Recent viewings

[Rev. Powell]

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING (1989): An unscrupulous advertising executive goes crazy from stress while trying to develop a campaign for pimple cream; he develops a boil on his neck which turns into a head with a personality even nastier than his own. A great wacky performance from Richard E. Grant (imagine a wild-eyed Nic Cage ranting in the Queen's English), amazing insane dialogue ("I've had an octopus squatting on my forehead for a fortnight"), and a total commitment to its bizarre premise result in a unique movie that should have a much bigger cult following than it currently does. 4.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

PCU (1994) - Made in 94 but couldn't be more timely today. We're seeing it's heinous unrated director's cut sequel being played out before our very eyes on daily basis. The words "rape culture", spoken as a joke at a party in this movie, are now bandied about on popular websites to describe the fraternity system, which has been in place forever but is suddenly intolerable. feminists, black power guys, and just general "cause heads" litter the campuses again, none apparently having seen this movie or at least don't get the joke.

Jeremy Piven is the main guy and, while not overflowing with charisma, does a serviceable enough job. David Spade is slightly more effective as an obnoxious college Republican leader of a strange retro fraternity that hates Pivens animal House type one. He conspires with the ultra PC President of the college to get rid of Pivens crew it's like Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham joining forces to thwart Donald Trump or something. Along the way typical college themes are played for mild laughs: stoners, dumb guys, hoity toity alma mater people etc.

There's an interesting moment at the end when Piven decries all the protests that occur "It used to be us against them" he says "now it's us against us" indeed. It's not brilliant social commentary nor is it a brilliant comedy a la Animal House or even not Another teen Movie. It's also just another story of a frat that's going to get kicked off the campus if they don't raise money via some means but the whole PC element is an interesting gimmick. It makes it just distinct and interesting enough to check out. some clever stuff, some mediocre , safely pg or pg 13, likeable

3.75 /5

[Rev. Powell]

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBORNE (1981): Dr. Jekyll throws an engagement party in his mansion, and the guests soon find themselves dying to leave. Slow to start, but thirty minutes in the rapes and spankings start and General Patrick Macnee starts randomly firing his pistol through the hallways; it's Eurotrash sexploitation in Victorian dress and fuzzy lighting.  3/5 for art/Eurotrash fans, 2/5 for everyone else.

[FatFreddysCat]

A double shot of grindhouse goodness for my day off today...

"Satan's School For Girls" (1973)
http://youtu.be/hAG8AKhvkqU
Irresistibly schlocky made-for-TV cheese produced by Aaron Spelling and starring two of his future "Charlie's Angels" (Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd). When her sister commits suicide, a woman investigates a series of similarly mysterious deaths at the exclusive girls' academy they all attend. Naturally she discovers something sinister goin' on behind the scenes. Cheap, silly and full of over-acting eye candy.

"The Deadly Spawn" (aka "Return of the Alien's Deadly Spawn," 1983)
http://youtu.be/agtrqXBfiE4
A hungry alien parasite crash-lands on earth on a meteor, sets up shop in a suburban basement, and eventually starts munching on the neighbors. Hilarity, naturally, ensues. This ultra-cheap, ultra-gory monster mash was filmed in my home state of New Jersey on a shoe string budget (supposedly around $25K) and it's better than it has any right to be!

[lester1/2jr]

Fired Up! (2009) Yes the exclamation point is in the title. I've been trying to watch more comedies lately. I think because I view them as being kind of outside my thing in general I embrace the guilty pleasure aspect and avoid really famous star studded ones like Tootsie. While unpretentious it might not actually be the best approach. Some of this national Lampoonish stuff is pretty poor. This was okay but I probably could have done better with something Anchorman like.

tangent: I remember when David Lee Roth replaced Howard Stern when he went to Sirius and he was quoted as saying his new job was easy. Stern said something along the lines of "if it's easy you're doing it wrong". Borat was hilarious because it was went over the top again and again. He got sued for it, it was pure anarchy but that's what you have to do. You can't just take it easy and write a couple jokes and act out a story. Unless your movie is called The Van and it was made in 1976 no one wants to just enjoy the vibe of your cool atmosphere you created. Comedy is an extreme sport. anyway...

Two jocks quit the football team so they can literally and figuratively  pick up girls at cheerleading camp. Of course, instead of being a full on parody of the absurd cheerleader movie genre it tries to be a real movie, with dopey American Pie type romantic dialogue that like ends with a gross out joke hahaha. This is all started with that ben Stiller movie where he gets his balls stuck in his zipper Something About Mary. The movie is about them having pg 13 hijinks with the girls in bland inoffensive sort of ways. Occasionally they make a joke about ...male cheerleaders are gay or something but it's all pretty vanilla. The best character is the evil boyfriend of the love interest girl he's a hilarious jerk type guy she should have stayed with him.

If you want to keep abreast of what the kids are watching these days you could probably do worse than this. It's ocasionally clever and passably entertaining though the blond cheerleader guy is pretty annoying. As always nowadays: twice as much sexual innuendo, very little nudity. Ill take Screwballs over this. It's "fun" I guess but there's very little rock n roll/ rebellion to it.

