Rate The Last Movie You Watched

[Julio Riddols]

The fact that the guy who made Primer was working on Looper must have had something to do with its success. Primer was an amazing movie considering the budget was only 7 grand.

[CrimsonFox]

Just watched "The Game" with Michael Douglas. It's okay. I'm a big puzzle fanatic and I think it could have gone further in that regard. There didn't really seem to be a lot of consistence with where he went/was taken. Some neat parts.

um
7/10

[Suicane75]

Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence): 8.3 Out Of 10

Being that I found the first Human Centipede a rather pedantic and boring film, completely undeserving of the hype, I was not in any rush to see the sequel. Boy was I wrong. Everything I expected the first film to be but wasn't, the second film was.

Led by the lead, a squat, little, fat man named Laurence Harvey, Human Centipede 2 spends the first hour building up a quease factor that is just delicious. There is some minor gore through the first two acts of the film but mostly it's a mind fuck and a general uneasiness with Harveys appearance. Rarely does an actor fit his role as well as Harvey does here. And although the look is a big part of it, he acts his ass off. It's just disturbingly awesome. There were moments I wanted to vomit just looking at him.

Writer/Director Tom Six does a fantastic job building to the third act by using Harvey and simple words and allusions to create an utter atmosphere of creepiness. It's ocular rape is what it is. Everything you see and hear makes your stomach turn just a little bit more as the film builds to a crescendo.

Now then, while the first hour builds based less on gore and more on the anticipated gore, the last half hour pulls no punches. It's gross, it's sadistic and it's flat out beyond the pale, so much so that it doesn't take long to become humorous as the fat little man creates his human centipede, forces laxatives into them, rapes the end girl whilst having barbed wire wrapped around his cock, and more.

I've watched some hardcore torture porn in the past, and while this film could be categorized as such, I think it does a disservice to the wonderful job that Six does of setting up his payoff. With very few sets and very little dialog, he creates a twisted fucking world with a demented main character that is completely enGROSSing.

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Cabin in the Woods - not even worth the $1.06 we spent to rent it from Redbox

I loved this movie.

[korme]

THE MASTER - 6/10
Started off and I loved it. The acting was, of course, terrific. However, the movie just started to lose me as we hit the second half. I didn't really understand the point of the movie, I guess. I don't know, maybe I need some more time to evaluate it. Very strange feeling leaving the theater.

[Suicane75]

Deadtime Stories: 7.0 Out Of 10

Had this one in the leftover pile from last year and had no idea what it was going in. Hah, turns out it's a film starring Scott Valentine from Family Ties, likely in the 7th of his 5 minutes, back in the late 80's. Holy crap, Melissa Leo is in this as well.

In Depth Review

Spoiler

Ok, so right away I'm not sure what I'm watching. I think it's a comedy but also just be bad. It's a collection of horror stories set up by an Uncle telling his nephew stories at bedtime. Now there is no horror setup, the kid just wants a story told to him, so it seems kind of bizarre the Uncle would just start telling him some fucked up shit, but anyway. I should also mention that the opening credits are interminable, and an 80's hard rock song plays over them that again I can't tell whether it's comedic or just bad.

The first tale features Scott Valentine as the adopted child of two witches. Valentine looks about 20 here, btw. Problem is, I didn't even realize it was Valentine till about 10 minutes into the scene since it's shot so horrendously. Jesus. The dialog plays as kids comedy but there's some bondage stuff, a dismembered priest and Scotts bare ass on display in all it's glory in a scene in which the witches bath him. Yes. This is wonderfully atrocious.

I've seen underground porn from the 70's shot outdoors at night that had better lighting than this.

So Scott is forced to capture a busty wench so his mothers can sacrifice her, which of course brings up a big moral dilemma.

Lots of close up reaction shots that highlite the acting abilities of Mr. Valentine. He's grossed out, he's worried, he's anxious. A few shots feature he and the wench in the background and I'm not sure they even realize the camera is rolling.

Oh dear. Scott and the wench are on the run and decide to stop in a cave. At which point a being in a robe shows up and Scott calmly asks "excuse me sir, do you know the way out here?" A way out of the cave they've been in for 3 seconds. The wench is thrown against the wall of the cave and the Styrofoam almost collapses. Marvelous. Ok, so the person following them is the resurrected dead sister and despite Scott pulling her heart out, the battle is not over, oh no. The heart attaches itself to his face, causing him to scream loudly and hysterically as if his nuts are being ripped out. Music blares, Scott screams, the scene builds to.......the girl grabs the heart, throws it against the wall and they both walk out like they're on a Sunday stroll. All this happens over the course of about 5 seconds.

The two kiss in a clearing as the first vignette comes to an end.

Where to start? This story looks like it was shot as a comedy, drama, horror movie and bondage porno and then using random selection was spliced together with various scenes from all 4. The acting, camera work, lighting, all the technical shit are horrid. I think Scott was horrid too but I'm not sure Oliver could have gotten anything out of this.

Back to the kid and his Uncle. The kid is complaining that the story had a sucky ending. I'd think the 7 year old might be more interested in what S&M means, but perhaps I'm over thinking this.

The kid is so scared that he asks for another story, he wants to hear about Little Red Riding Hood. The Uncle is mad because he's missing the Miss Nude Bayonne contest on Cablevision, ok, that was a great line.

