Recent viewings

[claws]

"All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" (2013) Disappointing slasher flick stars Amber Heard (yum!) as a virginal teen who joins some friends for a weekend retreat, which naturally gets interrupted by a psycho.
This movie took for-EVER to get going and even when it finally did, my wife and I predicted  the "twist" ending before it was half over.
My advice: don't bother!

Camps are split on this one. Slasher connoisseurs praise the stylish 1980s vibe, your average horror viewer doesn't really care. Of course there was also a huge build up since it took seven years for the movie to launch in the U.S. I bought the UK DVD in 2007 and enjoyed the movie until the ending (which I thought came off rather 1990s dated, despite retro-ish intentions). But after repeated viewings it kinda grew on me, so I bought the German Blu-ray in 2009. If anything it has nice visuals and a few decent/nasty kills. One can enjoy the "scenery" until the action begins or, simply turn it off 

[Jack]

"All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" (2013) Disappointing slasher flick stars Amber Heard (yum!) as a virginal teen who joins some friends for a weekend retreat, which naturally gets interrupted by a psycho.
This movie took for-EVER to get going and even when it finally did, my wife and I predicted  the "twist" ending before it was half over.
My advice: don't bother!

Camps are split on this one. Slasher connoisseurs praise the stylish 1980s vibe, your average horror viewer doesn't really care. Of course there was also a huge build up since it took seven years for the movie to launch in the U.S. I bought the UK DVD in 2007 and enjoyed the movie until the ending (which I thought came off rather 1990s dated, despite retro-ish intentions). But after repeated viewings it kinda grew on me, so I bought the German Blu-ray in 2009. If anything it has nice visuals and a few decent/nasty kills. One can enjoy the "scenery" until the action begins or, simply turn it off 

I think I started watching that on Netflix and fell sound asleep.  Never bothered to finish it up.

The Vineyard (1989) - I think I've watched this stupid thing three times now    A movie producer / famous wine maker has some aspiring actors and actresses come to private island, supposedly to audition for parts in his upcoming movie, but actually he just wants to, I dunno...chain them up in his basement so he can draw blood from them which he uses as part of his immortality serum I guess. He's also got zombies half-buried in his vineyard, which come to life occasionally. I have no idea why. This is entertaining, the girls are cute, it's exploitative, full of cheesy '80s charm, and stupid as can be lol. 4/5.

[Chainsawmidget]

For the last couple of day I've been staying at my moms and watching her pets while she was out of town (miss me?)  I really had little to do other than watch movies, so I've caught quite a few. 

I'm trying to remember what all I saw...

I watched Highlander and Crocodile Dundee again.  These are some obvious classics and I find they're still as excellent as they ever where. 

Mad Max, however, doesn't hold up that well.  The whole "ruined future" thing just doesn't work.  The movie just seems like it's taking place in some small town in the country.  Plus the movie drags badly in parts. 

National Treasure II was an enjoyable romp, but if you don't like Nic Cage, you're not going to enjoy it. 

I foreign horror film called Sick Nurses which is part suspense ghost story and part torture porn.  It gets a bit too nasty in places, but there were quite a few good squirming sequences as well.  Oh, it's about a group of Nurses that are being hunted, tormented, and brutally murdered by the ghost of a woman they killed so they could sell the body.

Illegal Aliens, is a "comedy" starring Anna Nicole Smith as the most annoying airhaired blonde you will ever see in a movie.  ... Oh yes, and she's part of a Charlie's Angels like trio of aliens that police the earth.  Anna can turn into cars and helicopters!  The script is horrible, and the acting is about what you'd expect from a low budget porn.  Oddly enough, there's no real nudity in the film. 


Sidekick is the last one of the movies that I distinctly remember watching.  It's an interesting story about a comic geek that discovers one of the people he works with actually has super powers, so he sets out to train the guy to become a real supehero and the guy.. well... he's no hero.  He's a straight A "Look out for number one" prick.  I'd recommend watching it.

[FatFreddysCat]

"All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" (2013) Disappointing slasher flick stars Amber Heard (yum!) as a virginal teen who joins some friends for a weekend retreat, which naturally gets interrupted by a psycho.
This movie took for-EVER to get going and even when it finally did, my wife and I predicted  the "twist" ending before it was half over.
My advice: don't bother!

Camps are split on this one. Slasher connoisseurs praise the stylish 1980s vibe, your average horror viewer doesn't really care. Of course there was also a huge build up since it took seven years for the movie to launch in the U.S. I bought the UK DVD in 2007 and enjoyed the movie until the ending (which I thought came off rather 1990s dated, despite retro-ish intentions). But after repeated viewings it kinda grew on me, so I bought the German Blu-ray in 2009. If anything it has nice visuals and a few decent/nasty kills. One can enjoy the "scenery" until the action begins or, simply turn it off 

Yeah, it definitely seems to have a "love it" or "hate it" vibe, not much middle ground. I had read about how it spent years on the shelf and had a feeling it was going to suck, but my crush on Amber Heard overrode my better judgment. :D

[indianasmith]

I watched a Swedish horror film called INSANE tonight.  It's like a foreign re-telling of PSYCHO, except that there are
some real hanging plotholes near the end.

Basically, a series of young women check into a lonely roadside motel, where the charming but slightly creepy owner/bellhop/cook
flirts with them and fixes them dinner before seeing them to their rooms.  At some point in the night they wake up to find
that someone has snapped a Polaroid of them while they were sleeping or bathing and left it on the bedside table for them to find.
Then a creepy guy in a black trenchcoat and gas mask hunts them down and kills them.

