Movies Watched The Week of 6/7 - 6/13

Good morning ladies and jerks.  Welcome to the newest installment of my self indulgent piece of weekly work. It’s a solid week all around that jumps through genres.  Nothing reaches greatness but one comes close.  And I jump headlong into an important movie in the annals of cinema.  Take a look at the week and see if you agree or get interested in seeing the flicks.  Enjoy, jerks.  

Clear and Present Danger (June 7th, 2015)

Director: Phillip Noyce

Starring: Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Joaquim De Almeida, and Henry Czerny

We got us here the second and final run Harrison Ford had as the Tom Clancy hero Jack Ryan.  And the second time is the charm for Ford, and third for the character as this is the best Jack Ryan movie there is.  Because while The Hunt For Red October had a bit of complexity in the story, this is the only one that throws Jack into a story where his ideas of right and wrong are thrown asunder and he has to do things he never thought he’d have to.  His faith in the system is shaken and it makes for a much more moral ambiguous story.  The story concerns a South American drug cartel and a hit they commit that accidentally gets the attention of the US President.  When the President decides to start a black ops war against the organization that did this, American lives are on the line and Jack Ryan is sucked into it as a potential patsy.  Now being a Tom Clancy story, it is a bit dry and kinda slow.  It may be a bit too long and too interested in the tedium of the bureaucracy of the CIA to be a beginning to end thrill ride.  But at a certain point, maybe 30 minutes in, the movie picks up the pace and the action starts to ramp up and the stakes start getting murkier and deadlier.  Ford is doing that Ford thing, playing a smart and kinda cranky man with a set of absolute ideals that won’t be corrupted.  Dafoe is a more honorable version of his slimy type performance.  Almedia is a drug dealer again and plays it with more intelligence than his usually roles call for.  This is a much more sedate version of an action movie but it has some real charm and bite to it’s story.  Much more than Shadow Recruit.

Rating: 8.5/10

Desperate Hours (June 8th, 2015)
Director: Michael Cimino
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers, and Elias Koteas

Michael Cimino is a really sad case to behold.  He got his big break thanks to Clint Eastwood.  After co writing Magnum Force for Clint, Clint was so impressed that he bought a script from Cimino and allowed him to direct it.  That was Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a movie that got Jeff Bridges an Oscar nom.  With his second movie, he blew the world away with the Vietnam epic The Deer Hunter, a movie that won 5 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.  After that, Cimino used his clout to bank roll a passion project that went over budget and was way too long.  That was Heavens Gate, the notorious bomb that killed United Artists and effectively killed his career.  It took him 5 years to get another movie going, and it was another bomb entitled Year of The Dragon.  After two massive art films, he was thrown into the B movie world, making some real crap to just work.  Then he did The Sicilian two years later, another bomb.  3 years later, he’d make this movie, Desperate Hours.  It’s based on an old play about a criminal holding a family hostage until his girlfriend can get to him.  It’s an ok movie.  It’s nothing really special and would fit right in at 2 am on TNT.  Not only is it sad to see Cimino slumming it with an apparent lack of any real skill anymore, coming off very amateurish compared to Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Deer Hunter.  It’s also sad to see Mickey Rourke in the beginning of the phase of his career that saw him not caring and just fucking around in genre trash.  The fact that he’s not trying and is still watchable is a testament to him.  The rest of the cast is ok, nothing special.  Hopkins did this the same year as the Silence of The Lambs, and it seems he spent all his energy there.  The cast does what they can with the movie, but it’s way too short to make an impression on anyone.  No one is fully fleshed out and are just faces in the crowd that fulfill a role.  It feels chopped up, evident in a real choppy editing job.  And the wrap up of the plot is kinda laughable, with a plan by Hopkins that is unbelievably absurd.  There’s some charm to it mainly thanks to the cast being as watchable as they are with a bad script and some lacking direction.  