As we lead into the next story, the Uncle explains that Little Red Riding Hood is a big breasted, high school cheerleader. Well then, maybe business is picking up here.

WTF WTF WTF. Some synth/jazz number, last seen in A Christy Canyon film, plays as the girl stands in her bra and panties and rubs her stomach while watching herself in the mirror. Her reflection is joined by a Princely looking gent who pulls her panties down slightly and licks her hip. This is now an 80's softcore film. I think they're just spinning a wheel. Her daydream is interrupted and in a bizarre cut away we see that it was actually her dog licking her. What In The Holy Fuck.

So much awesome in this second vignette. The girl goes to the drug store for her grandmother and runs into a man who's buying sleeping pills. Their order gets mixed up and we learn that the poor guy needs to get to sleep before the full moon. Meanwhile the girl has been whisked off to the woods by her boyfriend so he can take her virginity in a storage shed on an air mattress. We switch between the couple and the werewolf, the couple getting smooth romantic music while the werewolf gets heavy jazz as he starts to morph. So great. The boyfriend puts his hand up the girls shirt and it looks like he's grabbing cans of soup off of the top shelf. Wolf dude looks like he's having an orgasm in the middle of a Herbie Hancock song and rips off his skinny tie.

Ahh geez, we almost see the boyfriends schlong as it veers back into porno territory. The werewolf has transformed and apparently the director of this movie thinks werewolves look like David Brenner on no sleep. We get an action scene that features all the intensity of knitting. This really is funny, in a good way. The kid still can't sleep, despite being told a bed time story about a cheerleader losing her virginity and having to kill a wolfman, imagine that.

The 3rd story is a telling of Goldilocks And The Three Bears. The Bears are a father, mother and a mentally deficient son whom they've just broken out of an insane asylum. This one is played for pure comedy and it hits it out of the park. The family decides to hide out in their old house in Amityville. Unfortunately that dilapidated building is being inhabited by a cute little thing named Goldilocks who has telekinetic powers and likes to kill all her suitors and keep their corpses around the house. Yeah, you read that right.

Jeez this vignette is awesome. Borrowing some from Kentucky Fried Movie, Early SNL and even Benny Hill, this story is played for pure comedy and it works very nicely.

A pleasant surprise, this mix of comedy, good and bad, intended and unintended is a nice little diddy to fire up on an Autumn eve when you're looking for a good laugh or two.

[Suicane75]

Bite Marks: 3.4 Out Of 10

What a gay movie. Literally. Story of a young gay couple backpacking across America who get picked up by a bumpkin truck driver who may or may not have the same phallic tendencies.

The movie is pretty low budget and the director really has no idea what he's doing. The pacing is horrendous, scenes take much longer than they need to and the dialog is stilted. There are some funny lines but mainly the first 40 minutes is just sort of there. At this point it sort of devolves into a bad Halloween episode of Will And Grace with an insistence on social references and zingers. Now some of it is funny, but the sheer amount of jokes reaches a point of diminishing returns and it just gets tiresome.

While the film looks decent enough, the technical aspects, blocking, editing etc, are pretty bad. All of this could be forgiven if the film ever seemed like it was about something, but it doesn't. Two gay dudes pick up another gay dude and get attacked by vampires, that's the synopsis, but it doesn't get much deeper than that even though I think at points it tries to get philosophical about being true to yourself and coming out of the closet. The script is so muddled and all over the place that it doesn't really build to anything, it just continues till it ends, if that makes any sense.

Minor cheese value, but not enough to really recommend, even on that level. Bite Marks doesn't even break the skin.

[CleBrownsfan]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence): 8.3 Out Of 10



I've watched some hardcore torture porn in the past,

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

flower of flesh and blood? that's a good one. iirc, charlie sheen called the fbi after watching it because he thought it was a real snuff film

[chinaski]

Originally Posted by CleBrownsfan

Surprised me too. I've seen a ton of messed up movies and I liked the first Centipede but part 2 was total garbage imo.

[CrimsonFox]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence): 8.3 Out Of 10

Being that I found the first Human Centipede a rather pedantic and boring film, completely undeserving of the hype, I was not in any rush to see the sequel. Boy was I wrong. Everything I expected the first film to be but wasn't, the second film was.

Led by the lead, a squat, little, fat man named Laurence Harvey, Human Centipede 2 spends the first hour building up a quease factor that is just delicious. There is some minor gore through the first two acts of the film but mostly it's a mind fuck and a general uneasiness with Harveys appearance. Rarely does an actor fit his role as well as Harvey does here. And although the look is a big part of it, he acts his ass off. It's just disturbingly awesome. There were moments I wanted to vomit just looking at him.

Writer/Director Tom Six does a fantastic job building to the third act by using Harvey and simple words and allusions to create an utter atmosphere of creepiness. It's ocular rape is what it is. Everything you see and hear makes your stomach turn just a little bit more as the film builds to a crescendo.

Now then, while the first hour builds based less on gore and more on the anticipated gore, the last half hour pulls no punches. It's gross, it's sadistic and it's flat out beyond the pale, so much so that it doesn't take long to become humorous as the fat little man creates his human centipede, forces laxatives into them, rapes the end girl whilst having barbed wire wrapped around his cock, and more.

