Spider Baby

This is a black and white movie featuring Lon Chaney Jr. as a sort of butler who cares for three retarded children (or adults playing children). The Merrye children have a genetic disorder that makes them devolve mentally when they hit the age of ten. The father has recently died and the sister has come to reclaim the house in which the three kids and butler live (along with some random deformed aunts and uncles in the basement). The kids, while retarded, are natural killers who play with spiders. The kids end up killing the aunt and her lawyer. But the uncle and lawyer’s secretary escape to tell the story later. It’s not the best movie in the world, but for the time frame, it’s not bad. A tad far fetched, but it was a long time ago.

La Crevate

Finally, the last Alejandro Jodoworsky film in the box set, so I’m done with him. This one fortunately seemed to have significantly more in the plot area. And it’s a silent film and it’s a short film (35 mins), so it’s perfect. It’s about a creepy red-haired woman who sells human heads and swaps them out for paying customers. Actually an interesting concept. I’m guessing they spent about $25 for the set and props, so this guy made a killing if more than 5 people bought the film. The back of the box had a quote by Jodoworksy saying he thinks people will hate it because it’s an amateur film. However, I thought it was his best work. Weird.

Eat and Run

A former coworker of mine recommended this. She’s got a good track record for recommending bad movies, so I hopped on Amazon and bought this, even though it was on VHS. In a country town, a sausage-maker thinks he sees something crash land in a field and ends up picking up a really fat hitchhiker. The hitchhiker then eats the sausage-maker. And thus acquires a taste for Italian. So then he goes on a killing/eating spree across New York. So a police detective that loves to talk to himself is tracking this guy. This movie is amazingly bad, and I’m VERY impressed Stacy made it through this movie. There are billboards in the background for “The Wiz” if that gives you any indication of the time-frame of this movie. There are some really slap-stick comedy dialogs which were probably hilarious during the 80’s but fall sort of flat now (though I still chuckled a couple of times, admittedly). Don’t actually buy this movie, but if someone you know owns it, you’ll laugh, I’m sure.

Unfaithful

Diane Lane gets knocked over by a gust of wind and some French guy rescues her. Diane keeps in contact with Frenchie and eventually they start doing “it”. Things are fine until Diane’s husband Richard Gere hires a PI and finds out about the affair. He goes to Frenchie’s apartment and has a couple drinks and then kills him with a snow globe – a snow globe that Richard gave Diane as a gift (and Diane gave Frenchie the globe as a gift in turn). People have talked about how HOT this movie is and yeah, there’s some sex scenes, but I wouldn’t call it hot. It’s just got more action in it than most Hollywood films. It’s got good suspense after Richard kills Frenchie and then puts the snow globe back in their house, which Diane finds later and realizes that he knows (that’s what I would have done too – ha ha ha). It’s a good movie and worth watching, but it’s really not as hot as people say it is.

The Good Girl

This is a Jennifer Aniston film about her working in a store down south called Retail Rodeo. This kid starts working there and makes a pass at Jennifer, who has a husband she’s not happy with. She shoots him down and he goes all psycho on her and writes her a hilarious note about meeting her in the Chuck E. Cheese parking lot. One of the coworkers has to go to the hospital, so Jennifer races to the hospital and drops her off and then goes to Chuck E. Cheese. Hilarious. They meet and then go to a hotel to seal the deal. The coworker ends up dying and Jennifer continues the affair. Jennifer’s husband’s friend finds out about it and blackmails her into sleeping with him too. So when she ends up pregnant, Jennifer doesn’t know whose it is, and the other guys are freaking out too. It not a very uplifting movie, but it’s fairly interesting.

Chocolate

This is a Thai martial arts movie from the people that did Ong-Bak and The Protector (my nephew recommended this one to me). Girl raises a “special needs” child. The bad guys have warned her and her lover that they need to stay away or they’ll get her. And they get her… and cut off her big toe. Watching it with the English voices overdubbed is hilarious mostly because of a guy playing the part of the girl on the bad guy team. Sounds like David Cross playing a woman. So the special needs girl watches this martial arts training camp all day. She learns some serious skills. And when you overdub a special needs kid’s voice in English, it turns out hilarious as well (sorry to be non-PC). The sped girl’s friend find a book with amount of money people owe sped girl’s mom. The sped girl and her friend go and start collecting the money that is owed to the mother. The girl starts messing people up real bad. They work their way up the bad-guy ladder and eventually are forced to fight the big bosses of the crime underworld. The scenes are shot with almost no special effects, so make sure you watch the closing credits. They show sort of behind the scenes things and see them actually getting seriously injured during the shooting. It’s pretty impressive. This movie is worth a watch.

Orgazmo

This is an intentionally bad movie from the maker of Southpark. It’s about a Mormon guy (played by Trey Stone – as Joe) that’s doing his missionary work and interrupts an adult film shoot. The director hires Joe to replace his Orgazmo who’s broken his finger on the set. The director assures him he’ll remain anonymous, but the film makes millions and gets crazy publicity. Joe’s fiancé finds out the hard way he’s an adult film star legend. It’s a pretty ridiculous movie, but I did laugh at a couple of parts pretty heartily. Especially the quotes from Dave the set assistant. I don’t think I’d recommend it, but I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of it if they wanted to see it.

Gone Baby Gone

This is a shoot ‘em up movie from Boston with a good plot. A kid turns up missing and the family hires a private investigator team to find the girl. The girl’s mom is a coke head and had some issues with her dealer involving lots of money. The investigators end up in over their heads and run into some serious drug dealers. The case is closed and then another kid turns up missing. This case shed some more light on the original case. There’s all kinds of shooting and sweating in that street-level Boston kind of way. There’s a couple of pretty intense scenes, and it’s not really a “nice” movie, but I liked it a lot. It’s got some plot twists and not everything turns out the way you think it’s going to (or maybe I’m just naïve, which is a distinct possibility). Just watch this film. You won’t be disappointed.

Fando Y Lis

This is another Alejandro Jodorowsky film, and you all know how much I loathe his work. This one is no different. Full of some sort of drug induced symbolism that borders on retarded. A guy (Fando) pushes around his girlfriend (Lis) on a cart because she’s paralyzed. She carries with her a phonograph and a drum and a doll. Periodically, Fando will carry Lis around with him, but he carries her on the small of his back while standing upright, forming a human plus sign. Who the hell carries people like that? They’re apparently on the search for some mythical place called Tar. Along the way they find other retarded people who crawl around in the mud or breastfeed or dress up or are just plain morons. The movie doesn’t end up with much plot (as I suspected). Maybe I’m just not familiar with life in Chile or something, but I simply don’t get it nor do I want to. I’m hoping these actors and actresses in his films ar long gone because I’m guessing they’d be so embarrassed at the parts they’ve played. Maybe that’s just too harsh. Maybe it’s not.

Black Snake Moan

Christina Ricci plays a redneck whore – which is too bad because she USED to be smokin’ hot. Bummer. Her boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, goes off to war and leaves her behind to sleep with everyone in the town. She’s got some weird cough which I’m assuming means she’s got some sort of sickness. She goes to a town fair gets all drunk and looped up on drugs, sleeps with a couple people. Her boyfriend’s friend takes her home and tries to rape her. He gets frustrated, punches her in the face a couple of times and dumps her on the side of the road. Samuel L. Jackson picks her up and nurses her back to health (after he chains her to the house). At one point, he puts the chain over his shoulder and I couldn’t help yelling “JYD” really loud. Thankfully, I was alone. Christina and Samuel L. become friends and eventually JT comes home from the war and thinks Samuel L. has been working his lady. He’s wrong. This isn’t a great movie by any stretch, and there are some pretty simple reasons why this movie never made it big. But it’s not terrible. Trying to un-whiten “This Little Light of Mine” is impossible and should have been taken out of this movie, though.

Hercules, Prisoner of Evil

This is an even older Hercules movie (1964) with completely overdubbed voice tracks, which makes it even more ridiculous. A small village is attacked by monsters and Hercules decides he’s going to help find and kill this monster/monsters. Which is funny, because the king blames Hercules for all of it. There’s lots of running and lots of sweating men, but very little action. The monster is a hilarious mask on a guy, so it’s not scary at all and barely monsterlike. I’ve seen scarier burn victims. I kept falling asleep in this movie. Don’t bother.

Poultry-geist: Night of the Chicken Dead

This is another Troma movie, so just keep that in mind through the review. First off this movie has one of the best opening dialogues ever and nudity. And for those of you who know me well, you’ll know what “to the elbow” means. I’ll hand it to Troma, they get as many different types of people into their movies (including midgets, fatties, and paraplegics) along with broadway-style terrible songs (with asinine lyrics or libretto as the theater folks call it) and dancing. And Ron Jeremy is in the film early. If you are easily offended by insanely over the top fecal humor, do NOT see this film. And there’s WAAAAY too much singing in this film, and if you don’t have Trey Stone from Southpark writing your songs or lyrics, then don’t bother. And there’s an AMAZING amount of blood being sprayed all over the place in this film. Even more than a Japanese horror film (and that’s a LOT). It’s filled with bad puns, racism, politically-incorrect humor, and bad special effects. I love bad movies and I wouldn’t even recommend this one, though I give Troma credit for pulling out all the stops when they decided to make their own bad movie instead of distributing other people’s bad movies.

Beast of Blood

Part 3 of the Blood Island series. The pathologist returns to Blood Island to make sure the “situation” was remedied form the last time he was there. The villagers are not happy to see him, but they tolerate him. He goes back to the scientist’s castle to see what the guy left, but his lady companion gets captured by what everyone assumes is the green-blooded monsters. But it’s actually some of the villagers that abducted her and took her back to the scientist’s secret lair. So most of this movie is about the pathologist trying to get the woman he met two days ago back from the evil scientist. The scientist has been experimenting with green blood (as usual) and has a disembodied head next to the associated body. The head eventually controls his own body from across the room and the body portion tries to kill the scientist. I’m not sure it’s over (in fact I’m pretty sure it’s not over since there’s a fourth movie in the set). Again, not a fantastic movie and the plot is more than a little lame.

