EDIT TO ADD: It's been bought to my attention that small words like "by", "the", "and" and whatever else didn't appear in this picture for some reason. I apologize for any confusion. Hopefully everyone will figure out the titles still.
(Click on picture to see it bigger on the site.)
With special thanks to wordle.net I have here 30 movie titles all jumbled up. What you gotta do is try to figure them all out. Here are the rules and whatnot:
1. This will go for a week. Whoever has the most answers by next Friday, November 14th is declared the winner.
2. I'm disabling comments so no one posts any answers on here. Send all entries to invasionofthebmovies at gmail dot com.
3. I didn't include any one worded titles like "Snatch" or "Once". There are no sequels. Well, techically. One movie is part of a series but I dunno if that counts has a sequel or not. You'll see when you get it. The longest title in the quiz is 11 words long. I tried not to be TOO obscure but I think I did on a few to make it slightly challenging.
4. As of right now there's no prize for whoever wins. But if everyone needs some kind of motivation, then I guess I'll think of something. But it won't be anything pricey. Money's kinda tight, what with Christmas coming up and stuff.
I'm guessing no opinions=we want more Five For Fridays! So here ya go! Let's rock it like a hurricane, yo!
1. Oh! OH! OH!! OHHHH!! OH GOD YES!!!-Me and my darling fiancee went to the midnight screening of "Zach and Miri Make a Porno", which was just 18 shades of awesome. It felt like it was some sort of secret thing cause there weren't a lot of people there and thankfully no kids. I'm willing to bet there were kids during the regular showings cause people are retarded. Anyway, I never been to a midnight screening of anything so it was a new experience for me. As for the movie, I thought it was awesome. I could've went without one part (literally) at the end. If you haven't seen it, I won't tell you. I'll let you be surprised like I was. I am mildly miffed at the critics though who said this was like any typical romantic comedy. Um, ok? Whatever. Like I said, people are retarded.
2. You Spin Me Right Round Baby-If you notice over there to the right, you'll see in my DVD watched listing I saw a film called "Hell on Wheels". My fiancee suggested it and asked me nicely to add it to my netflix. It was comfortably nestled betweent "C.H.U.D" and "Basket Case". Anyway, we watched it Wednesday night and it's a documentary about how roller derby made a comeback and the first team of girls to bring it back. It was pretty interesting. It started with a team in Austin and the four girls in charge wanted to turn the whole thing into some corporation and the players were employees, but the "employees" weren't happy with the situation so they said "knock it off or we walk", the "presidents" said no and they indeed walked and started their own, which set a path for the current state of derby where every skater is equal and stuff. It's pretty good. If you were curious about derby, you should look for this and check it out.
3. Coming Up Next On Showtime: Forrest Gump: The Series-How come "Crash" got turned into a TV show on Showtime? What is it about? Yes, I have Showtime and I could just watch it but...I don't want to. I think it's more fun trying to figure out what it's about. I'm gonna assume it's one of those anthology shows that tell different stories each week about a group of racist people who run across each other or something. Cause that's more or less what the movie was about. But I liked the movie, even though a lot of people didn't from what I read. And what role does Dennis Hopper play? Is he the Rod Sterling in this situation? Oh what the hell, I'll check out an episode.
4. Wait, It's NOT A Remake of the George C. Scott Horror Movie?-When I read the plot for the film "Changeling" I was confused. Then I heard it was based on a true story and I got even more confused. Let's take a look at this through the Jason scope, shall we?
A single mom finds that her son went missing in Los Angeles. After a month or so the L.A cops are like "We got him" and they deliever her a kid, but it's not her kid. The cops go "Yes it is, make him your son or we'll lock you up in an asylum!" but no, she says it's not her kid so they do indeed lock her up in an asylum. It turns out it really isn't her kid and the L.A cops were like "Um...we can't find him but instead of looking like idiots, let's grab some RANDOM kid and be like 'Hey lady, this is your kid' and hope SHE DOESN'T NOTICE! High five me, Jesus, I just struck oil!"