Is it the hotel's owner? Or is he just a henchman? Or does he have a twin? None of these things are properly explained.
But the movie does feature a number of interesting twists and turns along the way, with some excellent gore effects.
Recommended as long as you don't want everything tied up with a bundle at the end.

[Jack]

In the Dark Half (2011) - a girl is babysitting a little kid, he dies of natural causes, and his father is bereaved. That's...pretty much it. It's just mundane people living their mundane lives in a mundane town. It tries to be mysterious but I really didn't care. There was also a twist at the end I didn't care about either. It had a few nicely filmed scenery shots and the theme music wasn't bad. 2.5/5.

[dean]

"Errors of the Human Body" - 2012

'Errors of the Human Body' Trailer

Psychological thriller about a doctor trying to find a cure for a disease his son died from gets embroiled in an experiment with an old lab assistant and her shady colleague.

Not a bad film, especially on a budget of about $1.8 million, though the comparisons the reviews I read gave to Cronenberg are pretty generous.  The conclusion is actually well done with a terrific closing line.  It's a shame they didn't build on that aspect better in the rest of the film though to give it more of an impact. 

In any case, not a bad effort, though it needs more polish.  I give it a low 2.5/5 only due to my high expectations given the Cronenberg comparisons.  Knowing the budget and tempering my expectations would have put this in the 3-3.5/5 category I'd suspect.

[Trevor]

In the Dark Half (2011) - a girl is babysitting a little kid, he dies of natural causes, and his father is bereaved. That's...pretty much it. It's just mundane people living their mundane lives in a mundane town. It tries to be mysterious but I really didn't care. There was also a twist at the end I didn't care about either. It had a few nicely filmed scenery shots and the theme music wasn't bad. 2.5/5.

I saw this a few weeks ago and my general reaction was 

[Rev. Powell]

HARRY DEAN STANTON: PARTLY FICTION (2012): Impressionistic pastiche of the career of cult character actor Harry Dean Stanton (PARIS, TEXAS; REPO MAN), with terse interviews, conversations with collaborators like David Lynch and Kris Kristofferson, film clips, and lots of folksinging from Stanton (whose voice is just OK). Stanton cultivates a mystical persona and prefers to give vague, Zen-like answers to questions, so the film struggles mightily to build a portrait of the real man behind the image. The ratio of insight to folk songs is unfavorable.  2/5.

[Trevor]

THE SIXTH SENSE: I gave this a miss when it was on release in 1999 but I finally saw it last night. The scene where Bruce Willis realizes that he's been dead the whole time..wearing my undies the whole film  was very creepy indeed. I enjoyed it and I also saw UNBREAKABLE and THE VILLAGE too: not bad. 

[Jack]

Galaxy Hunter (2004) - total cheesefest with with a spandex-clad agent woman trying to rescue another agent (Stacy Keach in what's little more than a cameo) from the clutches of an evil drug dealer. I'm pretty sure the lead actress got the job based on her implants because her acting ability certainly didn't get her the part. But it was good silly fun. 3.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

THE GORILLA (1939): A wealthy man hires three cowardly detectives (the Ritz Brothers) to protect him from a killer known as the Gorilla (who may be an actual gorilla). The Ritz Brothers are a second-rate comedy team but this old dark house comedy is light and busy enough to provide some small entertainment. Bela Lugosi is wasted as a butler. 2/5.

[claws]

World War Z (2013)

UN Investigator (Brad Pitt) and his family seek shelter on a U.S. Navy vessel in the Atlantic Ocean after a rage virus outbreak turn humans into kill-crazy and fast-sprinting zombies. Soon enough the Investigator is sent on a mission to different parts of the world for research, in order to develop a vaccine...
Mega budget high speed zombie thriller with amazingly done, well, zombies in action action as Brad Pitt's character is tossed into one dangerous situation after the other. The nail-biting tension is strong with this one. 4.5/5

[Rev. Powell]

THE ASTRAL FACTOR (1976): A psychic serial killer uses astral projection and telekinesis to strangle blonde models who remind him of his mother. Cute special effects (and female victims) don't overcome the poorly though out story. 2/5.

[JaseSF]

Wimbledon (2004): Long-time tennis journeyman Peter Colt (Paul Bettany) currently ranked 119th in the world considers retiring after his next showing at Wimbledon. However, after meeting and starting a whirlwind romance with an aspiring young female tennis pro named Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst), he finds himself having more ambition, passion, and desire than he has in years and suddenly finds himself unexpectedly winning too. However, her dad Dennis (Sam Neill) objects believing the romance is ruining his daughter's focus on her own game.

This was better than I expected. It's actually a very enjoyable little sport/romantic drama. Bettany and Dunst both do quite well here and the viewer does get caught up in Colt's struggle to try and make one last grab at the top as well as the romance. It probably helps though that I am a fan of Dunst.  **** out of ***** stars.

The China Syndrome (1979): News reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda), tired of doing light and fluff news items, gets caught up in a breaking news story surrounding a nearby nuclear power plant that nearly had an accident yet it was kept from the public. Eventually she unravels the startling truth that the plant is unsafe as does a senior supervisor named Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) working at the plant. Soon it becomes apparent that higher-ups at the plant don't want the truth getting out as it would cost them millions of dollars even in the face of potential disaster which they seem to choose not to believe will happen and decide to bury their heads in the sand.

Good performances from Fonda, Lemmon, and Michael Douglas as a motivated freelance cameraman make this quite good as does the thrilling aspect of our heroes trying to get the truth out in the face of people willing to go to any lengths to keep it quiet. There's a few technical errors here and there and the pace is a bit slow at one point (it does really take off later) but other than that, this is a great, great thriller that deals with a very real issue, especially in its time, - concerns about the safety of nuclear power. **** out of ***** stars.