Observe & Report

Since Seth Rogan is in 86% of movies since 2003, I felt obligated to go see this one with M.Giant. The movie is about a mall cop who’s trying to impress a whore that works at the cosmetics counter. At the same time there’s a secretly hot girl with a broken ankle who Seth bothers from time to time for free coffee. There’s a flasher in the parking lot of the mall and Seth is going to protect the whore from this lunatic, but he doesn’t. She gets flashed and he vows to get the pervert. The cops get called in and give him all kinds of crap for being a mall cop and he decides he’s going to join the force (but he doesn’t make it). He freaks out and won’t leave the mall after the cops turn him away and they beat him up pretty bad. After a few months, the hot girl is no longer secretly hot and kisses Seth. But the pervert shows up and runs naked through the mall. And you see it all. All. Of. It. With. Running. ALL OF IT. Minutes. Upon. Minutes. Of. Running. The movie wasn’t as good as I had hoped. I laughed at a couple of hilarious spots, but in all honesty, not a single character in this movie was believable. Not even close. It was semi-amusing, but for my money, I’d see Run, Ronnie, Run.

Mad Doctor of Blood Island

This is a 1969 movie about an island where green-blooded monsters attack visitors to the island – also part 2 of the Blood Island series. This might also be the first evidence of the zoom-in/zoom-out Wayne’s World camera effect in film. There’s a multi-level story line. A pathologist is visiting the island to do samples of green blood. A woman is there to see her father for the first time, but he’s the town (or island) drunk. And there’s a man trying to convince his mother to leave her rich scientist boyfriend and come back home with him (meanwhile the man’s father is the rich scientist boyfriend’s lackey and still married technically to the scientist’s girlfriend). Told you it was complex. There’s occasional nudity which still doesn’t help this film. The scientists experiments have turned men into green monsters which the villagers take as some sort of god/”evil one”. There’s a reason the guy’s mom is staying (I won’t ruin the plot for you…ha ha ha). But it’s not a great film, like a lot of 60s films.

Battle Royale

In Japan, things have gone awry in the not-so-distant future. So groups of students are selected by the government to participate in “Battle Royal.” This is a kill-everyone-before-they-kill-you contest on a deserted island. A group of students is on a field trip when they are drugged and collared and taken to this island. There’s a hilarious girl commentator who gives them the rules of the game like it’s a game show, then the 7th grade teacher (Vic Romano) kills one of the students and hamstrings another one to show them how serious this game is. The island is divided into zones. Every 6 hours, the students are read which students have died and are told which zone is now the “danger zone” and must get the heck out of there asap. The collars track their positions and vitals and can also be used to penalize people for causing trouble. As people die, there are stats shown on the screen – very ingenious. The students are given a survival kit with water, food and a random weapon. They have three days to kill everyone else or everyone explodes. There are two “transfer” students who are labeled as “dangerous” thrown into the class, so they’re the ones to watch out for. They are released one at a time and a SERIOUS melee begins. It is a VERY intense movie. You actually feel bad – these are just kids trying to survive, so they get paranoid and jumpy and crazy. One of the best Japanese films I’ve ever seen. This one is a recommender.

The Curious Dr. Humpp

This is a black and white (film, not interracial) movie from the late 60’s about a scientist who’s working on a youth elixir by sucking the “life force” from people having sex. I’m guessing for the time this was rolled out, there was a serious interest in this movie since it has 10 times more nudity than today’s films. It was originally filmed in Argentina, but then had random scenes shot in the US thrown in, but it still flows pretty well and you can’t tell. The scientist also makes these hilarious creatures with Frankenstein heads and blinking lights in their foreheads to capture men and women having sex. Remind me to ask my ultra-christian parents if it’s true that spontaneous sex parties happened daily in the 60’s. The Frankenstein people bring the captives back to the scientist’s hidden castle and when they’re finished having sex with each other, the scientist has them killed. The scientist talks to this disembodied brain in a jar that’s grouchy, so I’m not sure whose idea it was to whip up the youth elixir. As today’s movies go, it’s pretty lame, but like I said, I’m guessing if you asked your parents (or grandparents) about it, they’ll break a sweat.

Boarding Gate

This is a movie filmed in France – it’s still mostly in English, but it’s filmed in France is all. A guy (Mr. Blonde) is trying to sell his shares in his own company to pay back some debts. Apparently he just springs this on his partner in the business who isn’t thrilled about it. Meanwhile Mr. Blonde’s mistress pops by for a visit and they flirt/fight. The girl was not only his mistress, but a paid whore for the seller’s clients at work. She now works at a boat dockyard where ships bring in containers to go out. Some are filled with drugs and she’s selling them to make money to buy a club in China. The mistress shows up at MR. Blonde’s place and handcuffs him like they’re going to get dirty-style. Then she shoots him. The mistress’ boyfriend helps smuggle her out of the country to China. She gets to China and things aren’t exactly what she thought they would be. There’s lots of running and shooting and such, but not really in an action packed sort of way. There’s probably a reason this movie didn’t make the “big time”. (I also have no idea why this movie is titled "Boarding Gate"...)

Sanitarium

British medical suspense drama (they call it a horror, but it's not) from 2001, kind of like a shorter version of The Kingdom. A doctor is developing a drug to cure the crazies. The doctor is under the forceful hand of the asylum director who is hoping to get rich off the drug and is rushing (and skipping) a lot of testing. The doctor seems to go crazy and shoots himself before his work is completed, though not before we find out he is doing autopsies in the closed off portion of the hospital under the guidance of the director. The doctor who is assisting with the drug finds his notes with this random reporter’s help and autopsy remnants and begins to go crazy himself. Then his wife (also a doctor at the hospital) goes crazy and dies. The director is still trying to push for the release of this new drug, but clearly, things are getting tense. It’s got that annoying repetitive vocal music like a grown-up version of the Children of the Corn music (you know what I’m talking about). In the end the photographer/journalist starts seeing scary things in the photos he’s taken. They release the drug and people start dying left and right. They added Uri Geller into the film when they got to the end of the film and realize none of it made sense, so he’s playing a detective asking just enough questions to make some semblance of sense with this thing. It’s got one of those ending that doesn’t really make sense and you’re not quite sure what you saw, but it’s not a terrible movie. Just ends poorly.

Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. The Undead

Japanese swimming/zombie movie. The movie opens with a girl practicing alone for a swim meet (does that really happen and does it always happen in the dark?) and she feels someone grab her foot. Then she finds all kinds of hair wrapped around her hands and arms. Creepy. The coach ends up dead (complete with spraying blood all over the shower). There’s an announcement on the intercom system saying students need to be vaccinated, but whatever they’re injecting them with is turning them into zombies. Zombie teachers start chopping students up in class so there is blood spraying everywhere and limbs being strewn about (including toes). Apparently, the chlorine in the pool water is the antidote. But only for the students, not the teachers, so they keep on killing. Then one of those “What just happened?” parts ended the movie. The main girl swimmer kills the bad zombie coach by shooting a laser beam out of her… uh… lady parts. Sorry to ruin it for you. And there is random English thrown in, which in itself isn't funny, but when every time these English-speakers talk, they use "r" instead of "l", that's comedic genius (and yes, racism, but mostly comedy). This movie is weird, but not awful, just a little weird in the plot arena.

It Came… Without Warning (aka Without Warning)

Dad and son go on a hunting trip and are attacked by these little flying discs with tentacles (yes, without warning). Then some kids are going on a camping trip and stop for supplies and gas and run into a VERY young Jack Palance. Then the flying discs get a boy scout leader who’s taking some kids on a camping trip. The camping trip kids get split up and one couple turns up missing. The other two stumble across their bodies hanging in a shed. They run to a nearby bar and there’s crazy war veterans in there making everyone paranoid about monsters in the night. Lots of pointless running in the dark ensues. Well, there does end up being an alien at the end throwing these flying discs that attach to people’s bodies. But Jack Palance has some girl blow the alien up along with old Jack. It’s a pretty dull movie. Yeah, I said dull.

Hercules and the Captive Women

In this 60’s film, Hercules is absolutely huge AND he hangs out with a midget. Hercules (actually Hercules’ controlling wife) decides he’s done with fighting and pillaging. So his friends drug him and put him on a ship for a voyage. Hercules wakes up and isn’t mad at all, but he does manage to sleep like 18 hours a day (like my fried Coach used to). Hercules ends up on an island where women are being morphed into the very rock face (using really poor special effects. Then he fights a giant lizard that turns into a lion that turns into a condor being pulled about the sound stage on a visible string (PETA would love this film) that turns back into the lizard that Hercules pulls the horn off its head to defeat. The lizard condor guy was the god that Atlantis folks pray to, so they’re quite bothered that he killed their top guy. Then the girl Hercules rescues says, “Today is dedicated to Uranus.” And of course I cracked up because I’m 12. And apparently, the only captive woman in the film is the one he rescued from turning into stone. Hercules sets free all of Atlantis’ slaves and the soldiers set off to kill him. But not before the soldiers kill all the slaves. Seriously, there are corpses (some of which forgot they weren’t supposed to move in the wide-shots) laying all over the place. Like most things in the 60’s, it’s just not worth revisiting.

Burn After Reading

I heard some bad things about this movie, but I actually enjoyed the heck out of this movie. It was hilarious and intelligent and John Malkovich yelled through most of it. A cheating wife pulls a bunch of financial and governmental information onto a disc after her husband quits his job at the CIA. The disc gets left in a gym and two incompetent, but hilarious people try to get the X-CIA guy to pay to get it back. Meanwhile one of the gym workers is seeing the X-CIA guy’s wife and things get zany and hilarious. The Coen brothers pack a lot of hilarious layers of plot into one story and then simply summarize it by briefing the CIA chief J.K. Simmons – who’s hilarious. George Clooney is ahilarious sex addict/inventor/adulterer, but he’s hilarious at it and perfectly believeable in the role. Brad Pitt plays Chad (which we all know is a nerd name in the U.S. [but I hear it’s very classy in Britain]) who is this way optimistic and flighty borderline-fruity gym instructor who doesn’t know the first thing about blackmail. If you like either John Malkovich or the Coen brothers films, then watch this film. I think it’s one of their better ones.

Red Siren

This is a foreign movie, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out which country. There are French, British, German, and American accents abound, but it does take place in Europe since they’re driving to Portugal (I’ll make that leap). Girl shows up at a police station and turns in her mother for murder, handing over a dvd of a brutal bondage slaying. Her mother is wealthy and well connected and tries to get her daughter back by sending her goons after the kid. The kid ends up in the backseat of a random Volvo driven by an ex-military guy who’s trying to get out of the business. The girl tells the ex-military guy she’s looking for her dad in Portugal. He’s going to take her there and find her dad, but the kids mom is tracking them the whole way. This movie would have been a lot better if had more A) plot or B) shooting and C) ‘splosions. As it is, it’s just a long action flick set in Europe. It's about 16% as good as Taken was.

