Recent viewings

[Vik]

Blade Runner
This is one of those films that has grown on me after multiple viewings, despite not liking it originally.

[JaseSF]

Airport (1970): probably the birthplace of all the popular 70s disaster films, Airport is certainly one of the best of its type. Features a great cast of character actors including Burt Lancaster as an overworked airport manager, Dean Martin as a pilot, Jacqueline Bisset as a chief stewardess, George Kennedy as a chief mechanic at the airport, Helen Hayes as a stowaway passenger and Van Heflin as a desperate man who plans to set off a bomb on the Boeing 707 hoping it will allow his family to collect the insurance money. Will the pilots and crew discover him and his plan and be able to stop him before he carries out this deadly plot?

This film moves well (remarkable given it's well over 2 hours long), is compelling and leaves one guessing and in suspense. It also manages to make us take a liking to most of its characters and feel that we get to know a lot of them in the time we spend watching them on screen. Based on an Arthur Hailey novel, this one is pretty darn solid all around and I'm a sucker for a snowy setting to put me right in the mood to enjoy a film. Love this one and its overall atmosphere. ****1/2 out of ***** stars.

Made of Honor (2008): Tom Bailey Jr. (Patrick Dempsey), a talented womanizer suddenly realizes he is in fact in love with his long time best friend Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) only to learn she now plans to marry a new bloke she met in Scotland named Colin McMurray (Kevin McKidd). When she asks him to be her "maid of honor", he agrees in hopes of staying close to her and wrecking her wedding plans with Colin. Having Dempsey playing the usual female role of maid of honor leads to some unexpected humorous situations as does his competitions with Colin throughout the film. Finally Busy Phillips as Melissa, Hannah's cousin who was formerly jilted by Tom, and Sydney Pollack as Tom's dad who gets married over and over again add some slight, fun moments. In the end though, it's just another predictable chick flick. **1/2 out of ***** stars.

Airport 1975 (1974): Passengers aboard a Boeing 747 are left in dire trouble after a smaller plane collides with them and they are left without a qualified pilot to fly the plane. Now chief stewardess Nancy Pryor (Karen Black) must try and work with folks on the ground including airport manager, former mechanic Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) and pilot Alan Murdock (Charlton Heston) in an effort to land the plane but can she do it? In the end, an even more unlikely plan is undertaken to rescue the 120 people trapped on board.

This film seems a lot more farfetched than its predecessor as does not move as well or feature as likable or compelling characters as did the original Airport film. Still it does manage to build up a decent level of suspense and is fun escapist viewing on some levels. In some ways this one feels more like a TV movie and the performances feel a lot weaker and more wooden. Still it's neat to see so many familiar faces including Heston, Black, Kennedy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Susan Clark, Gloria Swanson as herself, Helen Reddy who performs a song, Roy Thinnes, Erik Estrada, Dana Andrews, Sid Caesar, Norman Fell, a young Linda Blair as a sick girl in need of a kidney, Beverly Garland, Linda Harrison, Ed Nelson and Laurette Spang. **1/2 out of ***** stars.  

[Jack]

Lake Placid 3 (2010) - the giant killer croc's have once again infested the tranquil little lake from the first movie.  This time it's up to Colin Ferguson (that's Sheriff Jack Carter for you Eureka fans), an Environmental Protection Agency employee, to figure out how to stop them.  There's a group of college kids partying on the lake, and a very butch female hunting guide has a few clients running about as well.  The characters were enjoyable, but the plot kind of dragged.  The really fake CGI croc's didn't do much to add menace to the proceedings.  It didn't try to be nearly as funny as the first movie, but what humor there was made me smile a few times.  3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Sabah -a love story (2005)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-q1guwt96E

This is dopey, unrealistic and probably racist or something but I still liked it. It's pretty darn Lifetimey but bear with me. An average looking muslim lady finds a picture of her and her father at the beach from when she was a kid. Actually it was a gift from her brother who is a "Not Without my Daughter" type arab a***ole though not as bad as that guy. It inspires her to take up swimming which is a big step for her because while she lives in Canada the family is like one of those real traditional families or they try to be. She has two sisters who are prettier but more annoying than her. Atom Egoytan however you say it is one of the producers which would probably account for stuff like the scene when the girl is doing the prayers while her gigantic boobs are falling out of her dress.

She meets a guy at the pool and let me just say my definition of Lifetimey is when the girl gets a guy who is way out of her league. That is in full evidence here. Also, the whole thing seems like a western fantasy of like turning a muslim woman into a "modern" woman . All in all, I would have a tough time believing this was based on a true story.

Still, I saw another muslim movie a while ago called "Amrika" that was really preachy and annoying. I liked this one alot better even though by most normal measures of quailty it was not half as good. The dialogue is pretty wooden and often of the tell rather than show variety. It's better on the rom com stuff than the politics. 4/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"A Clockwork Orange" (1971)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Xc-9YeWE4
Stanley Kubrick's notorious cult classic set in a dystopian future England, about an unrepentant street punk (Malcolm McDowell) who undergoes a controversial "rehabilitation" program in order to get out of prison.

This seems to be one of those movies people either love or hate. It's been quite a few years since I've last seen it, but I still dig it. As "Little Alex" himself might say, it's "Real horrorshow, oh me brothers."

The DVD contains a bonus documentary about how Stanley Kubrick himself pulled the film from cinemas in Britain during its initial release due in response to severe backlash to the film's sex/violent content, and how it remained unavailable there until after Kubrick's death nearly 30 years later... plus a retrospective on McDowell's career called "O Lucky Malcolm!"

