Recent Viewings, Part 2

[indianasmith]

DOCTOR SLEEP (2020)  This long-awaited sequel to THE SHINING worked on multiple levels for me.  Ewan MacGregor was brilliantly cast as the adult Danny Torrence, working to overcome his alcoholism and past demons, who winds up helping a young black girl who also shares "the Shine" escape from a sinister band of vampire gypsies who feed on telepaths - "they eat screams and drink fear," is how the ghost of Dick Holloran puts it.  Well done all the way around! 5/5

[Rev. Powell]

SHADOWPLAY (2019): A detective in Kuala Lumpur accepts a job searching for a missing girl, but instead finds a dreamworld reflecting his own psychology. Far too confusing a film for a character we don't really care about---but the setting is cool and I would now like to see a good film set in Kuala Lumpur. 1.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989)
In Harrison Ford's third spin as the adventuring archaeologist, Indy and his estranged father (Sean Connery, perfectly cast) race against the Nazi regime to find the Ultimate prize - the Holy Grail. As usual, lots of fists are thrown, stuff blows up, and things crash into each other. Tons of action packed fun.

[indianasmith]

TONIGHT SHE COMES (2018)

This was a freebie on Amazon Prime; I went into it with no real expectations.  The beginning was really rather slow and I was about to write it off as another low budget, one star piece of shlock.  But then . . . the plot took a hard left turn and ramped up the gore and suspense and awfulness till the end left me literally squirming in my chair!  Naked young women aren't supposed to be scary, but the killer in this gruesome tale of supernatural terror will leave you wanting to run whenever she pops onto the screen.  Brilliantly done; not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach!  5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Slaughter High" (1986)
A fiery high school prank gone wrong permanently scars the campus nerd "Marty," both physically and mentally. Five years later, those responsible are invited back to their now-abandoned school for a "class reunion," and soon they're being picked off one by one by a masked slasher. Gee, I wonder who the killer's gonna turn out to be?
This ultra-cheap "Friday the 13th" knockoff was filmed in the UK with a mostly-Brit cast (including one time Hammer Horror babe and Bond Girl Caroline Munro, still looking fabulous), though they're all pretending to be Americans. The set up is cartoonishly silly and it takes for-damn-ever for bodies to start dropping, but once the kill spree officially gets goin' the pace picks up and there's some pretty nasty gore, so the last half is entertaining enough.
Your mileage may vary depending on the depths of your obscure 80s slasher movie addiction.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Mortuary" (1983)
A young girl, despondent over her father's recent suspicious death, starts poking around the mystery with her boyfriend and they discover murderous goings-on happening around the local funeral parlor.
This cheap but effective '80s teen horror flick is notable mainly for the appearance by a very young Bill Paxton (in what I believe is his film debut) as the funeral director's creepy teenage son.  I didn't have very high hopes for this flick at first, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

[FatFreddysCat]

This seemed appropriate for July 4th viewing...

"Uncle Sam" (1996)
A U.S. serviceman killed in Kuwait is shipped back to his home town, where he mysteriously re-animates and goes on a killing spree during the annual July 4th celebrations, murdering anyone who isn't "patriotic" enough. The only ones who can stop him are his annoying kid nephew and former soldier Isaac "Chef" Hayes.
This tongue-in-cheek slab of horror cheese reunites writer Larry Cohen and director William Lustig of "Maniac Cop" fame, but unfortunately it's nowhere near as good as the "MC" films. The "Uncle Sam" character looks ridiculous as hell and though the movie has a couple of good gory bits, overall it's just too goofy to take seriously.

[lester1/2jr]

Shadows of the Orient (1935) - first: Regis Toomey who plays the inspector has one of the longest IMDB things I've ever seen https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0867538/?ref_=tt_cl_t2 . I remembered him from a very early gangster movie called "Alibi". He said "you're a great little guy...when it comes to stabbin in the BACK" . In this one he's a cop working to stop an illegal immigrant smuggling ring. Why anyone cared about that in 1935 is beyond me, wasn't America just going crazy with the depression and bootlegging and so forth at that point? it's decently entertaining
3.75/ 5

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (2005)
A perpetually-confused Englishman is whisked off of Earth moments before it's destroyed by aliens, and joins a crew of space-faring misfits on an mission to find the answers to Life, The Universe, and Everything.
This lavish adaptation of Douglas Adams' surreal comedic sci-fi novel has a great cast, impressive visuals, and a fair share of laughs, but if you're not familiar with the source material, it may feel like you're watching an elaborate private joke that you're not "in" on.

