Recent viewings

[lester1/2jr]

shadowzone and abel fererra's Fear City -  sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  these stunk.  shadowzone is one of those movies with some situation going on where there is alot of talking and very little action and fear city is like ferreras mid life crisis on steroids.  tom bergeron as a sexy street tough. You've gotta be kidding me. 

[Jack]

The Terminators (2009) - in the future, we build a whole lot of androids, and they decide to turn on us.  They nuke the major cities and then go after the survivors.  The group of people in this movie...oh how I wish they had been standing in a city when the nukes hit.  They're obnoxious morons.  They do stuff like narrowly escaping the androids, then running 50 feet and hiding.  They then immediately start a loud argument with each other.  And they do it repeatedly.  The only likable person ruins her character by having to act like Richard Simmons consoling a fat woman whenever someone is feeling down.     One woman has an injured leg, so everyone heaps sympathy and concern upon her.  Then she gets killed (Yippee! - she was extremely obnoxious and stupid.) and not only does no one bother to glance over their shoulder to see if she might be alive, but 30 seconds later they're all in a wonderfully good mood.  Another guy is whining and complaining that he has to carry a really heavy oxygen cylinder.  A couple of scenes later we see him picking it up by the end and holding it horizontally, with one hand.  As if there was any doubt it was just a plastic prop.  I recognized one of the actors, A Martinez, who used to play Cruz Castillo on the soap opera Santa Barbara years ago.  He seems bored out of his mind in this thing.  2/5.

[lester1/2jr]

jack - I have no desire to see that but I loved the review

"Another guy is whining and complaining that he has to carry a really heavy oxygen cylinder.  A couple of scenes later we see him picking it up by the end and holding it horizontally, with one hand.  As if there was any doubt it was just a plastic prop.  I recognized one of the actors, A Martinez, who used to play Cruz Castillo on the soap opera Santa Barbara years ago.  He seems bored out of his mind in this thing"

[Rev. Powell]

GOTHIC (1986): Romantic poets Byron and Shelly, along with FRANKENSTEIN creator Mary Shelly, along with friends, spend a decadent night in a creepy mansion drinking laudanum and telling ghost stories, until they hold a seance which materializes their deepest fears.  There are lots of memorable hallucinations by Ken Russell---who forgets the breasts with eyes?---but for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, it doesn't work as well as it should.  Over the years I've gone back and forth on this one, rating it anywhere between 3-4 stars.  For now, 3/5.  

[Silverlady]

Caught "Forbidden Planet" on TCM this afternoon.  I've seen it  many times before, but I still love this movie. Yes, it is dated, but for a Sci Fi film made in 1956, it was ahead of its time.  Despite some gaps in logic and some corny dialogue,  it still had great artwork and an interesting and intelligent backstory to more than make up for its shortcomings. 

[Joe the Destroyer]

The Gingerdead Man-        Yes, in that order. 

[InformationGeek]

Judge Dredd: That was a fun film.  I enjoyed the the over the top nature of the film with the villian being so out of his mind crazy.  The special effects were good for the time and  I think I could sit through it a few more times.  I am not sure how good it is at capturing the comic book since I never read them, but even if it wasn't too acurate, it was still a nice little experience.

[nilbog]

I am not sure how good it is at capturing the comic book since I never read them, but even if it wasn't too acurate, it was still a nice little experience.

Yeah I hear it's not massively accurate (apparently he never takes off his helmet in the comics) - but I agree that it is quite a fun and entertaining film to watch.

[Count Ratfink]

Saw Tim Burton's Corpse Bride for the first time last week, and despite the kind of creepy subject matter, enjoyed it immensely. As always, Danny Elfman's music was spectacular. Helena Carter and Danny Elfman totally stole the show as Emily and Mr. Bonejangles, and Johnny Depp was excellent as Victor.
I've always been a big fan of claymation, and once more Burton's team outdid themselves, creating fluid, believeable characters and distinct worlds, pouring heart and personality into each one. Even Emily's maggot familiar was great! As an aside, I found Emily to be quite hot as dead chicks go. 4.5/5 stars!

I also watched Brother Bear recently too. While I liked the movie and don't regret watching it, it was rather lackluster. Perhaps my biggest problem was how, throughout the majority of the movie, Kenai in grizzly form was incredibly nasty and sarcastic and just plain mean-sprited toward poor little cute Koda. I mean, good Lord, he's all the cub has right now in the world, and that's how he behaves? Another stupid thing was how after finding out that as a human, Kenai likely killed his mother, Koda is only upset for like all of ten hours before forgiving his mom's killer, and doesn't hold any grudge! I call BS there. Nor was there much sense of a classic epic quest in this movie. At the same time however, I must admit that I greatly admire grizzly bears, and have always liked human-to-animal transformation tales. The two bull moose, Abe and Rutt, were just hysterical, and the animation in general was gorgeously done. Last but not least, BB has wonderful music sung by none other than Phil Collins! Still though, I give Brother Bear 2.5/5 stars.

