zzz05 Reviews

Moonfall (2022)

Has the scientific validity of the second feature at a 1950s drive-in Space Opera Fest.

[2/10 · 8 January 2023]

Omigod, won't somebody buy Emmerich a high school basic science textbook? I could understand all the scientific illiteracy if he were cranking out cheap B movies for cable or streaming, but with the kind of bucks being shelled out for his productions, and at least some effort to make them realistic and believable, it's annoying to be constantly jarred by large and small errors, many of which would require nothing more than a change in dialogue to fix. To some extent, these SF blockbusters are aiming for an audience who are familiar with this stuff and have seen and read plenty of SF done where the scientific content isn't the weakest part of the production .

Genesis (II) (2018)

music fail

[4/10 · 20 November 2018]

I think one thing that took the edge off this movie for me was the soundtrack; a continual generic movie music signifying tension that merged into a drone eventually. yeah, I get it, these people are having a tough time and they're depressed. Now back off a bit and let the actors and dialogue have a chance.

Lady Street Fighter (1980 Video)

Oh Hai Linda

[2/10 · 10 November 2018]

This movie is so reminiscent of The Room; but it makes The Room look like a slick Hollywood production. Female hero has unplaceable accent. Pointless senseless romance. Pointless senseless plot. Not only gratuitous nudity, violence, and car chases; in fact, every single scene seems gratuitous.

Jeepers Creepers III (2017)

How bout a spinoff with just the truck?

[5/10 · 5 October 2018]

First, I should say I loved JC1, not so much JC2. I thought 1 brought something real new to the genre, 2 seemed to back off into routine. That said, I thought 3 continued to demystify the critter by just making him another monster to be physically wrestled with, rather than some supernatural manifestation. Too many closeups make him look like a guy in a creature mask and red tshirt. On the other hand, the truck gets the supernatural treatment here, and a pretty good job of it, except for where it gets filmed nice and clear and looks like an old truck with newly applied splotchy paint. But, nonetheless, it comes off spooky and scary over all, while the creature is moved in the opposite direction.

Performance (1970)

The Greeks got it right

[10/10 · 12 September 2018]

The Greek title: Parastasis. "the relationship among causal mechanisms that can compensate for, or mask defects in, each other". Yup, that's about right. On the other hand, the French title: Vanilla. I'm not seeing the connection.

Descent Into Darkness (2002)

Half-descent.

[4/10 · 16 May 2018]

This might be one of the better made-in-Bulgaria futuristic undersea outnumbered-marshal High Noon tributes starring Dean Cain that I have seen.

Defense Play (1987)

Hope everybody had a backup

[2/10 · 26 April 2016]

Apparently there was some sort of disk crash at a cloud-based video file storage service resulting in a several people's files becoming jumbled, including a bunch of documentaries about gliders, helicopters, the lyrical beauty of flight, etc.; one of those high school plays where the characters are all the same age; some sort of B movie involving redneck cowboys, a service station, funny mad scientists, and a 55 Chevy station wagon; trailers from the movies "War Games" and "Short Circuit"; commercials for Rold Gold pretzels and Pepsi-Cola; bad 1980s music videos; a game of Space Invaders; and the source code from some TRS-80 programs.

Pacific Rim (2013)

overcooked

[3/10 · 23 May 2014]

I came into this not expecting anything more than a couple of hours of distraction and I still was disappointed. An old Japanese Godzilla movie would have made as much sense, an actual comic book could have let me see the art design of the Jaegers and the monsters better, their cable TV shows showcase the lead actors' skills better. I didn't expect it to make any scientific or technological sense, but it was like the producers of a bad Adult Swim anime got handed a billion dollars and given too much freedom. And stretching it to over two hours rather than 90 minutes didn't help. I found the Transformers movies more enjoyable, and I'm not at all a Transformers fan.

The Last Exorcism (2010)

pretty good

[8/10 · 31 May 2013]

as part of my catch up on free on demand horror movies before they expire week, i got to this one, and it was so much better than the rest of that bunch; better than most of what passes as major studio output horror movies these days, too. i found the plot surprises at least somewhat surprising, although looking back there wasn't anything new added to the total set of horror plot twists, but all together made a good package. Acting was good, directing good, writing was good; recommended for adults and "intelligent" suspense-horror aficionados, rather than the adolescents who just want to see gore and don't like any sort of plot or serious mood.