Rating: 7/10

Drag Me To Hell (June 10th, 2015)
Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, David Paymer, and Dileep Rao

Sam Raimi hadn’t been in the horror game for a good long while, arguably since Army of Darkness or Evil Dead II.  After spending close to a decade making Spiderman movies to varying degrees of success, he needed a break from a monstrous movie by making a movie about monsters.  And it was a good idea, something most blockbuster directors should do to knock the cobwebs off.  It isn’t 100 percent successful, since he tries to make a movie with that mix of comedy and horror that Evil Dead II had.  But that was such a precarious tone to hold that it’s not too crazy to see he didn’t nail it perfectly again, especially almost 30 years later.  The premise is cool enough, with a woman with a good heart having to make a tough decision in her job coming back to bite her in the ass.  Lohman accidentally pisses off a gypsy woman who than curses her to hell.  Watching Lohman try to come to terms with this and fight for her survival is fun enough with some good scares and some good comedic bits.  But Raimi isn’t typically great with human drama, and the stuff away from Lohman isn’t great.  Long tries but can’t elevate the material.  It isn’t as perfect a ride as Evil Dead II, with some slow parts and some egregious CGI in it.  But the biggest problem with the movie is the ending, a twist that doesn’t feel completely earned and feels way too mean spirited to make it a satisfying ending to the story being told.  It just doesn’t fit and kinda sours the movie.  But the prior 99% works to make it watchable enough.  It’s a good reminder than Raimi can still do good, even after a shitshow like Oz: The Great and Powerful. 

Rating: 8/10

Heaven's Gate (June 13th, 2015)
Director: Michael Cimino
Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Issabelle Huppert, and Jeff Bridges

Having now seen the movie, I can totally see why this movie was blasted by critics and abandoned by the film going audience.  It’s a supremely bloated, overlong self indulgent piece of work.  The pacing is horrible and the story he focuses on is not as good as the story he relegates to the background.  But despite the self indulgence on display, there is some really good stuff in the movie.  Stuff that could have flourished with a massive edit.  Chop out a good chunk of this movie and you’ve got a really solid historical drama.  Because the visuals are gorgeous and the majority of the cast is really good.  The only weak link in the cast is Walken because he just does not fit in in a western.  He has a modern presence that is at odds with his surroundings.  But Kristofferson is really good as the stoic lead trying to do the right thing for the people and Huppert is solid as the love interest.  The movie isn’t short though and the movie is hindered by two major elements.  One, an overlong prologue and epilogue that spends way too much time on pointless beats before and after the main story to give Kristofferson some backstory, but it’s all pointless cause we can get this shit through the story.  And secondly, instead of focusing on this really cool morally ambiguous war between the rich businessmen and the poor immigrants, it spends an ungodly amount of time on a somehow ill defined love triangle.  All this time and it still feels ill defined and uninteresting is the surest sign that it needed to be cut.  The time spent there could have been spent on informing the world of the immigrants and getting to know them better before the big fight.  But alas he didn’t and the movie feels imbalanced.  But as is, there is still alot of good when it focuses on the good stuff.  And the movie is surprisingly violent, with some Peckinpah levels of violence exploding out every now and then.  Those moments really help as it drags the movie back from floating too far up its own ass and down into something relatable.  I can’t rightly recommend this outright because it is way too long for most to watch and is not all good.  But for those interested in film history and/or with the time enough to watch the movie that helped end the auteur period in Hollywood, this isn’t as awful as its reputation would suggest.  

Rating: 8/10









Top Movies

1. Clear and Present Danger
2. Drag Me To Hell
3. Heaven's Gate
4. Desperate Hours

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week of 5/31 - 6/6

Welcome back folks, another week and another sampling of the media I’ve ingested.  So of course I need to share it.  It’s a smaller than usual week, with a great high but a shockingly bad low.  I ran through this quick so enjoy a smaller than usual week.  And in a few weeks, I’ll be done with the other site and this will probably be more dense than usual.  So enjoy.

