Recent viewings

[Pilgermann]

The Monster Maker -- A mad doctor desires a woman who looks just like his dead wife, and injects her father, a concert pianist, with acromegaly (!) and offers a cure for the syndrome in exchange for the daughter's hand in marriage.  This should've been more entertaining than it was (it even had a guy in an ape suit!) but I found it to be mostly dumb and boring.

[Rev. Powell]

ELEVATOR MOVIE (2004): A socially maladjusted college student and a former slut turned Jesus freak are trapped in an elevator together--impossibly, for months on end. Sexually perverse and provocative bit of surrealism for the ERASERHEAD set, but sadly the amateur actors in this two-character, single-set filmed play can't live up to the demands placed on them by the (very good) screenplay.  Very disturbing images stick with you long after the credits roll.  3/5.

[Joe the Destroyer]

Last Man Standing- I certainly wasn't.  I stopped this horrible movie about halfway through.  I think the main thing I didn't like about it was the one fundamental and structural design: why the flying hell didn't anyone shoot Bruce Willis?  I know they tried, but not hard enough.  You'd think they would have tried more times, and eventually succeeded.  Instead, they offer him a position in their gang, he declines, and they're pretty much just like, "Oh, well, that's too bad.  Um, watch your back!  OOOO!"  This now sits in my closet with the other films to go to market. 

Frontier(s)- A French nasty film that's a lot like Texas Chainsaw Massacre without Leatherface.  Well, okay, too much like it.  It's a decent film, but too much of a genre exercise.  Lots of blood and grittiness save it from being a complete loss, and it is at least a decent film otherwise. 

Final Destination- I've seen this one before, but since my brother bought it for me for Christmas and I finally got it in a couple weeks ago I figured it was time to give it another watch.  Since this is my least favorite in the series, I watched it at 1.5x speed, which makes all the actors sound like they're on speed.  Fun stuff, what with all the inventive death scenes, but doesn't hold a candle to the sequels, IMO. 

[lester1/2jr]

Story of Women (1989) -  This is a very shocking movie, not because it's about an abortionist but because it is a french movie celebrating capitalism.  Of course,  it's still a french movie, meaning all normal  measures of morality goes out the window.  OUr flawed, that's an understatement, hero not only performs abortions with no medical training but rents out her back room to whores, favors her daughter over her son,  and sleeps with a cartoon alpha male "stud"  (not to try and appear expert, but there is ALWAYS one of these in french movies ) who is not her husband.   and yet we come to appreciate and root for if not exactly love her.  The actress , Isabelle Hupert, is incredible.  Based on a true story.   Set during the Nazi occupation of France, it reminded me of Japanese exploitation movies with the occupation economy of women servicing the foreign soldiers and gritty goings on on their lives.  5/5


good review from self appointed king Ebert

[Doggett]

crank
4/5
You know the film Speed ? well, replace a bus with Jason Stathem and it's that.
If a hired killer's heartbeat slows down, he'll die. So he has to find the guy who poisioned him, but he can't ever slow his body down.

[MilkManPictures]

Solaris (1972) - Took awhile to get going but I really enjoyed it.

[Doggett]

Nacho Libre
1/5
never again...

[Jack]

Children of Dune - I watched the first two-thirds of this mini-series last night.  I thought I remembered it being much better than it is.  It's basically Paul Muad'Dib, the hero from the first movie, who has been emperor of the galaxy for 12 years.  His forces are spreading out and slaughtering anyone who refuses to worship him.  He's quite unconcerned with this, as he can see into the future, so everything is inevitable, and why should he worry about it?  So he spends him time acting immature.  His mistress has two kids, then she dies.  The kids can also see into the future, so they spend their time acting immature and apathetic, prattling on about "philosophical" crapola.  This is a horrible plot device, it makes these characters completely unsympathetic and annoying.  There are a load of subplots, but I couldn't really make heads or tails out of half of them.  It's a beautiful movie visually, which is about the only positive thing I have to say about it.  2.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

All Ladies Do It ( dir. Tinto brass)  -   I liked this better than the German soft core "Vanessa" but not as much as Brass's own "Cheeky".  While he has the correct anatomical focus (the derriere)  the "actresses" he chose are not anyting special in this regatrd, particularly by modern post J LO standards.  There isn't much in the way of lesbianism, and there is some icky european type relations between related people, which I'm pretty sure you are not supposed to do,  scientifically speaking.    All that said, it does have that exceedingly silly and cheesy Tinto stamp and there is a semi interesting "theme" of marriage and sex and it even gets a little dramatic from time to time.  My favorite scene was the demented rave which is like 2 dozen people on some sort of patio with parody techno and nightlife freaks and whatnot, reminded you that the director is like 60.

[Rev. Powell]

NAKED LUNCH (1991): An exterminator gets hooked on bug powder and flees the law into the mysterious, Casablanca-like "Interzone," while writing a novel and receiving instructions from his typewriter. Loose adaptation of William S. Burroughs surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness novel about drug abuse by David Cronenberg is incomprehensible, of course, but worth seeing to see the large variety of scary breathing bug-typewriters who haunt the writers of Interzone. 4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: THE STARFIGHTERS: A Congressman's son wants to be a fighter pilot.  There's absolutely no drama, conflict, spacehips or meaningful plot in this movie: there are plenty of suggestive scenes of aerial refueling, and discussions of corn de-tasseling.  It really makes no sense why this movie was made; I guess the director happened upon a ton of stock footage of fighter jets refueling and decided to build a movie around it?  It's a terrible, pointless movie, and the quips make it just bearable.  Mike and the bots use up all their sex jokes in the first 6 minute refueling scene, and have nothing left for later scenes!  Back on the Satellite of Love, Crow tries to log in to the "information superhighway."  There's also a very disturbing looking skit of Crow refueling.  3.5/5.

[rakys]

Fast and Furious: The latest film is extremely noisy, features some fine stunt driving, particularly in its opening sequence, but it's dramatically a bit of a dribbler. I'm still trying to figure out the relationship between the opening of the film and the ending.

[InformationGeek]

Street Fighter

This movie really was bad.  Poorly edited fight scenes, bad actors, subplots that had no impact on the story, no character development, and Van Damme was very hard to understand.  At least I only paid 2 bucks to buy the movie.

[Joe the Destroyer]

The Devil's Advocate- To keep this short: decent movie, but I hated the ending.  

[Jack]

Knights of Bloodsteel - This wasn't bad for a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries.  It's set in a medieval period where magic is common, there are dragons, goblins, elves, etc.  There's a material called Bloodsteel, sort of a general purpose magical thing:  Make your arrowhead out of it, it will automatically find its target, make glasses out of it, the blind can see.  Handy stuff, but they're running out of it.  There are legends of an inexhaustible source of Bloodsteel, so some adventurers set out to find it, while at the same time the bad guys want to find it so they can use it to rule the world.  The characters are pretty good, they were very sympathetic and likable.  And human too, not your typical great warriors, they had plenty of failings and weaknesses.  The plot wasn't terribly exciting but it held my interest.  Special effects were pretty good in spots, kind of laughable in others.  It had its fair share of cheese as well.  3.5/5.