Blood Trail (2005 Video)

not half bad

[7/10 · 25 May 2013]

I'm catching up on all the on demand free movies that are due to expire within a week, which includes Blood Trail, so I've got recent experience of a lot of movies in its peer group to compare it to, and I've gotta say it's distinctly better than the pack. Definitely atmospheric, serious without being pompous, cheesy, or tongue in cheek; manages to get maximum value out of what's clearly zero budget for special effects; characters which seem to have some depth to them. Of course, the genre of the film being "American Indian Supernatural", it requires the Wise Old Indian who knows all about the spirit world, and the young bicultural Indian who has one foot in each world so can link the white guys who make up 99% of the movie with the Wise Old Indian. If nobody's done a thesis yet on the subconscious significance of Native American spirit world, with special attention to curses, in Hollywood movies, it certainly seems like a good topic.

Fallout (1999)

Note to aspiring directors

[8 November 2011]

This movie serves as a good example of a general rule, and should be included as part of the curriculum for film-making courses in the future: If you're going to include a suspenseful, edge of the seats, scene wherein the daring pilot hero, flying by the seat of his pants in a last ditch effort to bring his plummeting ship down safely, is breaking all the rules that ground control is ordering him to follow; ending with all the instruments screaming "Failure! Failure! Catastrophe! Duck and Cover!" or whatever, it's better if you don't intercut the sequence with shots of people watching it through a window, and only reveal that it was just a simulation after the end of the scene. I'm just saying.

Cyber Wars (2004)

Domino meets The Matrix, in Blade Runner world

[8/10 · 26 February 2007]

Not bad, not bad at all. I gather this is Australian, at least in part, and it seems of a piece with the generally good quality of Australian films, at least those imported to the US compared with the US domestic product.

As my title suggests, it combines general plot elements of Domino, The Matrix, and the general concept of Blade Runner; it doesn't try to outdo any of them, but instead is a somewhat stripped down, sleek SF action film, more in the spirit of Domino than the somewhat ponderous senses of The Matrix and Blade Runner, which had to set up the cyberpunk world that this movie can now take for granted.

What's nice about it is a general lack of crap or cheesiness; actors are all good, including Joan Chen and William Sanderson, apparently a permanent fixture of the cyberpunk world since Blade Runner; dialogue is good; no cheesy effects, performances, dialogue, etc. I find this compares favorably with something like Freejack, which had the faint whiff of fromage floating about it, as well as Mad Max (the original) which was sort of obviously cartoonish.

A Demon in My View (1991)

Old school Tony Perkins thriller

[6/10 · 26 February 2007]

Poor Tony Perkins, ever since Psycho he's doomed to play these parts. Anyway, this is another in the same vein, pretty well done; as imported into the US it seems so Veddy Veddy English with a slightly jarring Teutonic touch popping up from time to time.

I found parts of it hard to keep track of, but maybe that's me. I actually watched it a second time and was able to keep track of it all then.

Kind of a Hitchcockian sensibility to the denouement; justice gets done, sort of, but not in a straightforward manner by any means.

Appealing as the female lead is, he part is pretty minimal considering her position in the credits.

Cold Dog Soup (1990)

If you liked After Hours....

[8/10 · 15 September 2006]

Very much reminiscent of After Hours, but not quite with the background bleakness (which is more apparent if you re-watch After Hours more closely and are less distracted by the zany hijinks).

Similar idea, though; a young male's quest for that which young males quest for leads him to a mystical journey through the City At Night, where Unusual Characters and Weird Scenes teach him something about the reality that lurks behind and under his daily surface routine. Good acting and quality cast put this into the quintessential indy film mold, unable to be pigeonholed into A-movie, B-movie, etc. status but instead going off in it's own direction. As they say, if you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you will like.

