Recent viewings

[Newt]

Vampire's Kiss.

Nic Cage plays an absolute mental case in this film about a guy who starts to turn into a vampire after an affair with a rather fetching Jennifer Beals.  He is completely nuts in this movie and the highlight reel is fantastic. 

I had this one sitting in my 'to be viewed' shelf and based on the above I watched it this morning.  (Gee, thanks, dean!  ) Parts of it were highly entertaining: the highlights reel covers what I thought was the best of it.

[dean]

I had this one sitting in my 'to be viewed' shelf and based on the above I watched it this morning.  (Gee, thanks, dean!  ) Parts of it were highly entertaining: the highlights reel covers what I thought was the best of it.

Should've won the Oscar, and Bret Easton Ellis should have referenced it in American Psycho [they seem very similar in places]

[lester1/2jr]

Man Hunt- kinda average movie here and pretty uninspired for Fritz Lang. It's not bad, just not very memorable or exciting. You'd never hear someone say "remember that scene from Man Hunt" That movie with the huge island rats had more suspense. The lead actor Walter Pidgeon isn't all that charming, he is kind of condescending and never in enough real danger. It's ww2 propaganda really, though not as awful as say Song of Russia. Oh, the plot is about a guy who sees Hitler and almost spontaneously assassinates him and has to get away yadda yadda yadda. some okay stuff 3/5

[claws]

There Was a Little Girl aka Madhouse (1981)

Julia is pretty, young and a teacher for kids with hearing problems. When her Priest/Uncle asks Julia to visit her twin sister Mary in an asylum, things turn sour for Julia. Mary still is obviously disturbed, and promises Julia one hell of a deadly birthday. As their birthday approaches Mary manages to flee the asylum, and soon enough the dead bodies pile ...

Psychopath/Slasher hybrid from Egyptian rip-off Director/Producer Ovidio G. Assonitis. For this one he took a closer look at Happy Birthday To Me (1981) and did his own version. The results are quite pleasing, not only does the film look great (nice visuals, gorgeously shot) but he also added a few of his own ideas. There Was a Little Girl looks and sounds very American, without the fakeness usually found in budget Euro-productions filmed in the States. On the downside the film is a fountain of tired horror cliches with victims acting even dumber by putting themselves in danger. Also, the electronic laser-beam soundtrack can be very distracting at times. Still, the movie is good enough for what it is. 3.5/5

[Jack]

Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007) - repeat viewing. There's some ancient idol in an abandoned asylum. Of course the asylum has a tragic history with an abusive doctor doing horrible things to his patients. Anyhow some bad guys want this idol because it's worth millions, so they kidnap some girl who has a notebook with a lot of info on the idol and the asylum it's in, and at the same time a college professor and his students arrive at the asylum because they want this idol for a museum display. Then the automatic security system kicks in and locks everybody in. Time for some CGI ghost action This was fun, it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek and all the characters are rather entertaining. The ghosts do some very nasty things to their guests at the asylum. 4/5.

[Jack]

Spiders (2013) - an old Russian space station crashes to earth, with chunks of it landing in New York. Of course there were spiders on board and they survive re-entry, even though the other bits of the station are just charred an melted metal. Because they're actually alien spiders I guess. Anyhow they start growing, even though they don't seem to have nearly enough food to fuel such growth (but they're aliens so...yeah) and it's up to a subway supervisor and his soon-to-be ex-wife to straighten the whole thing out. And there's a big government conspiracy too of course. This was okay, the characters were pretty uninteresting and so was the story. Totally predictable as well. The CGI spiders weren't too bad, I actually thought they did a pretty good job on the huge one that was walking around downtown NY. Which was invulnerable to tanks, anti-tank weapons, and machine gun fire from helicopters. Bet it's not invulnerable to the main character though Meh, a decent enough waste of 90 minutes on a boring Monday night. 3/5.

[Bushma]

I watched Dirty Harry (again?).  While watching it there was so much of this movie that I simply didn't remember.  I'm not certain if I've ever actually watched the whole movie until now.

