Recent viewings

[Jack]

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999) - so this girl's parents were killed by Gamera in one of the previous movies, and she finds a monster (which she names Iris) she can raise for the purpose of taking her revenge on the big ol' turtle. The plot is kind of confusing, with a bunch of Gyaos birds attacking everyplace in the world and a bunch of talk about whether Gamera is a friend to humanity or not. None of that seems to go anywhere. Anyhow there's a big fight at the end that's pretty cool. The girl's monster is psychically linked to her so it takes revenge when she wants it to and, I dunno, dies when she decides that Gamera is actually good? I'd actually have to watch this a second time to really figure out what was going on in some of the scenes. Can't say I cared for this one too much, it's much darker than the previous two and not very fun. 2.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

SHARKNADO (2013): Global warming causes shark migrations and storms with heavy winds that pick up angry sharks and hurl them through the streets of L.A. I'm afraid that these Asylum shark movies have turned into a scam; they're just making shoddy movies as fast as they can and passing them off as camp. 2/5.

[Jack]

Ran (1985) - an aging warlord turns his empire over to his sons, but they're total a-holes and set to fighting amongst themselves. Meanwhile the old warlord goes senile and spends the whole movie wandering aimlessly through the countryside with his jester. There's a good battle halfway through: bloody and very atmospheric. Beautifully photographed. I guess it's a very beautiful movie throughout. On the bad side though, it's long as hell (2 hrs 42 minutes) and seems every minute of it. All the characters are as undeveloped and one-dimensional as it's possible to get, and there's not really a single likable person in it (well one of the sons maybe, but he's barely in it), and I didn't find the plot especially believable either. One of the sons is completely wrapped around the little finger of a woman he just met. A)  I can't imagine how anyone could stand to be in the same room as her and B) if she was trying to blackmail him, I'm sure he could have just lopped her head off and no one would have batted an eye. I suppose I'll be generous and give it a 4/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe8w7gBdg4Y

Those lovable stoners from Kevin Smith's 'Clerks' find out that Hollywood is making a movie about them... without their permission, so they head off on a cross country road trip to try and stop the film. Mayhem, naturally, follows them everywhere they go. Along the way, Jay & Silent Bob get mixed up with a team of international female jewel thieves, steal a monkey, and are pursued by a very determined wildlife marshal (Will Ferrell) in this fast paced, foul mouthed slapstick road movie which features cameos by just about everyone in Hollywood.  The gags come fast 'n' furious in this one, I laughed my a$$ off.

[FatFreddysCat]

A Band Called Death (2013)

http://www.youtube.com/v/R5Pf3MlUo7c

Nope, this is not the story of the late Chuck Schuldiner and his legendary death-metal combo (though that would be pretty damn cool, too)... this documentary details the strange saga of 'Death,' a mid-70s African-American hard rock band made up of three brothers from Detroit, who cut a record in 1975 and then promptly disappeared. When their music is rediscovered in the 21st century (thanks to the Internet) the two surviving brothers enjoy a bittersweet comeback.

This is a touching, absorbing documentary about family ties and the power of music, and sheds some well deserved light on a forgotten bit of heavy rock history. I love learning about stuff like this. And Death's music sounds pretty bad-ass too!!

[Jack]

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - this time Indy's trying to find the Holy Grail before the Nazis get their hands on it. Lots and lots of action sequences follow. I hadn't seen this in ages and it's a lot of fun. Lots of humor and plenty of cool special effects. I'm afraid I just have a hard time buying Sean Connery as a bumbling old man though, and the fact that he seems to be a terrible father doesn't help much either. Oh well, still had a good time. Question: Indy drank from the Holy Grail, which grants eternal youth, so why the heck did he look so old in Crystal Skull? 4/5.

[claws]

Question: Indy drank from the Holy Grail, which grants eternal youth, so why the heck did he look so old in Crystal Skull? 4/5.

Maybe it was Holy Grail Diet without Caffeine.

[Jack]

Question: Indy drank from the Holy Grail, which grants eternal youth, so why the heck did he look so old in Crystal Skull? 4/5.

Maybe it was Holy Grail Diet without Caffeine.

It could just get stale after a while too.  Either that or maybe Crystal Skull was set hundreds of years in the future, but pretty much nothing had changed?

[indianasmith]

I watched a pretty interesting creature feature called PRIMITIVE a couple nights back.  A special effects artist who works in horror movies is called away when his mother dies; she passes not long after he tries undergoing hypnotherapy to deal with his anger issues.  While he is back home, a monstrous beast begins murdering everyone who had ticked him off recently.  He is the natural suspect, except that he has an ironclad alibi for the killings.  Who or what is the murderer, and what is its link to our hero?  This was a fun movie, and I loved the fact that the monster was done with actual costuming and not CGI.  Definitely worth the rental!