The Verdict (May 31st, 2015)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Starring: Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, and James Mason

Paul Newman is the man.  Sidney Lumet is, too, the man.  So bring both of them together in a court room drama, returning Lumet to that genre he mastered 25 years prior in 12 Angry Men, and you got yourself another gem in that world.  Newman plays a down on his luck drunkard of a lawyer, an ambulance chaser who’s just been drifting through life for years now after a world shattering experience.  But when a big case is brought to him, it ignites something in him to crawl out of the shit and fight for once.  This is a very dreary, sad movie.  It’s not a bright, faced past drama.  Newman is in a shit place and just takes beatings the entire time and even in the end, it’s a bittersweet victory for him.  The only negative I have to say for this movie is that the pacing is a little too slow in an unnatural way which could have been trimmed a bit.  But it’s all pointless as it’s a movie with a superb cast, Newman leading the charge like a pro yet again.  Lumet directs this like a pro, this is just a pro fucking movie.  And for me, it’s all about the ambiguous nature of life.  Even good things aren’t that great, people will disappoint and you just gotta keep on trucking.  Give it a shot. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus (June 4th, 2015)
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Stephen Tyrone Williams, Zaraah Abrahams, Rami Nalek, and Elvis Nolasco

I like Spike Lee.  I do.  He’s hit and miss like a motherfucker, capable of dropping a masterpiece or a shitheeled joke with ease.  He’s dropped more bombs in recent years with three consecutive movies in a row. But that’s following Inside Man, a genuinely amazing movie that is firmly in his top 5.  But he always tries.  Which makes this movie really odd, because it feels like he didn’t.  He essentially just took the script from a 70s blaxploitation flick and put a little new touches on it and just filmed it.  The acting is really bad, and not in a good way like Black Dynamite did.  It’s just bad and wooden and not interesting to watch.  But mainly, it’s just really ugly looking.  It is so cheaply made, you can tell just by watching it.  Visually, it looks like a college student film with a slightly bigger budget that the rest.  But thats the problem when you crowdfund something, like Spike did here.  He used all his money and apparently it wasn’t enough.  And it could have been a good movie.  It’s a vampire movie, but not really.  The rules aren’t particularly well explained, but it’s all about addiction with vampiric blood sucking as the drug of choice.  It could have been cool, but Spike just whiffs it big time here. Gotta give him some credit though.  It takes big balls to make a remake after just getting shit on for making a remake.

Rating: 4/10

Oldboy (June 5th, 2015)
Director: Park Chan-Wook
Starring: Min-sik Choi, Gang Hye-Jeong, Yoo Ji-tae, and Chi Dae-han

And speaking of Spike, it was time to see the original movie of the first movie he remade.  And long story short, it’s a great fucking movie.  It’s got it’s problems but nothing being too killer.  I speak about the movie and the remake at length more on my podcast here, so give that a listen.  The movie is nasty, surprising, and immensely Asian.  It’s directed with a masters touch and just works.  I can see how it wouldn’t land with everyone because it’s an aggressively violent and sexual and weird flick.  Despite that, I give it a high recommendation.  I don’t wanna spoil too much, as seeing it fresh with no ideas beforehand is a great way to see it.

Rating: 9/10







Top Movies

1. Oldboy
2. The Verdict
3. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week of 5/24 - 5/30

Hello gang.  We are back.  It’s a pretty solid week here, although it peaked early on in the week.  And while there’s nothing bad, there’s a bitter disappointment in there.  It’s a shame.  But there’s one legend doing great work inside, an icon changing things up, and a unduly hated blockbuster.  Give it a read and see what happened.  Or not.  I don’t care man.  It’s been a long week.

