Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Dr. Whom]

Nezha Reborn (2021)

In a magical cyberpunk version of the Chinese warlord era, a street racer/smuggler finds out he is the reincarnation of Nezha, some kind of powerful chaos demon. This upsets the plans of domination of the clan of the Dragon King of the East Sea. With the help of a mysterious stranger (who turns out to be the Monkey King) our hero tries to control the chaos and save his world.

Another all action, all the time Chinese animation. It is based on a Ming dynasty novel, and like many of these adaptations, characters drift in and out the story, in a way that probably makes more sense if you are familiar with the original story. As far as the animation is concerned, it is a bit a mixed bag. It has some spectacular scenes and designs, but it would seem that the vision was sometimes too ambitious for the capabilities of the animation team, so there is some corner cutting, notably with the faces. Still, you have lots of action and it is very entertaining in a video game sort of way. Fun but forgettable.

[indianasmith]

TITANIC 666 (2022)  It turns out my new Spectrum TV package includes a subscription to TubiTV, so when I saw this dreadful piece of shlock mentioned here I looked it up and gave it a spin.  About as bad as a typical Asylum film - the newly furbished TITANIC 3 (not sure what happened to #2; was that another Asylum movie?) sets sail with many priceless artifacts from the original ship.  The great-granddaughter of the original Titanic's Capt. Smith calls down a curse on the ship for desecrating sacred waters, vengeful ghosts rise from the deep, and everybody dies.  Not as awful as it could have been, but lordy, it's not good! 2.5/5

BOUDICA: RISE OF THE WARRIOR QUEEN:  This was a movie about the legendary Celtic queen who raised a mighty rebellion against Rome in the time of Nero - except this movie is about how she became queen of the Iceni, a long backstory of teen romances, bad marriage, and betrayal by the Romans.  Not bad, but not great. 2.5/5

[Rev. Powell]

WHAT? (2021): A modern silent movie about a struggling deaf actor determined to land a role in a Hollywood movie. The script cleverly immerses viewers in the frustrations of deaf life without seeming too preachy, and there are decent Buster Keaton inspired gags. Ironically, perhaps, the accompanying soundtrack is pretty good. Needless to say, deaf viewers will respond much more enthusiastically. 3/5 if you can hear.

[jimpickens]

Skinner a pretty decent 93 serial killer movie a forgotten classic.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Metal Lords" (2022)
Two dorky high schoolers start a metal band, hoping that a victory at the upcoming Battle of the Bands will finally open the doors to popularity for them. However, their fruitless search for a bass player eventually leads them to consider hiring a troubled, cello-playing girl (!) instead.
A sporadically funny Netflix teen comedy with a metal backdrop. My 14 year old son loved it (he's exactly the target demographic they were shooting for) and I had fun pointing out all the old school metal love being displayed on t-shirts, posters, and on the soundtrack. Oh, and there are a couple of surprise rock star cameos that made me smile. Worth a look.

"Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks" (2019)
Bone crunchingly cool documentary about the history of martial arts movies, from the humble low budget origins in 1960s Hong Kong, through the grindhouse era of the 70s and the rise of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, through the VHS era and the genre's continued influence on virtually every corner of pop culture and filmmaking to this very day. Loaded with interviews with the genre's movers and shakiers and plenty of ultra violent clips from classic films. Tons o' chop-socky fun!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Spider-Man: No Way Home" (2021)
Picking up where Far From Home left off, the whole world now knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Peter (Tom Holland) goes to Dr. Strange to see if he can cast a spell that will make everyone "forget" his secret I.D. However, the spell goes wrong and creates a tear in the fabric of the multi-verse, allowing a variety of Spidey villains - and other Spider-Men! - from different realities to enter "our" world.
Marvel and Sony throw everything but the kitchen sink into this Spidey-extravaganza, with (SPOILER ALERT) baddies like Alfred Molina as Doc Ock and Willem DaFoe as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin returning to the franchise, and (SPOILER ALERT) Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield (who, let's face it, kinda got the shaft during his Spidey era) dropping by to play a major part in the third act. The nearly two and a half hour run time absolutely flies by. Is it the best Spider-Man movie of 'em all? I think it may be!

