Recent Viewings, Part 2

[FatFreddysCat]

"Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama" (1988)
...how could anyone possibly pass up a title like that? :D

A group of sorority pledges are assigned to break into the bowling alley at the local mall after hours, and come back with a trophy. Unfortunately the trophy they pick happens to have a jive talking demon inside of it, which they accidentally set free. The "Imp" then proceeds to turn the girls into zombies and... well, let's just say things get even sillier from there.

...yeah, this is some real high concept sh*t, folks!   

This "USA Up All Night" staple from director David "Creepozoids" DeCoteau is a total moron movie, of course, but it had a few legit laughs and some pretty girls in various states of undress, therefore I was entertained. Scream queen Linnea Quigley of "Return of the Living Dead" and "Chopping Mall" fame actually puts in one of her better performances.  
Make no mistake, this movie is terrible, but at least it's enjoyably terrible.

[indianasmith]

BUSH BASH (2020) With a title like this, the movie should have been either
A.  80's porn, or
B. a documentary about a White House farewell party in January 2009.

Instead, what I got was a glorious train wreck of an Australian horror film within a horror film, complete with bad acting, decent looking women, cheesy gore effects, clowns, zombies, and a topless, toothy female cannibalistic humanoid monster.  All served up in the grainiest of footage! 
A 1-star movie for good movie fans, probably 3.5 for us bad movie fanatics!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Ready Player One" (2018)
Steven Spielberg directed this elaborate fantasy/sci-fi adventure set in the overcrowded, post-apocalyptic world of 2045, where everyone prefers to spend their time in "Oasis," a virtual reality universe, than in the crappy real world. A gamer and his friends must uncover a priceless treasure hidden deep within the game by its late creator, before goons from a rival corporation can get their hands on it and destroy their virtual paradise.
As you might expect from a Spielberg movie, "Ready Player One" is a visual treat, with impressive effects, plus it's fun to spot the many "Easter egg" nods to movie/TV/video game/pop culture franchises from days gone by, including "Back to the Future," "The Iron Giant," "Gremlins," "Batman," "Gundam," "Mecha-Godzilla" and tons more. (There's even a Holy Hand Grenade reference!). At nearly two and a half hours "R.P.O." is probably just a hair overlong but overall I enjoyed this one more than I expected.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Billy Madison" (1995)
The idiotic heir to a hotel business (Adam Sandler) must re-take all 12 grades of elementary and high school to prove he's smart enough to inherit the company in this lowbrow comedy. Sandler plays his standard "annoying man-child who's really a nice guy deep down" character yet again, as "Billy" hangs out with school kids, romances his super-hot teacher, and finally gets a chance to show he's not so dumb after all. This movie's silly as hell but it's always been a guilty pleasure of mine, full of laughs and quotable bits.

[Dr. Whom]

Dynasty Warriors (2021)

As a rule, I like Chinese fantasy extravaganzas, but I found this one disappointing. For one thing, I found the plot very confusing. It is based on a computer game, and presumably if you are familiar with the characters and story line of the game, it makes sense. However, to me it felt like a TV miniseries that was cut down to two hours. Characters pop in and out of the story, to the extent that the director found it useful to add titles indicating who is who. Also, when they are on screen, they don't do very much, but tend to narrate stuff that happened off screen. There aren't even that many battle of fight scenes. What you are left with is stunning scenery and a bunch of basass warriors strutting about with oversized weapons. To cap it all, this is just the set up for the next movie in the series.

[Rev. Powell]

JIU JITSU (2020): Nic Cage (!) is among the jiu jitsu masters who must defeat an alien jiu jitsu death machine (!) who comes to earth once every six years. The plot is incredibly goofy, the fight scenes aren't bad, and Cage chews the scenery in his brief screentime, making for a dumb but energetic movie best watched with a boisterous crowd of questionable sobriety. I kept wondering why we need be afraid of an alien who comes to Earth every six years from time immemorial and never, ever wins a match against the human jiu jitsu practitioners. This movie is more fun than its 2.9 IMDb rating would indicate. 2/5 for normal people, but maybe even a 4/5 when appreciated as a bad movie.  

[Alex]

The Door. 2014.

After saving a businessman from a mugging a young unemployed man is given a high paying job ($500 per day) to sit at a desk while wearing a security guard uniform and make sure a door never opens. What is it that lies behind the mysterious door?

This could easily be a file from the SCP Foundation. I thought it was a well made, low budget horror movie. Just don't expect any answers.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Chopping Mall" (aka "Killbots," 1986)
Teenage mall employees are planning an all night party after the stores close. Unfortunately they've been targeted by the mall's trio of high tech security robots, who have turned homicidal due to a lightning strike on their control computer.
This fast moving, so-'80s-it-hurts sci-fi/horror comedy has an absolutely ridiculous premise, of course, but the young cast totally sells it, the robots are pretty cool looking, and it has one of the best exploding-head scenes ever filmed. Tons of dumb fun.

[Dr. Whom]

The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy (1957)

This popped up in my Youtube feed, and with a title like that, I figured you can't go far wrong. Turns out this is the third installment in a series of three and it shows. The first two thirds or so of the movie are  extensive flashbacks, recapping the events of the two previous installments that have led up to this one. This approach does save you a lot of work if you are making a series.