[Rev. Powell]

THE SHASTA TRIANGLE (2019): A young woman and her four female friends investigate mysterious happenings in Mount Shasta, California. Low budget mumbo jumbo about magnetic fields, secret government experiments and alternate dimensions leads to ho-hum results. 1.5/5

[Rev. Powell]

WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES (2019): After meeting at a funeral parlor, four emotionless orphaned children run away and form a pop band. High-energy, carnivalesque pop-psychedelics enliven Nagahisa's genre-bending feature debut, which wrings a surprising amount of empathy from its tale of children whose defining characteristic is that they have no strong feelings. Catch it if you can. 4/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Man With the Golden Gun" (1974)
Roger Moore's second turn as 007 jumps on the then-current kung-fu movie craze, as James Bond travels to Hong Kong and Thailand on the trail of Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), the underworld's most elite assassin, in order to recover a stolen solar-energy device. There are some cool action sequences and exotic scenery, as usual (plus, Britt Ekland is one of the hottest Bond girls ever) but the comedic bits feel forced (and the unnecessary return of annoying redneck sheriff J.W. Pepper from Live and Let Die is a series low point). It's an entertaining watch, but I'd have to rank this one near the bottom of the Bond pile. The series was clearly still trying to find its groove with Roger Moore in the lead.

[Dr. Whom]

The Atomic Brain/Monstrosity (1963)

A rogue scientist is perfecting a method to transplant a human brain (using a cyclotron, no less). His work is financed by grumpy elderly women with immense fortune in order to put her brain in a young body. Three girls are lured into the mansion with the pretext of working there as a housemaid. Where will this all lead to?

For all its failings (and there are many), I found this oddly watchable. This is another one of those movies who don't have enough script to fill the runtime, and instead has the characters taking forever to do anything.

Curiously, the mad doctor is called Otto Frank. I'm pretty sure Anne never mentioned any brain swapping experiments in her diary.

What intrigued me was that, although it is shot in the 60s, the lighting, cinematography, pacing etc are very much that of a 1920s silent movie, except that you have a narrator instead of text panels.

[pennywise37]

well i have The Man with the Golden Gun and i've never heard anything bad about it, in fact all i hear is that it's one of the best in the series. Trivia Note though back when Christopher Lee was filming it they had i think 3 different guns for him to use and each for a different use of course and while he never regretted taking the role he hated that damn gun cause in order for him to learn how to do it he could not look at it while they were filming and that makes sense cause normally if you are gonna put together a gun in a film and it's a Villain than well he would know how to put a gun together.

and when he was promoting the film he had to carry the damn thing with him and it of course wasn't real and he hated it because each time he showed up at any airport he's have to explain to them that it's fake and who he was etc... why he was carrying it and so on and so forth.  he freaking hated it and i can't say that i blame him either. anyways i watched a couple the 1st one i watched was "Bad Boys For Life (2020) a really damn good flix too for me i thought the 2nd one was far better than the first and the newest one is i think better than the last one.

anyways, than i watched "The Avengers (2012) a damn good movie 10/10 oh and the same goes for Bad Boys 10/10.

next up Ant-Man i also give that 10/10. i pretty much love all these Marvel films the only  ones i didn't give a 10/10 are 'Thor" (2011) which i'd say is about a 8/10

that one is a good movie but it just wasn't one of the best ones, than you have Black Panther that i'd also give 8/10 a good movie but not among my favorites.

anyways i loved Ant-Man i watched that and Bad Boys last night in fact. The Avengers i watched the other day actually. i grabbed all my blu-rays i haven't watched yet of the ones that i have bought and haven't touched at all and put those in boxes so i can have something ya know to do. why not ya know?

[Rev. Powell]

BIG RIVER MAN (2009): Slovenian Martin Strel is 53, overweight, and a functional alcoholic; he's also the world's greatest endurance swimmer, and this documentary follows his attempt to set a new world record by swimming the entire length of the Amazon River. As Martin deals with parasites, high blood pressure, an amateur navigator who turns into a crazed disciple, and his own growing insanity, BIG RIVER MAN turns into a real life AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD. 4/5.