It’s always great watching Henriksen (Dog Day Afternoon, The Terminator, Near Dark, Aliens, Super Mario Bros) being menacing and eating spiders, but he is the only good thing about this movie. Although the amount of fake spiderwebs was impressive.
31 December 2008
In The Spider’s Web (2007)
It’s always great watching Henriksen (Dog Day Afternoon, The Terminator, Near Dark, Aliens, Super Mario Bros) being menacing and eating spiders, but he is the only good thing about this movie. Although the amount of fake spiderwebs was impressive.
30 December 2008
Speed Racer (2008)
29 December 2008
They're Among Us (aka Infected, aka The Hatching) (2008)
28 December 2008
Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth (2007)
David Lee Smith (CSI Miami) is John Oldman who, at an impromptu gathering of his work colleagues, tells his friends he is 14000 years old. This is a variation of the dinner party movie where, in this case, guests talk, question, and argue the validity of John's statement. Oldman's friends (including John Billingsley from Star Trek Enterpise and William Katt from The Greatest American Hero) are all professors and they question him in their fields of expertise. Oldman himself has 10 doctorates but, "Living 14000 years doesn't make me a genius, I just had time". The film occassionally drifts in to the melodramatic, but always manages to redeem itself and is at its most thought provoking and entertaining when Oldman discusses his experiences with Jesus.
27 December 2008
Justice League Of America (1997)
26 December 2008
Tropic Thunder (2008)
I watched this film for 30 minutes without laughing, smiling, or developing any interest in what was happening, so I turned it off. Who do I speak to about a refund? Ben Stiller? Robert Downey Jr? Jack Black? Jack Black still owes me for Nacho Libre. And Be Kind Rewind. And...
25 December 2008
Rave Magazine Top 5 for 2008
Dead Set – a tv show that demonstrates why the world would be a better place if zombies were allowed in the Big Brother house.
http://onthematwrestling.blogspot.com – because we know you can’t get enough of Mister J’s cartoons and ramblings.
24 December 2008
All I want for Xmas Is... Ok, maybe it's not this...
If Mister J is going to live out his Tippi Hedren fantasies with Barbie, then I can crave the Black Canary Barbie. It's the Barbie the right wing moralists in the USA are calling the dominatrix Barbie and calling for it to be banned. Fishnet stockings and leather do not send a bad message to children.
23 December 2008
Living Hell (aka Organizm) (2008)
22 December 2008
Abraxas – Guardian Of The Universe (1991)
Jesse is as impressive as always (see Predator or Running Man for more Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura), but not as impressive as his stunt double in the bald wig (or fellow wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live and Hell Comes To Frogtown). A must see for Jesse fans, but probably a must not see for anyone else.
(Mister J is disappointed that I made no mention of Jack Kirby's Fourth World or Darkseid in my review, although the anti-life equation is a complete rip-off from those very books. I have apparently mislead people in to believing I am a nerd, or at least marginally well read in the field of pop culture. My apologies go to geeks everywhere for my ignorance. - fs)
21 December 2008
Wanted (2008)
20 December 2008
Blonde and Blonder (2007)
Pamela Anderson (often looking like a middle aged drag queen) and Denise Roberts (bleached blonde to appear dumber) set the women’s movement back 60 years is this ‘comedy’. I turned it off after 15 minutes of agonising viewing. If I want to watch a dumb blonde comedy, I will watch a Paris Hilton sex tape.
19 December 2008
Zombie Films
The latest remake of a George A Romero zombie film is not really a remake at all. The original’s scenario, plus its claustrophobia, tension, and despair are replaced by the now standard storyline of people on the run, this time including trigger happy soldiers Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames. The only twist here is the zombies aren’t just fast and manic, but they can also climb walls and run across the ceiling. I guess they were bitten by a radioactive spider.
In a picture perfect fifties style world, zombies wear control collars and exist as semi-useful members of society. When Dylan Baker (Happiness) brings home Fido (Billy Connolly), he doesn’t expect his wife, Carrie Ann Moss (Matrix) and son to grow quite so fond of him. It’s a quirky, intriguing, and rather charming story of a boy and his zombie.