I've watched some hardcore torture porn in the past, and while this film could be categorized as such, I think it does a disservice to the wonderful job that Six does of setting up his payoff. With very few sets and very little dialog, he creates a twisted fucking world with a demented main character that is completely enGROSSing.

[Suicane75]

No Tell Motel: 2.9 Out Of 10 Stars

Dull, pedantic and silly, No Tell Motel starts off with a nice premise and devolves into boredom fairly quickly.

Five young adults, 3 of whom are hot chicks, end up stranded at an old abandoned, haunted hotel for the night. Sounds good right? Well that's where the good times end. The script has a solid base in that all five of the main characters have secrets that the motel forces them to face, unfortunately the more acting we get and the deeper the script gets, the less interesting the film becomes.

There's no nudity or titillation despite having three very hot female leads, which always annoys the hell out of me. There's not really any gore either, it's mostly just people always within 50 feet of each other who never know what anyone else is doing. Frustrating in it's laziness to get from point A to point B is how I'd describe it.

None of the characters connect at all, and the lead female borders on bad at worst and boring at best. At times it almost feels like a Lifetime version of a horror movie.

No need to check in to this motel, there's nothing worth seeing.

[Suicane75]

Originally Posted by chinaski

Surprised me too. I've seen a ton of messed up movies and I liked the first Centipede but part 2 was total garbage imo.

Tell me more.

[korme]

HAYWIRE 6/10 - In general, I am a fan of Soderbergh's work (except for the awful Girlfriend Experience.) It was right up his alley, and I was good with that. The storyline was ok, and Gina Carano can kick some serious ass. But, she was awfffful in this movie. Completely glaring when a competent actor was on-screen with her. I just wasn't buying any of it, and it was too bad. It was literally like she was reading lines right off-cam.

[cubboyroy1826]

Originally Posted by korme

HAYWIRE 6/10 - In general, I am a fan of Soderbergh's work (except for the awful Girlfriend Experience.) It was right up his alley, and I was good with that. The storyline was ok, and Gina Carano can kick some serious ass. But, she was awfffful in this movie. Completely glaring when a competent actor was on-screen with her. I just wasn't buying any of it, and it was too bad. It was literally like she was reading lines right off-cam.

Saw this one as well and I will admit it was dreadful. Gina may be one heck of a fighter but man she cannot act at all. The whole time I was watching the movie I kept thinking I was in the way back machine which took me to a theater from the 70s. The filming was just off and seemed cheap.

[Suicane75]

Chernobyl Diaries: 4.0 Out Of 10 Stars

Ughh. Another really good set up that relies more on drama rather than horror for it's payoff and just let me down.

A guy, his fiance, and her friend are visiting his brother in Kiev and they join another couple on a tour of the town adjacent to Chernobyl. None of the characters are much more than stock, but the chicks were pretty hot and the build up had me sufficiently excited. Then it starts to rely on tension instead of letting loose the tits and gore and I just didn't care enough about the characters to stay interested. The "villains" are barely shown even though the previews let us know who they are. So we wait, and wait, and there are chases and running and some decent gore but nothing that gripped me in the slightest.

In the end it feels like a PG version of Hostel without any of the ambiance.

A diary with nothing much to say.

[Suicane75]

The Skin I Live In: 7.4 Out Of 10 Stars

Sweet beans! What an epically fucked up movie. I'm not sure how good it is, but I certainly couldn't stop watching it, especially when It reached a certain point and my stomach sort of went all oozy woozy.

Antonio Banderas is a renowned surgeon with a lab and an operating facility in his house. And if there's anything I've learned from movies, it's that no story about a surgeon with a lab and an operating room in his house can end up any way but messed up.

Elena Anaya is delicious as his patient, and I use that term loosely.

I can't really say much about the rest of the story without spoiling it so I'll just say that it builds wonderfully and even though it clocks in at about two hours long it never drags, in fact it keeps hitting you with new twists and turns and diverts off into different territories till you're not really sure at all how it all adds up, but when it does, hoo boy.

Psychologically fucked up, sexually explosive and downright twisted, it's a modern take on the mad scientist story that while not easy to watch at some points, is a very enthralling film.

[ISiddiqui]

Looper - 7/10: A good sci-fi film that makes you think a little bit, but don't think TOO much because the time travel really makes little to no sense. Great acting by both Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis, as well as Emily Blunt. Fun idea with some good action pieces. A solid movie, but not great.

[Suicane75]

Cowboys And Zombies: 2.8 Out 10 Stars

I had this one sitting around for awhile and I actually thought it was an Asylum ripoff of Cowboys Vs Aliens. Instead it's just a standard, very low budget horror movie. It's not without it's pluses however, although none of them have anything to do with quality.

I'm fairly certain that the whole thing is built around the first and last scenes and the directors vision to see a cowboy gun down zombies. Unfortunately an entire movie has to fill the rest of the 81 minute run time and nobody involved is any where near up to the task.

The film opens with a cowboy in a gunfight with a gang of outlaws. I give this scene decent props as I know it's hard to do a good action scene and while it's clearly low rent, it's not awful, and even when it's bad it's cheesy enough to be fun.