3/5

[indianasmith]

Last night I watched PLAGUE, a well-done Australian post-zombie apocalypse film. 
It was more human drama than undead flesh-munchers, but it was still quite compelling.
At the beginning of the movie a group of survivors are waiting at a fortified barn for the last member of their group to show up after they got scattered from their safe house.  After a bitter and deadly argument, three of them decide to go on, while Evie waits at the barn for her husband John to catch up.  Even though the others believed him dead, John does eventually arrive and he and Evie are together for a day or two without a vehicle.  He is depressed and on the brink of suicide when a man named Charlie shows up, killing the zombies that have besieged them in the barn and helping John and Evie survive.  But it turns out he has an ulterior motive . . .

This was entertaining and dramatic, better than I thought it would be.  4/5

[Trevor]

The House Where Evil Dwells: I thought this was going to be about my house so I watched it. 

[Jack]

Legendary (2013) - this scientists guy and his team go to China to capture some overgrown lizard creature that's killing the locals. Dolph Lundgren shows up wanting to kill the thing, but mostly to be a a-hole to the scientist guy (and stand around looking cool in his Dolph Lundgren sort of way). This was totally run-of-the-mill stuff if you've ever seen something in this genre before, but the characters were passable and enough stuff happened to keep it from getting boring. The CGI critter looked okay. 3/5.

[Rev. Powell]

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959): A French actress and a Japanese architect share a brief passionate affair in Hiroshima fifteen years after the atom bomb. A sad, almost despairing postwar elegy about the impossibility of human connection, about the impossibility of remembering and the impossibility of forgetting, set in a city rebuilt on the ruins of the world's largest graveyard. 4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

PATCH TOWN (2014): The movie that explains what happens to Cabbage Patch dolls after their owners grow to old for dolls: their memories are wiped and they are sent to factories to build more of their kind (and to sing showtunes). Unfortunately, this film doesn't exploit its great subversive premise, instead relying on standard, predictable Hollywood comedy conventions; the idea is like something a young Tim Burton would have come up with, but the execution is like something an old Tim Burton would deliver. 2.5/5.

[Jack]

Fields of the Dead (2014) - some college kids go to a farm to do some research but the place is haunted and eventually they start getting killed off. The characters in this were good, fun and witty, but as far as the plot, well two backstories were given for the haunting and neither explained the events of the movie, and it never made the transition from "fun" mode to "scary" mode so the parts which were supposed to be frightening didn't work at all. Still, all the girls were hot, so a generous 3.5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Penguins of Madagascar" (2014)

http://youtu.be/10OTg6lD4Jc

In their debut full-length adventure, the paramilitary penguins face off against a supervillain octopus who has an axe to grind with all of penguin-kind. Essentially this is an animated "Mission: Impossible" flick with an all-funny-animal cast. Lots of cartoon mayhem, fun for kids, painless for their parents.

[indianasmith]

Last night I watched a double feature:
FAULTS (2015) - A former cult expert and psychologist has crashed and burned in life after a girl he rescued from a cult committed suicide. He is reduced to giving talks at cheap hotels and trying to plug his books to bored audiences of vacationers.  Then two elderly parents ask him to intervene and rescue their daughter from a cult that she is mired in.  He hires a couple of guys to help him and kidnaps the girl, taking her to a remote, cheap motel for deprogramming.  As the process goes on, it seems more and more like she is the one in control and HE is the one being manipulated . . . this was well done, on a shoestring budget, with some great acting and an engaging story.

EVIL BONG 420 - You know, Full Moon Pictures once produced some pretty good quality low budget horror films.  I loved the SUBSPECIES trilogy and quite a bit of their other stuff.  I'll admit I haven't seen any of the EVIL BONG or GINGERDEAD MAN movies before this one, so I didn't really know what to expect.  Well, it was 53 minutes of pot, bowling, boobs, and Gingerdead Man plotting to escape from Bong World and find his nemesis, a balding  stoner named Rabbit, who has escaped back to earth and is running a Topless Bowling Alley.  Yeah, it's that bad.  5/5 on the bad movie scale, 2/5 on the horror movie scale!

[Jack]

Roadside Massacre (2012) - some kids go to a small town (population: 4) to search for the sister of one of the girls. Turns out there's a restaurant in town that serves the most delectable barbecued ribs anyone has ever tasted...gosh, wonder what happens to the missing people? The acting was bad but not nearly as bad as the writing, good grief these people come off as the biggest idiots in cheap horror movie history. Like, if you're in a room with three psychos and you manage to get your hands on a hunting knife and make your escape, what's the first thing you should do? Why, toss the big knife on the ground of course And then when they capture you again and you escape again, take a few minutes to argue with the guy you're with about whether you should keep running or just stand there like a complete imbecile. If I was the guy I'd be like "Hey psycho killers, she's over here!"

2.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Hero and the Terror" (1988)

http://youtu.be/_wAxEhRxkk0

A blander-than-usual late '80s entry for Chuck Norris. The Mighty Bearded One plays a typically bad-ass L.A. cop who hunts for a serial woman-strangler while dealing with romantic issues and impending fatherhood on the home front. Skip it.