Recent viewings

[Rev. Powell]

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007): A romance between a Liverpudlian and a New England WASP during the tumultuous 1960s is illustrated using 30 Beatles songs.  Creates a surprisingly coherent story considering the fact that the plot had to be constructed around the songs rather than the other way around; the vocal performers are pretty good, and several of the production numbers are knockouts ("Come Together," with an appearance by Joe Cocker, is a favorite).  A must for Beatles fans, obviously. 4/5.

[Pilgermann]

Better off Dead... - This is a silly movie but it's lots of fun if you ask me (and many other folks, I'm sure).  To me it almost has this laid-back feel but at the same time is kind of maniacal.

[vukxfiles]

Better off Dead... - This is a silly movie but it's lots of fun if you ask me (and many other folks, I'm sure).  To me it almost has this laid-back feel but at the same time is kind of maniacal.

I love that movie, it's the best John Cusack comedy ever

[Jack]

Necrosis (2009) - Three couples go to a remote cabin in the mountains - the same mountains the Donner party had their unfortunate problems in.  One guy, who may or may not be going nuts, starts seeing ghosts.  This makes him extremely paranoid and before long he's shooting anyone who comes near him.  Of course everyone is trapped there because of a heavy snowstorm.  This wasn't too bad.  It starts out very much like a typical slasher, complete with the locals warning them that they're basically doomed.  Unfortunately the whole ghost thing is left totally unexplained - the movie is about the paranoid guy and how the others have to deal with him.  It's actually more of a drama than a horror movie.  The characters were well developed;  the girls were real b***hes but at least they were somewhat realistic and believable b***hes.  The cabin was beautiful and the movie did have a decent amount of atmosphere.  I just didn't find the story very interesting at all, and being more of a drama than a horror movie, there wasn't much suspense.  3.5/5.

[indianasmith]

Necrosis wasn't too bad.  I tried to watch a Scottish horror film called DARK NATURE last night.  It was distributed by Troma, but it was NOT a Troma film . . . so slow and boring I fell asleep!  I never did quite get the gist of who was doing the killing and why . . . this one was a real snoozer.

[lester1/2jr]

You're Telling Me (1934)- I enjoyed this despite it getting tied down with a some kind of lame / not funny writing, sort of like how they always try to add "depth" to comedies and gangter movies and stuff nowadays. Leave the jokes, keep the morality lesson. Hollywood didn't get it then, they don't now,  I guess they never will. Anyway, this stars WC Fields, the big guy with the messed up looking nose (he was a terrible alcoholic). He's a type that doesn't really exist nowadays. He does physical comedy but he isn't all spastic lke Jim Carrey or Jerry Lewis. He 's kind of like Archie Bunker doing slapstick or something.

The jokes are subtle but funny. Just really basic stuff like him drunk getting tangled in these curtain strand things I can't explain it. Another time he is bringing this indestructable tire he invented home and he rolls it and a little girl starts following him because he's like a kid rolling a tire. I can't explain that one either, you just have to see it. ANOTHER time he goes to a pet store and buys an ostrich for some reason. He takes his 1934 ostrich in the street and can't control it. It's just silly stuff like that. The plot where he meets this princess and they overcome class obstacles is lame but there's enough funny stuff that I can recomend it.

you can watch the whole thing on youtube. the curtain things scene is at 3:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhDh2smTeB4 3.75/5

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury story + ray Bradbury SCREENPLAY = clunker? Yep. Disney deserves credit for trying to do somethign different and darker than usual but this can't hold a candle to "The Private Eyes" "Kenny and Company" or "Young Sherlock Holmes" as far as next step up type movies for kids. The first 25 minutes are largely superflous, it really begins when they get to the carnival. My favorite carnival movie is "Nightmare Alley", my least favorite is "She Freak". man that is bad bad movie unless you enjoy 5-10 minute shots of people setting up tents and so forth.

This evidently had a good sized budget and some of the special effects are okay but it just plods along. pass  2/5

[3mnkids]

Rampage(2009)~ A young punk upset about the way the world is,no, that's not true. That's what he wants you think... Goes on a mass killing spree. This movie actually angered me. I was p**sed when it was over.

There is nothing I hate more than the line.. "twist" ending! Superb surprise ending! Its sooo clever! No! It wasn't. It was stupid. You could drive a damn semi through the plot holes. Lots of movies have plot holes and I can overlook them. I could not this time. Its like Uwe Boll thought to himself ... eh, doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense a lot people wont think it through and will think I'm a freaking genius! Sure, yeah, you're a freaking genius because you made a movie with a high body count   

Not only was it ridiculous but maybe even a little bit dangerous. Look, im not the type to blame movies, video games,..etc. for the crap people do but, it just seems in the current climate of angry people its probably not the best movie to make. Especially when


SPOILERS  SPOILERS




He gets away with it.

[Jack]

The Devil's Curse (2008) - some college kids move into a large abandoned building where ten years earlier, a demon was summoned or something.  The whole demon thing isn't developed at all, so it's just people running over here, hiding over there, crawling through a tunnel (and one girl has claustrophobia so we get to listen to her hyperventilate for 5 minutes  ).  The main girl was totally hot, which was by far the best thing about this.  Sorry guys, but you need to make more than a token effort at having a story in order to make a good movie.  They tossed in a big twist ending which struck me as rather dumb.  3.5/5.

Cheerleader Autopsy (2003) - Some cheerleaders get killed and are taken to a funeral home where the employees sell the bodies to a dog food company.  This was very much like a Troma movie, except the people who made it weren't brain dead morons who stayed sh!tfaced drunk throughout the entire shoot.  It was full of toilet humor and that sort of thing.  It didn't make me laugh, but it was kind of entertaining.  3/5.

