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Jack Reacher (2012)
Actually Enjoyed It
I was totally, completely prepared to despise this movie. In fact, I avoided it at first. When I heard back when that Cruise had acquired the book I was.. well, sort of disgusted. I've read all the Jack Reacher books.. which indicates that I like and enjoy them. Always look forward to reading a new one as they come out. And Tom Cruise.. a runt.. is NO Jack Reacher. Whatsoever! And Jack Reacher ain't a handsome guy by any means. I figure the guy to play Jack Reacher would be Vinnie Jones.. if he could manage an American accent. A big hulking homely guy with an authentic military bearing. Jack Reacher was a major in the military police. You think handsome little runts get into that position.. forget about it. As Reacher says in one of the books, if you're going to go out and pursue and arrest some of the toughest hardest guys in the world, special forces guys and so on, stone killers, you must be tougher and harder. Period. Tom Cruise does not and cannot pull it off. That being said, if you are prepared to forget all about the Jack Reacher novels and just watch a typical Tom Cruise movie, it's okay. It's a sufficient time waster with a few good scenes in it. And the great Werner Herzog as a psychopathic bad guy is amusing. In short, well, there are worse films to watch and if nothing better is on.. what the heck.
Immortel (ad vitam) (2004)
Maybe You Had To Be There
So much hate for this work of art! Yikes! The saga of Nikopol and the Immortals ran for a long time in Heavy Metal magazine. I think it came over from the original Metal Hurlant from France. This was a different time. The music was different. The people were different. Our sense of art was different. Many artists and musicians loved to read Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant back then. It was a sort of comic book for intellectuals. Remember most of us had come out of the world of the 60s and into the 70s. Our sense of things was much different than today. Back then art --especially graphic art--was vital to us. Now, perhaps, its the internet. Then it was still the days of print. We read books copiously. We lived for books. We read graphic art much the same. It was important to us. So, if you like, this Nikopol thing is.. nostalgia? Nostalgia for a time when poetry still existed? A time before the human spirit was crushed and degraded into the withered corrupted thing it is today? Or not. Have it your own way.
Dementia (1955)
Pompous and annoying pseudo-arty junk
Azimov said 90% of everything is crap; but Too Much Coffee Man said ".. except crap. 100% of crap is crap." I'd stop there but I gotta get 10 lines to publish. So.. a great many really rotten flicks are created by would-be artists. Or "artists" to be more accurate. By and large these are utterly no-talent bums with nothing but a burning itch to be rich. They see a word of crap in which other no-talent bums are becoming successful peddling awful stuff.. and they are encouraged to follow suit. Too bad. There is a minimum of talent that is required in any art form. Pretentious gipe like this is merely annoying. If you enjoy being annoyed by crap then by all means jump right in.
The Hagstone Demon (2011)
Are the cast of this movie writing these reviews?
Sure sounds like it. This is one rotten movie. I give it a 10. I like bad movies, you see. This has everything: bad writing, bad direction, bad production, bad acting.. bad everything. Even the Hagstone is a disgusting looking old building with smelly slimy creepiness oozing out all over. Bad bad bad. But is it Doris Wishman bad? Is it Hershel Gordon Lewis bad? No way. Is it Plan 9 bad? Yeah, sort of. It is bad in an innocent, endearingly bad sort of way. The sort of bad you can scoff at with a good conscience because you support the idea of low budget truly independent film making and rather hope the makers keep making without ever getting good enough to sell out and become mainstream "good". Because that would be truly bad and truly unwatchable. Ya know what I mean?
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)
A Classic what is a Classic with great music
Now, I've just watched the version of 1993 with music by Rainer Viertelboeck. The music makes it for me, very much so. I see from the credits that several versions have been done with different music. I must have seen the original in a silent version waaaaaaay back when. Aside from the obligatory bowin' and scrapin' demanded for anything arty and old, I doubt if I was particularly impressed. I am not that wild about German Expressionism per se although there was a time in my youth when it was one of my favorite flavors of art. Time passes and now it seems to me to be.. quaint. I like the music though. As a musician I suppose I relate more powerfully to music than to painting.. and this film is self consciously a reification of German Expressionist painting or perhaps the graphics of the period. As a target of the motifs of Viertelboeck's music the film works very well and gripped me unlike any previous versions I have watched.