Pinocchio 964

This is a freakshow Japanese “cyberpunk” film. It’s got a very electronic/industrial soundtrack that’s super intense. As I said, it’s Japanese, so it’s really disjunct. It starts off in an insane asylum where a nurse walks in on a threesome gone bad and a doctor is drilling into a patient’s skull in a nearby room. Then a girl sitting on the street with binoculars has a retarded guy with a crazy hair spike fall into her lap and they go off together. The best part is they do subtitles for his jibberish. Then crazy guy starts speaking plain English (or Japanese with English subtitles anyway). Also, the Japanese film makers really like the bathroom scenes. I think this crazy lesbian keeps a female “companion” and a harem of “studs” all named Pinocchio and a different number. This Pinocchio 964 must have escaped, but was he crazy/retarded before he went into her service, or did she screw him crazy? It must be contagious because the girl from the street catches the crazy as well. Apparently, the director is way into vomiting scenes as well, as in the kind that carry on far longer than is comfortable, even for the strongest stomach. No, wait, they might be manufacturing pinocchios for sale to various sex harems. (I told you this was weird.) Ok, they’ve brainwashed him and he regains his memory. Then he runs for like 20 miles and about a half hour of the movie pulling a huge block of metal from a chain around his neck back to the factory where they make crazies (I would guess to get the rest of his brains back).The people don’t help him and he begins punching through people’s chest cavities (like you do). Wow, this movie is weird. Not sure that I would recommend this to people I liked.

Prodigal Planet: Thief in the Night, Part IV

Prepare yourself for me going off. This is the fourth film in the "Thief in the Night" series of ultra-xtian brainwashing films. It's the original "Left Behind" concept, but were film by religious nuts (with money) in Iowa and meant to be shown in churches to youth and teens in an effort to scare the bijeezus out of (or maybe into) them if they don't give up their autonomous thought and behavior to the entities they learned about in said church. The tagline on the box is "The true story that is yet to happen." So basically this is a futuristic historical documentary based on a true story that people have pieced together from a book of symbolism, ritual, and myth written 2,000 years ago and based on dreams and visions. Maybe I'll write down my own visions and hope someone in 4009 makes a super sweet movie based on those hallucinations and fed into the chips in people's heads, frightening children into believing in the true religion – which is bacon. The plot, since David Michaels didn't get the mark of the beast on his forehead, he's been captured and is trying to hack into the anti-christ's TRS-80-based computer system for god. But he's really being tricked into divulging the location of all the xtian hideouts so the bad guys can come brutally kill them on screen and totally blow the minds of any of the junior high kids viewing the film. He gets broken out of prison by a supposed double agent and they steal a GIANT RV tank that they suspect will never be seen and apparently is able to drive cross country on backroads without ever filling up with gas. Atomic bombs have been ravaging the US (which is the only country that exists in the mind of rich white xtians), and is shown by cutting in stock footage of A-bomb tests, even though many of them took place on islands, but that's beside the point. Some of the radiation has turned some of the left behind people into mutants who all wear brown robes and hate "normal" people.

Here are some of the films highlights:
• Cooky old preacher who knows everything about the end times and has hand drawn timelines of destruction, but refuses to be "saved". Turns out the guy playing this character is the writer, producer, and owner of the film company, so he's got a lot to say and enough money to trick people into saying it for him. Apparently, he's the only one with enough xtian fortitude to stoop to playing a heathen, sparing anyone else with less money than him the embarrassment.
• Lots of hilariously sweet porn-mustaches
• Pressing enter when a computer asks for a password sometimes works, but only if you're a computer hacker
• They couldn't have found an actress without a floater eye to play Lynda? Really?
• You can shoot a scene using miniatures and xtians will totally buy it
• Abandoned corvettes on the street will have cassette tapes of the rock n roll version of the William Tell Overture (lone ranger theme). I know first hand that xtians actually are only allowed to listen to crap like that (even in a sweet t-top blue mid-70's vette)
• Xtian film makers LOVE guillotine shots
• I'm guessing surplus army equipment was used for costumes cheaply in this film
• Omaha is the first city the Russians will bomb when they somehow scrape up enough money to rebuild their present-day military
• Buzzards can pick a man clean down to his skeleton in a day or two if he can't run fast enough (and if he stupidly gets out of the giant tank RV he's driving full of ammunition
• Secret codes contain musical notes that play the song "Onward Xtian Soldiers" so plainly that I can recognize it (and I haven't been to church in like 15 years), but an ultra-religious escaped con who knows all kinds of hymns can't decipher
• The Antichrist will roll every tank and battleship on the planet into the Middle East to blow up Israel (Not to be callus, but would it really take that many?)
• The mark of the beast can be washed off with a dab of rubbing alcohol and a rag
• When you've been working on deciphering an advanced near-impossible code for a week and your supposed double-agent who's been traveling with you calls you and quickly tells you the secret to the code, you should probably be suspicious
• Saying, "only nudity could save this film" over and over will not make nudity appears (and it still wouldn't have saved the film)
• One of the mutants had a pet boa constrictor named Julius Squeezer and talks to the floater-eyed lady's daughter about it while she uses a "chipmunk" voice, which is moronic. Then he says she just needs a good spanking (because corporal punishment is allowed by the church, but not the DCFS)
• Asking an xtian a simple yes/no question is a signal to pull a bible out and talk for 10 minutes while not answering the yes/no question. I'd like to cut this movie down by about 1.5 hours by splicing in "yes" and "no" whenever a question is asked. This might have to be part of a drinking game

And I JUST found out they've just finished the script writing for the FIFTH movie in the series called "Battle of Armageddon." It's sure to be a winner, shot 25 years after the last movie was released. The story board mockups looks absolutely hilarious and pathetic, but rest assured, I'll be buying it if they ever actually film it and release it. www.battleofarmageddonfilm.com

See, you shouldn't have gotten me started.

Night of the Living Dorks

This is a German movie (dubbed in English in the US market) that’s basically return of the living dead but revolving around three nerds. This nerd wants to whip up a love spell do score with this blonde slut who’s out of his league. They’re around for the wrong spell and they turn into zombies. They get super human strength and get revenge on the people that gave them crap while they were nerds. The neighbor girl is into the occult and they try to get her help for turning them back from zombieville. The dad is especially hilarious in this film. This is one I probably should have watched in the German language with subtitles since the English voices were really campy and moronic. The movie is actually really well made, especially for a zombie movie, but you have to know it’s campy going into it (if you couldn’t tell based on the title).

Transporter 3

The final (hopefully) movie about the guy that drives packages and people around for hire. He outsources to a friend who botches the job. The friend drives his car into Jason’s house and then blows up when he gets too far from the car. The bad guys pick up Jason and tell him he has to do a delivery of some stuff in the trunk. There’s also a girl in the car who’s the daughter of a dignitary who’s being blackmailed. Jason drives the car all crazy and avoids being shot at and crashing. And the guy starts breaking some of his rules that he’s been spouting through the other movies. When he breaks the rules, that’s when things get bad. It’s actually the best of the three, but it’s still not fantastic, honestly.

The Holy Mountain

I’ve seen Alejandro Jodorowsky films before and I just don’t like them (which makes it unfortunate that I bought the box set and now must sit through them all to justify my purchase). I apologize to you snooty film buffs who THINK you find meaning in all of this, but the guy is out of his mind. Supposedly, this was a movie highly respected by John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and George Harrison (in that they paid for it all) and bunch of other drugged out randoms. It’s as if Jodorowsky went through a book of symbolism and decided to incorporate absolutely every element of symbology into this film. Put in a plot? No time, people, let’s just put in more 10-year old whores, amputees, and splash in some excrement and children dressed as mice. There’s very little dialogue in this film, which doesn’t help its cohesiveness. I’d write about the plot, but as I said, there isn’t one. I would love to write about all the weird things that happens in this film, but you might be accidentally tempted to see it, which is not my intent. Don’t see this movie unless you’re into some seriously heavy drugs, or have taken a minimum of 10 solid blows to the head.

The Watchmen

I knew nothing about this book, nor have I read comic books in my past. However, I was still able to follow the plot of this movie. It all made sense. But I’m afraid if I try to explain the plot, some red-bulled-up nerd will write me from his mom’s basement and correct me. I’ll try to dumb it down and cover the generalities. These old super heroes are being hunted by an unknown assailant and have to don their costumes to figure out and fight the new evil super hero. But is he evil? The special effects in the film are great and I could look past most of the CGI in it. It was a long movie, but really didn’t seem that long, which is nice. The action, explosions, and tight body suits kept me interested most of the time. From what I’ve been told, they had to cut a lot of extraneous stuff to make it into a film, but a lot of people were impressed with the amount they DID keep in. That’s an impressive compliment coming from comic book nerds, I think. Go see this movie if you like action films. You might miss some of the back-story, but I wasn’t lost at all.

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women

Even in the 50’s they lacked imagination and had to resort to sequels rather than new ideas. This is part two or Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, in which they saved tons of money by reusing most of the first movie and overdubbing narrative over the top of the scenes. When they went to Venus the first time, they thought they heard a human female voice singing. After about halfway through, I wondered if they would ever transition to the new plot, which, as it turns out, they don’t. It’s the exact same movie, with about 10 minutes of new footage scattered throughout the film and occasional narrative thrown in. So the same movie, the same planet, and then these women are there, but never actually meet up with the astronauts, they just prey to their god (some pterodactyl creature) to kill the astronauts which they never do. It’s even the same credits I think. Wow, impressive the levels they DIDN’T go to to make a second movie.

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet

Another old 50’s movie (this time in color, so it might even be 60’s where they invented color. There is a space mission to Venus utilizing multiple ships. One gets hit by an asteroid, one crash lands on Venus and the other one goes after them. A lady stays back in another one to radio findings and such to the moon base. Keep in mind this is before anyone had actually made it to the moon, so these people are completely winging it. All sorts of dinosaurs (or people in Godzilla costumes) attack the astronauts and their robots and space cars which they brought with are having all kinds of mechanical issues. I don’t think scientists were very smart back in the 50’s. I say this based on how many of America’s top scientists use the phrases “I’ll bet you money…” and “close enough…” and your guess is a good as mine.” Don’t bother with this, although the overdubbed vocal track is hysterical.

