Recent viewings

[indianasmith]

I  watched FROST/NIXON again tonight. A very impressive and unforgettable film; if you love American history and politics, and find the Nixon era at all interesting, this is required viewing.

[Rev. Powell]

KEYHOLE (2011): A gangster ventures through his house searching for his wife, encountering tragic family memories along the way, in this surrealistic version of the Odyssey. Contains some cool ideas---Isabella Rosselini keeps her naked father chained to her bed in a sick psycho symbiosis---but it's even more confusing than Guy Maddin's usual offerings, without that spark of mysterious magic that animates his best films. Only for those who are already Maddin fans; this is not the place to start exploring his world. 2.5/5.

[alandhopewell]

     Borrowed this from the library....



     Wasn't what I expected, which was some version of LA FEMME NIKITA. What I got was a slow-moving, sometimes confusing film that made the pace and confusion work for it.

     Sometimes very uncomfortable to watch, but riveting. I plan to watch it again, preferably when I'm not as tired as I was yesterday. Recommended.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Whip It" (2009)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-7ODNGKGUc

Drew Barrymore's directorial debut is a quirky dramedy about a dorky Texas teenager (Ellen Page) who discovers a whole new side of herself when she joins a rough-and-tumble women's roller derby league. The trailers I'd seen promised something a bit more action packed and slap sticky, but I was entertained.

Extra props for Page's character owning a vintage Stryper t-shirt that becomes a major plot point, and for Juliette Lewis still being hot in a totally skanky way as Page's arch-rival from another derby team.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" (2007)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMJZ-_bJKdI

Absorbing documentary set in the high pressure world of competitive classic arcade gaming (yes, there really is such a thing), focusing on the battle to set a new world record high score on Donkey Kong. The main players are Billy Mitchell, a smug prick with a mullet who's held the Donkey Kong record since the 1980s, and challenger Mike Wiebe, a middle school science teacher and family man who simply yearns to make his mark on the world somehow. Color commentary is provided by a variety of other major playas in the competitive video game world, i.e. a lot of sad-sack middle aged fanboys who have probably never seen a naked woman.

This movie almost plays like one of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries ala "Best in Show" or "This Is Spinal Tap," but nope, this is the real deal, these folks actually exist. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll roll your eyes and say "Thank God, none of these people live next door to me."

[indianasmith]

I watched a very neat zombie movie called THE DEAD SEASON this week.
In a post-zombie apocalypse world,  a man and woman board a boat in an attempt to escape the mainland and find shelter on a Carribean island that is allegedly void of the walking dead.  Problem is, there is a small colony of people already there, and they are VERY picky as to who they allow to remain on the island. And, since all the vegetation there is rotten due to nuclear testing from years ago, they have to resort to unusual efforts to find food . . .

This is a somewhat slow but thoughtful and intriguing look at what people are willing to do in order to survive when all the restraints of society are removed.  Definitely worth viewing!

[JaseSF]

Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955): Ma and Pa Kettle (Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride) along with daughter Rosie (Lori Nelson) arrive in Hawaii to help out Pa's cousin Rodney (Loring Smith)'s pineapple business as he recovers from illness. Rodney mistakenly believes from Pa's exaggerated letters that he's a big business success in the U.S. leading to a lot of Pa style mishaps at the factory. Eventually Pa winds up getting himself kidnapped and it's up to Ma to come to his rescue.

This late entry in the series, the last with the one and only Percy Kilbride as Pa was pretty formulaic stuff by this point in time. It does have some fun moments the best of which come from Main who brings Ma back to her rough around the edges roots with this one. Her interactions with the snooty rich women and her later teaming up with the Hawaiian Lotus family kids, an Hawaiian family pretty near identical to the Kettles provide this one's funniest moments. Pa also has some great moments when he manages to get his kidnappers to dig for buried treasure. In the end, I'll give this one **3/4 out of ***** stars.

The Haunting in Connecticut (2009): With their teenage son battling cancer and needing treatment at a faraway hospital, a family decides to rent a new home nearby only to discover it has a dark secret - it was once a mortuary and it now seems to be haunted.

This film has many problems. First off, it's far duller than the supposedly "true story" on which it is based. Second, the story as presented here adds so many different supernatural elements the story just ends up seeming more and more far fetched as it progresses. Third, there's really very few likable characters in our story [especially unlikable is the abusive, alcoholic father] and we never get to know the characters enough to really care about them or what happens to them. Fourth, the film is never truly all that scary and its FX are never fully convincing. The few positives going for this film - the disturbing photographs of the dead, the slightly interesting medium angle, playing with the idea that Matt (Kyle Gallner) may be hallucinating it all due to his medical treatment, and a decent performance from Erik Berg as Jonah are outweighed by all the negatives that just make this film's story less and less credible as it goes on. This film simply tries to do far too much when keeping it simple would have worked much more effectively. In the end, I'm only giving this ** out of ***** stars.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Tommy" (1975)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4K_9WyQCgA

Lavishly produced, totally over the top bizarro film adaptation of The Who's famed rock opera about a traumatized "deaf dumb and blind kid" who becomes a pinball champion and then a messiah.

Great cast including Ann-Margret (hot!), Jack Nicholson (who actually sings, briefly!), Tina Turner, Elton John, and Eric Clapton.

The movie doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense but it's certainly a worthy watch just for the trippy visuals, particularly for the scene when a drunken Ann-Margret rolls around in a puddle of baked beans. :D

[Rev. Powell]

THE TEN (2007): A series of ten short comedies each centered around one of the ten commandments (i.e., it's the DECALOGUE re-imagined by an alumnus of the sketch comedy series "Mad TV" and "The State.") Par for the anthology course, some are funny (the twins looking for their real father) and some are duds. 2.5/5.

