Well, I was looking for something to stream when I was doing other work, so I chose this. I'm not sure if I would have liked it more or less if I paid active attention to it.
This is your typical Rob Zombie fare, with evermore diminishing returns. A group of people get kidnapped and are hunted down in an unpleasant way, this time by people dressed up as clowns with stupid nicknames. As is typical for Zombie movies, it's nihilistic and unpleasant. Don't expect anything good to happen.
Of course, the people in it are exactly as stupid as they need to be to drive the plot along.
Richard Brake is uncomfortably convincing as Doom-Head, the final clown. Actually, Zombie has a stable of decent actors he likes to work with, and I think he always picks his actors well. The performances are generally better than other low-budget trash this would be lumped in with.
I did find a Spanish speaking, Nazi little person an amusing touch. Otherwise, it's
This is a horror comedy that gets it mostly right.
We start on Sam's (Haley Griffith) 1st day as a pizza deliverer, where she's showing a song she recorded to her coworkers. They mock her song, and one of them tells her that he helped get her the job, and she "owes" him. We follow her on her generally miserable day until they get a big order from a neighborhood just outside their delivery area. Sam takes it, hoping to both get away from the lecherous co-worker and possibly make some money on a tip.
Well, these are rich people, so she gets stiffed on the tip. Then her scooter won't start, so she sneaks in to get help. Unfortunately, these people aren't very helpful. With a movie name like "Satanic Panic" - you know the gathering that ordered pizza isn't your typical social event.
She gets kidnapped after the group discover she's a virgin, and then that's where the action starts. There's some class warfare in here, but it's really not "about" that as it's just the setup for the plucky underdog to fight against powerful cultists.
I don't like that movie either. I read the book before I saw it, and remember being pretty disappointed they left out so much stuff and focused on these goony feel good messages and gimmicky inserts. A lot of the things Forrest did were transferred to other characters so he can be totally one-dimensional in the movie.
It was a long, long time ago, though, so I can't really vouch for the book beyond saying that I liked it much more than I did the movie, and I have seen a lot of people who love the movie say they hated the book.
Bubba Gumps Shrimp restaurant always amused me and is like 90% why I think fondly of the movie. I remember their food mostly for having a no nonsense spicy sauce that was my kind of spicy, but then their vegetarian options are basically non existent so it’s been over 12 years since I’ve even been there.
Which is to say that’s also how I feel about the movie, the longer since I’ve seen it, the more fondly I remember it and that I should continue not to watch it, so I stay remembering it fondly.
I have also met multiple three legged doggos named Lieutenant Dan, thanks to the film.
I posted this on Letterboxd, but I think it works just as well here.
One of the reasons I signed up for Letterboxd is so I can actually keep track of movies like this. I think I've seen all of the previous movies, but honestly, I couldn't tell you for certain. Sure, I can vaguely remember some scenes, and hey -- Ali Larter! I remember her in these! Otherwise they're mostly OK, sometimes fun, action/horror movies.
This one was no different. This movie was enjoyable action, and clear enough for me to know what's going on. When I didn't remember the basics of the previous films, this happily filled me in just enough to keep me going.
I should probably recount the plot a bit as a reminder to myself. Alice emerges from the last movie's battle, only to be contacted by the Red Queen. The Red Queen tells Alice there's an antidote to the zombie plague, but she only has 48 hours to release it before the final free human settlements will fall. (This time limit makes no sense, and looks like it exists just to give Alice a countdown clock.) Alice has to travel back to Raccoon City, reenter the Hive, get the antidote, and release it. This will probably kill her, because she was also infected by the T-virus. On the way she runs into a team of Umbrella soldiers leading a group of zombies to overrun the human settlement in Raccoon City. She gets away, helps the humans defeat the horde, and ventures into the Hive.
I like Jovovich as an action hero, and the action was exciting and intense. I was entertained, and in a few days I will forget I watched this. Thanks, Letterboxd.
I haven’t seen the new film Cats but I was a fan of both the stage musical and the TS Elliot Poems. The poetry was read to me by my great aunt as a child, who was a crazy cat lady (also a latin and romance language teacher), so it was appropriate. The stories were very much about this fictional cat society like what a crazy cat person might make up watching the cats in the street. It’s also very quaint.
The play was lots of fun to watch and was as much about motion and embodying a cat as it was about any story, in a way it always felt like the singing was a way to lure an audience in to a dance and performing arts number. The idea of putting it to screen immediately losses so much of the stage performance as there are few other musicals where the fact these are real physical three dimensional people performing, sometimes right next to you, is integral to the experience. The theater
Which is my preamble to why you should watch 2 fucking hours of people talking about Cats. When it came out there was so much talk about the uncanny valley and horrible effects (and I’m sure another hour can be eventually added detailing the utter mess from start to finish that was) but few talking about the what and why.