Transporter 2

Yes, I’m going to watch them all. This one is slightly better than the first one. Again, fire, explosions, glass, and blood, so it’s mostly a winner. Jason from the first one somehow is working as a driver to pick up a young kid from school (yes, seriously, it’s his job now). These guys kidnap the kid and hold him for ransom. They think they have blown up Jason after they get the kid from him, but he’s not dead. He continues to go around and shoot up as many things as possible. The bad guys try to poison an entire banquet hall for of rich important people and Jason tries to stop them. The good guys win, sorry to ruin it for you. This is a film you can miss and not feel bad about.

Wasp Woman

Another black and white old-timey film from the late 50’s. A bee scientist develops a youth serum for putting into jelly. It’s derived from wasps, but he hasn’t tested it on humans. The scientist gets fired from his job and solicits his services at a cosmetics company who is performing poorly due to an aging owner/spokeswoman. He promises to turn her younger in return for a secret laboratory. He injects her almost daily and she starts turning younger. The only side effect is she turns into a killer wasp lady. The costume furry black head she wears is hilarious. She kills various people in the building and eats them. When the scientist that created her hits her with acid, she falls out the window and turns into a pile of wasps (I think – it’s hard to really tell what happened with the poor special effects of the day). Not worth watching, but the receptionist uses this hilariously whore-y and slowed down voice when she answers the phone. Classic. Don’t bother.

Brian Reagan: Standing Up

This is a stand-up comedy DVD. I’m not usually a huge fan of Brian Reagan. I find him amusing most of the time, but this video did have me laughing pretty good in a couple of spots. He does a lot of his bits that I’ve heard before, but there were a couple that had me cracking up. There’s some bonus material which is also pretty good, but the good stuff is the feature material. It’s worth watching, but you could probably live with yourself if you missed this one, I’m sure.

The Horrors of Spider Island

This is one of those 1960’s black and white (even though the box says it’s color) films that was probably scary at the time, but isn’t even close now. I’ll also be a complete chauvinist pig and say women from the 1960’s were complete imbeciles (according to this movie). I’m glad my mother turned out as brilliant as she did. A group of dancers gets sent to Singapore and crash along the way. They end up on an island where a giant spider has killed the lone professor on the island. The best part is the professor has been mining uranium with a hammer – yup, just a hammer. Hilarious. The spider bites the dancers’ manager and he turns into part spider and begins killing girls. There are all kinds of girls in bras and swimsuits but since nudity wasn’t invented until the 70’s at Woodstock, you never see anything. The spider guy kills a couple girls and then the rescue team shows up. Don’t bother with this one.

Transporter

I’m usually a fan of these kinds of movies. Lots of fire, explosions, and nice cars. I liked this movie for about the first 20 minutes. This guy (Jason) drives deliveries (mostly illegal in nature) like a hired get-away driver in the French Riveira. He’s a very good driver and his car is extra fancy. He ends up with a delivery of a girl in his trunk. When he opens the trunbk, this stupid sappy music starts playing and he lets her out to pee, where she obviously runs away. As he’s retrieving her, the cops show up and he whips their asses. The driver keeps spouting these rules that he follows like a moron. And the guy her drops the girl off to is a completely worthless actor, straight out of community theater. Also, Orangina paid a crap ton of money for product placement in this film – they’re everywhere. When the terrible actor blows up Jason’s BMW, he comes back to the house and shoots everything up. Jason ends up with the original gagged girl and the bad guys hunt him down and blow up his house. Fortunately, Jason ahs scuba gear under his house and an endless supply of terrible music used for the sound track.

Lust, Caution

This is an Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger) film that takes place in Taiwan and Hong Kong back during the Second World War. It’s a really long drawn out film, like Brokeback, but it’s done really well. Some students put on a play to raise money for the resistance, and the actors decide they need to kill someone from the opposing side (if I knew the first thing about history, I would know who the “opposition” is. Ha ha ha ). They use one of the actresses to seduce one of the mob bosses and he falls for her, but she falls for him too. It gets kind of suspenseful and lots of nudity and sex and camera shots with smoke and lighting (like Lee likes to put in his films). It’s a beautiful film, filled with a lot of killing and adultery. You’ll really have to like Lee’s films to watch this one. It’s long if I didn’t mention that three times before…

China White Serpentine

Homemade attempt at a suspense/horror film. A guy dies and then shows up on some writer’s doorstep with a DVD with information about his death on it. There’s a girl narrating a stupid story about the guy doing drugs and sleeping with girls and generally being an ass. There’s all kinds of nudity and heavy metal playing on the soundtrack. It’s really more of a film school kind of movie. And I hope they failed the class. It was awful.

Organizm

This is a bad CGI movie about some sort of mold virus held up in an army base they’re decommissioning. I can tell from the opening scene it’s going to be bad because the mold chases a guy down a bowling lane and as he knocks down the pins, the mold gets him. The army find a tank full of some toxic chemical in the basement and open it up. IT’s got the mold stuff inside and it spreads like crazy. The inventor’s son is the only one with immunity to it, since the thing is accelerated by things like first, light, and chemicals. It never does quite tie up all the loose ends. Maybe they were hoping for a sequel when the thing hit Hollywood – which it obviously never did and went straight to DVD. Don’t bother with this one, even for bad movie night.

Pride & Prejudice

This is one of those old-timey period films set in Britain and is baked on a book by the same title. The reason I watched this film is my man-crush on Colin Firth. I’ll break it down for you. Colin Firth rolls into town and his friend finds Jane attractive. Colin is in denial about Jane’s sister (who is smoking hot) and is rude to her. Both men go away and there’s all kinds of flowers and crying and hugging for a few months. Both men return and stake claim on their ladies and get married. So why did it take 5 hours? Because it’s A&E. Here’s how a guy would make this movie in less than two hours: Boy meets girl and is a jerk. She likes bad boys, though so it’s ok because he’s rich. Explosion. Pointless nudity. Fire. Glass. Blood. More explosions. Nipple. Fire. Fool around on the side. Explosion. Car chase. Shoot out. Dwarf dream sequence. Explosion. Girl caves. Roll credits before they get married. Why am I not a script writer? Anyway, it’s a good movie and well acted if you like these and thous and ridiculous pomp and circumstance. Besides, it impresses the ladies when they see it on your movie shelf (between Barn of the Blood Llama and Cheerleader Ninjas).

Treasure of the Amazon

This movie is touted as the best Indiana Jones rip-off movie ever. I’ve been anxious to see it. The opening of the movie says it takes place in a fictitious place – so I guess the Amazon River that you learned about is completely made up (like heaven). There’s a homemade houseboat type thing with a bunch of people on it and there’s a crazy pilot in a sea plane chasing eagles in his plane, seriously. The travelers are looking for diamonds, but they tell the natives they are looking for gold. There is a random trigger-happy German being paranoid about his own stake in the jungle treasure, and you’re probably supposed to think he’s a bad guy. And there is gratuitous nudity, though these Brazilian women look awfully Caucasian to me. At one point, someone offscreen is throwing handfuls of bugs onto actors. Hilarious. Then there are carnivorous crabs. Don’t bother with this movie. It’s not like Indiana Jones at all.

Machine Girl

Japanese movie about a girl whose brother gets killed by a gang of bullies. The lead bully is the son of a yakuza boss, so when she tries to seek revenge, the yakuza family starts killing people left and right. Not just killing, but torturing and slicing off body parts. And of course, there’s all kinds of crazy fakey blood spraying all over the place. The sister gets her arm cut off by the yakuza before escaping their torture chamber. When she gets taken in by her brother’s friend’s family (her brother’s friend was also killed), they train her to be a fighting machine and the dad builds her a fake arm to replace her missing one. Except the fake arm is a giant machine gun. Then the yakuza’s ninjas show up in red track suits (you can tell their ninjas because they have shrouds on their heads and have throwing stars. It’s kind of hokey in a comic book sort of way, but it’s not terrible, if you can get past the blood spraying and eye gouging and such.

Ironman

Yes, I’m way behind on comic book movies. But I love Robert Downey Jr, so I had to watch this one. He plays a pompous ass like he usually does, but it’s totally because he’s a rich genius with too much money to spend (or he’s just an ass). He gets captured by terrorists and builds a suit that’s basically bullet proof and has cool powers. He builds another one when he returns home that’s better and can fly anddo all kinds of cool stuff. But the terrorist have pieced together his old suit and he ends up having to fight a larger version of himself. Cool movie. Decent special effects (though the CGI didn’t thrill me). I’d recommend it though, even for non-comic book nerds.

Severed Head Network

This is a compilation of independent and experimental films. Not good ones either. The first one is 6 minutes of droning electronic sounds, just at the cusp of being music. Then there’s cows being slaughtered and disemboweled intermixed with people writing covered in blood. Additionally, there’s a pumpkin having sex with a cross. The second one is a music video with a girl writhing around and taking her clothes off to a stupid electronic beat. To call it a “music” video is an insult to my musicianship. Number 3 is a couple sitting on a bed while poetry is being read by the narrator. They get naked and she whips out a Polaroid and they do “it”. There’s a black and white rape scene that cuts in and out (no pun intended) from the original scene, and then the girl strangles the guy from the original film. Movie 4 is about a tough-guy running and falling down and then finding a gun and continuing to run while pretending to shoot – again a music video with electronic noise. #5 is a black and white film shot at night. Guy shows up at a house and girl runs out all crying and carrying an axe. Seriously, that’s it. Next movie, grandpa pretends to be old, but is a clubber or so he thinks while he’s spacing out buying groceries for his wife. The next one is a musical where all the character wear animal hats and sing songs that a 3rd grader must have written. The next one is a music video with actual music and a skin head smashing things. Don’t waste your time or money on this DVD unless one of your kids has a film featured on it, in which case, disown your kid.

Look Both Ways

An Aussie movie about a photo-journalist guy who finds out he has testicular cancer and it’s spread throughout his body. The journalist takes the day off and on his way home covers a story about a guy that gets hit by a train. The journalist’s partner goes home to find his XGF there waiting with a positive pregnancy test. Everyone in the town is affected by the train crash for different reasons. This is one of those films where I’m supposed to review what I’ve done with my life, but it just doesn’t make me want to do that, since most of the people in the film seem pretty pathetic in their attempts to do it themselves. It’s not a great film. There’s a lot of people crying while sad music plays. It’s that kind of movie.

House on Bare Mountain

Granny Good runs a boarding school for 30-year old women. Granny Good is also a man who makes hooch in the basement. The girls get naked as often as possible and study, take cart classes, sun bathe, play catch, and run. Again, I never thought I’d get sick of female nudity, but I might just have to lay off the nudie films for a while. One girl comes in and she’s an undercover officer trying to bust the hooch dealer. Granny holds a prom and the girls invite a bunch of randoms with liquor to spike the punch. The cops show up and drink the hooch and pass out. There are people dressed up like Frankenstein, Dracula, the wolfman, and a Mexican guy (didn’t know they were monsters, did you?) Don’t bother with this movie unless you’re over 60 – then it might be your type of movie.