Undead (2003)

not bad

[7/10 · 15 May 2006]

Got this in a batch of cheapo DVD closeouts with stuff like "Scarecrow", but this was a pleasant surprise. It's hardly a great film, but it has a certain intensity which is often lacking in the cheapo productions. And a twist ending which is better than anything Shayalaman came up with it. Even grade B Australian movies seem to be pretty good, maybe they don't export the total junk here? Starts off as if it were going to be a total ripoff of Night of the Living Dead, but in a while takes off on its own independent direction.

So, an Australian Night of the Living Dead as interpreted by Shayalaman.

The Tesseract (2003)

hard but rewarding

[8/10 · 27 February 2006]

yeah, I guess this is not a movie for those who just need to chill out. In fact, this meets the mccluhan definition of cool media, i.e. one that requires you to work to interpret it. sort of like life.

so, take a combination of rashomon, memento, and your favorite film noir set in southeast asia and there you have it. confusing at first, but you begin to follow it more as you accumulate information.

there's a slight "twist ending" which isn't really necessary; besides, I saw it coming a mile away.

btw: (possible spoiler):

one of the possible signs of a good movie: you can't count on all the protagonists making it out alive.

The Anarchist Cookbook (2002)

Good flick

[24 October 2005]

I agree, this was a deeper film than, say, Fight Club, but not as "fun". It also was not particularly favorable to anarchists or nihilists or hippies or leftites or dropouts or republicans or leather/sadists.... I don't really agree with the characters self-assessments as anarchists and nihilists, but i guess they can call themselves what they want to. It does display the primary problem facing anybody wanting to change the world today; how do you change it without becoming part of it? How do you fight violence without becoming violent? Can you change the system from within? If you do change it, will you then be the system?

The Big Empty (2003)

An unexpected pleasure

[8/10 · 12 June 2005]

I was just switching around because I was too tired to get up and go to bed and hit this. I would never have investigated, from the blurbs in the TV guides, but I immediately got hooked in. (It had barely started) and I found I could not stop watching until it was over. Great combo of subtle humor, mystery, symbolism, whatever. Great cast, even the bit players. I didn't recognize Darryl Hannah. Lots of unexplained symbolism (see the forums) to discuss, so it would probably be a good date movie. I never saw any reference to this movie before seeing it on TV, did it get a theatrical opening, or was it straight to video? Anyway, it's recommended.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Video game: Plan 66 from Outer Space

[8/10 · 24 May 2005]

I guess I have to agree with everybody; lots of great visuals, no heart or soul. Also... no fun. If you like war movies, you might enjoy watching this, though. I get a kick out of the spacecraft that look and sound like idealized WWII fighters, but that's just me. Which reminds me, when will they make up their mind whether there is air in outer space or not? If you can hear the battle going on outside the ship, you don't have to worry about being sucked out the broken window. Of course, when the window did get broken, the getting sucked out part suddenly stopped like ten seconds later and everything was fine again. ?? I had to laugh when Padme tells Anakin he's been under a lot of stress lately. I was waiting for her to offer him a Valium. And most unfortunately, central to the movie and the entire Star Wars saga, Anakin's turn to the dark side; sheesh. In fairness, that's a real hard transition to make; it's not easy to have a likable character show his transition to a villain, but still seem like the same character. The combination of Hayden, the dialog, and the script didn't come near to doing it. Not enough buildup, not enough foreshadowing and inner torment, not enough external motivation. It wasn't a great tragedy, just a plot gimmick, and part of a whole tissue of plot holes that seemed to be tacked on to make the story mesh with Episode IV. Gotta kill off Padme? OK, let's just have her "lose the will to live". I expect Tom DeLay and Bush to pass a Congressional bill to save her life. Here are in the future, and the poor kid doesn't even get any resuscitation. Not even a doctor to thump her on the chest and scream "Don't you die on me!" like every guest actor on a TV hospital show gets. But Anakin threw everything over because he wanted to save her! Well, maybe he changed his mind, who knows. We'll have him yell 'Nooooooooooooooooooooo' to show he's upset, that oughta do it. This movie would have been a real hot item back when people were expanding their consciousnesses and reducing their logical skills before heading out to the movies. I did kind of like General Grievous, though, and the scenes with him were... fun! Kind of like Star wars used to be. I'll give the movie another point just for sentimental reasons.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

one of the best spoofs of 50s B&W junk scifi

[8/10 · 22 March 2005]