Now for the spoiler: of course, the protagonist is a loony. He's an inmate in a loony bin who suffers from paranoid delusions. He believes the head headshrinker is an evil goon named Dr Caligari who has a sort of zombie named Caesare who runs around stabbing people for him.But thats the twist ending. Very very ho hum by today's standards. And corny too. At the end the headshrinker says "now that I know what this fellows delusion is, I can cure him." The End. Nowadays as the camera fades towards black the good shrink would of course do something bizarre to let us know he really is the evil Caligari.. but back in the day.. 1921 afterall.. that's not how you ended films. I think if I edited the film I would simply leave off the final intertitle giving the shrink's little upbeat speech to leave a tiny bit of doubt in the viewer's mind. Oh, but that's just me.
I rated this Classic What Is A Classic a full 10 marks. Mostly because I like how the old Expressionist film works so well with Rainer Viertelboeck's music. The music and the intertitles have a gorgeous beatnik-esque flavor that I really like. Engagingly retro.
The St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959)
Black and white spin through St Louis Mo back in '59
Plenty good ol' cars in this flick. Steve McQueen, a very well known car guy, is a would-be bank robber. He falls in with some hard cases and they all come to a bad end as a result of a botched robbery. The best laid plans, etc.
Now, having read some of the other reviews, I have to wonder: where is all this "gay" stuff coming from? I didn't see anything like that. Maybe I'm just not apt to be jumping to conclusions. Maybe I don't have any "gaydar" at all. Whatever. I guess if you want to see homosexual stuff insinuated you will see it. Besides which, naw, I just can't see Steve McQueen appearing as a homosexual, especially back in the 50s when there was all kinds of approbation attached to that particular lifestyle.
I'm not much of a Steve McQueen fan. I couldn't tell you if this was good acting or bad acting from him. He always seemed very.. low key. I guess some folks find that to be good acting. Me, not so much. I saw him as an action star not necessarily an actor. A star doesn't actually have to act much, just do action stuff, shootouts, car chases, punchups, making out with hot babes, etc. But acting? Naw.
The best part of these lo-budg genre flicks is taking a tour around town back in the day. That's what this is about: St Louis in 1959 and a bunch of good ol' US iron rolling through the streets. If that ain't good enough for you, I guess you ain't gonna like this movie. Oh well. I liked it just fine.
Gallowwalkers (2012)
Far out
Wow! The haters are hatin alright. I suppose I am the only one in the universe who liked this movie? Aw so what. I don't care what other humans think about anything anyhow, especially would-be reviewers (who generally don't know crap about anything and think they are writing little essays for highschool newspapers and trying to look intelligent.) All this pointless yakking about plot and acting and other crap! None of which means anything at all. Movies are texture and nothing else. This comic book is loaded with texture. It oozes with it. I predict the heavy metal crowd and the nerds will love this movie. Why? Atmosphere. It speaks a language that only US comic reading metal heads in the wasteland could possible understand. All these would-be reviewers from foreign lands completely miss the point. All their film school pretensions mean nothing to the metal kid in the urban wasteland. These kids don't read or write reviews so their voice is missing here. This movie reads like a comic and its all eyeball kicks and nothing else. No thought required. Excellent! You can have your Bergman and your Wim Wimberg and what all else. We loves our comics and we don't care what you like or don't like. Snipes is king! Long live texture rich non-actor Snipes! Down to hell with pretentious holier than thou filmschool rubbish!
The Ghoul (1975)
The Description Gives The Whole Thing Away
So what gives? The description gives the whole thing away. Where's the sense in that? Right away we know the ghoul is this doctor's son who's a cannibal. I'm sorry I stopped in to see if this is worth watching. Now I know what the story is there's no point is there. I was somewhat intrigued to begin with because John Hurt seems to be assistant to the stooge of the ghoul. So I thought I'd pop over here and see what the fans think. Actually I just wanted to see if it really was John Hurt or not. But lo and behold I made the mistake of reading the description and now I know it all. Where's the mystery now? The guy that always plays Van Helsing or Baron Frankenstein is the doctor and his son is the ghoul. John Hurt is the murdering psychopath who stooges for the Indian woman who stooges for the ghoul. And the doctor is a lying sack of feces. The whole gang is a bunch of utter scum. Since I don't like any of these rats I don't think I'll watch anymore. Bye. Oh yeah.. whoever wrote the description is an idiot.