[indianasmith]

I watched ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE this weekend.  Yeeeuuucckk!!!  Not silly enough to be amusing, too low budget to be scary, and took itself way too seriously.  Between this and BIOPHAGE, that's two bad zombie movies in a row.

[Jack]

Starship Troopers 3 (2008)  Casper Van Dien returns to the series to kill more bugs and urge everyone to "kill 'em all!".  There are also a load of subplots about romance, religion, and politics.  I'm a huge fan of the first two films, but this one is an epic fail.  The screenplay was awful - they tried to do the parodies of war propaganda TV commercials, but it came off as stupid and borderline comedic.  They tried to do romance, but the characters were completely undeveloped and had absolutely no chemistry together.  They even tossed in religion, but it came off as goofy and pointless.  And if you spend a minute thinking about it, it was completely unbelievable as well. Anything having to do with the military seemed like it was written  by a 16 year old girl.  They wasted so much time with the failed subplots that the main plot lacked any focus at all.  The directing was uninspired and clueless.  Acting, well...I don't know what anyone could have done with this screenplay.  2/5.

[lester1/2jr]

One arabian night (1924) -  this is kind of like a silent era version of tha movie of the week or something.  Actually that's not really fair, the direction and performanes are really really good but it's all stuff that is familiar even if you've only seen a handful of silent films:  the freakish guy (here a hunchback) who's in love with the beautiful girl, said beautiful girl usually a gypsy, exotic locales with eunechs and so forth who are all too german looking.  Worst though is the story which is just too thin especially with a long 1:43 running time. 

There is some amazing artistry here and it deserved to be rereleased and it looks great even sublime in places but I can't reccomend it.

[lester1/2jr]

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975): I don't know if the movies of Rainer fassbinder are the stuff of greatness of just a kind of meloncholy weirdness. Maybe melancholy weirdness IS greatness?  Anyway I liked the concept: Mr Kusters works in a tire factory for 40 years and one day kills his boss's son and then himself.  We don't know why.  The daughter and a reporter fabricate a story about what a horrible monster Kuster was.  Why? So the reporter gets a big story and the daughter name recognition for her singing career ( her show is something else.  like a caberet performance of some kind you'd expect to be performed by a transexual).  The communists  use Mother Kusters to make some sort of statment about capitalism, Mother Kusters is lonely and uses them for attention and on and on. Sometimes the "we use each other" thing overwhelms the story and it's a bit like an allegory but it is clever.  

I kept wondering what remake in a modern setting would be like.  We don't have alot of communists here (Glenn beck fans might disagree) but we have alot of politically committed kinda sorta hypocritical people and the press element is about exactly the same.  Yeah, man do I have some great commercial instincts: lets remake a random depressing german movie from the 70's.  

                       
note:  weirdly, there are TWO endings.  the movie just STOPS and the german ending is described.  the American ending is shown.  I think it was the better of the two but I'm actually glad they made the unusual decision they did in descibing the one and showing the other.  Of Fassbinder's films I've seen this and Chinese Roulette and this had a stronger theme but I kind of liked that one a little better.

[Rev. Powell]

THE BRIDE (1985): Dr. Frankenstein builds a mate for his creation, but instead decides to turn her into a feminist icon (!), so the original monster leaves to join the circus with a dwarf (!).  Pointless and ridiculous "remake" of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.  Man, was this bad, and in a "no fun" way to boot.  The only pluses were David Rappaport, and Jennifer Beals' nude scene.  1.5/5.

[Jack]

Resident Evil Extinction (2007) - Alice (Milla Jovovich), the genetically enhanced survivor of the zombie apocalypse of the first two films, is now on the run in a desert wasteland.  She meets up with some other survivors, and together they fight the zombie hordes.  Of course, the Umbrella Corporation is still alive and well (and evil as ever) in it's multitude of underground complexes.  They'd like to capture Alice because her blood holds the key to the cure for the virus which created the zombies.  This was excellent!  Soooooooo much better than the second movie in the series.  They dumped the comic book superhero stupidity and replaced it with exciting, yet much more believable action scenes.  The characters were likable (and awesomely hot), and the whole production had a wonderful style to it, very much like the first movie.  4.5/5.