From there we get an attempt at a movie, and save for the bad editing, bad music and bad acting, it's just a bunch of nothing much. The bad stuff is bad enough to be entertaining, including a Native American who I'd guess is not simply the best Native American actor they could find, but the only Native American they could find, there can be no other explanation for how bad this fella is. The sets are minimal. There are two "towns" in the film and I'm pretty sure they're the same 3 buildings used to make up each one.

The lead actor is decent enough I guess but he's not what I would call good, nor is he given much to work with. He's bounty hunting so he can collect money for an unspecified purpose that he doesn't reveal till late in the film. You see, he fell in love with a girl who was underage, she didn't want to give it up, so he raped her. Yes, he raped her. Now she's pregnant and her pa is dead and even though her ma doesn't want him around he figures that if he comes back with enough money to pay their mortgage all will be forgiven. I shit you not, that's the story.

There are zombies, and the makeup and gore is pretty good but there's never any tension cause it's just too dumb to care about any of the characters and there is a LOT of nothing much going on in between the "action".

There are some nice titties bouncing about, and a lot of long shots of folks walking or waiting.

Essentially a film that looks like a student film project that would get a C at best. But it does take itself seriously enough that it's enjoyable in how bad it is if that's what you're into.

[Suicane75]

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane: 4.1 Out Of 10 Stars

Had high hopes given the first 10-15 minutes of the film as it had a cast full of hotties, great atmosphere, and a style that suggested something above the average teenage slasher film.

Unfortunately, the further the movie progresses, the less interesting it gets, till it just becomes a mundane exercise in sameness.

The cast is strong and the dialog is not all that bad. The chicks are hot and although there's a lot of tease there isn't much nudity. Amber Heard as the lead is pretty damn captivating and her character is strong, it's just a shame it was wasted by a generic script and rather gore less, tension less script.

Mandy Lane looks nice, but there's not much to do there.

[IlliniCub]

Sinister 8/10

I don't wanna give anything away here, but one of the best modern horror movies I've seen. Amazing imagery and musical score that sticks with you.

[Suicane75]

Wrong Turn 5: 6.5 Out Of 10.0 Stars

The franchise that mystifies me. The original, starring Eliza Dushku was decent, no better, no worse than average. That it spawned one sequel was not a shock. Given how horrible that sequel was, it surprised me greatly that they churned out two more, both as putrid as fresh dog poop.

But I'd be a liar if I said that I didn't get excited when I saw there was a new one out. Maybe I'm a glutton, maybe I just have such faith in the premise that I assume they'll stumble into getting it right eventually.

Well, they didn't exactly hit a homer, but Wrong Turn 5 is the first right turn the franchise has taken since......well ever.

This years version is a sequel to part 4 but still in prequel time compared to the original. It also returns the 3 main baddies from part 4.

This film continues the tradition of preposterous set ups that make no sense in regards to the story being told. Part two occurred during the filming of a reality tv show that had about 4 people working on it. This one takes place during a music festival in a small WV town that the characters reference as just as big as Coachella or Burning Man. Then those THOUSANDS of people promptly disappear for the entire film, making one wonder why the back story was even needed if it was going to be so blatantly ignored, to the point of absurdity.

Don't get me wrong, the film is horrible on a storytelling level, but unlike previous versions it moves quick. You wont have to watch an insufferable snow boarding montage as in part 4 or a tedious 45 minutes of characters walking like in part 3.

More importantly, the filmmakers aim here seems to be to just have as much fun as possible making a gory fucking horror romp, adding the humor liberally and letting the guts flow freely.

The acting is pretty bad, the decision making of the characters is beyond retarded and the writing borders on appearing to be parody. But it works in the way good cheese should. It's laughable, but at least it's funny to watch these dipshits try and emote and reason. The biggest plus is the pacing. We never get bogged down. No character is not expendable. The kills are as fun as all get out and the gore is top shelf, I even cringed on more than one occasion.

The "sets" add to the cheese factor. The entire town appears to be 3 streets the size of half blocks. The nudity is pretty decent although I could have done with seeing a few more pairs of boobs. Oh yeah, one of the leads is a dude who looks like Ben Aflecks brother, the way Patrick Swayzes brother does, like they removed a chromosome or something.

So yeah, if you like fun and inventive kills, if you like gore, if you like cheesy story so absurd you can't help but laugh then this movie will suit you just fine.

I guess 5 wrongs make a right.

[korme]

suicane why do you watch so many b movies

[Matthean]

People like that sort of stuff.

[B & B]

Water is wet, sky is blue, Suicane watches B movies. Who gives a fuck?

[JediKooter]

Seven Psychopaths 6/10

Not a great movie, but, a very good cast makes up for a kind of disjointed (though I think this was on purpose) movie. A dark comedy for sure, with some gore thrown in, which in my opinion, if that was cut out, would not take away from the movie. It seems to have been added for affect or an exclamation point in those particular scenes though. So if you don't like blood/gore, this might make you a little queezy. They do try to balance it out with the funny parts and most of the time it works.

Woody Harleson does a good job, but, there's times where he does seem to force it a bit. Christopher Walken does a great job, as he usually does. Not really a fan of Colin Farrel, but, he also does a good job and isn't irritating like he normally is. Sam Rockwell plays the only type of character he seems capable of playing...a smarmy, dickish, liar and does a good job of it in this flick. Also, some very good supporting performances that I think really added to the movie.