Darkman (May 24th, 2015)

Director: Sam Raimi

Starring: Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Colin Friels, and Larry Drake

The first Liam Neeson action flick, and it’s probably the best.  It’s got more style and energy to it than anything he’s done in this Taken phase of his career (The Grey notwithstanding).  And in a time where Sam Raimi is undervalued and not doing great work, it’s a nice reminded to see that he was a unique voice in cinema for a while before Hollywood knocked that out of his system.  This is a comic book movie that isn’t even based on a comic book, right in line with Batman 89 in visuals and score (thanks Danny Elfman) and in some ways tone, but this is all Raimi and thankfully not Burton.  Liam Neeson is a scientist working on a synthetic skin for burn patients when he is attacked and left for dead thanks to his lawyer girlfriend shaking the hornets nest.  And of course, he uses his fake skin to create masks and his newfound ability to not really feel pain with a heightened strength to get revenge.  It’s all done with the Loony Tunes inspired insanity he perfected in Evil Dead II, brought to the less demonic comic book world.  Neeson is great as the tortured, rage filled Darkman. He acquits himself well to the genre.  McDormand does well enough, not getting enough screentime to really make a dent in this fast and quick movie.  The villains are kinda forgettable but that’s fine. Raimi is the star of the show, setting up great and hilarious set pieces that use the masks gimmick to full effect with all his crazy visual tics on display. It’s a fun ride that stands above the iconic Batman.  Wish Raimi could harness this energy again to something not Spider-Man related, but at least we got this. 

Rating: 9/10

Cowboys and Aliens (May 26th, 2015)
Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, and Sam Rockwell

Yeah, fuck it.  I like this movie.  Sorry, not sorry.  It’s not great, but it isn’t plagued with the problems Lindelof deals in in the cinematic world.  Questions aren’t answered and the ending isn’t a clusterfuck of stupidity.  It’s a simple western with aliens as the bad guys instead of injuns or some shit.  Craig plays an amnesiac who wakes up in the desert without any idea how/why with some strange contraption on his wrist.  When he ambles into a nearby town, he is discovered to be a notorious outlaw and is arrested.  Before being trucked out to a city for justice, Ford shows up as the man he wronged to get frontier justice.  But the aliens attack and kidnap their people, sending these men on a journey across the land to find their peoples.  It’s a western and it manages to be pretty lowkey for the most part.  That may be the problem for most, it’s humble approach.  The initial invasion is bigger than a western action scene, but it’s pretty low scale for a sci fi extravaganza. Favreau directs the hell out of it, the visuals perfectly capturing the vibe of a western.  The aliens themselves are decently rendered little bastards.  Craig is good as the stoic badass with the little hints of humor throughout, a good man with no name esque performance.  Ford is awake in his performance, always a good thing. He’s playing a mean, corrupt bastard of a man who has a decent journey through the film.  It’s not a masterwork but it is nowhere near The Long Ranger or John Carter in terms of cinematic messes.  It’s a fun ride and doesn’t deserve the beating it got.

Rating: 8/10

Shaft (May 29th, 2015)
Director: John Singleton
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Christian Bale, Jeffrey Wright, and Richard Roundtree

John Singleton should stick to genre movies.  Having recently seen Higher Learning and rewatching Boyz N The Hood, his message movies are so blunt and unsubtle and way too heavy handed.  R Rated versions of after school specials with amateurish production.  But after growing in the technical side, he can take a good genre script and shoot it pretty well. This movie here is not a masterpiece or even a great movie by any stretch.  It feels choppy and cut up with reshoots thanks to busy body studio heads and producers.  It’s plot isn’t convoluted so much as harried and unmomentous.  But it’s got a good style, feeling like a modern (for 2000) version of a genre movie with the charisma of Sam Jackson keeping this all watchable.  Sam doing much of the work.  But the cast he gets is really good, a far cry from the amateurish acting he traded in before.  And he shoots the action pretty well.  It’s fun mainly, especially when Richard Roundtree gets to interact with Sam.  Because this isn’t a remake.  It’s a sequel, and Roundtree reprises the role of Shaft.  So that’s fun.  And the villains, while not threatening in the least, are fun to watch.  Bale is great as a more outwardly douchey/unappealing version of Patrick Bateman and Jeffrey Wright is pretty good as the overly ambitious drug dealer.  It’s not a perfect movie and it isn’t as good as Four Brothers, but it’s a solid entry from a man who wasted too much time trying to be Spike Lee. 

