Recent Viewings, Part 2

[indianasmith]

HOLLOW MAN 2 (2004)  I watched and thoroughly enjoyed the 1999 HOLLOW MAN with Kevin Bacon as an invisible psychopath, but I guess the sequel had somehow slipped by me.  I caught it on RokuTV last night and finished it this morning; it was not as well-done as the first one but still a decent addition to the "invisible villain" genre.  3.5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Doors" (1991)
Oliver "Platoon" Stone's lavish bio-pic details the rise and fall of the iconic '60s rock band and their gifted, but deeply troubled, vocalist Jim Morrison. Val Kilmer's portrayal of the Lizard King is a career-peak performance. I'm told that the surviving Doors members weren't exactly thrilled with how this film turned out but for casual viewers it's a fascinating time capsule of the psychedelic Sixties.

[indianasmith]

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO - A young girl named Eloise moves to London to begin studying at a famous fashion school.  Disenchanted by her hard-partying, mean girl roommate, she rents a flat a few blocks away from an elderly woman.  But as she settles into her new digs, she begins to see visions of a beautiful young girl named Alexandra in late 1960's London - coming to down to the big city in order to be a headlining singer, but quickly descending into a life of drugs and prostitution and finally being murdered.  Ellie's visions become more detailed and realistic as time goes on, intruding on her waking life, until she finally goes to the police and tries to persuade them to look into the decades-old murder.  But all is not as it seems . . .

This is a haunting ghost story as well as a tribute to the blighted dreams of so many young women who wanted to be stars.  The elfin beauty Anya Taylor-Joy lights up the screen as Alex/Sandy, the doomed figure who haunts Ellie's dreams.  Very well done film!  4.5/5

[Rev. Powell]

THE MADS: A NIGHT OF SHORTS 8: Par for the course: too much podcast, too little riffing. One of the four short subjects was "Mr. B-Natural," which I've now seen riffed three times, with none of the do-overs coming close to the original. Guest Bridgette Nelson is pleasant and peppy. 2.5/5.

[Alex]

The Lost City.

A fun enough romantic comedy with a bit of adventure. Most of the cast look like they are having fun, except for Sandra Bullock who while still hot, moves as if she'll snap if she moves quickly. If you like stuff like Romancing the Stone, then the chances are you'll like this one. Daniel Radcliffe seems to be having the most fun.

[lester1/2jr]

Welcome to the Circle (2020) - hard to tell if this is an honest attempt at a sci fi ish horror or a tax shelter of some kind. A guy and his daughter stumble upon a cult in the middle of the woods. No one has ever wandered away 4 feet from some campsite to find these guys, apparently. The high point of this thing are the 2 or 3 attractive girls in the cult. There's also some very occasional Xena style cornball humor that sort of works. After that, it's a record amount of department store mannequins and an impossible to follow backstory about some early 20th century explorer. The pretentious art clips of black and white footage of monkeys and so forth might have worked if the whole thing had made more sense and been better, but its just silly and random.

the whole thing is very very similar to some other much better movie I saw about a bunch of wood weirdies in a cult who exist in a time loop.

2/5

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3918800/reviews?ref_=tt_urv  the IMDB reviews are split in favor of it, they are wrong



this guy gets it

" 1/10
Man
oldenic1 October 2020
This Movie is so terrible who wrote this ducking Script?"

[indianasmith]

WE SUMMON THE DARKNESS (2019)  OK, I'll admit, I picked this one off Netflix mainly because it has my current celebrity crush, Alexandra Daddario, in it.
But it turned out to be a moderately fun movie set in the late 80's at the height of the "Satanic Panic."  Three girls go to a heavy metal concert, with Alexis (Dadarrio) driving, and there meet three goofy stoner guys, and invite them back to Alexis' dad's house to party, since he's out of town.  But the guys quickly discover that these party girls have a different kind of fun in mind - the kind that involves sharp knives, pentagrams, and lots of screams.  But stuff goes wrong, stepmom comes home early, and the story assumes an almost comic aspect.  Not great, but not bad, and AD is as cute as ever.  3.5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

Dangerously hot weather out there today, good reason to stay in, drink beer, and watch movies.

