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Post by Joker on Aug 27, 2010 23:11:05 GMT -5
Shutter Island
Leo DiCaprio is a U.S. Marshall that goes to an isolated island mental instution with his partner to uncover where a mental patient disappeared to. He has gruesome flashbacks to his army days in WWII when he helped to liberate the Dachau concentration camp and committed a vicious act. Then things just keep getting weirder and weirder as he has hallucinations of his dead wife and children. As he gets closer to the truth things just get more grim and finally a revelatory twist sheds a lot of light on all of the confusion. One of the best mindbender films since Jacob's Ladder.
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Post by PimPamPet on Aug 28, 2010 2:45:36 GMT -5
The Phantom of the Opera. I'm not really into silent movies that much but this one's absolutely brilliant. Lon Chaney's make-up used to give me nightmares as a kid. A timeless classic. Hannibal Rising. I was impressed by this one, it's far superior to any of the other post- Lambs Lecter movies. It tells us the story of Hannibal growing up and what happened to him to make him such a sick and twisted person. Airplane II: The Sequel. Not quite as funny as the first one, but still enjoyable.
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Post by Skyroniter on Aug 28, 2010 16:51:55 GMT -5
Rollergator 1996
Every time I think I've seen all of the worst movies ever, a new contender throws its hat into the ring. This one wears a mighty big hat.
A young woman finds a talking baby alligator on the beach. He's hiding from Joe Estevez, owner of a small amusement park, who hopes to make a fortune by adding the gator to his freak show. Mr. Estevez sends a skateboarding female ninja after our rollerblading heroine. They skate around the LA drainage system while baby gator tosses out wisecracks. Eventually our heroine is assisted by a skating teen girl with a slingshot. Can they escape the evil ninja and deliver baby to Conrad Brooks of Plan 9 fame? You'll have to suffer through it like I did to find out. I suppose you could google it if you really wanted to know. But why would you?
The story isn't really as good as I'm making it sound. The dialog is inane. I think much of it was made up on the fly. Fortunately the awful soundtrack frequently drowns it out. The girls are cute but the alligator is irritating and unbelievably fake. No one can act but in their defense they didn't really have anything to work with.
I'm not sure if this was meant for kids or just a lame attempt at comedy but it is so inept that I totally enjoyed it.
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Post by mccloud on Aug 28, 2010 19:19:32 GMT -5
I didn't get to jump on the Avatar bandwagon the first time around, so when they re-released it this weekend, I saw it today, in IMAX no less. It was a damned expensive ticket, but a nice flick. I also got to see a 3D trailer for Tron. lol
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Post by Bix Dugan on Aug 28, 2010 22:02:03 GMT -5
I always thought that the Mads' host segment with Frank and Dr. F laughing uncontrollably at the "Fridge Alert" was really their collective memories of tripping. LSD or mescaline, or mushrooms.
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Post by Crowfan on Aug 29, 2010 17:46:37 GMT -5
The Last Exorcism. Very creepy chiller about a fundamentalist preacher who gets a letter from a widower with two kids and wants help, because the daughter is possessed by the Devil. Has many twists and turns, and the documentary style of filmmaking really works here. I jumped several times and got chills toward the end. Very very spooky and highly recommended.
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Post by Joker on Sept 1, 2010 3:10:37 GMT -5
Two-Lane Blacktop
A young James Taylor plays a very intense driver of a souped up old '55 Chevy who races other boastful drivers for money. He travels with a deadpan mechanic and a young girl joins them. Then they challenge a possibly crazy driver in a GTO (Warren Oates) to race for pink slips that will end in Washington D.C. They want a fair race though and will not take advantage of this guys holdups. It's a very likeable film even though Oates and some of the other character actors act circles around future singer/songwriter Taylor.
Forbidden World: Director's Cut
A mercenary (Jesse Vint) is called to a remote outpost on a desert planet where a metamorphing new life form bred to create an abundant food supply begins to attack and mutate the scientists there into its own food. It's very gory, but suffers from some bad set design where you can see that it's just fast food containers lining the walls. Funny since they seemed to work when used in Galaxy of Terror.
Actually Galaxy of Terror was a much cleaner print than the DVD I got from Netflix. The picture here looks like it was taken from a decades old VHS print (which it probably was) complete with degraded picture quality and tracking problems. And this is supposed to be the new version of the DVD recently released!
Update: Actually this wound up being the Director's Cut disc, but that doesn't really excuse not just putting the five minutes of cut footage into the remastered theatrical cut, thus making it infinitely more watchable.
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Post by Skyroniter on Sept 3, 2010 20:58:53 GMT -5
Nuclear Hurricane (2007)
In honor of Hurricane Earl I decided to watch this windy flick. Much like Earl, its initial promise of fear and/or excitement quickly turned into a yawn fest. Don't bother.