Rating: 8/10

Wet Hot American Summer (May 30th, 2015)
Director: David Wain
Starring: Michael Showalter, Janeane Garofolo, Paul Rudd, and Christopher Meloni

There’s a lot of people in here that I like and who went on to go to do alot of good things.  And this is by no stretch a horrible movie.  But it’s kinda not good.  It’s really not that funny.  It’s rickety and too silly and doesn’t feel like anyone put thought into the movie/jokes.  This feels like a big improv sketch show with a lot of bad sketches.  I like the idea of what they’re trying to do, but this doesn’t come off as funny or subversive as Sleepaway Camp and that didn’t mean to be.  But there is a scene where Christopher Meloni talks to a can of soup that is voiced by H Jon Benjamin, so it can’t be completely worthless.  It has it’s moments but they are spread way too far apart and don’t hit the mark high enough. 

Rating: 7/10







Top Movies

1. Darkman
2. Cowboys and Aliens
3. Shaft
4. Wet Hot American Summer

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week of 5/17 - 5/23

We got us a short week here, with both jobs being very busy for me and taking precious time away from laying down and watching cinema. It’s tough, but I think I can get through it.  And sadly, nothing here jumps on the list of great ones or even super rewatchability.  There’s one complete failure, a mediocre take by a legend, and a good little oddity from another legend.  But it’s all interesting to me, so give it a read and tell me what an asshole I am for thinking as such.

Higher Learning (May17th, 2015)

Director: John Singelton

Starring: Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson, Ice Cube, and Michael Rappaport

Boyz N The Hood was a real big movie in 1991, one of those flicks that capture the attention of the world and feels important.  So John Singleton jumped onto the list of hot directors and sadly kinda squandered it.  One only has to see his directorial output past Baby Boy to see how far he’s fallen, only making 3 movies in the last 12 years of the unpopular variety.  And even looking back at Boyz N The Hood, it hasn’t aged particularly well and Singletons directorial style is the reason why it hasn’t aged well.  He isn’t a subtle man, going to bash people over the heads with the messages he is trying to get across.  Nobody is a character really, just a message that are filled with speeches and moments that fall right into that message.  It’s all big and grandiose with obvious music to make you feel something, either a time or feeling.  And all that can be applied to his third movie, Higher Learning, which has all those Singleton flashes.  But what separates this from Boyz N The Hood is that Boyz doesn’t have a lot of characters to spend time on and his message is more narrow and clear, which allows some moments to come in to show who these people are when they aren’t walking motivational posters.    This movie tries so hard to showcase all the problems that could befall a college student, from overworking athletes to racism to rape to misogyny to mental illness to anything you can think it tries to tackle.  So nothing sticks and all of it’s just grating.  It feels phony and contrived and just self righteous.  It’s a big swing and a miss that shows why he hasn’t had the longevity and productivity that Spike Lee has.

Rating: 4/10

The Lady From Shanghai (May 20th, 2015)
Director: Orson Welles
Starring: Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, and Glenn Anders

Off my massive collection of movies on blu ray, I only on two Orson Welles movies and this is one and the other isn’t Citizen Kane.  This is a decent little movie, something that seems to be a work for hire job that he tried to make unique but was screwed over by the studios yet again.  Chopped to bits and forced to deal with reshoots that stand out completely, it has some good moments and ideas but doesn’t really stand together.  It’s supposed to be a black comedy take on a typical murder mystery, but the choppy editing makes it totally convoluted and hard to follow.  And the performances are by the two lawyers in the movie are so big and obnoxious, it can be really hard to watch.  Welles doesn’t fare much better with his insane Irish accent.  Hayworth is just a blank for the most part, so aside from her looks she doesn’t really stand out.  What this movie does is all technical stuff (editing aside) really well.  Good location stuff and a really good climax that Enter The Dragon ripped off, this works decently enough.  But don’t use this as the lynchpin of early black and white hollywood cinema.

