Recent viewings

[claws]

Years of the Beast (1981)

A College Professor and his wife are heading to a secluted farm during rough times: it's the midst of the rapture. People disappear within the blink of an eye, food is getting scarse, and there's vandalism and chaos. On the farm the couple teams with two more people and they all try to survive the apocalypse.

Wow. A Christian movie not trying to preach or to push beliefs or forcing some religious message. I'm not sure if this was made by some church but I do appreciate the effort in making this entertaining. It is very low budget and comes with a corny theme song, and there are quite a few typical B-Movie moments scattered throughout. Not very violent but it gives you an eerie feeling and food for thought. Worth checking out. Rating: 3/5 (Good)

[indianasmith]

GET OUT (2107) - I had been meaning to see this one for some time, and it wound up being my last movie of 2017.  I had heard that it was an excellent horror/suspense title, and I heard right! Entertaining and creepy from start to finish.

[Rev. Powell]

CRIME WAVE [AKA THE BIG CRIME WAVE] (1985): In 1950s Canada, a young girl becomes obsessed with helping the writer who's renting her parents attic complete his "color crime movie" script; he can write beginnings and endings, but has trouble with the middles. John Paizs' labor of love is a unique, ahead-of-its-time retro camp comedy with an off-the-chain surreal third act; it prefigures both BARTON FINK and the oeuvre of fellow Winnipeg native Guy Maddin. Retitled THE BIG CRIME WAVE to avoid confusion with Sam Raimi's CRIMEWAVE from the same year. 4/5.

[indianasmith]

Still watching my way through Season 1 of Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR.
(For those who've never seen them, each episode is a 1 hour, stand-alone movie by a famous horror director or screenwriter)
Tonight's fare included:
HAECKEL'S TALE - a young man mourning his lost love seeks out a necromancer to raise her from the dead.  But she warns him against his plan by telling him the chilling story of a young doctor, some fifty years before, who discovered first hand that bringing the dead back to life can come at awful cost.  This is a gruesomely titillating tale that lends new meaning to the term "stiffy."

JENIFER - A cop catches a man about to decapitate a young woman with a meat cleaver.  He shoots the attacker, only to discover that the victim is a young woman with the body of a supermodel and the face of a gargoyle, who is incapable of speech.  The only thing he knows about her is her name - 'jenifer' - from a piece of paper her attacker was carrying.  But this speechless young woman with the horrible face comes to exercise a powerful erotic attraction over him when he takes her into his home . . . and he discovers her appetites are a tad - well, unusual to say the least!

[lester1/2jr]

Last Kind Words (2012) - well, its not that scary but the writing and acting are much stronger than anything I've seen lately. A certain type of horror fan will really hate this, but if you can appreciate stuff like Witch (2015) I'd say give it a shot.

A likeable, duncey southern teenager and his Dad arrive at a run down ranch to do some work. Pretty soon, the kid runs into Amanda, a hot girl who seems to come from the forest itself. She wins him over in short order but implores him not to hop this certain fence, which he does ( also in short order). The Garden of Eden temptation aspect is driven home maybe a little too much when he takes an apple from a tree ( of sex?) when he gets to the other side.

A good comic relief sort of character is Katie, his Janeane Garofalo ish friend who comes to keep him company. She does modern things like swearing and having a cell phone. It breaks up the mildly overbearing rustic vibe* and generally gives non ranch hand viewers a bit more of an entry point. *I mean Amanda has a TRANSISTOR RADIO that plays country music its a little much sometimes.

There's no big special effect scenes or goblins or anything like that and the ranch owner guy looks like Cramer from TVs Mad Money but I liked it a lot anyway.

5 /5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Sharknado 5: Global Swarming" (2017)
Fin, April, Nova and the gang are back (again) to save the world from yet another series of catastrophic Sharknado outbreaks which threaten the entire planet. 
SyFy/Asylum's signature franchise keeps getting bigger, louder, and dumber with each new installment. At this point, forget about getting a coherent story or decent performances. Just turn your brain off and chuckle at the cheap CGI mayhem, the nods to other/better movies, and the endless cameos by D-list celebrities lining up to get munched (including Fabio, Samantha Fox, Clay Aiken, Gilbert Gottfried, Kathie Lee Gifford, and many more). 