[Jim H]

Phoenix the Warrior, AKA She-Wolves of the Wasteland (1988).

Man, what a badly made movie.  It's kind of amazing to me that this was shot on film, just thinking about the set-up, development costs involved, technical crew required, etc.  Like I get on shot on video stuff being this shoddy, but on 35mm?  Also props to them getting Boris Vallejo to do the the cover, best use of money for the film hands down.



Anyway, this is a Road Warrior ripoff with almost only women.  There was a war, all the men died for some reason.  Now there's some ancient witch lady who I guess is breeding new people and sucks the souls out of men or something?  It's actually kind of hard to follow.  A woman is on the run from her and a warrior lady helps her.  Everyone runs around the whole film basically in bikinis or fetish gear, but oddly there's only about 5 minutes of the film with nudity, and none from the leads.

The transitions between scenes are just terrible.  There's several times where there's a cut and literally years have passed, but it's 100% impossible to tell.  Like a woman is pregnant, than a hard cut later she's giving birth and everyone is in the same clothes.  There's a bunch of gunfights and fistfights, and they're just awful too.   

I'll give it credit for a few things though.  For the first two thirds, it is not boring.  That may not sound like a big deal, but man, a lot of Mad Max knockoffs are just insanely boring sequences of people walking around in the desert 90% of the time.  This one keeps changing locales, or will have a random fight, or just parade around women in ridiculous costumes.  It clips along.  They also briefly have a mutated group that worships television, and it's actually an interesting idea.  But then the last third is a total snooze fest, and the ending is incoherent.

Oh, and the make-up effects are surprisingly solid, especially on the witch lady - she has a tube going into her head, and you can see liquid going through it regularly, pretty neat.  She also looks appropriately old and mutated.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised looking at the credits though - it's a man by the name of Scott Coulter, who'd go on to work on effects in little films like The Expendables, and TV shows like Tales from the Crypt.

[FatFreddysCat]

TITANIC 666 (2022)  It turns out my new Spectrum TV package includes a subscription to TubiTV, so when I saw this dreadful piece of shlock mentioned here I looked it up and gave it a spin.  About as bad as a typical Asylum film - the newly furbished TITANIC 3 (not sure what happened to #2; was that another Asylum movie?)

Yes, Titanic II was a thing, released by Asylum way back in 2010. It's gloriously god-awful.

[chainsaw midget]

A bought a 5-movie DVD pack called Cheer!  Rally!  Kill!  expecting some decent cheerleader schlock.  About ten minutes or so into the first one, the "new boyfriend" character starts acting like a psycho and attacks another guy for just looking at his girlfriend.  I thought to myself, "this feels like a Lifetime Original Movie.  I looked up the DVD online. 

It turns out they're all Lifetime original movies. 

[Rev. Powell]

ANATOMY OF HELL (2004): A straight woman pays a gay man to observe her naked body for four nights, and they become intimate. A strange pseudo-erotic, pseudo-intellectual experiment that must be a deep metaphor, because taken literally it's completely ridiculous and insulting. Very explicit, just a notch below hardcore (the male lead is porn star Rocco Siffredi, who actually isn't bad). 2.5/5.

[Jim H]

Terror Within 2 - I saw the first like 25 years ago, and only remember thinking it was bad.  So I watched the sequel, only half paying attention to the first 40 minutes.  I don't think I missed much.  Instead of George Kennedy, we get R. Lee Ermey.  Whatever.  It's bad, but watchable bad.  It's got some goopy monsters that are OK I guess, and there's a scene where the hero avenges his dog that was the highlight of the film.