Above Suspicion: The Red Dahlia: Part 1 (2010)
A TV Version of a "Read" Must be A "Watch".
Crime novels are not meant as great art. So, taking crime TV shows as great art is remarkably silly, isn't it. This is just a "watch", ie., comparable to the sort of novels you pick up in a batch at the second hand shop or buy at the airport on the way somewhere. Seems like a little gritty to begin with, ie., showing the poor girl's dead body and mutilated face--not the sort of thing you want to watch with your grandkids by any means (unless they're Death Metal rockers or maybe fans of Marilyn Manson.. and adult of course.) So, I see this as a distraction from the news (which is horrid, isn't it).. and a chance to see a very pretty woman (Kelly) and snoop around in some very posh English properties, the sort of places that very few of us would ever get to chance to wander around in. Well, and also the chance to enjoy a feeling of oh what scum the rich folks are! We always suspected as much, didn't we. Oh, what fiends! Not like us decent folks. So we can kick back in our shabby pads and enjoy a good sneer. A pleasant time waster.
The Human Tornado (1976)
Yes, Comedy Gold.. no, Comedy Platinum!
Now who could criticize a Rudy Ray Moore film? Why would you want to? You can't have accidentally wandered into it. And if you did you could walk out in the first two minutes and just forget about it. Why go out of your way to squawk. Makes no sense. Rudy Ray is what he is. This is burlesque: low comedy and semi-nude ladies. You don't wander into a burly-Q show and then squawk because it isn't Shakespeare or the King James, and if you do you're showing a real serious lack of intelligence. So, since I use a binary reviewing method, ie ON or OFF, I hereby give this appalling grindhouse classic a score of 10. Particularly comic is Rudy Ray's absurd vocalizations when he does his faux Kung Fu stuff, and the speeded up segments for the fight scenes. Everybody in the flick looks to be having fun. And why not?
El día de la bestia (1995)
Yes, A Masterpiece!
Sure, I'm a cynical old man. I've seen it all, believe me. I like to laugh but rarely get a chance to laugh in today's batch of crap films. I love this film. I laughed out loud a dozen times. One of the few times I miss the old days of sitting in a theater full of people all laughing to beat jeebus. No spoilers here! I won't say a word about the story. Just that I enjoyed this film immensely. The lead characters are fantastic. At the end of day, warm, funny, and quite touching. That makes two Spanish films that have really impressed me lately. This one, and REC. For different reasons of course. REC I found genuinely frightening the first time through. This one is genuinely hilarious. Two hooves.. er.. thumbs up!
Quatermass II (1955)
I Agree With SteveReed100: This Is The Best One
I was lucky enough to find this on YouTube and have rewatched it a couple of times. Definitely IMO as well, it's the best of all the Quatermass offerings. I know that most people will disagree. Oh well. What makes this work is precisely what some would complain about: it's clunky. Very clunky. Funky and clunky. But I like that. Why I don't know. The main actor is.. let's say it: he's terrible. This was live television back when. Maybe that's the charm: they make mistakes. I like that. The man slotted for the part died and this fellow was brought in. Supposedly he "had trouble" with the "technical parts" of his lines. Hmm. I don't know. I just think he was a bad actor. But, as I said, I like that. Don't know why. The space trip is a riot. Really enjoyed it. Especially when they're walking around on the "asteroid". It's wonderfully ridiculous. They wear spacesuits that make them look like giant dildos. No kidding. And yet the series is actually frightening. As clunky as it is it still manages to provide a chill. Don't forget.. this was just after WW2.. after Naziism and Fascism in Europe and the rise of absolutist Communism in Eastern Europe. Therefore you could see the series as metaphor for the fascist or communist usurpation of power in the UK. That's where the chill comes from. Normal people easily corrupted and turned into grim fascist goons working for hideous monsters. That is a metaphor that still resonates and somehow the clunkiness amplifies the effect. For me anyway. You probably wouldn't see it that way. Oh well.