Canadian writer/director Bruce La Bruce tries to do for disaffected, teenage, German zombies of today, what Heathers did for disaffected, teenage, American girls of the eighties. Except the movie Otto is like the character Otto, lifeless and uninteresting, despite the amusingly, deadpan narration and explicit gay sex.
18 December 2008
17 December 2008
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
14 December 2008
13 December 2008
Black Emanuelle
Black Emanuelle is the first of the Italian rip-offs... er homages... to the French soft core blockbuster of a few years earlier, and a far different kettle of fish to the later, much sleazier sequels helmed by the late, questionably great Joe D'Amato. It is far closer to the incredibly dated Just Jaeckin "Emmanuelle" from 1973, taking a supposedly straight-faced look at contemporary relationships and questioning the usual flash point topics of the time, such as fidelity, jealousy, and desire ( all the while luxuriating in exotic surroundings ). Unlike D'Amato, director Albert Thomas does not present us with predatory drug lords, snuff movie-makers or rampaging cannibals, making for an admittedly less sensational, yet far more engaging viewing experience.
Photojournalist Mae Jordan ( aka "Emanuelle", aka Laura Gemser - who would later still, take the name Moira Chen, only to appear on U.S tv and chased around the set by Highway to Heaven's Michael Landon... and if she does that to an angel, what hope do us mere mortal's have? ) flies into Nairobi, where shes to shoot some stills to accompany an article by British writer Anne ( who is played by the very German, right down to the haircut, Karin Schubert ). Anne shares an "open relationship" ( hey, it was the 70's ) with her husband Gianni... which pretty much means both of them spend much of the film jumping anything that moves. Contrary to her subsequent reputation, Emanuelle seems positively puritanical next to these two would-be nymphomaniacs. Okay, so towards the end of the film she has sex on a train, with an entire football team... still...
The film is entirely Gemser's show. Not yet submitted to the endless array of rape and degradation that would come with the D'Amato era, she is a much relaxed screen presence. Projecting a slightly passive, at times even submissive and wide-eyed sensuality, Gemser manages to remain practically untouched by the debauchery that surrounds her. Unlike the original, the moralizing is kept to a bare minimum this time around, and in fact seems to have been added as almost an afterthought when towards the end of the film Emanuelle tells Gianni he hasn't "lost" her, as he never "possessed" her in the first place. Beautiful but somewhat dreary, the film in nonetheless worthwhile seeking out as a time capsule to an era, and a genre, now long gone.
12 December 2008
Snakes On A Train (2006)
A couple of illegal, Mexican immigrants sneak on to a train where the woman starts coughing up snakes. People die and then a really big snake appears and attacks the train. The ending is ridiculous, which is partly what The Asylum are known for doing in their movies. It’s nowhere near as good as it should be, even with green goo, and that’s because there are way too many stories going on between passengers on the train, and we don’t need to see that krud. All we want to see is snakes and killing and hysteria.
11 December 2008
Black Swarm (2007)
01 December 2008
29 November 2008
26 November 2008
I Am The Last Omega Man Legend On Earth
Vincent Price stars in the purest adaptation of Richard Matheson's book. Price spends his time playing music and killing pseudo-zombie-vampires and, unknown to him, the surviving humans, making him a 'legend' and he his feared by everyone. The film is slow but, with its unsettling visuals and claustrophobic feel, it plays like an extended episode of the Twilight Zone. And we love the Twilight Zone.
Charlton Heston tries to live a normal life, test driving cars, watching Woodstock, playing chess in his apartment, and looking for the pale, daylight fearing, technology hating mutants so he can kill them with a variety of guns (hey, this is Charlton Heston). Heston's monotone monologues dominate the film, but the action and despair is increased making it the most accessible of the versions.
Imagine thinking you were alone in a plague ravaged world, only to discover it is also populated by CGI wildlife and Will Smith. How depressing would that be? This film takes the title of book but not the premise of being a 'legend' (despite a sloppily added voiceover at the end that fits about as well as Ron Jeremy at a chastity convention). After Smith starred in “I Robot” (another film which had little to do with its source material), did he really need to do it again?