Rating: 7/10

Happy Feet (May 23rd, 2015)
Director: George Miller
Starring: Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, and Robin Williams

George Miller may very well be the weirdest and most singular populist director working.  His original Mad Max trilogy was filled to the brim with weird touches and big visuals.  The Witches From Eastwick was crazy, as was his installment in The Twilight Zone Movie.  Even Babe: Pig In The City is so much weirder than the usual kiddie movie fare.  And that continues onto Happy Feet, a movie that features anthropomorphic penguins that are kinda realistically depicted, ignoring the dancing and singing and such.  It’s a musical with some odd choices and a great look.  And it’s got the mexican penguins that kinda take you aback that he’d put them in.  But it’s also a deceptively smart movie, tackling the ravaging of mother nature and even organized religion/extremism in there while also being a love story with a be yourself bent.  It’s a cute movie with some good laughs and is visually gorgeous, not a surprise with Miller.  But it’s a little too long and is structured really weirdly.  It’s not bad and it’s a good time at the movies.  But he’s done better, and maybe the sequel is better since he’s good with sequels. 

Rating: 8/10





Top Movies

1. Happy Feet
2. The Lady From Shanghai
3. Higher Learning

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week Of 5/10 - 5/16

Hey gang! Welcome back, we got a new weeks worth of cinema to bring to ya.  Sadly, it's a week with less great in it than prior weeks, but there's enough stuff in here worth some enjoyment.  It's a solid week, nothing special or horrible.  So let's give it a go and see what happens.  

Coogan's Bluff (May 10th, 2015)

Director: Don Siegel

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Susan Clark, Tisha Sterling, and Lee J. Cobb

You gotta love some old school Clint movies that are charmingly out of touch with the times.  Clint stars here as a Sheriff deputy from Arizona who is tasked with extraditing a prisoner back to Arizona from NYC.  So it’s a movie where not only does Clint get to play fish out of water in 1968 NYC, but the prisoner is a hippie and the world he inhabits is so cartoonish that you can’t help but chuckle at it, like a crusty grandpa who doesn’t really know what he’s talking about but is confident he does.  Aside from the charming ignorance on display, the movie is kind of shaggy and slow.  It ambles along with no real urgency, despite the mad dog killer roaming the streets.  Clint spends most his time just laying pipe with women around town.  The only real highlight of the movie is Clint getting into a big brawl in a bar.  That’s about as interesting as the movie gets.  It’s got some late 60s movie charm to it with the aforementioned hippy silliness, but that’s about it.  Charming enough if you want a Clint fix. 

Rating: 7/10

The Dead Zone (May 13th, 2015)
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Herbert Lom, and Martin Sheen

If someone told you that an adaptation of Stephen Kings book The Dead Zone would be made in the 80s, David Cronenbergs name wouldn’t immediately jump to mind.  He is an intellectual director, not necessarily a man interested in plot or everyday people.  But with further thought put into it, the match is actually a pretty good fit.  Cronenberg has one fascination when it comes to movies, and that is the body turning against ones self.  And that is what The Dead Zone is, a story where everyman Johnny Smith (Walken) gets into a car accident and slips into a coma for 5 years, coming out of it with the ability to see the important moments regarding life and death to those he touches with his hand.  But this ability is taking a toll on Johnny and it is slowly killing him the more he uses it.  Cronenberg is a pretty good fit here as he is more interested in intellectual ideas and tone, bringing a real sense of melancholic doom to the movie.  It’s also easily makes the weird seem reasonable, never coming off as fake.  And while he isn’t one for the technical aspects of filmmaking, he does get some good shots and a cool visual way to show Johnnys ability.  Walken is good in the role, but is kinda the weakest link in the movie.  He is just naturally so weird and off putting that his journey he takes isn’t as rewarding or natural, similar to Jack in The Shining.  But it doesn’t kill the movie.  The only other weak link is the ending plot with Johnny meeting Greg Stillson (Sheen) is a bit rushed, only really coming into play in the last 20 minutes or so, rushing Johnnys journey into the decision he has to make.  But it’s done decently enough in the rush to work within the overall framework, still ending on a tragic but kinda bittersweet note.  This isn’t my favorite Cronenberg (that’s still A History Of Violence), but I have a lot to see and thus far from what I’ve seen this is the best of his from the 80s. 