All in all, not a great movie. I went in thinking it was something very different, but, overall, was not disappointed. If this kind of movie is not your thing, you will probably hate it, but, I'd recommend it for a matinée.

[ISiddiqui]

Seven Psychopaths sounds like it takes some inspiration from Tarentino, or is that a wrong impression to take into the movie?

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Seven Psychopaths sounds like it takes some inspiration from Tarentino, or is that a wrong impression to take into the movie?

I don't think that's a wrong impression at all. I actually kept expecting to see a cameo of him or see him somewhere in the credits.

[ISiddiqui]

Awesome! Sounds like it may be up my alley then .

[Chief Rum]

Interesting. I was on the fence to go see Seven Psychopaths, and I am not sure your post helped remove me from the fence. I like the off the wall stuff. I have never been a huge fan of gore for gore's sake, though.

On top of that, I love the types of books that Alex Cross comes from (although Patterson's Cross hismelf I haven't really gotten into). That would be an automatic see for me except it is just getting ripped to shreds on RT. So that doesn't look like much of an option either.

I think I have been spoiled because my last three watches were End of Watch, Looper and Argo, all excellent films. It's going to be a very busy weekend, so I will probably hold off on seeing a movie and just wait for Cloud Atlas next week.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Awesome! Sounds like it may be up my alley then .

Right on. I'd hit up a matinee showing of it. Just in case you don't like it, you didn't pay full price, haha!

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Interesting. I was on the fence to go see Seven Psychopaths, and I am not sure your post helped remove me from the fence. I like the off the wall stuff. I have never been a huge fan of gore for gore's sake, though.

That's the thing, it's not really there just to be there, I see why they did it. I just think it wouldn't have changed much if some of it were not there. However, there's actually a couple of instances where it connects things together...if that makes sense? Hard to explain without spoilers.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

On top of that, I love the types of books that Alex Cross comes from (although Patterson's Cross hismelf I haven't really gotten into). That would be an automatic see for me except it is just getting ripped to shreds on RT. So that doesn't look like much of an option either.

9%, damn. And the ones that are "Fresh" don't make the movie sound all that good either. One of the "Fresh" reviews says to go see it because it was so bad it's funny.

[Suicane75]

Originally Posted by korme

suicane why do you watch so many b movies

I love horror movies, especially this time of year.

Originally Posted by B & B

Water is wet, sky is blue, Suicane watches B movies. Who gives a fuck?

Who put cornflakes in your pee?

[Suicane75]

Inbred: 7.2 Out Of 10.0 Stars

Delightfully disgusting and disturbing British tale of four young delinquents and their two caretakers, out on a weekend retreat in the middle of nowhere. But the story doesn't much matter, this movie is all about the twisted behavior of the locals and the top shelf gore.

Once the set up was established I expected a more or less straight ahead slasher movie with some creepiness thrown in, given the state of the local population, (It's called Inbred for a reason), but what I got was a gore fest above and beyond. And it's not just gore, it's fun gore. There is a ton of humor in this one, intentional humor. I was at times vacillating between cringing, wincing, and laughing my ass off, not an easy task for a movie to accomplish.

There isn't any nudity although I found myself strangely attracted to the female lead, Jo Hartley, a middle aged woman with an odd sex appeal. What we do have though is blackface, vegetables used to plug orifices, manure used to fill orifices, old naked men playing piano, horses, and a ton of fucking twisted kills. I wouldn't go as far as to call it pure camp, because it's just too damn gross, but it is funny as all get out, especially the lead local

If you're in the mood for a balls to the wall kill fest, with enough blood and guts to fill a barn, then you can't wrong with this doozy.

[korme]

The guy who made Seven Psychopaths also made In Bruges, which I love. The guys on Filmspotting said it's not quite up to that par though, so I am hesitant if I want to see it in theaters or not.

[samifan24]

Originally Posted by korme

The guy who made Seven Psychopaths also made In Bruges, which I love. The guys on Filmspotting said it's not quite up to that par though, so I am hesitant if I want to see it in theaters or not.

Same. As much as I liked In Bruges I'm going to wait for Seven Psychopaths on Redbox.

[ISiddiqui]

Argo - 9/10: FANTASTIC drama about a hostage rescue in Iran. Great story, great cast, brilliant one-liners. Affleck may not be the greatest actor (though he does a good job here), but he's one Hell of a director (speaking of which, the movie has a great line about directors). Just wonderfully done. Probably see it around Oscar time.

[Suicane75]

Study Hell: 9.0 Out Of 10.0 Stars

Fair warning, this review is filled to the brim with spoilers.

Very low budget Canadian fare about a group of delinquents forced to stay after school in detention with a teacher so crazy that the principal tells him he could be fired any moment, but short of that she's putting him in charge of the entire building and this group of kids. Much of the writing follows the same nonsensical suit. It's also funny seeing people clearly ranging in ages from about 12 to 30 playing students, including one hairy, beer bellied, 30 year old playing the jock.

So yeah, the teacher has some sort of backstory with the janitor regarding Vietnam and a buddy of theirs who killed a bunch of cheerleaders and whose son is one of the kids in detention, I honestly couldn't follow it very well, but it doesn't take long for the teacher to start thinking that the school is the jungle and holy shit it just goes from 0 to 60 in about a minute and makes very little sense.