Gummo

I’ve never seen this movie before, but I’ve heard lots of people tell me it’s reaaaaal messed up. And they’re right. As far as I can tell there are 14 different story lines. Kid with bunny ears stands on a walkway over the highway releasing all kinds of bodily fluids on traffic while a hilarious song about a rooster plays in the background. Then another kid finds a lump in a girl’s breast that he’s feeling up. Then a couple of kids are riding around shooting cats with BB guns and selling them to this guy who sells them to a Chinese restaurant. Then these bleach blonde girls without eyebrows (one of them is the bunhead from Big Love) put electrical tape on their nipples and jump on the bed. Then these two skinhead guys work out and then start fist fighting in the kitchen. There’s lots of mullets and dead animals. Then there’s two little boys dressed as cowboys who swear and yell like idiots. Then a retarded girl in a Krokus shirt (you can tell she’s retarded because she’s wearing a Krokus shirt) hugs the blonde girls while they watch a kid play tennis with designs carved into his hair. Then there’s a black midget sitting on the couch with a guy who’s rambling about a lesbian midwife. Then the two BB gun kids go over and pay a guy to sleep with this retarded girl. One of them is wearing a Dio shirt. Wurd. I could go on and on about the other weird stuff that happens, but I won’t waste your time. But there is an albino. This movie is as messed up as people have told me. It’s hilariously weird and the characters are freakshows, but I did enjoy it, more than I would have liked to. Ha ha.

Quinceanara

Mexican movie about a girl who’s quince is coming up and she finds out she’s pregnant. Her dad, a preacher, flips his lid, and she moves in with her grandfather. Her cousin also lives with the grandfather, and is a closet gay and sleeping with the landlords, both of them. The landlords evict the grandfather and the young girl has all kinds of issues with her boyfriend. There’s all kinds of drama, but thankfully, it’s not drama like a Mexican novella tv soap opera.

Chinese Super Ninjas

The movie starts out by saying it’s based on Ancient Japanese catalogs and collections like the Samurai manual and based on many contemporary works of Japanese writers. Hey wait, I thought the title was Chinese Super Ninjas. This is an old school kung-fu theater type of movie. Traditional garb with badly overdubbed white people voices. Lots of sweet kung-fu action with various weapons that I’m sure they made up, rather than finding in some ancient Japanese text. The movie starts with some Chinese fighters hacking at each other. They throw in a Japanese samurai and he ends up killing himself honorably. But not until he sends for a Japanese ninja to answer some sort of challenge. And not until he poisons on of the head Chinese kung-fu guys. Whoa, now there are gold ninjas spinning golden umbrellas to blind the Chinese fighters. The umbrellas now have blades and now the blades are being shot from the umbrellas. I’m guessing that since today’s technology hasn’t invented these
umbrellas, these aforementioned Japanese texts don’t have them either. Now there are brown ninjas. And now there are blue ninjas. It’s like a gay rainbow ninja movie. Wait, now there are red ninjas. And now tan ninjas. Now there’s a random girl who’s uncle has forced her into prostitution. This story line is so
complex with all the colors and whores. There’s cool action, but the plot really isn’t all that solid (like a lot of kung-fu movies).

Kiss Me Quick

This is an old 1960’s film called a nudie-cutie. It’s back when you weren’t allowed to show very much, so these renegade film makers made nudie films, but got around censors by not showing touching of any sort. I honestly never thought I’d get sick of girls swinging their boobs around, but alas, this is the closest I’ve ever been to that. Here’s the plot – a space boy is sent to earth to observe women, which his planet of Buttless doesn’t have. It’s this boy’s last chance to prove he’s a man (and he looks like he’s 40). The boy is sent to a mad scientist’s lab who is creating the perfect subservient woman, so he’s got lots of them on hand. They’re shown doing hilarious things like standing naked in one of the belt vibrating things, but mostly they’re dancing like idiots holding beakers of bubbling chemicals. Frankenstein and Dracula randomly show up like they’re all friends (Hey, that’s not how it’s written in the bible – ha ha). This movie doesn’t end any more exciting than it starts. It’s got gratuitous nudity, but it’s frankly, not worth it.

Inside

French film about a pregnant girl who’s in a terrible car accident. She’s flashing back to all kinds of freaky things just before it happened, but she’s also hallucinating in the present about the baby clawing its way out of her mouth. A random woman shows up at her door and she doesn’t let her in, but the lady knows her name and goes back out back and throws something slimy at her house. The police leave after finding nothing, but someone is inside her house. The intruder stabs her in the belly and face with scissors, but the preggo manages to get away. Then the preggo accidentally kills her mother. Also, Hollywood (or Parisian Hollywood) or not, scissors in the nards NEVER looks like a good time. The cops come back and there’s more killing. This is a serious bloodbath, and it’s gruesome as hell!!! Really, I’m impressed. This director must be angry or something. All kinds of gross stabbings with various things and heads getting blown up. This one might be worth a watch if you’re in the mood for some subtitles and blood.

King of Kong

This is a movie about competitive video game players. There’s King Nerd and then there’s the autistic/OCD guy who keeps trying to beat him. King Nerd is sooooo full of himself I want to punch him in the throat. And he looks like Ben Stiller’s retarded brother who got trapped in the 80s if he had a kid with Chuck Norris. King Nerd has quite a following of toadies who all kiss his ass and doesn’t compete head to head, but is the first to call foul on the autistic/OCD guy and has people storm his house and dismantle his machine. It’s sad. Just when OCD guy gets a break, King Nerd chops him down. It’s a super sad movie and really frustrating. King Nerd should be on Tool Academy just so I can see him get his ass handed to him. In one scene, there’s a kid with a Darkest Hour shirt on – that’s the redeeming part of this movie. Ha Ha. At least that kid will make it in life, unlike these nerds. If you really want to watch this movie, go ahead. It will make you feel good for holding a real job and not having a beard made out of felt.

Blades

This is a Troma movie, so you know it’s bad. It’s an 80’s horror movie about a golf course. So take Caddyshack (and remove the humor) and combine with Friday the 13th (and remove the horror) – you’ve got Blades. A golf pro (with terrible acting skills) starts a new job for a golf course owner (with equally poor acting skills) and ends up sleeping with the owner’s wife. Meanwhile, there’s a tournament happening at the golf course and a serial killer of some sort hacking people to bits. They don’t actually show any of this, except for limbs sticking out of sand traps and clothing scattered in the woods. They go on a police-endorsed “maniac hunt” (yes, that’s what they call it). They find random scary bald guy in the woods, but it turns out, it’s not him. Plot spoiler…. It’s a lawnmower with a taste for human blood. Ha ha ha. This movie has a lot of stupid stuff in it. Don’t bother, unless you like weak golf slasher movies without slashers.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest

I love the Family Guy so I had high hopes for this movie. Fortunately, this movie came through for me. It was hilarious. I was laughing out loud and I was watching it by myself. It was that funny. Peter tells his family a story and uses his kids as characters in the story. Wait till you see what Meg turns up as – I cracked up. They followed the plot and dialogue really closely, but then added in some hilarious one liners. It was awesome. Go see this movie.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

yes, I’m that far behind that I haven’t seen this move yet (nor read the book). It was pretty good. I’m not a huge fan of stupid costumed characters, but since most of it was supposed to be campy, I think I could deal with it a lot better. A guy finds out his planet is about to be blown up and his friend is from another planet. He hitchhikes on one of the ships that blows up the planet, and then hops around the galaxy trying to find the answer to life. It’s got some hilarious stuff in it, but it really didn’t keep me engaged in the movie. That from a Sci-Fi Fantasy guy from way back… ha ha.

Day Zero

This is a movie about the draft being in effect for the Iraq War. Three friends get drafted and have all kinds of things they need to do to get their lives in order. Frodo kind of goes off the deep end, but he seems a little unstable anyway. The lawyer gets his dad to pull some strings so he doesn’t have to go. And the cab driver decides now would be a good time to start a relationship and not tell her he’s been drafted. It’s not a very uplifting movie at all, but it’s kind of well done. I didn’t mind it (which with my reviews, that’s almost a recommendation) ha ha.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Part 2

I never saw the first one, but I’ve heard that one is better than this one. Apparently there are these pants which a group of girls trades around between all of them. They’re supposed to be lucky or something. This wasn’t explained at all in the second one, so I guess the writers were assuming you saw the first one. America Ferrera is friends with a snooty actress who goes to a summer camp for snooty actresses. America is brought along to work the stage crew behind the scenes. She ends up accidentally auditioning and gets the lead part. Then one of the other “pants” friends thinks she is pregnant and freaking out. The other friend falls in love with a nude model that she is forced to draw. And the last “pants” friend goes to Greece to do some excavating of an archaeological site. There’s a lot of girl drama (obviously), and they all end up fighting and then reuniting and hugging like girls sometimes do. I guess I should see the first one before I recommend this or steer people away. It wasn’t a bad movie. I just wish I had a little background for it.

Gingerdead Man

first off, this movie has Gary Busey in it, so you know it’s terrible. Plus, for a movie this bad that they sunk this much Hollywood money into, there should have been rampant nudity, which there wasn’t any. Gary Busey goes on a killing spree at the start of the movie and kills a dad and his son while the daughter watches on. The cops catch Busey and have him executed. The ashes mysteriously end up at the daughter’s bakery where she puts them into some gingerbread cookies. One of the employees cuts his hand on the box and “accidentally” drips blood into the flower. Cookies get mixed and put into the oven in the shape of a giant gingerbread man and after weird power outages, Busey is back in the form of a gingerbread man (actually a terrible puppet with Busey’s voice). I’ll give them credit for putting in hilarious one liners and puns like Killsbury Doughboy – that was groan-worthy but commendable. Don’t bother with this one, unless you like cookies, Gary Busey, or non-nudity. However, there is a part 2, which is subtitled “The Passion of the Crust.” With a sacrilegious name like that, I’ll be buying that one too – I’m sure it can’t be much worse than the first one, right?...

The Toy Box

This is an early 70s movie without much of a point, but lots of nudity. LOTS. Guy talks his girlfriend into going to a “party” which turns out to be a lot of nekid people rolling around on the floor in front of a dead guy with these weird wax fake eyes. Not sure why they had to be fake and not just closed, but whatever. Then a bunch of people end up getting killed. Yeah, really, that’s the plot. If you’re one of those people who claims they’ll never get tired of nudity, watch this film. It’ll cure you.