Rating: 9/10

Cujo (May 15th, 2015)
Director: Lewis Teague
Starring: Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Danny Pintauro, and Chris Stone

This is an interesting companion piece after coming off the heels of The Dead Zone.  Whereas that movie felt very much in line with Kings work with an auteurist feel, this one tries to emulate King with a workmans hand guiding it.  Which is fine, as it’s still a decent movie and fixes some pretty bad aspects of the book in the transition, but is hindered by the weak narrative at play before the showdown in the car actually comes into play.  The one weakness still in play from the book is that Dee Wallaces character is really kind of unlikable, a woman who steps out on her husband because she’s a spoiled brat.  And she makes some stupid decisions that just are horror movie stupid, making her hard to root for.  And just the domestic stuff doesn’t click anyway, with Kelly as her husband kinda not interesting to watch anyway.  And the movie is screwy when the rabid killer dog is more empathetic than the humans it’s trying to kill.  But once the dog attacks the car, it takes off and works pretty well.  It still retains a bunch of the obnoxious coincidences that plagued the book as well, but they work well enough in a story about a dog thats as good and devious a killer as Jason Voorhees.  It’s a movie that requires some more than usual suspension of belief, but there’s some charm to be had for it, that 80s drive in charm.

Rating: 7/10

Bad Lieutenant (May 16th, 2015)
Director: Abel Ferrara
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Frankie Thorn, Zoe Lund, and Paul Calderon

This is a weird movie in the fact that it has a very seedy tone to it that it does pretty well, but it is also not the greatest in any other aspect.  Keitel gives a great performance as this little shit, a wolf in sheeps clothing who can’t do anything right who just descends into even worse depravity at the end.  But that’s pretty much what the movie has going for it.  It tries to go for a Catholic forgiveness redeeming story, but it gets to it with way too little time left.  It’s got that early 90s indie feel to it, and Keitel is really the only one in the movie.  People just float in and out.  It’s a weird flick, one that I can’t even completely say is good but is so odd and singular with a great performance at its center, I can look past the really repetitive drug scenes.

Rating: 8/10






Top Movies

1. The Dead Zone
2. Bad Lieutenant
3. Cujo
4. Coogan's Bluff

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week of 5/3 - 5/9

Welcome back gang.  We gots a new entry for ya ass, and it’s alright.  It’s an almost disappointingly average week, with an utter awful lowpoint in the mix.  But overall, a good week.  And while I can’t write it up due to an embargo, I saw a movie this week that you can see on the other website come Friday, May 15th.  So sit back and try to enjoy.  And wait patiently to see the word come out about the new release.

Chillerama (May 3rd, 2015)

Directors: Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Adam Rifkin, and Tim Sullivan

Starring: Richard Riehle, Joel David Moore, Ray Wise, and Adam Rifkin

All anthology movies have a weak entry in them.  VHS 2 had the robot eye short.  The Twilight Zone Movie had Spielbergs short about old people.  But I haven’t seen an anthology with an entry so bad as to poison what came before and what came after it.  This isn’t a serious movie.  It’s filled to the brim with super childish humor and taboo/offensive material in such a delirious way as to be fun and not offensive.  But Tim Sullivans entry is so bad on every level, that the movie sank a whole lot.  It’s the second entry in a 4 entry film.  The first entry is from Rifkin, and while that isn’t perfect it has a dedication to the ridiculous and bodily fluid humor that it is a bit charming in its low key shittiness.  And the two after it by Green and Lynch are real solid and pick up the slack but not enough to really make the whole good.  Sullivans is that bad and amateurish.  Greens is a goofy little throwback to the Nazi genre of grindhouse movies with a really Jewish sense of humor about it in such an over the top way.  And Lynch takes on the zombie genre in such a fucked up and different way as to be jaw dropping.  And he has a little joke movie within the movie that is so childish that you can’t help but laugh.  I wish I could recommend this more.  But Sullivan really just fucked this movie up completely.