[retrorussell]

Finished Poultrygeist just a little while ago on Netflix.  Way too many song and dance numbers ruin what is otherwise good, sloppy, tasteless fun.

[Jack]

Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf (1972) - kind of a meandering plot about a woman who goes to Transylvania with her husband, who's soon killed by bandits. But then she meets Paul Naschy, who's a werewolf, and they eventually travel to London where they meet the great grandson of Dr. Jekyll, who might be able to cure Naschy's problem. Kind of a typical Spanish '70s thing with undeveloped and distant characters and harsh editing. Had some nice Gothic atmosphere in spots. 2.5/5.

Curse of Bigfoot (1978) - sort of a quasi-documentary about Bigfoot, where they make a lot of statements like "The existence of Bigfoot can no longer be denied" and count a single person's sighting as conclusive proof of Bigfoot's existence. Excruciatingly boring as well. It starts out with a woman giving her dog a bowl full of milk and yes, we watch him drink until every last drop is consumed. And the pace doesn't pick up one bit from there. Only made it about halfway through this, bored out of my skull at watching yet another guy walk through the woods for 5 solid minutes.

The Pure Terror 50 movie set hasn't gotten off to a very good start lol.

[Raffine]

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003)

A little old lady comes to the rescue when her beloved Tour de France cyclist grandson is kidnapped by the French Mafia. She is aided in her quest by his obese dog Bruno and the formerly famous and now elderly singing sensations 'The Triplets of Belleville'.

This sharply funny and ultimately touching beautifully animated film has the look and feel of those Freleng and DePatie shorts that featured The Pink Panther and The Inspector. It's really astonishing how much emotion the animators can express in the characters with a subtle look in the eyes or a slight grin. I've read a lot of comments about how Bruno is probably the  best and most realistic portrayal of a dog in any film, and I agree! This film will definitely put you off ever eating frog legs.

The film angered some because, even though they are supposedly French, the grossly fat and stupid citizens of Belleville remind them of caricatures of Americans.

This famously lost the Best Animated Film Oscar to the almost identically plotted FINDING NEMO. The terrific musical score and song lost, too. It's probably no big surprise to say I now prefer resourceful grandmas to clown fishes any old day.

EASTER EGG: Look for a turd in a toilet shaped like a famous cartoon mouse!


Marlin and Dory get help from their fishy pals to help find Nemo. Sort of.

[Raffine]

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" (2007)

Have you ever seen AMERICAN MOVIE?

I still find it difficult to believe this was an honset-to-goodness documentary and NOT a Christopher Guest-ish mockumentary.

[JaseSF]

The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956): Ma (Marjorie Main) and the kids go to Mournful Hollow, Arkansas to help Pa's brother Sedgewick (Arthur Hunnicut) with his farm. While there, they also work to help Sedge get on better terms with the townsfolk and try and help his long waiting fiancee Miss Bedelia Baines (Una Merkel) finally convince Sedgewick to marry her. Besides all that, they also have to deal with bootleggers secretly manufacturing illegal moonshine in a barn they've rented from Sedge.

With illness forcing Percy Kilbride to leave the Ma and Pa Kettle series, they tried to get things to work with replacement figures but they never caught on. While Hunnicut tries his best here, his Sedgewick character never seems like anything but a pale imitation of Pa only of course he isn't really Pa at all. There's some bright spots here and there, the funniest bits involving Ma and the Kettle kids taking a train ride, the Kettle kids trying to find out what's going on in the barn and of course the animals getting plastered. The rest feels like tough slugging with Big Trout and Small Fry like Sedge with Pa feeling like sorry imitations of Geoduck and Crowbar making one wish even more for the real thing instead. Some good gags here and there as I said but in the end, I can only give this one **1/2 out of ***** stars.

The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957): Ma (Marjorie Main) and Pa (Parker Fennelly) Kettle plan on starting up on their new farm when they discover lovebirds Sally Fleming (Gloria Talbott) and Brad Johnson (John Smith) in their old farmhouse much to the chagrin of Sally's wealthy father and Brad's boss J.P. "Jim" Fleming (Roy Barcroft) who disapproves of their plans for getting married that is unless the long pampered Sally, with the help of the Kettles, can prove that she can actually pull off life as a farm wife.

Personally I feel this movie is a step up from The Kettles in the Ozarks. Sure Fennelly cannot truly take the place of Percy Kilbride but he sure does his best here and at times does manage to make you believe he is Pa. The cast here is pretty stacked too IMO what with Claude Akins and Roy Barcroft in bit roles and we get familiar face in these part without a doubt Gloria Talbott, of I Married a Monster From Outer Space, Leech Woman, The Cyclops and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll fame, as essentially our leading lady. This one has some great gags going for it too the best of which involve a bear named "Old Three Toes" and some confusion as to whether of not Ma may be a family way yet again. Plus Pa actually tries to do a day's work but as usual not with the best consequences. The only thing really missing here is Geoduck and Crowbar as Pa's working stooges being essentially replaced here by a garbageman named George (George Dunn). A fun one that's a bit dated in terms of its material yet also proves to be a tad bit better than I expected, I'm giving this one *** out of ***** stars.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" (2007)

Have you ever seen AMERICAN MOVIE?

I still find it difficult to believe this was an honset-to-goodness documentary and NOT a Christopher Guest-ish mockumentary.

Yeah, actually now that you mention it, I have seen "American Movie" (though it's been a while)... and I probably had a similar reaction to that one as well!