The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
Horrible Part Is At The End
SPOILER: The horrible part is at the end. The sick kid, having come to some kind of understanding with the burned up ghost kid, goes back to the haunted house. He goes down to his haunted room in the basement (I mean, would you put your sick kid down in that horrible damp basement dungeon? Of course not!) basically to free the poor ghosts down there. He's got an axe, see, and he chops the walls and out pours dozens of dead bodies! He's set the place on fire to burn them up. They just pour out the walls where they're stacked up like cordwood! Horrible! Horrible! They even pour out of the ceiling when the place is burning up. Now.. do you mean to tell me that nobody could smell all these dead bodies?? Dozens and dozens of them all crammed into the walls and ceiling?? I tell you, that house would stink so bad you couldn't get near it. You could smell it from the street. Ask any police or LEO. They'll tell you for sure. The reek would pollute the whole neighborhood. What's with this family? Do they have some kind of congenital no-smelling syndrome or something? So, that's the horrible part: just imagining the stink as the dead bodies pour out of the walls. Creepy? You bet.
Apocalypto (2006)
Terrifying Look At State Terrorism
SPOILER ALERT! Don't Read This! It seems that all ancient agricultural societies went through a period of state terrorism. Usually this is expressed as religious ritual involving human sacrifice, torture, and slaughter of lower classes. Actually of course from a political perspective it is always the actions of a tiny parasitic aristocratic minority extracting surplus and maintaining power by terrorizing the people below them in the social pyramid. Okay, that being said, this flick demonstrates that in some rather grotesque and frightening ways. The Bad Guys here are truly horrible and evil.. and look it! The Good Guy, young Jaguar Paw, is the Noble Savage persecuted by the "civilization" next door from whence issue the state terrorists who prey upon the forest dwellers. He gets away. Thank god because I'm so fed up with nihilistic films where everyone dies in the end and evil triumphs. However, this is the spoiler part: Jag's wife and son are down in a hole. Jag is being chased by a gang of killers. He's got to save his wife and son from drowning in the hole. He "takes out" ie kills all but two of the Bad Guys who are chasing him. However he gets shot in the chest with an arrow.. which he manfully breaks off. Meanwhile, down in the hole, neck deep in water with her young son on her shoulders, and precariously perched on a small rock to keep her head above the water, Mrs Paw gives birth to an infant! Jag shows up. I'm wondering how is he going to get his wife, his son, and a newborn infant out of this deep hole (at least 20 feet deep and rapidly filling with water!) when he is--or should be--on the verge of death with an arrow embedded in his chest? CUT! What? Yeah, cut. Next scene shows the little family--Dad somehow recovered and somehow having gotten his brood out of the hole--pausing before heading off to safety in the jungle. HOW DID THEY GET OUT OF THE HOLE? HOW DID HE RECOVER FROM AN ARROW IN HIS CHEST? Ha ha! No answer to that. Gibson thinks we are so stupid we won't wonder about it. Just.. magic I guess. Deus ex machina? Aw jeez!
The Devil's Chair (2007)
Spoiler Ahead! Don't read this!
First, I'm really starting to hate this bald guy. Really. He was the rat bastard sadistic rapo sheriff in the latest I Spit On Your Grave. In that one he was richly and ingeniously rewarded for his evilosity. In that one the raped girl shoved a shotgun up his fundament and blew his teeth out the hard way (the really hard way?) But in this flick he gets away with all his crimes and seems to be going off on a further murder spree. Okay the spoiler: there is no chair. He says so. The old shrink, "Gandalf", says too that what's happening, ie the Cthulhu monster part, is not real. It's all in his head. But um he's just a psycho this bald guy. A psychopath. But that's the twist, you see: the psycho turns out to be a psychotic. Sure. Get to neckin' with a gal who ain't there and, yep, you're nuts, baby. So it's metaphor of course. The hoity-toities who buy into the psychobabble are just as gullable and stupid as those who buy into the supernatural hooey. The psychopath knows that and toys with them on that basis. The yob says they're weak. And proclaims himself strong. At the end, the twist has another twist: it's all con. The psychopath is pitching directly across the "4th wall" and he knows it. So the imaginary necking at the end is just more bullshit from a bloodthirsty goon. He's not talking to an imaginary girlfriend: he's talking to us, the audience. The punters. Let's call this thing "Try To Make A Jason Franchise". But, no thanks.
