Recent viewings

[Rev. Powell]

THE GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS (1973): A mining company representative tries to buy leases from the hostile residents of Virginia City, NV, while meanwhile some phosphorescent gas has turned a sheep embryo into a monster. After scenes like the sheep stampede and the dog funeral, you might be wondering if this is a genuine bad movie from an LSD-damaged director or deliberate camp; in either case, it's absurd enough to keep the interest of trash aficionados. Maybe 3/5 for bad movie fans, worth seeing.

[lester1/2jr]

^that thing was insane looking


One take (1997) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127058/

imagine a sensitive, romantic, thought provoking drama done with the budget of a backyard zombie movie. It doesn't happen often, but somehow a guy with a decent sense of story telling managed to get his movie made. It should give hope to prospective film makers, but no one has seen this and it will never be any sort of thing. actually that's not true, bill bob thornton gives a blurb that its a wonderful movie or something.

the plot is a guys (really pretty hot) girlfriend dies and somehow sends him a postcard from beyond the grave. He decides to go check out where she's from to see what the hell is going on. He's racked with guilt about the fact that her appendicts burst while they were camping and it was his fault because he wanted to go to the top of the stupid mountain they were climbing.

Interesting twists and turns and people emerge. it snuck down my queue and I'm glad it did

4.75/ 5

[Rev. Powell]

THE POST (2017): Historical account of the Washington Post's decision to publish the Pentagon Papers despite legal threats from the Nixon administration. Spielberg directs Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, so quality is assured---definitely not fake news. 3.5/5.

[Svengoolie 3]

So did Spielberg work in a scene with Meryl Streep bound and helplessly facing fiery death?   

[FatFreddysCat]

"Ms. 45" (1981)
A mousy NYC garment district worker is raped twice in the same day (Ouch! What are the odds?), which understandably causes her to have a mental breakdown. Eventually she becomes a vigilante by night, blowing away random punks, pimps, and hustlers.
Abel Ferrara's artsy, gory female "Death Wish" variant was pretty strong stuff for 1981 but nowadays it's almost quaint. Still, it's worth a look if you're a grindhouse completist, especially for the old-school downtown New York locations, which are so grimy you can practically smell the garbage and the hobo urine.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Resident Evil" (2002)
A security team has to fight its way out of a secret corporate facility crawling with zombie-fied employees and flesh munching mutations -- the result of a lab accident with a top secret virus.
Based on the long running series of video games, this loud, chaotic slab of high tech sci-fi/horror nonsense was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson of "Event Horizon" and "Alien vs Predator" fame (and stars his wife, Milla Jovovich). It also launched an equally long running film franchise. I doubt if I'll bother to watch any of the half dozen or so sequels that have followed this one, but "Resident Evil" was an entertainingly silly time killer on a rainy day.

[lester1/2jr]

Kloverfield - I've been putting off writing this because it's just such an established movie who cares what anyone thinks in 2018. It seems to be influenced by 9/11 in the way that Godzilla movies were influenced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I thought all the characters were pretty good if not utterly perfect and that it was pretty cool by and large. idk do I get a milkshake or something?