[Rev. Powell]

WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957): An aging professor has dreams and flashbacks to his youth as he drives to a university to accept an honorary degree. An elegiac reflection on an ordinary life; many people respond empathetically to this one, while it leaves many others (like me) a bit cold. 4/5.

[indianasmith]

Just finished watching a little indie slasher called THE VICTORVILLE MASSACRE.  A group of college kids go to spend Labor Day weekend at a friend's house in a small town where many murders have recently happened.  They get drunk, hop in a hot tub. play truth or dare, and then start getting killed by the obligatory shrouded black figure with a skull mask - while an off-duty cop sits out in the street and wonders if something is going on in the house or not.  Dumb, dumb, dumb film, with a group of the most unlikable slasher fodder to grace the small screen in a long time.  Not even any gratuitous nudity to make Jack happy.  The only cool touch is the "life flashing before their eyes" cutaway as each victim meets the end. Glad this one was a freebie!

[FatFreddysCat]

"The World is Not Enough" (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4JgqBlbnJk

In Pierce Brosnan's third go-round as James Bond, the murder of an oil tycoon inside MI6 headquarters sends 007 to Azerbaijan, where the magnate's insane daughter and a Russian terrorist are plotting to corner the region's oil supply by blowing up the competition's pipelines with stolen nukes.  

Denise Richards is hilariously miscast as a nuclear bomb defusion specialist (?) who aids Bond in his mission and also happens to look good in short shorts and a tank top.

Featuring lots of big action sequences but coming up short on logic, this may not be Brosnan's best outing as Bond but it's entertaining enough.

[Jack]

Dragon Wasps (2012) - a couple of Paris Hilton wannabe's go to Belize to track down the father of one one of them. They meet up with a group of US soldiers who are having a small war against some drug smugglers. And of course giant, fire-shooting wasps attack from the sky. A pretty typical low-budget thing, with Corin Nemec (you may remember him form Mansquito) doing a decent job as the military commander, and those two ridiculously miscast girls running around in the jungle acting like the only time they've ever been outside before was shopping on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The head of the drug smugglers kind of stole the show with his evilness A very ordinary 3/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYtz5sw98Bc

In Pierce Brosnan's second James Bond adventure, 007 investigates a Ted Turner/Rupert Murdoch style media mogul (Jonathan Pryce) who's committing terrorist attacks against the Chinese and British military, hoping to pit them against each other - for the sake of ratings. The adventure takes Bond from Hamburg to Vietnam (and a brief look at those funky rock islands from Man With the Golden Gun), where Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh drops in as a Chinese agent who helps 007 prevent World War III yet again.

Not quite as good as the preceding "Goldeneye" but a damn solid Bond adventure all around.

[indianasmith]

I watched a fairly neat little horror film called HEEBIE JEEBIES last night.  Not far in I realized it was made for TV, but it was still kind of enjoyable and the monster was VERY bizarre looking!

[Jack]

The Sea Beast (2008) - SyFy Original about some invisible sea beasties who start attacking the residents of a small fishing village. The sheriff (Corin Nemec - the Mansquito guy again) teams up with some researcher to track the thing down before it kills his daughter and her boyfriend who are having a romantic get together on a nearby island. Pretty typical SyFy stuff, with low budget CGI and some pretty questionable logic; did you know that cutting a lamp cord and touching the exposed wires to a metal roof can electrify the whole thing? With thousands of volts apparently The characters were decent enough and the plot moved along okay. The ending was entertaining as - SPOILERS - Nemec set up a trap for the queen beastie involving oxygen and acetylene tanks set to tip over just perfectly so their nozzles were knocked off by a metal beam and the hubcap full of burning gasoline he had situated nearby of course caused a massive explosion. I got a chuckle out of how he had that rigged up. 3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Jack I think you've got a thing for Corin Nemec.

Eloise's Lover (2009) - yeeeaaah buddy! I mean...poignant and sensitive movie about two Spanish hotties, one lesbian and one who slowly realizes she is one, having evocative self discovery in spite of things like the lesbian lesbian is an outcast and the mother of the other one is Godzilla. Like most of these things, there's a lot of tension before the pay off but trust me when I say it's ALL good (except the ending which is kind of "uhh we're out of time lets wrap it up" 5/5