Movies

Wanted: A Cure for Freemanic Paracusia

Submitted by corwin on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:53am

0.90 Bolls

A little while back, Dustin told me he had a comic I just had to read, as it was written specifically for me. His recomendations have always been spot-on, so I took a gander at his copy of Wanted and was immediately hooked. It's the story of a world where the supervillians finally banded together to wipe out all of the superheroes and took over. A hypochondriac office worker discovers that he is the son and heir of The Killer, a super-villain assassin. Finding that society's laws and morals no longer apply to him, he finds time to take his revenge on everyone who ever wronged him before setting on the trail of the man who killed his father.

Dustin was right, of course, I loved it. But when

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Stuck (2007)

Submitted by corwin on Sun, 5 Jul 2009 7:30pm

-0.80 Bolls

Over the weekend, Dustin and I discovered we both had Stuck in our instant viewing queues, so we decided to go ahead and watch it as part of our regularly scheduled movie night. Stuck is Stuart Gordon's take on on actual events that took place in Fort Worth, Texas. After a night of partying, a nurse's aide named Chante Mallman hit a pedestrian while driving home. Instead of stopping and calling for help, she panicked and drove home with the man lodged headfirst in her windshield, bleeding profusely. She parked the car in the garage, and went inside to go to bed while the man bled to death.

This isn't the first time I've seen this particular plot dramatized. It's a favorite of crime shows; I've seen it on CSI and one of the Law & Orders. But it's a whole different beast under the directon of Stuart Gordon. He cut his teeth on H. P. Lovecraft adaptations like Re-Animator and From Beyond, and gave us the inimitable Dagon a few years back. Stuart Gordon doesn't pull punches.

Technorati Tags: Mena Suvari Movie Reviews Movies Stephen Rea Stuart Gordon Stuck

Legend of the Bog (2009)

Submitted by corwin on Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:48am

0.90 Bolls

Once in a while, I rent a movie based solely on the title and box art. The Redbox has definitely fed right into this habit. I'll wander up to the machine and glance over the selection until a movie or two catches my eye. Thus did I end up taking home Legend of the Bog, starring Vinnie Jones.

When I got through the previews to the DVD menu, I could already tell I was in trouble. Scenes of a big, bald man in what looked like a sack cloth tunic running across the countryside while the least appropriate music for a horror movie played dominated. I started to wonder if this was a Lifetime Movie Network film about a misunderstood man living in the bogs, rather than the horror/action movie the cover promised.

Knowing I was in for some pain as I hit play, my first thought when the FBI warning came up was that it should say something along the lines of "Any duplication, authorized or otherwise, will result in a taint on your very soul which can never be absolved." I grabbed my laptop and decided to share the pain by typing my thoughts into Twitter as the movie progressed.

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Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

Submitted by corwin on Mon, 8 Jun 2009 8:04pm

-0.80 Bolls

Once in a while, a movie comes along for which I am the target audience. Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus was just such a movie. It was obvious to me from the title alone that the fine people at The Asylum sat down one day and asked themselves the all important question: what would corwin like to sit down and watch? They clearly know my long-standing love of giant shark movies, and the way I'll run head-long into a "versus" movie. And, in a stroke of marketing genius, they took a like from Snakes on a Plane and gave it a title from which anyone can immediately tell if they want to see it. And from the moment I heard of Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus, I wanted to see it!

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The Underground Comedy Movie

Submitted by corwin on Sun, 12 Apr 2009 4:56pm

0.99 Bolls

A little while back, I heard that Vince Offer, the infomercial guy who sells the Sham-Wow and the Slap-Chop, had a more interesting background than I would otherwise have thought. He had apparently made a movie once upon a time, but had been ruined financially when the Church of Scientology kicked him out and, according to him, launched a smear campaign against him. He managed to use his skills marketing a vegetable shopper to pull together enough money to finish producing the movie, then marketed it in infomercials to sell over 100,000 copies. He then used the profits to turn around and sue the Church of Scientology.