Oh, for a quick logic gap, here's something.  The main character gets the leading lady pregnant while he's escorting her out in the desert.  Then she gets raped by one of the monsters in this movie, and its sperm infects the zygote and it becomes a monster fetus.  All of this happened while they were wandering in the desert for apparently days or weeks.  Then they get to the underground bunker place and they put her on a monitor when they realize she's pregnant - and they have live video footage of her getting impregnated and the monster sperm too!  How the hell does that work, can their medical scanner see through time?  It was baffling, and stupid too - all they needed to do was show the fetus was abnormal, audience would get why...

Dead Space (1991) - My interest was spiked because of the video game of the same name, I must note.  But, Roger Corman's remake of his own Forbidden World is pretty god damn terrible.  It is shot very poorly, the action scenes are really bad, the editing is frequently incoherent, the writing is bad, it's just a stinker almost top to bottom.  The one highlight are some of the monsters are fun.  Oh, another game connection, the final design is VERY similar to a hydralisk in StarCraft to the point where I wonder if it was an influence.  Also, it was fun seeing a super young Bryan Cranston.  Huge plus - film is only 70 minutes long.  It feels more like 90. 

Dead Space monster:


Hydralisk:


Though I suppose both are basically queen alien + Gigan, so maybe it just naturally flowed that way.

[FatFreddysCat]

"National Lampoon's Animal House" (1978)
It's 1962 at Faber College, and the new pledges of Delta Tau Chi get caught up in the ongoing battle war the slovenly, hard partying frat bro's and the school's exasperated Dean Wormer, who wants to kick Delta House off campus for good. Wacky hijinks and mayhem ensue.
"Animal House" made a ton of money, turned John Belushi (who totally steals the movie) into a legit film star, and inspired countless low budget teen-sex-comedy imitations. It was considered controversial and excessively raunchy in its day, but while its edges have been dulled by the passage of time, it's still great fun, full of gags and endlessly quotable bits.

[Rev. Powell]

THE MADS ARE BACK: THE DEVIL'S HAND: In the movie, Commissioner Gordon (Neil Hamilton) is a Satanist (OK, he actually worships some dark god named with the scary name "Gabba") doll maker who lures a not-so-innocent horny guy into his cult by offering sex with a witch. For a public domain horror I'd never heard of before, this was a hoot, and the riffing was up to par. Now for my complaint: they edited about 15 minutes out of the movie, just so we could spend more time with the special guest Dave Hill (a musician/comedian who didn't really light my fire). I like these but it feels like they emphasize the Q&A segments way too much for my taste: I could do with just the movie, thanks, I don't need to know what everyone's watching on TV. 3/5.

[Dr. Whom]

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

This is very meta: Nicolas plays himself in a movie in which he makes a movie where he is playing himself.

The movie version of Nicolas Cage takes an offer of 1 million dollars to feature at a birthday party of billionaire playboy Javi. He is then approached by the CIA who tell him that Javi is in fact a criminal mastermind, and they need Nicolas Cage to infiltrate the mansion. Hijinks ensue.

This one is a hoot. Nicolas Cage turns it up to 11 playing a caricature of himself while Pedro Pascal embraces the silliness of it all with infectious enthusiasm. The plot is perfunctory, it is just loads of silly fun with lots of callbacks to Nicolas Cage's previous roles, not to mention his interactions with his younger self.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The One" (2001)
An L.A. police officer (Jet Li) has been targeted for elimination by his "evil twin" - a version of himself from another universe, who's been tripping across dimensions and murdering each of his "other" selves in order to absorb their life forces and achieve cosmic powers...or something like that. Obviously, much butt is kicked and lots of things crash and explode.
The plot of this sci-fi actioner is total comic book nonsense (props for using the "multi-verse" hook waaaay before there was an MCU, though!) but the action scenes are impressive (esp. Jet's climactic fight against "himself") and the whole thing moves so fast that you don't really have time to think about how silly it is till it's all over. Nothin' special, just a decent popcorn action flick.