Great recreation of the old B&W junk 'scifi' epics; tosses just about everything in: good scientist with domestic goddess wife, bad scientist who wants to rule the world, aliens, mysterious living dead skeleton, mind control, mutant beast, animal evolved to human status who maintains her animal charms. The only thing missing is love-crazed teenagers and their hot rod jalopies. Pretty deadpan as far as these things go; still a bit of self-conscious camp, nudge nudge wink wink. Maybe that's necessary for this kind of thing, I don't know. Doesn't get in the way too much. Like a lot of these movies, it's probably better on TV than on the big screen, especially if you have to pay $10 to see it.

Prisoner of Love (1999)

No-one Knows What It's Like to be the Bad Man....

[5/10 · 27 December 2004]

Strange little flick... An attempt at the good bad guy genre, I guess. Like Goodfellas, or Mean Streets, or Fingers, or The Sopranos, or all the urban gansta flicks out these days...

Naomi Campbell was surprisingly good, I thought. Eric Thal seemed to be good, but for me his performance was terribly undercut by his having an uncanny resemblance to Steve Butabi in A Night at the Roxbury, complete with hairstyle and numerous facial expressions. A cinematic genius could probably cut both flicks together to make something comically horrifying. Otherwise, I didn't find any of the other bad guys too compelling, they were just vaguely psychopathic and repellent.

If you like this genre, highly recommend you dig up a copy of 'Fingers', the 1978 film by James Toback with Harvey Keitel. That one's a knockout.

Zabriskie Point (1970)

Good film, but fixed in its era

[16 November 2004]

Antonioni's comment on the US youth 'revolution'... it's accuracy is about what you might expect from a middle-aged Italian director of some fame, describing the US hippie scene about which he knows nothing. But as a film, it's great; particularly in the 'pure film' aspects, such as the visuals, the cinematography, etc.

Famous scenes such as the desert love scene and the house blowing up remain as essential pieces of film-making as they always were. A lot of tangential weirdness involving the filming and the cast, which I will leave it to the readers to ferret out for themselves.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

better than the critics gave it credit for

[8/10 · 20 August 2004]

Of course, I saw this on TV on cable, and a lot of movies are more palatable on TV for free than on the big screen for $9+. But that's mostly true for half-baked comedies, not 'action movies'. Anyway, this wasn't half bad; acting was good, characters were well defined, I particularly enjoyed Capt. Nemo and his high-tech very impressive gadgetry. Even on TV, the action was gripping and crisp, none of the murkiness that often infests similar epics (in an attempt at 'atmosphere', I presume) making video viewing a chore. Extras die like flies, something to consider if you're going to make this 'family night at the movies' and you're not training your kids to be sociopaths.

Rollerball (2002)

another 'why' remake

[4/10 · 10 August 2004]

Why? The original had at least cult classic status. This doesn't improve on the plot or the cast. Caan had at least the right aura of subdued possible menace to handle the role, this guy Klein? izzathisname? has the same contact sport star quality as Woody Allen. Rebecca Romijn does OK in her role, don't know if it's talent or just they it's cut to fit her. Wouldn't it be interesting to have refabricated the movie around her character? Oh well. The murky supranational conglomerate politicoeconomic subtext seems even murkier in this version than the original, to the point of boredom. Or maybe it's just not saying anything more than the original said.

Cabin Fever (2002)

Yikes

[6/10 · 29 July 2004]

In the tradition of the 'Eeeyuck' horror movies here comes Cabin Fever. Got a little of the cheesy special effects flavor of those fine productions of the early 60s.

Casting of the townsfolk is quirky, to say the least. And that extra section towards the end with the storekeeper guy and the 'African-Americans', to use the politically correct term, was funny, not the least because it was unexpected. Like most such flicks, you could see the 'surprise ending' coming a mile away.

Perhaps it's an allegory about falling out of love and breaking up of relationships.