The detention scenes try and play like The Breakfast Club with a low rent version of Judd Nelsons speech about his dad and a girl pretty much doing an exact Ally Sheedy impersonation.

The fight scenes are remarkable in that I'm not sure they were choreographed much at all as it looks like the teacher is just flat out throwing one of the kids around at one point. On one hand it's funny in how bad it looks, on the other hand I was legit worried watching a dude fall and flail around a pile of desks, once hitting his leg on the corner of a desk and it looked pretty nasty.

LOL. Ok, so a girl and a guy sneak off to the teachers class room to share a drink and maybe do some in and oot, but the crazy teacher finds them and the aforementioned fight scene occurs. Fight scene might be a bit of a stretch as it's just one dude throwing another around. Before crazy teacher finds them though, they open a hidden door in his class room that leads to a closet filled with weapons. The script and the editing get very bad here as they make no attempt convey what is going on. The teacher pulls the guy out of the closet, beats him up and slashes him with a giant knife, then he just lets him walk away. Ok. Now the girl is in the closet, but she's never acknowledged so I don't know if the teacher ever even saw her, she does react to the boy being slashed, even though the door is shut and she can't see him. God I love bad movies. So the kid crawls down a pair of stairs and is found by the rest of the group. He proceeds to tell them that she's locked in the closet, even though we clearly saw that the teacher didn't do that. The next moment we see her walking through the halls, looking lost, even though it was clearly established the she was just a flight of stairs away from everyone else and, ya know, she's in her own school. This is magnificent. She's walking through the hall looking for a kid who was just knifed from side to side by a maniac as if she was lazily taking a Sunday stroll at a flea market. Fabulous.

So once the knifed kid gets found by the rest of the students, the jock, I think he's the jock, I dunno. Anyway, he sets out to find the girl and the crazy teacher and oh yeah, he looks like Chael Sonnen had a kid with Allanis Morrisette and she did mushrooms all through her pregnancy.

Sweet Jesus, the acting in this thing would make Anna Nicole Smith ashamed to call herself an actress.

Ok, so the rest of the kids are sitting on the steps all chill like Doug E. Doug, when the blonde returns. The other girl in the group looks up from reading a book and pronounces "thank god, we thought you were dead". I mean.....I just...I have no words. Oh, and the dude that got knifed? He's just chillaxin. Ok, so they want to plan an escape, but the blonde, who is delicious by the way, she says that the front doors are chained and locked, so the goth girl says that the keys are kept in the office, to which the nerd replies exasperatingly "HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW THAT?!" That's the thing I love about movies like this. They're so badly written that character motivations change from scene to scene, and lines are just handed out rather than roles being developed beyond a cursory outline.

Ok, now it's getting clearer. The teacher clearly thinks he's back in Vietnam and is having major shell shock flashbacks or some shit. The humor comes from the fact that he looks like a Canadian version of Mark Lynn Baker but the acting is akin to Cousin Larry trying to win a role in The Deer Hunter. So on one hand you have a dude overacting to the umpteenth degree and that's juxtaposed by a group of kids, who are supposed to be fearful of their lives, just sort of blase in their attempts to escape. The two girls in particular are remarkable in their ability to look like they're in a different movie altogether.

So they can't unlock anything, or open a window, or use a phone or escape in any one of a hundred different ways, so they decide to make a bomb to blow the doors open. Lucky for them the goth girl carries around powdered chromium in her purse. Now normally I would take this is a moment of parody but I swear to fuck there isn't an ounce of sarcasm in this revelation.

JESUS CHRIST ON A CRACKER THIS BLONDE IS THE GREATEST ACTRESS I'VE EVER SEEN. I'm not sure this girl even knows what kind of movie she's in. She literally waits for her lines, says them while staring vacantly, regardless of what emotion she's supposed to be emoting, and then just moves on. I have no doubt she's in this movie because someone wanted to bang her. Not that I can blame them.

So the nutso teacher lures the principal lady back to the school. The students see her from the chemistry room and the two girls go to find her. They run down stairs, they run up stairs, they run through catacombs, I have no fucking clue how getting down one floor can be so tumultuous. Meanwhile, back in the chem lab, an episode of Degrassi breaks out as the stoner and the geek have a bonding session in the middle of building a bomb to escape a psycho killer. It brought a tear to my eye and a nail to my brain. Of course they get attacked and the nerd is perilously trapped under a desk. Yeah, he gets trapped under a desk. Oh the perils of being trapped under 10 pounds of wood while the bff you just now made who you previously hated before he got stabbed but then got better, gets beaten up by a crazy veteran. Luckily he musters up the strength to reach into his pocket protector and throw a pen at the teacher, knocking him silly. I'm not even exaggerating here or trying to make this sound dumber than it is.

We aren't even half way through yet and this is already a classic.