[indianasmith]

I've been on a real movie binge lately.  Let's see - in the last five days I've watched:

HYENA - a pack of were-hyenas are terrorizing suburban California, shifting into beast shape and devouring unsuspecting locals.They are led by an Alpha female, the girl were-hyena with the fiercest hunting skills, longest fangs, and biggest boobs.  They are being hunted by a wise old black man and a younger white fella whose wife and baby were eaten in the movie's opening clip.  Fairly fun, cheesey creature feature.

SLAUGHTER HIGH - Holy cow, A.J. needs to check out this awesome piece of 1980's cheese!  A group of punk high schoolers play an unfortunate prank that goes bad on the major nerd (reminded me of the first scene of TOXIC AVENGER) that went horribly wrong, and he wound up horribl scarred and out for revenge.  Ten years later, they come to a reunion in their abandoned high school building, and die in fun and unique ways.  Cheesy dialog and hair, and some of the most RANDOM gratuitous breast shots of all time!

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011) - Finally got to see this remake and it wasn't bad.  Lots of blood, a good bit of nudity, and impressive swordplay.  Dialog was pretty much pure cheddar all the way thru.

BAD TEACHER (2011) - OK, I've always had a bit of a thing for Cameron Diaz, and this movie is just FUNNY!  The movie buff in me was laughing, while the educator half of me was glaring at the TV shouting "You CAN'T DO THAT!!!!" about every five minutes or so!  Holy cow, it was hilarious!

[Jack]

Grave Encounters (2011) - Ghost Hunters meets The Blair Witch Project.  A TV film crew goes to an abandoned asylum to do a bit of paranormal investigation.  For added drama, they even have themselves locked into the building until the next morning.  Oh boy, bad idea.  This had good characters, fairly believable, and very much in the style of  SyFy's Ghost Hunters show.  And most of it is filmed with low light cameras for that extra spooky effect.  It starts innocently enough, with a window opening all by itself, and some noises coming from other rooms.  By the end it's progressed into pure insanity.  Pretty darned effective when it comes to building tension and scares.  I guess my only complaint is that I've watched so many episodes of Ghost Hunters that this seemed like the same thing - except they were cheating and making it seem like the ghosts were real.  I guess that's the price you pay when you're basically doing a take-off of a very well established genre.  But I'll still give it a 4.25/5.  It had me caring about what happened to its characters, and genuinely feeling like they were in some really deep s***.

[lester1/2jr]

Machete Maidens unleashed- nice documentary about making movies in the Philipennes however you spell it. The jungle was hot and crazy and they had to deal with a dictator to get stuff done, but it was actually good because the army ended up helping them in the battle scenes! I'd seen a few of the women in cages type ones with Pam Grier but not the one with the Flying Bat guy. Wild and crazy times and it faded weith the death of the drive in. 4.5/5

[claws]

A Christmas Story (1983) Blu-ray

Haven't seen since VHS days and I had no idea it was a beloved cult movie until I got on the internet ten years ago.
Funny and at times touching comedy. Great little film. 5/5

Night of the Comet (1984)

The same comet that wiped out the dinosaurs is back and turns everyone into calcium dust on Christmas eve. Except those who spend the comet passing earth behind steel.
Entertaining sci-fi horror comedy with a great likeable cast, lots of humor, fierce zombie action and quotable dialogue. 5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

Since it's Thanksgiving night, I celebrated by watching a true Turkey:

"KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK" (1978)
http://youtu.be/zmy5WhWdQCE

The super powered (?) rock icons battle an insane amusement-park robotics expert who plans to use evil duplicates of KISS for his ultimate revenge against those who've wronged him in this pseudo-classic made-for-TV abomination. "Cheese" is the word!!

[Jack]

Outlander (2008) - back in 700 AD, a human from the future crash lands his spaceship in Norway, and meets up with a group of Vikings.  He eventually befriends them, and then they have to band together to combat a creature that has tagged along on the spaceship.  This was great.  The whole thing was very believable, dirty and gritty, but with excellent characters and an interesting plot.  Acting was top-notch, and it even had a pretty girl in it.  Only negative would be that they made the creature bioluminescent, which just sort of screams CGI, even though the effects work was pretty fantastic overall.  Listening to the commentary track I found there was tons of CGI stuff in this movie that I would have never noticed.  5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On- cautiously reccomended by Mofo Rising, I really liked this despite the fact that it was a little on the "here are the conversations, you figure out the story" side. I really admired the main character who stopped at nothing in trying to find out the truth about what happened to two fallen comrades in I guess ww2? in New Guinea (the location gives you a hint).  No one wantewd to talk about it because it was so ugly so why did he? "To prevent more wars" and it should. 4/5

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES...: The experiment is colorful, carnivalesque Ray Dennis Steckler badness about a weenie greaser who's hypnotized into becoming a hit man for a fortune teller.  Host segments cover Pearl delivering the Space Children from the previous episode to their omnipotent Space Mommy and Daddy.  Tom and Crow are also participating in a walkathon: Tom's marching for H.E.L.P.I.N.G. C.H.I.L.D.R.E.N. T.H.R.O.U.G.H. R.E.S.E.A.R.C.H. A.N.D. D.E.V.E.L.O.P.M.E.N.T.  The movie's a great MST3K subject, and the host segments are not bad to very good.  A strong episode that I think will grow stronger with multiple viewings.  4/5.

[Jack]

a weenie greaser

Is that his career or just his hobby?

[Rev. Powell]

a weenie greaser

Is that his career or just his hobby?

I meant a greaser who also happens to be a weenie!  My bad!