Someone I’ve never seen before tells us who this TS Eliot guy was and why he wrote cats.
I haven't pulled the trigger on buying Cats (2019), mostly because it's still $20, and I'm cheap.
One thing I have realized as I watch these videos about "Cats", especially when they show the Broadway version vs. the movie, is that I think the Broadway cats are way hotter than the movie cats.
I think it's because the play is just people in bodysuits with stylized cat elements and makeup, and I love a dancer in form-fitting outfits. The new cats are creatures with humanish bodies, fur and cat ears.
Because COVID-19, I watched the Amazon Prime offering "Mermaid Down!" Don't watch this except under circumstances where you get absolutely no reflections on the screen (actually, just don't watch it, but you know what I mean), because most of the action happens in total or near-darkness. Many aspects of the movie are incomprehensible--It involves a doctor who runs a residential treatment center for women with mental health issues, set in a building with a basement that is supposedly haunted--which, if I understood the plot correctly (a supposition of which I make no guarantee), the doctor uses to run medical experiments reminiscent of Dr. Mengele. One of the women sees and hears a ghost that no one else can.
One day the doctor's out on his boat, apparently spying on two grizzled sailors who are out to catch themselves a mermaid. They catch one and chop off her tail (to keep her from escaping), but are ambushed and killed by the doctor, who takes the mermaid back to his institution and runs experiments on her. She develops a cocoon around her lower half and grows legs. The doctor introduces her to the rest of the population. She can neither talk nor walk, but she uses a sign language that one of the medical professionals (a woman) can understand, because it's similar to ASL.
The doctor kills a bunch of people. The mermaid escapes, and the residents who haven't been killed follow. They find bodies hidden behind walls in the doctor's boat. The doctor is killed (supposedly) at least three times, but comes back for one final death, imitating that overused trope I remember best from "Fatal Attraction," back in 1987. The mermaid saves everyone else, and then takes off.
The doctor's motivations are never explained.
All in all, this is not one of those you watch simply because you can. You will never get back that hour and a half.
I had never heard of this one before, but it was 84 minutes long and I was looking for something a bit weird. Yes, this was on Shudder.
Baby Wadsworth is an adult man who acts like a baby. Is Baby severely developmentally delayed, or has his family forced him to act like this?
A social worker is assigned to the case, and she immediately takes an uncomfortable interest in Baby. Eventually, the social worker gets to the point where she threatens the Wadsworths with the court system, and that makes the Wadsworths take matter into their own hands. I didn't guess the twist, but considering the twist is rather stupid, I liked my ideas better.
You see she was planning to drive the Wadsworths into acting illegally against her, so she could kill them off. She wanted to keep Baby... as a playmate/brother to her husband! He apparently had a brain injury in an accident, and now he's just like a baby, too!
I went to darker places - I was certain Baby was going to be sacrificed somehow, like he was going to be an organ donor for her injured husband, or he was going to be used as some kind of insurance fraud... or literally sacrificed.
This movie is probably weirder than you might expect. It's also shocking more in concept than in execution. It's rather tame in what it shows, but what it shows implies some truly awful things.
It was OK, I guess. I almost wanted it to be trashier, but I'm also kind of glad if wasn't.
I predicted the ending of that movie about halfway through, right down to what the final scene would be. And I was watching it with my brothers, so I had witnesses.
The book this was based on also was the source material for Cobra. The basic structure is the same, a renegade cop saves a damsel in distress from a group of relentless killers.
Unfortunately, there's about a decade of cheesy action movies like it between Cobra and this movie. It was passe by the time it was created. Even adding ex-KGB agents and super hackers doesn't make it better.
A lot of people complain about Cindy Crawford's acting, but honestly it's not bad. Her performance isn't any worse than dozens of other people who inhabit this and movies like it. Certainly she is not being outshined by William Baldwin. I don't consider it her fault this movie is very mediocre.
It's all a big mess, but I guess I was entertained.
Actually pretty interesting. There's a dream sequence where angels are played by Fabio and Patrick Ewing. There is a cameo by Larry King for no apparent reason.
How it relates to the previous movies isn't revealed until well into the movie, and I've seen worse connections in other franchises. Basically, someone is copying the Gemini Killer, a serial murderer 15 years dead. They are getting the details right - things not revealed to the press, and that has George C Scott as Det. Kinderman confused and worried.
As it turns out, the soul of the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif) was put into the body of Father Karras, even though Karras was dead. It took him 15 years to figure out how to be functional enough to start killing again.
There's a great scare in the movie, some very intense scenes, and a lot of bad dialog. Kinderman in particular is written to be a literate man who annoys you with his erudition.