Ok ok ok ok ok. This is awesome. The 3 remaining kids decide to get a sledgehammer from shop class, to try and smash the locks. Of course in a room filled with potential weapons they ignore them all. They find the janitor hiding here and now we get a full explanation of the backstory. Seems the nerd kids father used to be a janitor at the school and went to prison for killing a bunch of cheerleaders. BUT it wasn't him at all, but rather the crazy teacher. Seems the two of them were in Nam together and were friends but the kids dad knew the teacher was unbalanced so he got a job as a janitor to keep an eye on him and ended up going to jail for the crimes that the teacher committed. When the kids ask the janitor why he didn't tell the cops he replies "who'd believe a janitor?" You cannot argue with that logic.

This is like one of those childrens learning shows where there's an adult teaching a group of kids about something. How do we know what Ducks like to eat? Well let's go down to the pond and find out! How do we know the backdoor isn't chained? Well let's go and find out. Yay! They're more excited to find out something new than they are scared of being MURDERED!

So the nerd and the goth girl find a hiding spot and an after school special about bravery and courage in the face of danger breaks out. They fall madly in love over the course of 45 seconds and then.......well I think we're supposed to think that they fucked because when the blonde girl finds them they're sound asleep, laying on top of each other. But they're fully clothed. It makes zero sense, but in the pantheon of things in this movie that make no sense this barely ranks.

With no way to escape and likely minutes away from being discovered by a psycho killer, the girls luckily remember that there are caves beneath the school. For the love of Dean Cameron, this movie is just levels or retarded piled upon levels of retarded. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the blonde hid from the killer in the school pool, so she'll be running around the rest of the movie in wet, clingy, clothes. That's one on the plus side.

So in order to get to the caves below the school, they of course have to go UP to the rafters in the gym and crawl into the air ducts. I don't want this movie to ever end.

I should also mention that from time to time, psycho teacher will take to the PA and channel Robin Williams from Good Morning Vietnam. If you give the filmmakers credit you may think that these scenes are parody but I'm positive they think it comes across as chilling, which makes it so much more hilarious.

Down now to only two students and one psycho teacher, we're treated to a rather lengthy scene of them walking and him shaving his head. You haven't lived till you've watched a man shave his head......psychotically.

Now I have no idea what's going on. Despite crawling into the rafters and into an air duct and back down into the school and into a secret room and through a tunnel that leads into a cave, the teacher is there waiting for them. Mapquest really could have helped these kids out.

This leads to an amazingly bad fight scene in which for the 3rd time in the film the teacher headbutts his victim and doesn't jostle his glasses even slightly. Despite putting up a valiant effort against the man who framed his dad for murder, the nerd is no match for an insane Vietnam Vet, but this does give the girl enough time to escape. Escape where you might ask? Well through a door, up half a flight of stairs and back into the school. They went through an awful lot of trouble to get.....never mind. It's like shooting dumb fish in a dumb barrel at this point.

Oh fuck me in the ass. At the start of the film, when detention first started, the teacher told the kids to write an essay on why they're in detention, ya know, just like in The Breakfast Club. Well now, instead of continuing to run, the girl just sits down on the floor and pulls out a piece of paper and begins to read it. It's the nerds essay, and we're treated to a knockoff of the end of The Breakfast Club where the principal reads Judd Nelsons essay. Again, it seems like this may be parody, but I swear it's not. Not only do we get a voice over but we're treated to a montage of the tender moments goth girl and nerd boy spent throughout the film, both of them. It's amazing how someone can be so inspired by such great films and yet have zero grasp of what those films were doing. It's fucking grand.

Ahaha. So the girl, inspired by reading nerd boys essay, decides to get on the PA and challenge the teacher to meet her on the roof. Here we get a glimpse of what a Jackie Chan movie would look like if Jackie Chan were a 16 year old girl and his nemesis was a middle aged white man. In this harrowing, edge of your seat fight scene, he has flashbacks of Nam, if Nam were the woods behind Shop N Bag. Realizing what he's done, the teacher decides to kill himself, which gives our heroin time to sit on a grate and cry as we now get to hear her essay, which sounds just like the boys essay. God, I love that whoever wrote this movie thinks he's saying something profound, I fucking love that he thinks this is deep, and I'm NOT being sarcastic. It's the only reason this piece of shit is as great as it is.

I can't even begin to explain the final scene of the movie. We flash forward two years. The girl returns to the school with her boyfriend and standing on the front step they tell jokes and laugh and then break down and cry in as un organic a manner as possible. Again, it's just moving between emotions with no particular reason. It turns out her boyfriend is the brother of nerd boy because why not be as absurdly convoluted as possible. They go home and she strips down and gets in the bath while his phone rings. I really have no idea what is supposed to have happened here. He picks up the phone, then reaches into her coat for the gun she carries, then he walks into the bathroom, hands her the phone and slumps over dead from........something? Never minding that her boyfriend is laying there dead, she takes the phone and starts asking who it is, the voice on the other end of the phone menacingly says "find me", and we roll credits. You could threaten to cut my balls off and I still wouldn't be able to tell you what the fuck I just saw.

Sometimes a movie is good because of how bad it is, but then there are movies like this one, that aren't just good because of how bad they are, but because of how bad they are at trying to be good. This thing wants to be clever, it wants to be scary, it wants to tell a story, it's so engorged with story and ideas that it's overflowing, and it's all stammeringly awful. It's not quite The Room, but I'll be damned if it isn't close.

[Julio Riddols]

I'm watching this movie ASAP.