Toys Are Not For Children

Guy and girl work in a toy store in the early 70s. A woman comes in to buy a toy for her daughter and invites the girl worker to come visit her in NYC where she lives. The girl comes for a visit and finds out the woman is a prostitute. The toy store girls marries the toy store guy and then denies him any “play” when they move in together. She however has half a billion toys and seems like a complete moron. The mom has brainwashed her into loving guys. However, toy store wife goes back to visit the prostitute and gets hired on as an apprentice simply to get the prostitute to tell her where her father is. Then the toy store wife sleeps with her father. It’s weird and stupid and boring all wrapped into one. Not worth it, unless you like to see how stupid actresses can be in the 70s.

Axe

Movie from the late 70s which goes by various names. The movie starts with three thugs waiting in a hotel room for a guy to come back. The guy comes back, but he’s with what one can assume is his gay lover. The thugs hand out an ass whoopin with a plastic doll (yup, seriously) and the assumed ferry jumps out the window. The thugs then show up at a convenience store and shoot skeet inside using apples. Then they take off the cashier’s shirt, try to shoot apples off her head and spray coca-cola on her boobs. Scene cuts to random country girl who lives with her paralyzed grandfather. She goes out, collects some eggs and chops off a chicken’s head. She comes back inside and the three thugs show up looking for trouble. During the night one of the thugs has his way with her. During the act, she chops through his neck with a straight razor, cuts up his body with an axe and throws the parts into a large trunk. She then gets attacked by thug #2 and she chops him up with an axe in front of her paralyzed father. Then as the third thug realizes what’s going on, the cops show up and he runs outside. Kind of a pointless movie actually. It’s short, but still not recommended.

The Wrestler

There’s a reason Mickey Rourke got nominated for an academy award this year. This movie is really good, even if you don’t like wrestling. If you DO like wrestling, you’ll love this movie. The backstage talk before matches is hilarious and full of brilliant descriptions of wrestling moves. Rourke is a wrestler whose hay-day has passed. He still has a fan following, but a heart attack puts him out of commission for a bit. His day job is frustrating and he tries to reunite with his daughter. The movie is not uplifting by any stretch, but it is extremely well acted and directed. My only complaint is the handheld camera work. I was motion sick within the first 20 minutes of the film. Seriously motion sick – like eyes closed, slunk down in my chair, and sweating like a Twinkie at a weight watchers convention. Seriously sick. I honestly listened to more of the film than I watched it. Just be prepared for that. Otherwise, it’s a brilliant film.

Taken

I’m not sure what I expected from this film, but whatever I thought it was going to be paled in comparison to the actual film. It was awesome. Lots of explosions, shooting, glass, blood, and an actual plot. Sure some of the things were a tad far-fetched, but honestly, I can overlook a lot. People speaking English before they speak French while you’re in Paris– that doesn’t happen, but you forget about it after the first couple of times. Liam Neeson is a bad ass in this film. He’s an ex-military spy commando guy who walks around Paris just blasting people. His daughter takes a trip to Paris and is captured by sex traffickers. Let’s just say, he finds them. Go see this film.

Blacula

70s film about a black vampire – just like the title alludes to. Dracula invites handsome black man and his wife over for dinner and then insults them by suggesting the slave trade industry is perfectly acceptable. Fight ensues and Dracula bites the guy and says he will return as Blacula. Fast forward to 1970 something when a gay inter-racial couple buys Dracula’s mansion and opens up Blacula’s coffin. The best part about this movie is the music. The previous movies I’ve watched have had white people playing their version of 70s funk when an African American would show up on screen – and come on, you can tell. This soundtrack sounds like they scored the sweet band from Electric Company – sweet bass groves not played by white people (however any band scenes at black night clubs have white people in the band obviously not playing the music you hear). Blacula finds the woman he believes is the reincarnation of his dead wife and tries to get her back. Meanwhile, people are dropping like flies – and then popping back up with fangs. One thing I found out about vampires from this movie – you look normal when in public at night, but when you get all vampire-y, you grow fangs and sideburns – who would have known? I also now know that James Earl Jones stole his voice from Blacula (probably didn’t have it trademarked – his mistake). And this movie is not afraid to use the British word for cigarettes, nor the “N”-word as much as possible. There is also a guy named “Skillet” in this movie. Now I need a funny nickname. Maybe Paperclip or Duvet would suit me. This movie is funny and lame at the same time.

Two Thousand Maniacs

Movie about a small town in the south that has a centennial celebration. For the celebration, they detour a couple of cars with Yankees in them and call them their “guests of honor”. The townspeople are all waving Dixie flags and trying to separate the Yankees from each other so they can kill them in various ways. It’s pretty creative how they do it and totally hilariously fake. But it’s an OLD movie, so you just deal with it. There’s a barrel roll with nails pounded into the barrel, then there’s a modified dunk tank with a boulder on top, and your basic drawing and quartering. It’s pretty graphic for the time and totally overacted all country bumpkin style. Two of the Yankees try to make a break for it. It’s not really a good movie, but I’ve definitely seen worse. And for the time, I’m sure it was terrifying.

X Files: The Movie

I’ve heard mixed reviews on this film, but I wanted to see it for myself. Plus, I’m a big Scully fan, so I really didn’t need any prompting. Like most of the episodes, there are two or three plot lines interwoven, which in the end, combine into something slightly other than what you thought it would be. Woman FBI agent turns up missing, but a pedophile priest keeps seeing visions and leading them to clues. Also, Scully is helping a kid with a rare brain disorder while a creepy OTHER priest keeps an eye on the boy. More FBI agents end up missing and there’s some weirdness with the brain kid. Mulder does his usual and gets in over his head and Scully has to bail him out. This is a good movie, but like a lot of people said, it’s like one longer episode of the X-files, without anything flashy throw into the movie.

The New Barbarians

The year is 2019: the nuclear apocalypse has already happened. This is another post-apocalyptic Mad Max wannabe film with Fred Williamson. All the cars are dune buggies and painted silver and everyone has hilariously "futuristic" pointy costumes (man I hope those don't come into style in 2019 for real). The sweet car Scorpion drives around in has this hilarious glass bubble on the roof like a fish tank that glows green at night – that's not obvious. Then Fred Williamson drives around in a sweet dune buggy with equally hilarious round glass all over it. The film has awesome (and painfully obvious) mannequins blowing into pieces. Add in a couple of low-speed car chases and in-buggy fighting at speed under 5mph and you'll have maximum suspense (at least for this film). Also, according to the credits, 90% of the people in this film are from Italy (except for Fred Williamson). Alright, here's something you don't see everyday (and hopefully won't in 11 years): Apparently one of the initiation ceremonies of the templars (the bad guys) is some sore of sodomy performed by the leader to the captive. How did they think of that?! Funny costumes and bad acting, but probably not worth killing an hour and a half for.

Innocence

French film which I'm sure has some sort of symbolic meaning which I can't figure out. Young girls arrive at this "place" in a coffin. They are greeted by their housemates who are age-indicated by the color of ribbon in their hair. The eat together, play together, work together, dance together, learn together, and sleep together. At night some of the girls disappear and it's very mysterious. No one comes to visit them and they have no contact with the outside world. The houses all play together, so there are all kinds of inter house activities, but they're not allowed out of what appears to be this school compound. If you try to escape or disobey, you are punished by being forced to serve the girls for the rest of your life. So once the girls are old enough, they are put on a train and sent into the city. Not sure exactly what this signifies, but I'm guessing it's some sort of coming of age story (which never make sense to me anyway). Decent movie, but really doesn't have enough direction (point A to B) for me.

Sword In The Moon

Korean martial arts film where a group of assassins is killing all of the high ministers. The best soldiers are put on the mission to find this group of assassins and are not having any luck. It's pretty convoluted and jumps around a lot between flash backs and present time. But it's got some good fighting and action scenes. Apparently, some of the ministers were in on the whole rebellion and are doing their own killing. It's still difficult for me to tell which assassins are working for who, but whatever, I'm just watching the fight scenes in this one. The plot is too complex. It's a decent movie, but without a strong plot, it just gets lost in the billions of other martial arts films.

Werewolves On Wheels

Movie from back in the 70's when biker gangs were a serious negative force to be reckoned with. They drive around and beat up all kinds of people. This biker woman gets her fortune told and she's going to die in a tower struck by lightning. Then there's a painfully long satanic ritual (like 20 minutes) with fire and wine and chanting and pentagrams and caves and robes. Come on, seriously. Wait, it's not over, then they go into the woods the following night and recreate the thing by saying "oobla-doobla-oobla-doo bride of satan." Completely stupid. This should have been a short film. People start dying off one by one, presumably by werewolves, but they're never seen. Just a spray of blood and a dead body. They go back to find the evil monks that started this mess and then one of the biker guys turns into teen wolf. Ha ha ha. Wait, now one of the girls turns into teen wolf. Ah, 90 minutes into the film, we see werewolves. Brilliant plan. Also apparently, the monks can paralyze people with their stares. Good weapon to have. And then the credits roll. Not only is it stupid, it's anticlimactic. Don't bother.

The Other Side

I will be honest, I didn't expect much from this film. It's a more-or-less homemade horror flick (at least it's not Hollywood) about people who go to hell sometimes break out and get another chance. There are others that hunt them down and send them back to hell. This guy gets out and discover his fiancé has gone missing. He thinks he knows who did it so he goes on a rampage with the help of a couple of new friends from hell. This movie was REALLY well done. It has a great story, great effects, and great camera work for a lower budget. It also has some wicked (pun intended) plot twists. I would recommend this movie highly. It's not going to be 12 Monkeys or anything, but it's pretty darn good.

Trekkies 2

I've seen the first one and I was shocked… This one was even worse. I used to want to throw a grenade into various metal shows, but I think I'll save it for one of these conventions. I'm just horrified and embarrassed to be the same race as these people. People are spending tens of thousands of dollars on garage sets and remodeling their apartments to mimic the movie sets and are sleeping on the floor. One thing I learned from this documentary is that Star Trek is a relationship destroyer. Men and women are getting dumped because they are obsessed. Some are still living at home with their parents, and shouldn't be. There are a lot of people in the film who might be men or women – it's so hard to tell sometimes. And how many Star Trek bands can there be? And is there a requirement that they be terrible? I love metal bands with random members missing appendages – I call it Nub-metal. Watch this movie and laugh your other body parts off.

