Recent viewings

[Jack]

Manticore (2005) - some US troops in Iraq go to a remote village to retrieve a TV reporter, but once there find that there's a Manticore running around killing everybody.  This was pretty typical SyFy Channel stuff, with a rather predictable plot and cheesy CGI.  But it's a favorite of mine because I liked the characters and the action moves along pretty well.  4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

BLANCANIEVES (2012): A matador's daughter is oppressed by her evil stepmother until she escapes and winds up traveling with a troupe of bullfighting dwarfs. Unexpected twists on the ancient legend, bits of macabre humor, and magnificent music and camerawork announce this silent, 20s-styled refashioning of Snow White as a modern masterpiece. 5/5.

[Jack]

One for the Money (2012)  - Katherine Heigl stars as an unemployed and broke girl who takes a job as a bounty hunter. She's totally inexperienced of course, and her first job is bringing in a wanted cop who was also the first guy she ever had sex with. He was arrested for shooting someone that he was investigating, and over the course of the movie Hiegl ends up helping him with the investigation while still trying to get her bounty for him. This was really good. Kathy Hiegl is quite funny and the rest of the characters were good too. A really fun tongue-in-cheek drama. 4/5.

[Newt]

Ride the High Wind (1965) with Darren McGavin as a free-wheeling babe-magnet airplane pilot adventurer. Yeah.  McGavin and company head into the Kalahari to retrieve Boer gold purportedly still guarded by one of the soldiers who was entrusted with its safekeeping 60 years before.  Very '60's in the script and even more so in the music. That is half the fun.  Quite low-key, really, but it moves along well enough that I found it consistently amusing and thoroughly enjoyed it.   

[indianasmith]

Last night I watched a South American film called HIDDEN IN THE WOODS from a company called ArtSploitation Films.
Two sisters are dragged off into the woods by their father, after he kills their mother for sleeping with another man.
He impregnates one of them, and years later, when the two sisters are grown and the offspring of the younger one has become
a genetic mutant with mental issues, authorities finally investigate the tales of abuse . . . the father kills two of them, but the girls escape and the older sister becomes a prostitute to support the other two . . . so basically it's a gruesome, nasty film with incest, rape, cannibalism, and drug runners . . .
OK if you like that sort of thing, I suppose.

[claws]

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) (Blu-ray)

Is it just me or is this movie getting better with age? It seems like I discover something new every time I watch this. Still hard to believe this was shot without CGI. Perfect casting, though Anthony Hopkins was a bit overdoing it but Keanu Reeve's stiff acting was most fitting for playing an Englishman. 5/5

Young Frankenstein (1974) (Blu-ray)

This comedy still cracks me up. Cloris Leachman's Frau Blücher character is one of my all time favorites. I only wish she had more onscreen time. 5/5

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: U.K. Version (1975) (Blu-ray)

Silly but charming, adorable yet naughty. Reading comments on this movie over the years, I find it funny how this musical is disliked by some males because its offending their masculinity  Grow up guys. I never had a problem with this, and it truly deserves its cult status. 5/5

[Jack]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - some Russians kidnap Indy because they need him to help them find a relic at the huge area 51 storage warehouse (you know, the one where they put the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the first movie). So they find that and there's apparently an alien corpse in the box. Indy escapes, gets recaptured, and escapes again throughout the movie. For some reason they've got Shia LaBeouf hanging out with Indy in this one; I'm guess it was to make a few teenage girls swoon because I can't imagine any other reason for him to be here. Harrison Ford seemed a bit old and lackluster this time, and the rest of the supporting cast didn't exactly set the screen on fire either. It had it's share of big special effects shots but I didn't find the story too interesting at all. 3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Living and the Dead (2007) - This is good but also the kind of movie where you kind of have to shake your head. Imagine Rick from the Young Ones becoming semi retarded after a horrible accident and trapping his mother in a Misery type scenerio. It's not a horror movie more of like a weird comedy bit that isn't funny but dark and very uncomfortable.

A guy with mental problems lives in a huge shabbily kept up mansion with his Mom and Dad. His mother is an invalid. He wants desperately to be normal and resents his mother's nurse because he feels he is up to the task which he certainly is not. soiled sheets, cold baths and disaster ensue.