Rating: 7/10

Mission Impossible (May 4th, 2015)
Director: Brian DePalma
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Ving Rhames, and Jean Reno

It’s really crazy to think that it’s been close to 20 years since this movie came out and that the franchise is still kicking.  Because while it’s not a bad movie by any stretch, it just doesn’t have the hook that most spy movies do.  That and MI2 was so not well received that everyone just assumed it was over with.  And luckily for us the series became fluid, with each director coming on and making it feel different than the last.  So here, we got a DePalma movie. Not too into shootouts and guns, but more about the tech and cool shots and real tension and an over the top story.  It feels much in line with DePalama.  The story is kinda too convoluted for its own good and some of the character beats aren’t fleshed out to well that by the end, you’re left wondering why they did what they did.  Cruise isn’t bad in it, but he is trying to play a character that isn’t there on the script where he essentially would just be playing movie star in the sequels. But DePalmas craft keeps the movie going, especially in the iconic scene with Cruise hanging from a ceiling in that white room which is just tension and quiet.  It’s a crackerjack scene and makes the movie.  The climax is cool too, even with some typical wonky 90s cgi work. But it has Tom Cruise blow up a helicopter and get exploded towards a speeding train.  So it’s fine.  Since the series is basically one offs with no real continuity, this is lower on the scale for watchability. Really only for the context of the series, much like Dr. No.  But it’s solid enough and makes for a fun watch.  

Rating: 8/10

Play Misty For Me (May 6th, 2015)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills, and John Larch

Here we got the debut of Clint in the directors chair.  And it’s a pretty solid little picture, rough around the edges but a movie that actually influenced things to come.  See kids, this was the movie that introduced the crazy stalker movies that would include the most famous of them Fatal Attraction.   As a debut, it is rough around the edges.  Some obvious audio issues, a little lagging in the pace, and some whatever moments in the performance area.  But it does a good job with the idea of a swinging dick dj (Clint) getting in too deep with the crazy lady fan of his (Walter) while trying to further his career and reignite his relationship with his ex (Mills).  There’s some real tense, wild moments in it.  He even kinda does some real early shaky cam in an attack scene, that’s kinda surprisingly bloody.  And being a 70s movie, it’s got some stereotypical black and gay characters that give it that nice little 70s spice.  The resolution is just so gloriously insane that it made me cackle.  I’d suggest this to folks, since it started a pretty strong career behind the camera for the icon. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Invaders From Mars (May 8th, 2015)
Director: Tobe Hooper
Starring: Hunter Carson, Karen Black, Timothy Bottoms, and Laraine Newman

Tobe Hooper, the man with the most ridiculous of careers.  He came out of the gate with a masterpiece, a game changer in the horror field with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  And after that, almost nothing he’s made has been really good.  He’s got his movies that have some goofy entertainment to be had.  And we can get into the debate that he directed Poltergeist, despite all the rumors and the feeling while watching it that Spielberg directed it.  But despite his almost abject failure to make a success without the air of Spielbergian influence, you gotta give him credit in that he pretty much never repeated himself. He went so off base with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 that you gotta respect the audacity to just make a sequel in a different genre completely.  Even this movie here, Invaders From Mars, could have been an easy Poltergeist/Amblin ripoff.  But instead he goes with the tone of an old 50s sci fi drive in flick, full of goofy performances and silly plot turns and weird monster effects.  And it is just a good, goofy little movie that won’t really stick with you but entertains you while in the moment.  Aside from the kid being an utter chore to watch and a just awful twist ending, it’s a good time.  And if you ever wanted to watch Nurse Ratched get eaten by a giant martian testicle, this is the movie for you.  This is a solid entry in Hoopers three movie run with Cannon films, but it is at the bottom because it can’t match the sheer lunacy of Lifeforce or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. 

Rating: 7.5/10





Top Movies

1. Play Misty For Me
2. Mission Impossible
3. Invaders From Mars
4. Chillerama

- Tom Lorenzo