2019: After the Fall of New York

Another post-apocalyptic film set after radiation has ravaged NYC. Normal people are being hunted to run experiments on, but most people have radiations burns on various parts of their bodies. This film was shot in 1983, so it's got some pretty dated sets, costumes, and acting. Well, if the year is 2019, and the nuclear bomb went off 20 years earlier, then that means 1999. The plot is basically that no human has been born in 15 years (so 2004), and they've found an uncontaminated woman who they hope to reproduce mankind with. All the cyborgs have supposedly been eliminated, but they keep showing up. There's basically awful radiation-derived costumes and latex appendages and scars. This group of hunters has to break into NYC (from Alaska), grab this fertile woman, and then break back out again to repopulate the earth. They are helped by various bands of deformed renegades (including a dwarf named Shorty) and monkey people. This movie is bad, stupid, and boring. Not worth spending the time reading the back, let alone watching it.

Thumbsucker

This kid is in high school and still sucks his thumb. Everyone is trying to help him – his mom, dad, even his orthodontist. The kid fails with girls on his debate team, however on a road trip, they all strip down to their skivvies – I never knew debate team was so awesome. The movie would actually be good if it weren't for Keanu Reaves. Seriously, this guy is the worst actor in the world. He's totally unbelievable in this film. Even Vince Vaugn playing a debate team coach is plausible in this film. He gets fed up with debate team after a bad round and then decides he needs to be off his meds. It's got some pretty stupid dream sequences in this film which are pretty far fetched. The kid starts hooking up with this girl he used to have a crush on. She is now a stoner and gets him high and does things to him while he's wearing a blindfold. She's totally using him for sex so she won't get hurt. And then he thinks his mom is cheating on his dad. Things get weird, but it's a decent movie.

Doubt

Yes, this is the one in theaters now. The movie is good, but it's not enjoyable. It's got Phillip Seymor Hoffman and Meryl Streep. It based on play about a priest in the 40s who the head nun suspects of an "inappropriate relationship" with a young boy at school. There is no proof that anything has been done, but it's pretty grim looking from the nun's perspective. This film is grim. Not uplifting at all. There are a few brief moments of levity, but other than that, don't expect to feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Lickerish Quartet

This is a 70's film with some weird stuff going on. The movie starts with this husband and wife watching adult films with their seemingly retarded son. When they're done there, they go to a carnival and see a motorcycle stuntwoman who they are convinced is one of the girls from the previously viewed films. They invite her home and the son performs a magic act before his parents can turn on the film. I'm not sure what they think will happen when the girl sees the film that she's in, but there's some sort of issue with the film and it's not the right episode or something. She spends the night, throws some books on the floor then strips naked to nail the husband. Except randomly, the screen goes to black and white and it's like it's wartime or they're in one of the films they're watching. Not sure what that's all about. Then the girl sleeps with everyone in the family. The next scene is the son and the motorcycle girl having the same conversation watching the same movie as his father. So some sort of endless cycle of weirdness. Not a recommender in my book.

Tsotsi

African movie about a gang of hoodlums in Johannesburg. One of them, Tsotsi, is more reckless than the others. He steals a car, after shooting a woman in the stomach. He drives off and discovers a kid in the backseat. He tries to raise the kid on his own and find a woman who is nursing her own kid. They form a sort of partnership. Tsotsi beats up one of his "brothers" in the gang really bad and there is lot of tension in the gang because of it. The kid makes Tsotsi grow up and learn some humanity on the mean streets. Tsotsi has grown attached to the kid and to the nursemaid. I thought it would end different than it did. It was a decent movie as foreign films go.

Miranda

Italian movie from Tinto Brass about a very well endowed and very hirsute and "promiscuous" woman named Miranda. Here's the plot: Miranda sleeps with every guy in town and they all propose to her repeatedly. Seriously that's it. Don't bother, even for the boobs. Still not worth it.

Absolution

Homemade shoot 'em up movie shot in Chicago/St. Louis. All kinds of non-sets like hotel rooms, in front of skyscrapers, in basements, in parks, in traffic, in mom's living room, friends apartments, and any other cost-efficient locations. It's all bad acting, all missing microphones, all mispronunciation-laden, all various accents by the same actors, all terrible garage band soundtrack, all sub-par post-production. The hilarious thing is that the bad guy in the film looks a LOT like Blagojevich. Hilariously apropos shady deals in Chicago. They also do this hilarious black and white grainy security cam for some shots. Seriously? It doesn't have to be sent to Lucas films, but there are companies who specialize in cleaning up you slop. Then there's a random female narrator who's reading some poem or something about heaven and earth and god and glory and gateways and blah blah blah. Why is this even here? Oh because it's taking about angels taking human form while showing sky diving stock footage. Then slow motion footage of a girl snorting coke and then smoking a cigarette. You could take those two pieces out and save yourself 10 minutes. Random scene change again – random fat guy is shooting a porn in his basement. There's a hilarious gameplan/pep talk meeting before the scene is shot. I was cracking up. There are also a lot of phone conversations with banks making large electronic funds transfers. I've never done that in my life, so I'm not sure if they thought they were bring avant garde or if I'm so far out of the loop when it comes to drug deals and hired guns. Also word of warning: never go to a doctor who is going bald and has a metal-mullet in a pony tail and has his glasses on the top of his head. Not believable, sorry, morons. Don't watch this movie EVER.

Hilarious Followup: Here is the plot summary from IMDB. It's so far from what I wrote it's pathetic. Hey if you're going to film a movie with a backstory, then tell your audience what the back story actually is. "An angel descends to Earth - intending to learn what it is like to live as a human being. While on Earth, this spirit becomes involved in terrorism, drug deals, and pornography. Chemicals used in a new super-bomb are to be melted down in VHS tape shells and secretly shipped out of the U.S. as part of a porn film deal. Overseas, the porno tapes will be melted down again so that the chemicals can be extracted and used for mass destruction. The angel wants to stop these evils, though it is the law of the angels to not interfere in human history. The angel jumps from one human host to another, sinking deeper and deeper into the nightmare, becoming more involved. The angel begins to feel the darkest of human emotions: fear... anger... hate... and it all leads to bloodshed, depravity, and intense violence."

Bikini Bandits Experience

Some stupid piece of crap that a studio put together in hopes that it would be a B-movie classic – they even beg for it on the cover of the disc. It's got Corey Feldman in it and he's making fun of himself, but being a good sport about it. It's got as many bikinis as you could possibly fit into one movie, yet it's still a waste of film/plastic/time. I'm not sure what I expected out of this, but this wasn't it. There's an attempt at a plot: Satan gets the bikini bandits to go back in time to defoul the virgin Mary. They don't do it, but they stumble upon an Amish girl who has a retarded son who's been captured and sold into the retarded sex slave industry (sounds hilarious but it's totally NOT). I guess one of the tools from TOOL is in this band, which is I'm sure going to be a selling point for people of that mental caliber. As someone said, "Baywatch is more graphic than this film." The only reason to watch this film is to hear some sweet metal on the soundtrack. Of course they don't say who is playing, but it's some quality stuff. I know there's some tech metal on there, which rules. Don't bother with this movie. Thankfully, it's only 55 minutes.

Shadowless Sword

Korean martial arts film about a land called Balhae, which has just seen its princes killed. Only one remains and the good guys intend to put him on the throne; the bad guys are trying to stop him. The film starts out with heads blowing up and awesome fighting Then goes into more awesome fighting and brutal bone breaking and face slashing. It's awesome. Balhae must be halfway between Thailand and India because the people are an interesting mix of Indian and further East Asian. Also, many of them look like Captain Jack Sparrow which slays me. One female assassin is sent to recover the prince from his hovel hiding place and another female assassin is sent with an army to capture the prince for the bad guys. It's an out and out battle with people flying through the air across rooftops and through trees. All kinds of hot Asian lady fighters... wurd. This is a great martial arts film. Go rent this one or just buy it. It's that good.

Sex With Love

Chilean film about sex education in schools. It's kind of supposed to be a comedy since everyone is having sex with everyone else and grade school kids are talking about masturbation. There's a lot of grown-ups having sexual issues with their marriage and the parents meet to talk about issues like this at school. Kind of weird. Some couples work their problems out and some don't. It's one of those true to life stories in South America where things are just a little bit off-kilter from the United States. Not a terrible film.

Brunch of the Living Dead

Independent zombie film that's really short – and really independent. It starts out kind of Shaun of the Dead in which no one notices there are zombies everywhere. It's shot on a college campus and there are college kids playing zombies everywhere. Awesome. There's a brilliant 70 second intermission in which zombies break dance and pop lock. One college student realizes his girlfriend was at a party the previous night and might still be alive. So the hot RA, her boyfriend, and hungry student go try to track her down. They find his girlfriend and she's a zombie who kills the RA's boyfriend (after he stands up with his business censored out with a black box). And that's pretty much the whole movie – which is why it's only a half hour long. Mildly amusing, but don't waste money on buying this one. It's not worth. It.

1990: Bronx Warriors

Movie filmed in the early 80's about what NYC will be like in the 1990s after an apocalypse. Completely inaccurate, so I'm assuming these guys were hoping this film would be lost in the explosions of said apocalypse. It's basically "The Warriors" but the Warriors was at least interesting. And oddly, the Warriors had been shot like 3 years earlier. Basically it's all kinds of gangs on motorcycles wishing they had been cast in Mad Max instead of this film. Thankfully, someone cast a person to play the role of future Kurt Russell and future Jan Michael Vincent. (Also thankfully, neither of those two are actually in the film.) I will say I'm kind of glad motorcycles in the 90s didn't have glow in the dark plastic skulls on them. Also, there are gangs of Tuskan raiders in the catacombs of the Bronx, which rules. A lot of girls look like trannies in the Bronx in 1990 – I don't remember that, but I might have been there in the late 80s and late 90s so I might have missed that. And now I know who my friend Trash stole her name from – one of the main characters is named Trash – and my friend only wishes she looked like muscle-bound metal guy from the 80s. Don't waste your time with this one. Supposedly in the uncut versions of this film, there's some sort of tap dance gang fight – I'd change my mind about this film if I saw that I'm guessing.

Switchblade Sisters

Another 80's gang movie. Girl gang gets into trouble with a seemingly innocent civilian who apparently can wield a knife pretty well. The girls go to jail, including the non-gang girl. The gang recruits the innocent girl for their purposes, but she gets caught up with the girl gang leader's boyfriend. Things get touchy and cat fighty, and occasionally you'll see a random breast. But not enough to make this movie worth watching. I've had bad luck with gang movies lately.