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Post by PimPamPet on Sept 4, 2010 20:06:23 GMT -5
The Deer Hunter. One of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen, without a doubt. It never fails to impress me. No need to summarize what it's about, I trust everyone here is familiar with it. They Saved Hitler's Brain. The plot was difficult to follow, but I'll attempt to sum it up from what I understand: at the end of WW2, the nazi's apparently discovered a way to seperate the head of Adolf Hitler from his body and keep it alive. Somewhere in the 60's (I'm assuming) the ones who remain loyal to the fuhrer decide it's time to try to take over the world (again) by releasing an extremely lethal gas which will wipe out a large part of the earth's population. Or something. From the director of 12 to the Moon (a movie us MSTies should all be familiar with) comes this bizarre sci-fi "thriller". Originally released under the title The Madmen of Mandoras in 1963, this is an edited-for-TV version with approximately 25 minutes of "new" footage (shot in the late 60's/early 70's) replacing the original opening to the 1963 movie. This part of the movie doesn't combine too well with the rest, especially in terms of production values which are extremely cheap here. The premise sounds a lot more exciting than it ever gets. The most notable scenes are the ones involving the Adolf head. It looks very silly. "He" only actually talks in 1 or 2 scenes and makes awkward facial expressions the rest of the time. It only appears for a few minutes of total screentime (which is disappointing - after all, he is the title character) and doesn't actually seem to have a purpose in the nazi plot. The acting is utterly unconvincing, partially due to the superficial nature of the characters, as well as the writing. I quickly had trouble figuring out what each character's relation to the others was. This is a good example of a "bad bad movie", as opposed to a "good bad movie" which is actually entertaining. There are some amusing moments here and there, mostly unintentional due to the bad acting/editing, but the story is a total mess and I had trouble figuring out what was going on in some parts. Not recommended, unless you're an insomniac like myself and need these terrible movies to get through the night. :-)
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Post by Joker on Sept 4, 2010 22:17:36 GMT -5
Almost Human (1974)
Thomas Milian is Julio, a small-time criminal who is pretty much psychotic and can't seem to get ahead in his criminal career. Then he comes up with a kidnapping plan to snatch up the daughter of a wealthy businessman for a huge ransom. He's planned the whole thing out and knows how he can get the money and get away with his two partners. After slaughtering a family he gets his plan in motion. A no-B.S. cop (Henry Silva) wants to shut him down permanently and hunts him relentlessly to get the girl back alive. A very unconventional ending make this an okay caper film, but Milian pushes it over the top with his scenery gnawing presence. He looks like a young Stephen King and acts like Bill Moseley. Very nuts.
Survival of the Dead
You know, I like George Romero's films, but as of the last decade he hasn't been making very good ones. This one is yet another bad flick with unlikable characters. A bunch of soldiers get fooled into going to an island where two Irish clans are having a blood feud with one side trying to keep their undead loved ones around and the other one trying to wipe out the plague spreaders. People don't act like real folks so I never gave a crap about any of them. A bunch of money is valuable for some reason and no one points out that it's probably only good for toilet paper as the human race seems to kill each other off faster than the zombies.
I guess it was supposed to be a comedy, but it really just seemed pretty stupid. After a while you want to grab these people by the face and scream at them to start thinking so they can survive for the good of humanity. But then you realize that you wouldn't want to live in a future full of these greedy, senseless morons.
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Post by reaperg on Sept 5, 2010 12:33:21 GMT -5
"Army of Darkness"
I was at a midnight screening at a local sci-fi center. I don't need to tell anyone how great this flick is, do I?
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Post by Crowfan on Sept 5, 2010 18:52:31 GMT -5
The 1978 version of Piranha. Humor and gore. Had forgotten that this was a Roger Corman film. Has director commentary from Joe Dante(Gremlins); making of featurette, bloopers, still gallery, trailers, radio and TV spots, and more. Campy good fun. Highly recommended.
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Post by Skyroniter on Sept 6, 2010 12:11:16 GMT -5
"Army of Darkness" I was at a midnight screening at a local sci-fi center. I don't need to tell anyone how great this flick is, do I? You don't need to tell me. Great flick.
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Post by Skyroniter on Sept 6, 2010 18:16:22 GMT -5
Croc 2007
I thought I was going to watch a documentary on the company that makes those stupid plastic shoes. Turns out I was in for a B movie about a big ass crocodile who has a taste for the ladies. Men and kids too.
Michael Madsen does his best Quint imitation. Which isn't very good. And the flick borrows its main plot point from Attack of the Giant Leeches. But the scenery is beautiful and the movie keeps chugging along. Relatively painless way to blow an hour and a half.
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Post by Crowfan on Sept 6, 2010 18:45:31 GMT -5
The Believer. The story of Danny Balint, a young man who is a very strange contradiction, a Neo-Nazi who is also a Jew. The film shows his struggle between destroying his own people and being drawn back to Judiasm. Inspired by true events, this film is not only really interesting, but also chilling. Very highly recommended.
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