The evil scientist known as The Bat has set his sights on an ancient treasure that is guarded by the undead Aztec mummy. So he constructs a cyborg (not really a robot) to defeat the mummy, but he is thwarted by the timely intervention of his nemesis, Dr Almada. Pretty much par for the course for a Mexican 50s serial style SF movie. I watched the English dub, so I have no idea what the original sounded like, but the actor voicing The Bat has the evil scientist laughter down to perfection. It also has the most useless nightwatchman in the history of nightwatching.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Fear Street Part 1: 1994" (2021)
"Scream"-esque teen horror about a group of small town high schoolers who get caught up in the mystery surrounding a lethal local legend. Decent performances by the young cast and a fair amount of ultra-violence and gore.
This is the first in a Netflix trilogy based on the series of teen-horror books by R.L. Stine of "Goosebumps" fame. I was entertained enough by this to tune in for the next installment ("1978") sometime soon.

[zelmo73]

The Mandalorian, Seasons 1 & 2 (2021). I finally forced myself to sit down and binge watch this show over the past week, and I was reasonably entertained by the second season and how it ended. The *gasp* moments in the second season were satisfying; it was cool to see old school Star Wars characters make cameo appearances, even if they were not very relevant to the plot and more fanfare than anything else. Though I guess at least 2 of them are set to become future Disney+ shows. It's funny that I put this show on for my little boy to watch but he seemed to lose interest in it fairly early on, and my wife bought the "baby Yoda" doll earlier this year because she thought it was cute yet showed absolutely zero interest in the show itself.  

[lester1/2jr]

Kowloon Walled City documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rj8m7Ssow

There are a bunch of things on youtube about this dark and mysterious place but this ^^, from a German crew, was the most substantial.

For some reason, thousands of people decided to live in a tiny tiny area of land in Hong Kong called The Walled City. You might remember it from Bloodsport; the corridors with all the pipes and tubes and the big wall of buildings with a million little signs. It looks like an exagerated version of every Chinatown in the world. The one here in Boston reminds me quite a bit of it. There's a food court that I go to that is about the size of a regular stores break room. There's very little space but its never crowded because everyone just eats and leaves. The food at the 4 stands packed in there is better than all the restaurants in my town.

Don't get it twisted, as they say though. Crime in Kowloon runs totally unchecked. Rats and roaches live freely among factories dedicated to producing perishable goods. The corridors constantly leak water and you have to go up to the roof to see the sun. When you do go up there, a plane passes over your head every 5 minutes. very relaxing!

I imagine there were far worse things that happened in there the doc didn't cover, but its all a microcosm of humanity. Some people choose to spend their time being productive, while other people pursue drugs and crime. One western woman dedicates her life to helping drug addicts and lives in the city herself for 20 years. Somehow this is okay with the gangsters who sell drugs to the people. Things seem to work themselves out, one way or another.

Eventually it got bulldozed, but for a brief period of time it was total anarchy dude!  



5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"GORP" (1980)
Wacky hijinks among the sex crazed counselors and kitchen staff at a summer camp for Jewish kids. Basically, this is 90 minutes of pranks, farts, food fights, half naked girls, and jokes that only 12-year-old boys would find funny.
This mostly forgotten teen-sex comedy desperately wants to be another "Meatballs" or "Animal House," but the difference is, those movies still had a plot amidst all their mayhem. "GORP" doesn't ... it's just a bunch of scenes of various loud, obnoxious characters doing stupid stuff, strung together to feature length.
There are a couple of legit chuckles here 'n there, plus you can watch for a couple of future big names payin' their early-career B-Movie dues -- Rosanna Arquette and Fran Drescher play some of the female counselors, and a baby-faced Dennis Quaid plays a gun-crazed military cadet who may well have been the blueprint for "Tackleberry" in the "Police Academy" series.
Overall it's silly, disposable junk.
By the way, I had to look up what the hell "GORP" meant, because the movie never mentions the term, or explains it ... apparently it's summer camp slang for trail mix, i.e. "a collection of nuts and flakes," which actually sums up the film pretty well.

[Dr. Whom]

Shiva Baby (2020)

A young woman is going to a shiva, which, I understand, is a Jewish wake for the dead, where not only her life choices will come under severe scrutiny from her parents and  family friends, but she also meets her ex-girlfriend and her sugardaddy.

I had a hard time getting through this one. There is no plot to speak of, there is no reason to like the main character and the satire is laid on with a trowel. Also, the only thing that drives the movie forward is a series of shortsighted decisions by the main character. On the positive side acting performances are good all round and it does capture the claustrophobic nature of these gatherings perfectly.
This is a debut, so I guess it is a case of the glass being half empty or half full. Perhaps the good reviews had led me to expect more.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Bill & Ted Face the Music" (2020)
More than 25 years after their last time traveling adventure, the now middle-aged doofuses Bill and Ted (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) still haven't written "the song" that will bring peace to the Universe. When they get a message from the future that they are rapidly running out of time to do so, they start scrambling across dimensions looking for inspiration, while their daughters (who are basically Mini-Me's of the 1989 versions of B & T) use the time traveling phone booth to recruit the most badass musicians in history for their Dads' backing band.
While "Face the Music" is not a laugh a minute like the previous "B & T" flicks, it's fun to see Winter and Reeves falling right back into their old school groove and there are quite a few legit laughs. If you keep your expectations low you might be pleasantly surprised.