Dredd (2012)
Yes, It Hooks My Inner Fascist Alright!
Wow! Talk about nasty! This flick really impressed me. It reminds me of the original Terminator.. not in concept but in it's ability to reach out and hook my interest. Of course there are a zillion things wrong with it but personally I don't care because it pushed the right buttons. In the first place, Dredd looks like Dredd. And acts like Dredd. Way back when someone interviewed the creator of the Dredd character and he pointed out that Dredd is NOT a hero. In fact, he's a villain. He's an evil nasty fascist bastard altogether. That was the idea behind the character. The maker was satirizing the mean-spirited bloody-mindedness of Britain in the seventies. I don't doubt that it's much worse now, post-911/711 etc. London is literally a spy camera on every corner and a corrupt layer of cynical opportunists manipulating the security state to their own advantage. In Freudian terms, Dredd is Superego run amok! (Look it up.) The idea being evil times produce evil environments which produce evil responses. Dredd is what the "good" fascist Batman would be in real life, stripped of all his humanistic pretenses and reduced to the sadistic rigidity of the superego. A costumed goon. But as entertainment? A guilty pleasure for sure.
The Tunnel (2011)
So What Do Want For Free?
Faulty, yes, very faulty. But I like the concept.. a free movie right from the get-go. Terrific idea. Sort of an "open source" idea. Kind of. And as usual I use a binary review method: All or None. In this case All even though as I said there's plenty of faulty available for the haters to focus on. Okay fine. The thing about these consumer-cam flicks is that the makers are cutting all the studio crap right out of the picture. Anybody with an idea can go down to Costco and buy a cam and get to it. That means the door is open for any and all creative individuals to get into the movie game without being subject to the inherent nepotism and narcissism of the structured movie establishment with it's endless layers of greedy ten-percenters trying to pound the maker's concept into some formulaic mold of previous success. Big Studio Flicks are enormously expensive. And frequently brainless and wholly predictable. The movie establishment is now making flicks exclusively for dumb children only which is why they're all based on comic books now. The movie establishment is consuming itself with stupidity. So, being in favor of DIY consumer-level movie making I say it's a good idea to support little flicks like this, yes? Like, what do want for free? LOTR? Or what?
Nine Miles Down (2009)
It gripped me alright.
Well I don't know why others have panned this excellent flick. I went through it without once having the desire to fast-forward. Watched every bit of it and enjoyed it very much. I don't know, maybe you have to be a psychologist and a phenomenologist to dig this movie but I found it very gripping and a rather neat look at paranoid ideation. A man suffering from intense guilt because his wife went mad and murdered her children and then killed herself, becomes exposed to a toxic environment and himself goes mad with tragic results. I look upon the hallucinatory segments as metaphor in so far as it is difficult to describe paranoid ideation in a compact manner. If this were a real "case" we would spend weeks or even months unravelling this man's behavior to learn what complex thoughts he was having when he went insane. The film context allows us to compress this analysis to a series of visual allusions. It worked for me. Clearly not for others.
Fire with Fire (2012)
A D'Onofrio Flick
Why such a low vote? I use a binary reviewing method. It's ALL (10) or NOTHING (1 since there ain't no 0). You may well love this film. I had to FF (fast forward) like crazy through the cringey parts. If you're a D'Onofrio fan like me you watch it to see the Man do his character actor thing again. Remember the Bug in MIB 1? Oh yeah. Great right. Well, right up to when they pull that stupid CGI crap at the end and threw physics right out the window (like, how does that huge bug fit into the redneck's skin anyway?) Fans of the TV show (the Broken Neck man?) will watch to see him ACT some more. But all the rest? Meh! Incredibly stupid. Trying to suck Bruce Willis fans into buying this is just evil. Yeah, we all know actors are just whores, ie they'll do anything for a buck but how much money does Bruce Willis need anyhow? Something to do while he limps along waiting for his next Die Hard vehicle? (Die Hard In Your Wheelchair You Antiquated Goon?) D'Onofrio is the only one here who puts in a credible performance. The Man ACTS as always.
