total lack of acting ability.  It's terrible, but I had a blast laughing all the way through it.
Sharp eyed viewers, watch for former NFL great Larry Csonka and Ron "Horshack" Palillo in bit parts!
Followed by two (!) sequels, which of course, I will be watching sometime soon, because I'm a masochist.

[lester1/2jr]

freddy- lamas' Body Rock is a very guilty pleasure of mine. Breakdancing movie but theres no rap music in it!

Nightmare Alley (1947) - Second viewing. While most film noirs are urban crime stories, this is a horse of a different color. Tyrone Power plays a hack carnival mentalist who ups his game by learning a jealously guarded (by a woman whom he charms) code which he employs with his very cute and demure wife to great success and fanfare. He eventually encounters a crooked psychiatrist who is up to the same sort of shenanigans in her line of work.

There's some crazy stuff in this. The film was a massive departure for star Power who normally played heroes. He wanted to show his range and did an okay job. There is a part of the movie where he's sort of down on and his luck, drinking and hanging around and so forth. He doesn't nail these scenes it was just too much of a stretch for him to play a total loser, but it's an epic saga. watched on youtube



5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

freddy- lamas' Body Rock is a very guilty pleasure of mine. Breakdancing movie but theres no rap music in it!

Hah, after watching "Snake Eater" last night I went looking for the sequels on YouTube, and now this morning "Body Rock" has turned up in my YouTube "Recommended Videos." I think it's a sign that I'll have to check that out soon :D

[Rev. Powell]

REWIND (2019): An adult man looks back at his father's home movies and reconstructs a history of childhood abuse. A moving and involving--and even inspiring--documentary, which will resonate strongly with survivors. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Snake Eater 2: The Drug Buster" (1989)
Rogue cop John "Soldier" Kelly (Lorenzo Lamas) is back for another low-budget shoot'em up. After a particularly violent gun battle at a Mafia-run drug lab, Kelly is suspended and sent to a hospital for a psych evaluation. Fortunately, his fellow patients show him a way to sneak out of the hospital at night so he can continue his battle with the city's drug pushers, with the help of a streetwise sidekick (Larry B. Scott, aka "Lamar" from the Revenge of the Nerds series).
This one's a slight improvement over the first "Snake Eater" but that's faint praise. Lamas and Scott make a pretty good team and seem to be having fun. Otherwise, meh.

[lester1/2jr]

Nightmare Code - pretty decent sci fi flick relegated to tubi probably for its low budget, which it tries to compensate for by using a 4 screen at once gimmick. A guy who's in trouble for doing assange type cyber activism (an idealist ) takes a well paying gig picking up the pieces at a startup that had issues. The issues were one of the guys went on a massive shooting spree. As it turns out, he didn't exactly go crazy.

The code he created analyzed peoples faces extremely well. You could tell who liked you and who hated you. It also could create it's own footage of what might happen ie two people who like each other are then shown having sex even though they haven't yet.

The story is strong and the performances and casting are solid. The four screen thing will turn some off but it's worth it to endure

4.5 /5

[RCMerchant]

the CHILDREN (1980)
A leak at a nuclear power plant turns a school bus full of kids into zombies whose touch means being burned to death.  You can tell they're zombies because they have black fingernails (?).
The only way to kill them is to chop off their little hands!
Silly, low budget obscurity, with no name actors . Fun time!

http://youtu.be/PMJsI7UgxFw