Sorum

I'll try to explain this movie, but it's not going to be easy. It's a Korean film, and sometimes the Asian films are filled with all kinds of subtle jabs at socialism and other stuff I know nothing about. This taxi-cab driver guy moves into a run down apartment building and gets a room where a grisly murder and fire occurred 30 years earlier. His neighbor is writing a book and using the whole apartment and story as a plot in his book. The new guy falls in love with a 7-11 worker who knows one of his apartment mates. Things get weird because both of them have secrets from their past involving killing people. I'm not sure the whole thing makes sense or maybe it's just too much symbolism. It wasn't an awful movie, it just didn't go anywhere or really finish. The cover is misleading like it's going to be scary, but it's not at all.

I Drink Your Blood

70's movie about hippie Satanists. These dirty hippies break down outside a small town. They push their spray-painted hearse truck over the edge of a small cliff with one of the hippies inside as a prank. These hippies stroll into this small town during construction of a dam, so when a young woman gets assaulted, the townsfolk don't know who did it. Also, I'm just assuming there isn't a disclaimer at the end of this movie saying no animals were hurt during the making of this movie. In fact, a LOT of animals were hurt in this film. Grandpa goes to harass the hippies about it and they give him LSD. Then the grandson goes out with a gun to track down the hippies. The kid gets blood from a rabid dogs and serves rabies-blood meat pies to the hippies. The hippies turn rabid and start killing each other and other townfolk, frothing at the mouth and the whole bit. Occasionally, a really annoying and loud sound would be played when a rabies person would work itself into a frenzy. Or other spots in the movie. Like an electric carving knife going on too long and being REALLY loud. Lynn Lowry is in this film, and as it turns out is in a handful of movies I own. She's half pretty/half creepy.

Cat People

First off, this is an all-star cast. The guy from Night Court, the guy from Clockwork Orange, the guy from C.H.U.D., the girl from Lonesome Dove, the guy from Arrested Development, Girl comes to meet her long lost brother in New Orleans and I think he turns into a black panther and mauls a hooker. She apparently has some cat blood because she jumped 20 feet into a tree at the zoo. The zoo is hilarious because children are standing well within killing distance of lions and tigers – moral of the story, never take your kids to a zoo in New Orleans. Her brother is trapped in a cage at the zoo, then he rips Ed Begley Jr's hand off in front of Lana Lane.

Be Kind Rewind

I had heard a lot of bad things about this movie, but I generally like Jack Black, so I gave it a shot. Granted it's one of those movies, you're regularly saying, "come on, that wouldn't happen," but still I thought it was enjoyable. My friend Coach will not enjoy it because he is unable to suspend belief for short periods enough to actually enjoy anything for the sake of stupid comedy, but that's beside the point. Here's the plot, Jack black is sort of a conspiracy nutjob who breaks into a power plant to bring down the grid. He gets electrocuted which turns him magnetic. He is a regular at a mom and pop video store and ends up demagnetizing all the films. So to cover, Jack and Mos Def make their own versions of the films, which then become wildly popular. The movie store has to make enough money to make repairs or it gets torn down. To me Jack Black seemed somewhat toned down in the film, though there are bursts of craziness so it's not like he's a dramatic actor or anything. Mos Def goes between being a bumbling unintelligible simpleton to being well spoken and articulate and I think it's a pretty serious flaw. I wouldn't recommend it to most people, but I wouldn't steer anyone against it if they want to see it.

Everlasting Piece

I hadn't seen this movie in a long time, but I remember loving it. It's these two barbers in 80's Ireland (yes with all the fun of the IRA that goes along with it). They work at an insane asylum. A patient gets admitted who had been a toupee salesman, but got committed for scalping people. The barbers get their hands no his list and start selling toupees in an effort to make money. Once you get over the considerable accents they have, it's hysterical. Their families and friends are hilarious. Even the IRA is put in a semi-comedic and campy light. It's got some drama, it's got some chase scenes, it's got some moronic low-brow humor, but all in all it's a good film. There's a wee bit of swearing, so I wouldn't pop this in around your kids or anything. But it's a great film (and not just because I love Irish films).

Alive

Japanese film based on a Manga comic from the director of Azumi (one of my favorite films). Two men survived an electrocution death penalty and are taken to a special place and given almost anything they want. It's an experiment of some sort. Their families are told the executions have been carried out and no one knows they are still alive. This movie reminds me of Tavistock (for those of you who know what that psychological headgame is – if you do, let's talk). The people running the experiment start messing with the inmates to see what they do – I guess trying to break them. They turn up the heat in the room, cut back on their food, set off alarms every 30 minutes. It appears to be affecting one and not the other. The experiment is actually about something called an Isomer which is kind of an evil spirit trapped in someone's body that tries to get other people to kill. The experiment is trying to determine how it works and if it can be used as a weapon. Interesting idea, but to make the movie cool, it has to backfire in some way – and it does. The movie isn't a tenth as captivating as Azumi, so I'd probably not recommend it. It's decent, but unless you know the Manga version, it's probably not that exciting. But the special effects are pretty slick though…

Versus

This is an awesome modern-day Japanese action flick. The movie opens with two escaped convicts running through the woods to go meet their get-away people. People run their mouths and people get shot, then they come back from the dead. Apparently the land is cursed and brings people back to life (The Forest of Resurrection, to be exact). Well, these bad guys have been dumping bodies here for years, so they all come back to life at the same time. Like typical Japanese flicks, the plot really isn't about what you think it's about. It's actually about two immortals fighting to take over the world. The film is decent, but again, it's no Azumi – which is the movie I judge all action flicks on for the past few years. It's got tons of cool blood sprays and special effects and sweet camera work during the fighting scenes. If you like Japanese action flicks, check it out. It's cool, but it won't change your life.

Semi-Pro

Now I'm not a huge Will Farrell fan, nor a fan of any sort of basketball. I didn't have high hopes for this film, but I was kind of pleasantly surprised. It was an awful movie, even for Will Farrell, but I still laughed much more than I should have. Basically it was because of some of his one-liners. They were funny, and I'll probably be repeating some of them like I did after Anchorman. Minor league basketball league is getting absorbed by the NBA and only the top 4 teams are going to the big leagues. Farrell set out to boost attendance and build up his team. It's a decent film, but TRULY don't expect too much.

Get Smart

I knew this movie was going to be kind of campy and I was right. It was well done though. I honestly love the Rock, which helps. It's a remake of the original tv series, which was campy though, so it's alright. IT was well done and had all kinds of action and explosions in it. You have to go into thinking it's going to be stupid, or you won't like it. I had the right mindset, and I loved it. I was laughing out loud a couple of times. There are some stupid groaner parts of course, but Alan Arkin cracks me up, as does Steve Carrell. Just go watch this one. It's worth it.

2LDK

Japanese movie about two girls (aspiring actresses) who share an apartment in Tokyo. One is nice and kind of goodie two shoes and loves the theater. The other is trying to break into movies and is kind of more whore-y. The nice one labels all the food in the fridge so they know who's food is who's. They both pretend to be nice to each other, but they crap-talk each other in their heads constantly – hilarious. Both girls have auditioned for the same role in a film and it's gotten competitive. There's cell phone message erasin' and all kinds of funny business. Then it starts getting catty. Then it gets downright violent.

Perfect Creature

Vampire movie set in a time-mixed-up world. There are walkie-talkies, helium air machines, horse drawn carriages, and automobiles. The "brotherhood" have existed with humans for 300 years and now one of them has gone off and bitten the neck of a couple people. The one who has bitten the humans has been experimenting with compounds that can turn humans into vampires, but it's driving him crazy since he's been doing some experimentation on himself. And it seems like all kinds of humans have tappers right on their veins – bizarre… The humans, with the help of the bad vampire's brother, track down the bad guy who is trying to turn as many people into vampires as possible. It's a pretty good vampire flick, honestly. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. But they definitely put some money into it, so it's not at all bad. Just not huge Hollywood production.

Scorpion

Japanese action flick about a girl criminal who the cops are after. I now realize this is part four of a long series of films about a female prisoner (701), but it kind of stands on its own if you know that going in. She had broken out of prison it seems – which is why they were hunting her in the first place. They rough her up pretty bad and some guy that works at a strip club finds her and hides her away to recover. Apparently this guy has been in trouble with the law before, so the cops kind of know his shtick. They also rough him up pretty bad. They track him to his hideout where he's got the girl stashed. I realized about now, that she really hasn't spoken through this entire film. Hilarious. They catch the guy and then bring him in for questioning (aka beating). Then they roll his mom into the room to guilt him into a confession. Scorpion spends some time in prison and then the true scorpion comes to the forefront. I won't ruin the ending, in case you've seen the other three. It's a decent movie, but I will now have to go back and see the other ones for the full story.

Satan's Storybook

After what seemed like half an hour of opening credits with white lettering on black background, I was already dreading this movie. I'll warn you in advance, this movie is shot on what appears to be camcorders. The opening scene is either Bedouins, mummies, or ninjas walking through a cave with a prisoner (maybe) with a really big collar like in Alice in Wonderland. They get attacked and get away, but only after one of the white shrouded people dies. Then a bare-chested guy with goat fur pants and a goat skull mask with giant horns starts ordering people to find his queen (who I am assuming is the prisoner in the previous scene). I've decided this movie was produced by some sort of LARP/community theater act. It's almost a play, with stage lighting being brought up while people are standing motionless – terrible. Suddenly, there's a completely random cut to modern day news reporter and a car driving around NYC with terrible punk/electronic/metal playing. Crazy killer (we'll call him Paul Stanley) picks a name at random out of the phone book to kill. He picks this girl named Jezebel. Jezebel is a hairsprayed tramp who lives with her mom and dad (who stop in an tell her it's time to go to bed – even though she's 20)(literally 20)(not sure why her name is listed in the phone book instead of her parents, but whatever). The killer is wearing an Exodus shirt – which I will warn you is a sure sign of a mentally unstable individual. Paul kills her mom and dad and almost her before the cops get to him. Jezebel brings back her grandmother from the dead (who has a Transylvanian accent oddly) to help Jezebel take her revenge on the Paul Stanley. The home made sets and props are hysterical. Then another random scene change to a drunk sad clown who kills himself before his show. Not quite sure what's going on here, honestly. It's an awful movie, and I would not recommend it to anyone. Seriously, not to ANYONE.