[Rev. Powell]

RINGU (1998): A journalist investigates an urban legend about a cursed video tape whose watchers die a week after viewing it... naturally, she pops it in the VCR herself... It's easy to see why this was a hit: it takes its viral premise with refreshing seriousness, taking time to tell its story without resorting to jump scares or other tricks. The US remake was of about equal quality. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Our Man in Casablanca" (aka "The Killer Lacks a Name," 1966)


Spanish/Italian Euro-spy fun with Lang Jeffries as a American agent tangling with femme fatales and a bad guy with an electrified metal hand (!) over some stolen documents.
As usual with these cheap 007 knockoffs, the story is a muddle but the exotic Moroccan scenery is lovely and so is the female eye candy.

[lester1/2jr]

Videodrome - this is one of those movies I had seen before but somehow hadn't. It came on tv so I sat and watched the whole thing which is rare for me nowadays. It's a sci fi movie I mean everyone knows the plot and who's in it and what it's about. after seeing it but not seeing it a bunch of times over the years I'm glad I watched it. sorry this is a little repetitive but it's short

5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

It was my 10 year old son's turn to pick a movie on Netflix. This is what we got...

"Expelled" (2015)

After breaking the rules one too many times, a teenage prankster finally gets himself kicked out of school. If his parents find out, he'll be packed off to a military academy...so he embarks on a series of crazy schemes aimed at weaseling his way back into school before Mom and Dad discover what's happened. Lots of  hi-jinks that owe much to "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" ensue.

If your kids have never seen "Ferris," they might get a kick out of this preteen-friendly comedy...but I felt like I was watching a cheap remake. Also, the kid in the lead role (who is apparently a YouTube star of some kind) was such a smug prick that I was wishing someone would punch him in the throat after about ten minutes. :D

In other words... if you don't have kids, there's no need to bother with this one.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Really?  I seriously wonder why he's not in jail?  Did he get off on some technicality?

(Note to self:  If they make a JEEPERS CREEPERS 4, don't rent it!)

Actually, after the incident, I do believe he served time for the incident. How much time? I do not know, as the whole incident is so ugly, I don't want to look it up. He served his time, and then was released.

[indianasmith]

MASTERS OF HORROR: SICK GIRL
   This is a dark tale of parasitic love between a previously unclassified, giant insect, a lesbian entomologist, and a young art student (played by the always gorgeous Erin Brown, AKA Misty Mundae).  Dr. Teeter is a lovelorn bug specialist whose profession is offputting to the women she tries to date.  Misty is a dreamy young art student who has the hots for her, and in the midst of this a package shows up on Teeter's door with a giant insect, nearly a foot long, that promptly escapes its cage and begins laying its eggs in the ear of any convenient host . . . like two distracted lesbians who live in the apartment where it roams.  This is a twisted story of metamorphosis and madness, cleverly done and very creepy.

MASTERS OF HORROR: HOMECOMING
     A political attack on the Bush administration and the war in Iraq masquerading as a horror story, featuring a White House political strategist and a blond news commentator a la Anne Coulter.  Soldiers killed in action rise from the grave to vote against the President who sent them to their deaths.  When the election is rigged so that the incumbent wins, they march on Washington.  Look, I have no problem with political propaganda in the guise of a horror story.  I don't even mind if it takes a swipe at my side of the aisle if it is cleverly done and funny.  But this is such a hamfisted, transparent exercise in Bush-bashing that not even military zombies could redeem it. 

[Rev. Powell]

LIFE IN BED (2003): Three New Yorker women move to L.A. to make it big, but end up spending most of their time in their shared king-sized bed with an upcoming rock star. A wandering indie comedy that begins as if its going to be a variation on EXTERMINATING ANGEL where the protagonist can't leave her bed, but quickly abandons that premise for a series of sketches about how tough it is to be a jobless actress in Hollywood, what with all the cocaine and guys always hitting on you. Well-meaning but far from a must see; some sex livens things up. 1.5/5.

[Trevor]

Been viewing my bank statements: *shudder* 

[Rev. Powell]

BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (2006): "Guy Maddin" remembers his childhood growing up with a mad scientist father and a domineering mother in a combination lighthouse/orphanage, and the alluring detective who came one summer to investigate the family's secrets... More Maddin madness, another experimental silent film with bizarre editing, surreal components, breathless melodrama, and psychosexual comedy; the Isabella Rossellini narration and B-movie plot make this one slightly more accessible than the most obscure Maddins. 4/5.