"Monty Python's Life Of Brian" (1979)
The Python troupe's parody of Biblical epics tells the story of Brian (Graham Chapman), an average guy who was born on the same night as Jesus, just a few doors away As a result, he spends most of his time being mistaken for the Messiah. I used to say "Holy Grail" was my favorite Python flick, but the older I get (and the more cynical/pessimistic I get about religion) the more I lean towards this one. Cast off the shoe, follow the gourd!

"Deadlier Than The Male" (1967)
This stylish James Bond knock off stars Richard Johnson as swingin' investigator Hugh Drummond, who must stop a pair of beautiful assassins (Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina) from murdering the executive board of a major oil company. Lots of action, impressive scenery, and loads of female eye candy. This is my favorite of the many 007 wanna-be's that popped up during the mid 60s spy craze. Worth watching just to ogle Elke Sommer, who was ridiculously hot at this time.

"Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon" (2015)
Informative, entertaining documentary about the "adult humor" magazine that spun off from a Harvard student publication and took the 70s counter culture by storm, launching the careers of writers and performers like John Hughes, Gilda Radner, P.J. O'Rourke, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest, and many more. I was a few years too young to read the Lampoon in its heyday, and it looks like I missed out on a lot of subversive, funny stuff.

[Trevor]

But it turned out to be a moderately fun movie set in the late 80's at the height of the "Satanic Panic." 

That thing raged in SA for a long time: I was told I was going to hell as I wore a lot of black (still do) and that I dared listen to "new age music" such as The Moody Blues. 

And don't get me started on what those idiots thought when I said I liked the Ninja Turtles.

[lester1/2jr]

Death Spa (1989) - the spa that eats. fun movie that's a combination of a bunch of 80's late night sort of genres. Insane accidents are a daily occurrence at an LA ( I guess?) spa that is more like a deluxe gym. There's tension between the guy who owns it and his late wife's brother, who runs a supercomputer that makes the place all high tech. could this have something to do with all the stuff going on??? lots of babes and weirdos hang around the place despite the high injury toll

If this was made nowadays it would have B list celebrities and predictable corn ball lines, but this is way better. The word "camp" gets thrown around a lot but this really has it. would make a great Broadway production

4.5 / 5


lady after getting out of a shower that almost fries her to death while also shooting tiles out "this place is starting to have some maintenance problems" something like that

[Rev. Powell]

HATCHING (2022): A competitive Finnish gymnast of about 12 finds an egg in the woods, brings it home, and hatches it, but what emerges from the shell isn't a simple avian---and is overly attached to its "mother." Creepy psychological horror/thriller that plays out like a tween BLACK SWAN. The general mood reminded me of Julia Ducournau's RAW. 4/5.

[indianasmith]

A CLASSIC HORROR STORY (2021) - A group of car poolers traveling across Italy in an RV get into a wreck, and wake to find their vehicle stranded in a meadow, miles from the road, next to a creepy old house.  The path through the woods is blocked by weird, gruesome sculptures and severed pig's heads.  And when it gets dark, strange lights and sirens converge on the stranded travelers . . . a creepy tale of human sacrifice and secret cults, based on real Italian folk legends.  Good stuff!  4/5

[Rev. Powell]

PLAYDURIZM (2020): A twink wakes up in a lavish seraglio-style apartment with a handsome butch roommate and his abused girlfriend and no memory; he develops a severe crush on the hunk as things get weird, and very sick. A pink flamingo-lit pastiche of themes and styles from the cult films of the 80s and 90s, with echoes of DR. CALIGARI, LIQUID SKY, THE DOOM GENERATION, NAKED LUNCH, and especially VIDEODROME, with extra doses of homoeroticism, brutal sadism, and body horror. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Decline of Western Civilization" (1981)
The first installment in Penelope Spheeris' documentary trilogy examines the punk rock scene in early '80s L.A., featuring interviews with and live performances by Black Flag, X, Fear, Circle Jerks, the Germs, and more. Some of the bands are better than others, of course, but it's fun to watch all the ultra-violent concert footage.

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: GAMERA VS. JIGER: This may be the only one of the original Gamera movies I hadn't seen before, and it's pretty ridiculous. Jiger basically impregnates Gamera by shooting needles into him which hatch spores which grow into a baby Jiger in Gamera's lungs, which a pair of kids kill by piloting a mini-sub into Gamera and throwing a walkie-talkie at the youngling. With a plot like that, you don't need too much in the way of jokes---I was laughing more at the movie itself than the riffs, and not laughing much at all at the host segments. Still a good one for Season 13. 3.5/5.