It's better than I thought it would be.
0.0Mhz
Apparently this is based on a South Korean web comic and the two leads are k-pop stars. There's not much original to it, but I found it basically competent and sometimes scary. A group of jaded "teens" go off to a haunted house and meddle with things they don't understand. Bad things start to happen when one girl gets possessed by the ghost.
I can't really recommend this, even though I was entertained. It's just ok.
Oh, I almost forgot, I saw Exorcist III as part of Joe Bob Brigg's Last Drive In.
He has a really long rant in the beginning about - the Gillette commercial? I didn't even know what he was talking about until he started to describe it. This is well over a year old. Sounds like a routine he couldn't fit into last year's season. The basic premise is that he willfully didn't understand the commercial so he could make jokes about how it's not comprehensible, and it's all about selling razors anyway. Anyway, I tuned out until he started talking about the movie, which is really the only part of his shtick that matters.
This is a movie that is surprisingly good for basically being exploitation. It starts out with Susan Sarandon as Melissa Compton, a rich girl slumming it in Greenwich Village with her hippie, drug dealing boyfriend. She gets a bad mix of drugs and is hospitalized. Her father, Bill (Dennis Patrick), goes to her apartment to collect some things, gets in a fight with the boyfriend, and winds up beating him to death.
Now enter Peter Boyle as the titular Joe, and he is introduced spewing the most unvarnished racist rant I've heard in a while. It was strong language even for the 70s. Daddy goes into the local bar to collect his nerves, and lets slip during the hippie part of Joe's rant that he just killed one.
Even though he passes it off as a joke, Joe puts two and two together and confronts Bill. This winds up being a bonding experience for Bill and Joe, and they become unlikely compatriots. When Melissa eventually learns that her father kills her boyfriend and runs away. Bill and Joe go looking for her in the Village. Things go wrong during that search, and bad things happen.
This spends too much time showing these terrible men bond, so it's a bit too long to my tastes. Still, Peter Boyle is predictably great.
This movie kind of reminds me of Suckerpunch. Yes, it's a completely different kind of movie with a completely different kind of message, but it seems to be angry at you for believing the movie as it is presenting itself.
Small Apartments is - by all the movie's visual language, by the casting of comedians, by the setups and reveals - telling me it's a comedy. The main character, Franklin Franklin, is presented as quirky and maybe a bit stupid. He only drinks Moxie soda and only eats pickles. He awkwardly wears wigs and wanders around outside in his underwear. Whoops! His landlord is dead, lying on his apartment floor.
Then, as you discover over the course of the movie, how shitty his life is. You get to discover how shitty his wacky neighbor's lives are. Four people connected with Franklin die. The movie mostly does not change its tone. Maybe fuck you for thinking this is a comedy.
It's pretty clear that Franklin is not mentally well. I'm having trouble finding the humor in that. OK, there's a running joke with the landlord's murder investigation, and a few deadpan deliveries from Billy Crystal which got a chuckle from me.
I think I'm just unhappy that I thought this was a comedy, and the movie told me it was comedy, but it's a "quirky" drama. Oh, and Franklin is neglecting his dog, which kind of breaks any sympathy I have for him.
A rage virus infects the office building of a high end, particularly toxic law firm - ironically the same law firm that successfully defended a client from a murder charge due to the same type of infection.
They chose the wrong time to fire Derek (Steven Yeun) and screw over Melanie (Samara Weaving). The two team up and murder their way up the executive chain to get justice/revenge.
It's not very good, but it was thrilling in places and amusing in others. The humor that is intention is even sometimes amusing. Yuen and Weaving are pretty great, and there's a lot of over-the-top acting by quality characters actors. It was not particularly gory, but it had a few moments of viceral thrills.
Once again, this was part of Joe Bob Brigg's Last Drive In. I enjoyed that Joe Bob was giving the director shit about parts of the movie, and he learns after the bulk of the movie is done that the director (Joe Lynch) was live-tweeting on twitter and giving him shit back.
Once again, this was part of Joe Bob Brigg's Last Drive In. I enjoyed that Joe Bob was giving the director shit about parts of the movie, and he learns after the bulk of the movie is done that the director (Joe Lynch) was live-tweeting on twitter and giving him shit back.
Sounds like the funniest part of the movie.
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
AKA "Jason in Space". I have 1-8 on Bluray, and I know I've seen 9, but have never seen 10 until now.
In a longish opening sequence, Jason gets cryogenically frozen, along with a lady he attempts to murder. They get discovered over 400 years later, as part of an Earth scavenging/archaeology trip. You see, the future Earth is a wasteland, and people are living in orbital colonies and "Earth 2".
