Recent Viewings, Part 2

[FatFreddysCat]

"Off The Rails" (2016)
A documentary about the odd case Darius McCollum, an autistic New York train enthusiast whose obsession with mass transit has led him to repeatedly impersonate a New York MTA employee so he can drive trains and city buses. He's been incarcerated 32 (!) times for his crimes yet he continues to violate Parole in order to take trains and buses for joy rides.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Angel" (1984)
A teenage honor student by day (Donna Wilkes) leads a secret double life as a prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard at night. As if that wasn't enough pressure, she becomes the target of a serial killer who's already carved up a few of her friends.
This long time cable cult favorite somehow manages to find a balance between sleazy exploitation flick and After School Special style cautionary drama. Followed by three (!) sequels, each with a different girl in the title role.

[Rev. Powell]

CUDDLY TOYS (2022): A mondo-style experimental mockumentary about the dangers facing today's teenage girls and refuses to shy away from the worst case scenario. An extremely angry feminist film that drapes its indignation in a layer of low-budget camp irony, which somehow both blunts and sharpens its impact.  3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Love Me Deadly (1972) - Well, that was certainly something. A woman who looks like Chrissy from Three's Company has a REALLY dark secret: she's a necrophiliac! Also, she got that way because of unresolved feelings towards her late father. Someone was doing some baaaaaaad drugs when they made this reasonably well acted and played totally straight WTF film experience. 

The last 1/3 is the craziest and best part. The rest of the movie could have used a little of that energy instead of the soap opera ish, marriage drama vibe. Would make a good double biill with "Neither The Sand, Nor The Sea" or even "The Baby".

4.33 /5

It was a bit lower heading in to the last half hour, but that redeemed it. Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club would probably enjoy this. The terrible, overheated theme song is the icing on the cake. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3ICBDNmMY (warning: gross corpse kiss)

[FatFreddysCat]

"Your Mother Wears Combat Boots" (1989)
When an overprotective single Mom (Barbara Eden) learns that her only child has quit college and joined the Army, she travels to his base to talk him out of it, but ends up inadvertently going through Airborne training herself.
A fluffy made for TV "Private Benjamin"/"Stripes" knock-off that gets by mostly on the charms of its leading lady (Barb was in her late 50s when she made this, but was still lookin' pretty MILF-y) and ample support from vets Hector Elizondo (as Barb's exasperated Sergeant) and Conchita ("Two and a Half Men") Ferrell. Not a must see but an OK time waster for a rainy afternoon.

[Rev. Powell]

Rewatch, but I don't think I've reviewed it here before. CURE (1997): A detective investigates a series of killings where ordinary people slay their loved ones after meeting a mysterious man with amnesia. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's existential classic is a dark police procedural that is actually about the search for identity and the battle with the evil inside each of us. 4.5/5.

[Trevor]

BIG BOOB BANGAROO

Not bad. 😉🦖

[M.10rda]

I'll check out OFF THE RAILS. It is said that if you know one person on the autism spectrum, you know one person on the autism spectrum. However fwiw I know (or know of) multiple people on the autism spectrum who are obsessed w/ trains.  Seems odd, but it's a thing. Maybe Trains are the new Anime.

[zombie no.one]

I'll check out OFF THE RAILS. It is said that if you know one person on the autism spectrum, you know one person on the autism spectrum. However fwiw I know (or know of) multiple people on the autism spectrum who are obsessed w/ trains.  Seems odd, but it's a thing. Maybe Trains are the new Anime.

my mother's job used to be working with kids diagnosed with autism, and she said more often than not they would be obsessed with Thomas The Tank Engine !

[lester1/2jr]

Rec (2007) - Good ol' Rec, hadn't watched this one in a while. It is certainly in the top tier of found footage horror movies, maybe even the best one considering how boring most of Blair Watch was. Right off the bat, you can tell the people involved are on board with making it realistic and making the characters likeable and relatable. It does, at certain points, resemble a video game, where the leads are dodging zombies and discovering clues and so forth. I wouldn't be surprised if it was influenced by some of that, like the one where you shoot zombies at the amusement park. Maybe the writer worked at Dave and Buster's in a mall somewhere.

A cute and feisty young reporter who has an "Insomniac" type show on Spanish TV hopes something interesting and salable happens when she does an episode at a firehouse. Her wish is granted, but it's a little more than she bargained for. Rec Spawned a number of sequels and makes most found footage movies look half assed and lazy ( probably because the genre has been taken over by microbudget narcissists. )

4.75 /5 almost perfect, (though not EXACTLY my thing)

[indianasmith]

DO NOT ENTER (2026) - This was a pretty cool found footage film about a group of Instagram urban explorers who break into a hotel where gangster Meyers Lansky supposedly hid some $300 million of his loot, only to find the place is haunted by something not quite human.  Really well done overall, although the ending was a little cheesy.  A solid 4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

DRACULA (2025): The Romanian one. A Romanian director wants to make a movie about Dracula but he has no good ideas, so he asks A.I. for assistance, resulting in about a dozen absurd short films. A pair of actors are hunted by vampire killers who've paid for the privilege, there's an adaptation of a classic gothic horror story, and Vlad the Impaler appears as a fascistic boss with a robot sidekick, and so on, with each scene including deliberately ugly A.I. enhancements. Mostly obscene, occasionally amusing and sometimes even witty, but you get the distinct feeling Radu Jude made this scattershot satire/parody to amuse himself, not you. 2/5.

[M.10rda]

I wasn't expecting Radu Jude's name to appear at the end of that review. That's probably a bigger/better twist than any in the film itself. 

[FatFreddysCat]

"Event Horizon" (1997)
In the year 2047, a space rescue crew boards a derelict space ship that's been missing for seven years. In that time, the ship has reached the end of the known universe... and brought something evil back with it.
I've been meaning to revisit this underrated-as-hell space-horror flick since one of its stars, the great Sam Neill, passed away a few weeks ago. It didn't do much box office business in '97 but it's become a cult item since then, sitting squarely at the intersection of "Alien," "The Black Hole," and "Hellraiser."

"Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" (1993)
There's a new vigilante in Gotham, killing off the leaders of the city's underworld and leaving Batman as the prime suspect. As he investigates, the Dark Knight learns that these killings may be connected to a long-lost love from his early days as a crime fighter.
Theatrical spin off from "Batman: The Animated Series" features plenty of bone-crunching cartoonmayhem and fine voice work by the late, great Kevin Conroy as the Bat and Mark Hamill as the Joker.

[M.10rda]

EVENT HORIZON... man, what a disappointment in the theater in '97. This movie does so much so well for a while that it truly stings when it grows predictable (which isn't something one could say about ALIEN, HELLRAISER, or the off-the-wall BLACK HOLE) and of course when Neill's makeup at the end resembles a human char-grilled ballpark frank. Great cast, w/ Jason Isaacs and Sean Pertwee rising to Neill's level. I just wish someone took the film away from P.W.S. Anderson and gave it to Cronenberg or someone else more competent.

Have meant to post a formal tribute to Sam Neill, but - what needs be said? Obviously a Great Actor but also maybe one of the very Greatest Supporting Actors. If "Supporting Actor" has a page on Wikipedia, photos of Sam from MY BRILLIANT CAREER and POSSESSION belong at the top of the page. Although it isn't in the same class of Great Cinema, I'd rank HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE right up there with Sam's greatest work. He's perfectly solid as the second lead for the whole movie, then right at the end delivers this utterly devastating line reading that elevates the entire film. Cheers, Sam.