Here's the movie in a nutshell



It's not great but it's pretty good for what it attempts which is sort of a disturbing filth strewn movie

4/5 and get it away from me please

[Rev. Powell]

MUSCLE SHOALS (2013): Documentary explaining how two studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama became hit factories, supplying us with number one singles from Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, and others. This goes deeper into the music business and its history than the more celebrated 50 FEET FROM STARDOM, and Anthony Arendt's unexpectedly great cinematography makes this tiny hamlet and its environs into a character every bit as intriguing as the rural music moguls. 3.5/5.

[claws]

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

1976: Newsman Ron Burgundy and his team of Reporters are TV superstars in San Diego. When the Network decides to add a Newswoman to the all-male sexist team Ron Burgundy's world turns upside down.
I didn't like this on my first and only viewing nine years ago. The DVD has been gathering dust ever since. I must admit I got curious in a rewatch after reading that a sequel was heading our way. The wonders of a second viewing: enjoyed it this time very much. On the surface, Anchorman looks like one of those "Dumb and Dumber" type of comedies, but look deeper and you'll notice its actually one of those classy screwball comedies in clever disguise. Much praise goes to Christina Applegate who rivals Will Ferrel's caveman Burgundy character in a battle of the sexes match with wit, beauty and tongue-in-cheek Women's Liberation attitude. 4.5/5

[alandhopewell]

     The missus, my sister-in-law and I watched this last night; serious Cold War cheese....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m29sEfUJyog

[alandhopewell]

Insomniac Double Feature last night:

"Trick R Treat" (2009)
http://www.youtube.com/v/vMoiNyyXSwU
Cool "Creepshow" style horror-anthology flick in which numerous spooky stories - including a principal who moonlights as a serial killer, a pack of female werewolves, and a school bus load of ghostly children - all intersect around the same small town on Halloween night. This one finds just the right mix of humor and horror, and has become a Halloween season perennial for me.

"RoboCroc" (2013)
http://www.youtube.com/v/uWoW7TfM8mc
Yeah, this one is a "crock" all right. A secret government space launch crash lands near a zoo, causing its payload of experimental "nanobots" to invade the body of the zoo's giant salt water crocodile...which transforms the croc into a souped up, super powered metallic killing machine. The "RoboCroc" then proceeds to invade the water park next door so it can chomp on lots of girls in bikinis, while the military and a couple of zookeepers try to figure out how to kill the darned thing. Even with the typically low standards of SyFy Channel Movies factored in, this one was still hellaciously bad. Like, "worst thing I've seen this year" bad.

     You'd be hard pressed to find anything worse.

[FatFreddysCat]

^^ So far "RoboCroc" is standing firm as the worst thing I've seen this year... and since we're almost halfway thru November, Hollywood would be hard pressed to come up with something to beat it before the end of the year!!! 

Back on topic....some major family sh*t has been cutting into my movie watching time over the past week or so, yesterday I started making up for it by watching two in one day...

Devil in the Flesh (1998)
http://www.youtube.com/v/dvqk3s8Glvc
A pre-'Charmed' Rose McGowan is the lone bright spot in this teenybopper variation on 'Fatal Attraction,' as a disturbed teen who develops a fixation on her hunky creative writing teacher. Naturally she will allow no one - not his girlfriend, nor her religious nut grandmother, or her social worker - to get in the way of her happiness, even if it leads to murder. This is totally predictable teen slasher stuff, but I have had a major woody for Rose since the late 90s and she looks dynamite here.... so it gets a pass.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)
http://www.youtube.com/v/KMWrZmD0AN4
Sequel to the video-game based horror flick finds the little girl from the last film, all grown up and entering the haunted town of Silent Hill again to rescue her father. Where the first flick was more of a psychological horror that depended on mood, Revelation is straight up action packed splatter/gore with a few moments that steal liberally from the Hellraiser franchise. It was obviously made on a smaller budget than the original, but on the other hand it's easier to follow (and it's about a half hour shorter). I may be the only one but I think I liked this better than the first.

[tracy]

"Robocroc" was atrocious! It was full of so many "Oh,come on!" moments that I had to watch the entire thing just to see where it went. Right down the crapper.

[Rev. Powell]

TO THE WONDER (2013): An impressionistic portrait of a love affair between a French woman and an American man. Nothing happens in this well-intentioned bore that seems to be made from leftover scraps of THE TREE OF LIFE. 2/5.

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994): An insurance investigator investigates the disappearance of a bestselling horror novelist whose books have the power to drive men mad. The pioneering meta-horror premise compensates for an ordinary execution. 3.5/5.