They take the lady and Jason back to the ship, and the professor in charge of the students learns that Jason is a legendary mass murderer and may be worth a lot of money. The lady gets revived and becomes like Cassandra - her warnings about Jason are ignored.
Thawing Jason comes to life when he detects a couple having sex. He wreaks havoc on the spaceship and station, killing space marines and students aplenty.
This movie is entirely mediocre, basically copying better space monster movies like "Alien" when it's not making winking references to previous kills in the series. The cast is too large to make you care, going for volumes of murders rather than interesting ones. It forgot the real bread and butter of a slasher movie like this.
It's weirdly bloodless and also both prudish and horny at the same time. There's no underwear in space, until there needs to be because people are having sex. On that note, it is fascinating to see what a low budget, early 2000s movie thinks future fashion looks like... not interesting enough to see this.
I like that they tried something different, even if it failed, but it's not very good.
I *will* have to watch it again, as I need to watch it with the "We Hate Movies" Catsmentary.
There are some parts that are just good performances.
- Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella doing "Memories"
- Jason Derulo as Rum Tum Tugger
- Steven McRae as Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat.
Then there are the performances that embraced the crazy.
- Idris Elba as Macavity - Ineffable!
- Ian McKellen as Gus the Theatre Cat
Those are the standouts.
The rest is "Cats" - the musical about cats! Except dressed up and reworked by someone with more enthusiasm and money than sense.
A remake of 70s exploitation flick Death Game, this time with Eli Roth as the director. This time it stars Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas (Knives Out), and also a cameo by Colleen Camp. Camp is one of the stars from the original and I'm always happy to see her. I'm pretty sure I found this one by looking for other things de Armas did, and thought, "Hey, this looks like trash!"
Evan (Keanu) is a caring middle-aged dad whose family leaves for a weekend, while he stays behind so he can get some work done. After he's just about ready to stop work, he gets a knock on the door. Two young ladies are there, lost and stuck out in the rain. Apparently grateful for his hospitality, they seduce him. Once that's all done, they take advantage of his hospitality and eventually take him hostage.
Actually, I thought the first half hour of this was pretty great. There is a lot of tension in the seduction. Keanu is really playing the scenes well. He wants to look like a caring father figure, but also as someone who's cool and sexy enough to be seduced by young ladies. He's enjoying the blatant come-ons, but he backs off when they get too close.
Once he succumbs to the seduction, in perhaps the dumbest, most unrealistic choice in a movie I've seen in a quite a while, the tension ends. You know that this guy is screwed (metaphorically this time). The only thing remaining to see is how bad it's going to get before it ends.
This is a fundamentally amoral movie. It sets up the idea that the ladies are underage, and they are doing this to expose/destroy evil men. Yet, it's pretty clear that they are just psychopaths out to have some fun. If the girls in this movie cared so much about punishing Keanu's character, why did they do so much to destroy his wife's life?
Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland came up on Shudder this week.
The original Sleepaway Camp is a gross, sleazy slasher movie with a surprising, wild twist. It's kind of mediocre up until that point. The next 2 movies decide that the movies should go campier (pun intended).
The killer from the first movie, this time played by Pamela Springsteen, is quippier and a more "fun" kind of crazy. She is killing the bad kids in camp, but no one is really good enough to survive.
Part 2 is intended to be more humorous. Angela is a camp counselor, and when the girls in her cabin act out, she murders them. It's not really funny, and it's not at all scary, so it doesn't work as a comedy horror movie. It's not quite as gross, but it still winds up being pretty sleazy, with a lot of topless and horny teens.
Part 3 increases the campiness, but it is also more sleazy than part 2 and perhaps a bit more creative with the murders. This time, the premise of this camp is to create a shared experience between privileged and underprivileged teens. Angela assumes the identity of a camper - by running the girl over with a garbage truck in broad daylight. There are a lot of in-jokes about how rough a life "Maria" must have led because she looks so old - Springsteen was 27 but the character is supposed to be 21.
The campers are split up into 3 groups, and Angela quickly dispatches them group by group. I want to point out one counselor played by Michael J. Pollard. He's a character actor who is kind of sleazy just by existing, but amps it up by seducing a pretty teen camper by flashing a Playboy belt buckle and hip thrusting. He is somehow successful. In a movie with gruesome murders, this is the grossest thing I saw.
The most resonant thing in part 3 was a rich white girl calling a black teen several racial slurs. In the movie, the counselor chastises the black teen for getting violently angry, but completely ignores the nasty girl. Obviously, the rich girl is the next person who is killed, but the movie doesn't seem to notice how terribly the counselor handled that situation.
I like 3 better than 2 because of it's unrepentant sleaze, but none of these movies are actually worth watching.
Re: Seen any crappy movies?
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