This story sounded interesting enough that I figured I ought to take a look at The Underground Comedy Movie.

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Surviving the Game (1994)

Submitted by corwin on Sun, 5 Apr 2009 8:57am

0.80 Bolls

Richard Connell's classic 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game" has long been a favorite of mine. I've seen several film adaptations, as well as coming across versions of the story in nearly every format and genre. The hunter becoming the hunted is a plot that always strikes a chord with me. So it was only natural that Netflix recommend Surviving the Game to me, especially given it's star-studded cast. Sadly, Netflix was grossly mistaken in assuming I'd give this one four out of five stars.

Technorati Tags: Gary Busey Ice-T Most Dangerous Game Movie Reviews Movies Richard Connell Rutger Hauer

Chill (2007)

Submitted by corwin on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 7:00pm

0.90 Bolls

There seems to be an unspoken rule among filmmakers that if you're completely lacking in talent or budget, H. P. Lovecraft is the writer to go to for your inspiration. With a few notable exceptions, the movies based on or inspired by his work are pretty awful. I don't understand this, as Lovecraft, like Poe, is a fantastic source of good horror.

Take, for instance, his story "Cool Air," written back in 1926. It's a good little story, tightly written, that could have supported a short film of some kind (which, as I look now, it did back in 1999). Unfortunately, it is also the inspiration for the unspeakably awful Chill. Spoilers ahead....

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The Shaky-Cam is Already Inside the House!

Submitted by corwin on Sun, 9 Nov 2008 8:44pm

-0.20 Bolls

This weekend, I had the opportunity to watch The Strangers. I remembered seeing the trailers when it first came out and thinking it looked pretty creepy. It struck me as something that could really give me a good scare. Realistic horror always scares me more than anything supernatural; Cujo scared me more than any number of zombie movies. Overall, I thought The Strangers was pretty well done, with one really glaring exception. From the very beginning, the director of photography eschewed the use of any kind of tripod or camera mount. I can only imagine the director thought he was making some kind of edgy decision to make the scenes scarier or more suspenseful by shaking the camera like it was a camcorder the whole time. That can, and has been, very effective in small doses. When the whole movie is like that, it destroys any kind of immersion in the film, and a good horror movie absolutely relies on such immersion to terrify the viewer. Instead, too many otherwise genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments get reduced to cheap jump scares.

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Confessions of a Superhero (2007)

Submitted by corwin on Fri, 28 Mar 2008 9:25pm

-0.70 Bolls

Documentaries are not normally my thing when I pick out movies. I guess while I often prefer realism in my entertainment, outright reality doesn't often do it for me. Considering the number of documentaries there are on topics that interest me, I should probably watch more of them, but there it is. That being said, when I saw Confessions of a Superhero listed in Netflix, I was intrigued. It follows the lives of people who dress up as comic book superheroes and work the streets of Hollywood getting their pictures taken with tourists for tips. So when I finally got back on the ball providing entertainment for my Saturdays with Dustin and Jessika last weekend, I made sure to bring that one along, and it proved to be a hit.

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Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

Submitted by corwin on Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:34am

0.40 Bolls

Dustin, Jess, and I decided to give Wrong Turn 2: Dead End a try based on the recommendation of Film Threat's Chris Gore. In the DVDuesday segment on Attack of the Show, he gave it a buy, calling it a slasher flick in the style of the classics of the genre. That combined with the appearance of Henry Rollins in the cast was enough for us, so I popped it in the Netflix queue despite having never seen the original Wrong Turn. Dustin and Jess assured me the original had no redeeming value and was definitely not something I needed to waste my time on. Sadly, completist that I am, I will have to rent it someday. At any rate, none of us is sure what Chris Gore was thinking with that recommendation. It wasn't, by far, the worst movie I've seen in this genre, to be sure. It was fun to watch with friends, but not something I would have chosen to see, save for the presence of Henry Rollins. Now, let's spoil this bad boy.