[Doggett]

Martyrs.

Well acted.
Well directed.
Well grim. 

If you like Hostel you might want to check it out.
Not for me, folks.

2/5

[Trevor]

The Hitcher (1986) and The Long Good Friday were recent purchases and viewings for me: 5 South African rand for each VHS ~ that's about 50p in the UK and about 50c in the USA. 

[Flick James]

The Hitcher (1986) and The Long Good Friday were recent purchases and viewings for me: 5 South African rand for each VHS ~ that's about 50p in the UK and about 50c in the USA. 

The Hitcher (1986). A gem. I classify it as a B+ movie. The cast were well-known, but not super-stars, good production, yet off-beat enough and quirky enough not to be a mainstream film. The remake was, of course, completely bogus.

[lester1/2jr]

Enemy at the Gates (2001)- My grandfather, like everyones grandfather, fought in ww2 against the nazis so I guess I should be more gung ho about stuff like this but I don't know. Besides the fact that I'm very anti war this particular movie valorizes the communists, who of course would go on to establish the so called Iron curtain of censorship, gulags and other collectivist horrors and bring misery on theirs and other peoples for decades. I can't help but think of ,of all people, Kissinger who when asked wether Iran or Iraq would win that war said "can't they both lose?"

In a brief map thingy in the begining we are told the German war machine is spreading across the world and the last stage, the endgame, the battle for humanity is taking place in Stalingrad ( you're not supposed to notice the irony) Jude Law is a genius sharpshooter who becomes a rock star via propaganda put out by his newspaper buddy. Unfortunately this means the germans are now gunning for him specifically and they've brought in Ed Harris, their sniper guy, to take him out and it's a chess game between two master ...chessmen (oooh).  

Jude Law plays Vassili Zaitsev, who could easily be nicknamed Smooth Z like my friend in college with the same last name. He meets a hot jewish soldier played by Rachael Wiesz how ever you spell it. They hope to sharp shoot their way to victory together and have sharpshooter sex and make sharpshooter babies and have a house with shrubs cut to look lke a rifle site thing.


Besides the fact that it's in english but the characters are german and russian it at least looks very authentic with the destroyed city and dirty soldiers everywhere. Most importantly it isn't too talky. The acting and writing were very good. I have seen a bunch of ww2 movies lately and this is one of the best ones. European guys always hold a girls head like a soccer ball when they kiss hahaha.

4.5 /5

[Jim H]

The Great Silence.  I've often heard this described as one of the best of the lesser known spaghetti westerns.  I can't deny it was well-acted and well-shot (though a little rough around the edges), but I didn't really find it that great.  The storyline was just kind of there, and the title character never talking comes across as a gimmick rather than anything that really improves the film.  I don't know.

Probably the thing that also should be mentioned is the ending. 

**SPOILERS**

I wasn't expecting a particularly happy ending, but the bleakness of this film's ending was pretty extreme.  I've heard some say it is foreshadowed and led up to, but I noticed very little of this.  The darkness of the ending wasn't totally unfitting, but it still didn't strike me as a natural progression of the storyline.  In particular, I felt the film was leading up to the sheriff returning - some say he'd be dead from what happened to him realistically (and, most likely, they'd be right) but realism doesn't have much of a place in a movie where characters have near magical shooting abilities and the characters are this exaggerated.  The fact that they barely show him go under the water, and immediately cut away, was what leads to the expectation.

The downer ender DOES fit better than the hilariously ludicrous "happy ending" that was also on the disc and used in North Africa though.

**END**

According to the IMDB, the lead actor suggested the ending when shooting was almost done.  And that sounds about right to me.

6/10

This is one of many points when the line between a movie about a communist propaganda effort and the movie itself being propaganda becomes rather thin.

I really don't recall this.  Granted, it's been a while since I saw it, but the main thing I remember about its depiction of the USSR was its explicit depiction of Order No. 227 (with the Russians killing their own men, though this is exaggerated in the film), the brazen stupidity of some of the early Russian generals, the cynical use of propaganda (slight irony in that, considering the sniper duel itself is now thought to have been Soviet propaganda), references to the Great Purge, and so on.  It might be worth mentioning a number of things depicting the Russians in a negative light never happened - like the bit where they give one guy a gun, and another guy a stripper clip of bullets, and tell him to grab his gun when the other guy dies.  That's a deliberate demonization of the Soviets, and from what I can gather, it never actually happened.

Point in fact, the only aspect of the Soviet Union I can recall being portrayed positively at all is the tenacity and courage of its lowliest foot soldiers.  Which is deserved, as the Soviet soldiers were very much of the "Don't **** with the Motherland" type.

[indianasmith]

I saw ENEMY AT THE GATES some time back.  It was well done, and showed the desperation of the Eastern Front war pretty well.

My big problem with the movie was its ending . . . I mean, the



SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Master German sniper just stands up so the Russian can shoot him?  

COME ON!!!!

[indianasmith]

Jim H -

You are right about the Soviets not doing the "empty rifle" charges at Stalingrad.
However, the Chinese did use that tactic with great efficiency in Korea.  They would send over a first wave armed with nothing but rocks and sticks, then a second wave with empty rifles and bayonets, then a third wave with ammunition clips to pick up the rifles from the fallen. Then as many fully armed waves as necessary to overwhelm the position.  Their strategy seemed to be to make their enemies use up all their ammunition. A philosophy of war-making apparently based on the old Doritos commercial:


"Crunch all you want.  We'll make more!"