[Jack]

Skyfall (2012) - one of Judi Dench's ex-employees is out to kill her and of course it's Bond's job to save her. I've always detested Dench as M, so all I can say is it's about time. I don't know how many times Bond has saved the world since Dench took over as M, and all she's ever had to say about it was to ridicule and demean him. And she scowls. Half the damned movie is Dench scowling at this, Dench scowling at that. How in the hell could anyone find this character to be anything other than repulsive? And now I'm supposed to care about her and want to watch an entire movie abut Bond's efforts to save her? Then there's Craig as Stoic British Guy, all Connery would have to do would be to say "Bond...James Bond" and he'd blow this guy right off the screen.  But Craig fits right in with the cold and soulless nature of this movie, it makes me glad I'll never live in the same world as the people who created it. Other than that it's basically a bunch of special effects sequences which in the old days used to be fun because they were wink wink nudge nudge sort of stuff, but nowadays they're humorless. Surely they don't think I actually believe that any sane man would attempt this junk, do they? And then there's that great old Bond cliche where the bad guy could easily kill the good guys but decides to make a speech instead; we get that not once but twice in a row. Oh the action moved along at a good pace and some of the scenery shots were quite beautiful, but this isn't the sort of thing I'd ever watch again. 2/5.

[Rev. Powell]

Don't hold back Jack---tell us how you really feel about SKYFALL. 

THE BUTLER (2013): Born to a sharecropper, Cecil Gaines escapes poverty and becomes butler at the White House serving seven presidents, slowly becoming estranged from his civil rights activist son. A memorable survey of the turbulent period of American race relations; one of the small pleasures is recognizing the actors tapped to portray thirty years of presidents. P.S. Lee Daniels is a very good director, but it's unbearably pompous to put the director's name in the official title of the movie and I refuse to play along. 4/5.

NOSFERATU (1922): The earliest (unauthorized) adaptation of Dracula relocates the action to Germany in the late 1800s. Mixing imagery of disease and sex, F.W. Murnau's horror classic is helped immensely by the presence of the mysterious Max Schreck, whose rat-faced Count Orlock looks totally inhuman and remains arguably the scariest vampire ever depicted onscreen. 5/5.

[Jack]

Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) - some scientist takes some Godzilla cells and crosses them with a plant (Oh that just sounds like a brilliant idea doesn't it?  ), apparently with the goal of creating an anti-nuclear bacteria. They end up with a monster of course. Meanwhile some Arab guy is constantly trying to steal the formula so their scientists can come up with a way of growing crops in the desert. Then there's some other subplot about the scientist's daughter, who was killed, but dad somehow puts her spirit into the formula...or something like that. It's a bit talky with all this junk but it's only a matter of time before Godzilla shows up with a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound and pulls the spitting high-tension wires down Good classic city-smashing Godzilla action all the way. The Japanese Defense Force has also created some Super X2 aircraft which actually managed to get the big guy mildly annoyed at one point. Oh and we get the mega-zapper laser gun thingies - those are always my favorite. There are a couple of good monster battles, not the greatest I've seen but quite satisfying. I usually watch these in Japanese with English subs but I watched the English dub this time and it was actually pretty decent. 4/5.

[Jack]

Airplane! (1980) - screwball comedy that I've always loved.  I've seen it soooo many times now that, well, how many times can you listen to the same jokes and still find them funny?  I still got a few chuckles out of it though  4/5.

[indianasmith]

Last night I watched RAT RACE (2001) over at a friend's house.  This is one of the funniest movies I have ever watched - and just as funny on the third or fourth viewing as it was the first time I saw it! Everything from a cow dangling from a hot air balloon to an insane squirrel saleslady to a busload of Lucille Ball impersonators, this movie is just ridiculously wonderful.  I'm still chuckling over it this morning!

Then when I got home, I watched RETURN OF THE KILLER SHREWS.  Fifty years later, a reality TV crew is filming a show on the same island where giant shrews ran amok and killed a bunch of people.  They even got a couple of guys from the original cast to reappear in the sequel!  John Schneider is hilarious as an overpaid, undertalented reality TV star, and the shrews are done with such bad CGI that they make the original "dogs wearing shag carpet" special effects look good!  And how could any bad movie lover NOT enjoy a film that includes the line "We're gonna need a bigger goat!"?  Cheesy and cheap, this is the kind of movie this site was made for.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Firestorm" (1998)

http://www.youtube.com/v/CcHSj4wxpMw

Hollywood tried to turn former NFL great Howie Long into an honest-to-goodness action hero in this formulaic-but-fun butt kicker. Howie's a Wyoming 'smokejumper' who has to battle a raging forest fire and a gang of escaped convicts (who set the fire in order to cover up their jailbreak). This enjoyable but instantly forgettable popcorn flick tanked at the box office and took Howie's movie career down with it, but William Forsythe is great as the sleazy bad guy and the fire scenes are suitably thrilling.