The Invasion (2007)
Scared the Crap Out of Me
Yeah it did. For some reason these bodysnatcher flicks are the ones that really creep me out. You're mileage may differ. Reading the reviews I see that is true. Seems a lot of folks really hate this movie. I don't know why. Don't care either, to tell the truth. I gave up giving the remotest damn about what haters hate years ago. Nicole is a hottie. Boy is she ever. Shapely, beautiful, and she loves her kid. I like to see that.. a woman who fights to save her kid. Too many movies are populated by worthless passive goons who won't defend themselves. Love the way she gunned down them stinkin' alienized zombies. Obviously the good doctor knows a thing or two about handling a firearm. Yay on that! Can't stand people who won't defend themselves and their loved ones. Really. And her kid got plenty of guts too. Imagine having to stick a needle in your mom's heart to get her going' again. Yikes! Double yikes! But he did it. A chip off the ol' block(ette)? SPOILER: Has a happy ending. I was worried it was going to be one of these "modern" flicks that sows dispair and leaves you depressed because the ending is bleak and awful. I hate those loser flicks. Really. What kind of entertainment is that?? Bottom line: me, I found this flick watchable.
Rites of Passage (2012)
Quirky and amusing but horrible. I vote Yea.
On my binary scale of Yea or Nay (ie 10 or 1) I give this flick a Yea meaning I didn't have to fast forward through any of it. Of course that doesn't mean you will like it. Maybe you hate it as many other reviewers seem to. Somebody said there's no likable characters. I didn't find that at all. The kids are all really nice, ordinary student types. I've been around University life for forty years. I can see normal when I see it. In fact, unlike most of these types of movies, I felt bad when so many of them got murdered. I really did. Of course the protagonist kid is a dweeb alright but so what? Aren't we all? In the old days we all would have been cheering at the end when he came through and did his thing. The evildoers are a couple of real rat bastards. I hated them thoroughly. Christian Slater did such a good job as a slimy rat psycho that I think I'll never be able to see him as a hero type again. Good character acting. I really dug the monkey too. That was great. The other psycho is such a putrid punk I was yelling at the monitor when he was doing his disgusting rat psycho stuff.
Outlander (2008)
On a scale of Yea or Nay I giveth this flick a hearty Yea.
Wonderful adventure flick. I use a binary review method, ie ALL or NONE, ie ON or OFF which on IMDb translates to 10 or 1. This long sword flick by me gets a 10. The criterion I use is childishly simple (minded).. 10 means NO Fast Forwarding through cringey parts or 0 (ie 1) which means Yes Fast Forewarding required. Thus a 1 from me does not necessarily mean a bad film. It just means that I couldn't watch without fast forwarding over unwatchable (by me) parts. OUTLANDER gets a 10. I had no desire to fast forward over any of its parts. No icky squishy parts, no cringey baloney parts, no hideous revolting parts, etc. This movie is just entertainment. That's what I want from a movie. Profoundity not required. Historical revelations not required although I like to see at least an attempt at some kind of historical accuracy. This movie has lots and lots of juicy historical type details. Of course the lead characters are too pretty, but that is to be expected in almost any movie. The rest of the players are pretty much what you could expect from Norway in the 10th century. I would have preferred to see someone more physically impressive than John Hurt in his role here but oh well. You can't always get what you want. Boromir is a Slav name so why does Borolmir speak with a sort of wacky Geordie accent? Picky picky. Oh alright. Bottom line this is a good old fashion Saturday afternoon matinée adventure flick. Were I a kid I would absolutely love this movie BUT that being said I can see that small children would be scared witless by the monster which is a pretty horrible customer to say the least although really no worse than anything in the Jurasic Park franchise.