[ISiddiqui]

The Way - 9/10: A powerful and moving story about a dad who finds out his son has been killed (by a storm) on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain and decides to finish the journey. Martin Sheen is just absolutely brilliant as the father and the companions he meets on the way are well acted and fleshed out as the journey continues. An incredibly powerful story about fathers & sons and friendship.

[revrew]

Alex Cross - 4.5 out of 10

I'm no fan of the previous James Patterson films ("Kiss the Girls" and "Along Came a Spider") - although I recognize Morgan Freeman did a very nice job in them. But ugly, masochist mass murderers and rapists being chased down by cliche police work is just so ... blah.

"Alex Cross" isn't much better, but some of the ugliness is turned down to be a PG-13 film instead of an R, and the writing is just a touch better. This one could have gotten an average score. Tyler Perry also did well in his role as husband and father ... but as a detective? Not so much.

Perry made me care about the character of Cross, but he also prevented me from caring enough about the storyline. Less than average, blah 4.5.

[Suicane75]

My Little Eye: 3.4 Out 10 Stars

Where do I start with this clunker? The premise is pretty solid, 5 strangers put into a house in the middle of nowhere as part of what they think is an internet reality show. The goal is for them all to stay within the house and a small outside perimeter for 6 months. If nobody leaves they all get a million dollars, if just one leaves, they all lose. Sounds solid enough right? The problem is that that's about as dramatic as it ever gets, I mean reading the premise is as dramatic as it ever gets.

From the start the film betrays itself with it's characters, 3 men and 2 women, whom all, save for 1 guy, are about as nondescript as it gets. Secondly, the film immediately takes you out of whatever hype you had going in by presenting it's plot in a very absurd way. None of the contestants knows the name of the site, has any idea about anything going on outside of they were contacted to be on this show and then put in this house. The very first thing we learn about the characters is that they're all dumb as shit, but that's ok, because being dumb as shit is the most personality any of them are given.

The next problem is that the film is really hard to watch. It's colors are dark and drab and a lot of the footage is night vision or low quality cam footage. If the film were in any way suspenseful I imagine this style would help, but it isn't in the slightest. Instead it's 5 people impossible to care about in hard to follow shots that irritate from the word go. The first half of the movie just gets more and more irritating as it progresses.

The second half of the movie has some potential spots of excitement but they fade rather quickly. There's a lot of loud music and annoying effects that had me wanting to punch my tv in annoyance. It's trying to be stylized but it's just aggravating to no end. The story itself as it plays out is nothing impressive, despite all the technical bells and whistles they try to throw on top of it.

Let's see, there's some nudity but the chicks are fairly plain. The acting ranges from fine enough to bad. It's a cast full of people who could have pulled from the line at an open audition for a Soap Opera, all have some degree of attractiveness, but it's daytime tv attractiveness. You know what I mean.

So yeah, a film whose premise and occasional jump scare are enough to keep you from turning it off, but once the credits roll you'll just be mad at yourself. Like when you're lactose intolerant but have a hankering for ice cream, but the only ice cream in the house is a kind you don't like, but you eat it anyway and then you've got diarrhea and you didn't even enjoy it.

[ISiddiqui]

Seven Psychopaths - 8/10: I was right - it did sound like my kind of movie . Definitely not your normal film. It was very self-referencing and lots of meta-jokes (such as a character describing something that Farrell's screenplay should have, then happening in the movie you are watching). The screenplay within a movie, which impacts the movie was very intelligently done. The acting was great and there were some incredibly funny one liners and awkward scenes. Just a whole lot of fun!

[IlliniCub]

Ahhh I really remember liking My little eye back in the day

[korme]

Going to see Seven Psychopaths right meow

[Suicane75]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

I'm watching this movie ASAP.

You wont be disappointed.

[Julio Riddols]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

You wont be disappointed.

My feelings exactly. My fiancee and I are watching the Resident Evil movies in order first, then as soon as I can get my hands on a copy of Study Hell, it's on.

[korme]

Seven Psychopaths was AWESOME out of GREAT

[Suicane75]

How close was it to Purrrrfect?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Chopper -- 6.5/10

I'll let imdb set it up
Chopper tells the intense story of Mark "Chopper" Read, a legendary criminal who wrote his autobiography while serving a jail sentence in prison. His book, "From the Inside", upon which the film is based, was a best-seller.

Never heard of him. Never heard of the movie before tonight either, so I guess that's why.

I think the only recognizable face (in the U.S. anyway) here is the one playing the title role, none other than Eric Bana, some three years before he would play The Hulk. It's an okay tale of a violent & somewhat psychopathic convict who is alternately funny/charming and batshit crazy. The scenes in prison are actually better than the ones after he's released, largely in part because the earlier in the film you are, the more you're just watching the story roll along. By the time he's on the streets for a while, you realize that the tagline for the movie ain't no joke:
The truth, the half-truth, and nothing like the truth

If you're familiar with soldier-turned-author Dick Marcinko, then imagine if he were a Aussie criminal instead of military, his stories were about a tenth as believable and about a twentieth as interesting.

It's not terrible or anything, Bana is very consistent in the character, both the prison version & the outside world version. The supporting cast is pretty bad, although at times I wonder if that's almost intentional, in order to have them seem even more bland compared to the big personality of Chopper.