4/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Top Dog" (1995)
A tough San Diego cop (Chuck Norris) is saddled with a scruffy new canine partner,  and together the mismatched pair must solve a series of bombings. Lots of car crashes, shootouts, and explosions follow. Imagine "K-9" or "Turner & Hooch" with way more slow motion roundhouse kicking.
This cheap looking flick tried to mesh a standard Chuck Norris butt-kicking action plot with some cute animal hi-jinks in order to pass itself off as a "family" film, but its story is too dark and violent for kids (the bad guys are home-grown Neo-Nazi terrorists!) and too silly for grown-ups.
In a classic example of bad timing, "Top Dog" opened a week after the Oklahoma City bombing... and when it tanked, it took the remnants of Norris' declining film career with it. Fortunately he already had "Walker: Texas Ranger" up and running by the time this movie crashed and burned.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Cherry 2000" (1987)
In the desolate future of 2017 (ha!), a yuppie from the city hires a female "tracker" (Melanie Griffith) to guide him through the desert wastelands so he can find a replacement model for his beloved robot wife.
This quirky cult action comedy is an entertainingly weird mash up of genres (cyberpunk sci-fi, Western, post-apocalypse, and yes, even romance) but somehow it manages to make all the clashing ideas and styles work.
I had seen this flick once before on HBO but that was dog years ago, and I remembered next to nothing about it. I'm glad I revisited it cuz this "Cherry" was cool stuff. Recommended.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Founder" (2016)
Michael Keaton stars in this entertaining period piece as Ray Kroc, the struggling restaurant-supply salesman whose chance meeting with two California brothers with a unique twist on the standard '50s burgers-and-fries drive-in eventually becomes McDonald's, the biggest fast-food chain in the world. Dryly funny and well written with great performances all around, esp. by Keaton and Nick "Parks and Recreation" Offerman as the tightly-wound Richard McDonald. Good stuff.

[316zombie]

"lady in the water"-m.night shyalaman
    i was REALLY impressed with this movie! i need to buy the dvd AND the book soon, my greatniece and nephews will love it too. there are very few things in life better than a fairy tale movie that grownups like too.

[indianasmith]

THE PATRIOT (2000) - I've seen this one so many times, but it never gets old.  Yes, I know the main storyline is pure fiction.  Yes,  I know the British never locked people in a church and burned them (although they and their Loyalist allies did some absolutely HORRIBLE things during the Southern Campaign of 1779-81).  But it's a fun, well-acted, beautifully filmed movie with a stirring score by Hans Zimmer.  So the haters can eat dirt, I love this film!! 5/5

[Svengoolie 3]

I just watched "the cloverfield paradox" on netflix and my general opinion is that it's bad, and not in a good way. It's got great effects and acting, but the sotry is just a mess. mostly it's a horror movie set in space. You know all those movies where the find the drifitng ship, board it and start getting killed by ghosts? Yeah, it's basically that on a space station. Substitute "quantum" for curse and alternate dimension for ghosts and that's basically the cloverfield paradox.

Dumb depressing storyline that makes no sense because of the magic word "Quantum!"  Also depressing because as soon as someone shows some intelligence and actually solves a problem he's killed in some horrific way. Almost as if being an intelligent reasonable person who solves a problem is an automatic death sentence. XXXX you, anti intellectuals.

Sadly the movie had great effects, very high quality. Wasted in a boring, inane evil spirits out for revenge movie plot.

Also, TCP manages to snatch utter disaster from the jaws of simple failure at the very end.

[Fox Sake]

"Le Diabolique" (1955 France) - one of my favourites, and a film I never tire of re-watching.

A Parisian boarding school  is run on a shoe-string budget by a bullying & arrogant governor (Paul Meurisse),who is married to the school's owner (Véra Clouzot). Meurisse
is also having a secret relationship with one of the teachers (Simone Signoret). Both women have suffered under the heavy hands of Meuriss, so they both hatch an elaborate plan to kill him!

A simple premise excellently revealed under the expert eye of director Henri-Georges Clouzot (real-life husband to Véra); and the ending is the icing on the cake - for me at least. Lots of suspense, and one or two quite heart-stopping moments thrown into the mix as well. One would be forgiven in thinking tht this was directed by someone like Alfred Hitchcock - but instead it seems the great man learnt a lot from this film and later went on to make "Psycho" 

5/5

[Rev. Powell]

A PAGE OF MADNESS (1926): A man takes a job at an insane asylum with the hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife. Often called the Japanese answer to THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, the story is not strong (it was intended to be shown with live narration by a "benshi," and that script is apparently lost), but the imagery is striking and advanced for 1926---kinetic editing, double images, and distorting lenses---and sells the demented melodrama. 4/5.