No offense to everyone involved, especially since this apparently "happened", but that sounds retarded. If I'm wrong about the story in any way, please let me know.
5. In Tribute-In the few weeks that I haven't done The Five, some people died. Including Rudy Ray Moore and Michael Crichton. I totally dug the Jurassic Park films (yes even parts 2 and 3), even though I'm not a big dinosaur nut like I know some people are. Looking at his credits, I didn't know he wrote "Twister" and "Coma" which are other films I've enjoyed. And I never watched "ER" cause medical dramas that don't feature Howie Mandel in a snowglobe don't do anything for me. As for Rudy Ray Moore, I plan on paying a tribute to him later this month in the form of a brand spankin' new Mass Invasion! Me and my dear friends will be checking out "Dolemite", so stay tuned for that.
That'll do it. The new game/contest/whatever thingy will be posted a bit later. I doubt I'll have a prize but if no one participates I'll sweeten the deal with a little somethin-somethin. -Jason
I have to leave for work in about 15 minutes so I wanna make this quick so people who only read blogs during the day can have a say in this.
1. I'm gonna have a neat little game/contest thing coming up soon. I dunno if I'm gonna have prizes for it or not. Fletch at Blog Cabins does fun stuff for no prizes and people respond well to them, so I could give it a shot I suppose. Stay tuned for that.
2. I plan on doing a Five For Friday tomorrow but what I wanna know is this. A-Do you guys like that feature? B-If so, do you think there's anything different I can do? C-If not, why and what should I do to improve on it?
Today is possibly the last beautiful day (as in temps over 75, which is weird for November 6th in Indiana). REM, what do you have to say about that?
Mr. Fletch over at Blog Cabins started another interesting meme thingy and this time I got tagged. Yay! This time around, we have to list a movie we like for every letter in the alphabet. Read his post for all the super long and mildly confusing (to me anyway) rules.
A-Army of Darkness B-BASEketball C-Clerks D-Dead Alive E-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind F-Ferris Bueller's Day Off G-Grandma's Boy H-Hot Fuzz I-Idle Hands J-Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back K-Knocked Up L-Leon: The Professional M-My Blue Heaven N-Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad O-One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest P-Pulp Fiction Q-Q: The Winged Serpent R-Reservior Dogs S-South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut T-The Terminator U-UHF V-Very Bad Things W-Wayne's World X-Xanadu Y-Young Einstien Z-Zombie Lake
I'm suppose to tag five people but Fletch got all the people I read on a regular basis. The only one he didn't get was Final Girl and the odds of her reading my blog, then posting about this meme are slim, so...yeah. But I look forward to reading everyone elses list. -Jason
Here we are, the final night of my Halloween Blog-A-Thon. It's been an interesting trip. Here to take us home is Ross from What I Watched Last Night telling us what he thought of Rob Zombie's Halloween.
My Thoughts: I'll have to respectfully disagree with Ross. I thought it was an OK movie but Jesus, what was with all the backstory? Did Michael Meyers really needed to be explained THAT much that a good hour or so was filled with Michael as a kid, being crazy, and obsessed with masks? Who cares why he likes masks, the mask makes it all that much creepier. But I have said in the past if there was no previous "Halloween" movie and this movie was "new and fresh", it'd be pretty good. But since we know who Michael Meyers is and he's suppose to be this giant boogeyman that can't be stop, Senor Zombie kinda ruined the fun if you get what I'm saying.
The Trailer:
And that'll do it. Thank you for reading all 9 days of posts, it was fun. Who knows what I'll cook up next year. Guess we'll see.
I'm gonna get to the final "Halloween" post in a bit. But I wanna show this off cause I worked all day on it. I made a short Halloween film where I show off my Halloween costume and fight off an evil TV. Check it out!
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. -Jason
Reality shows suck on a whole, but what if someone made a reality show where a bunch of people were stuck in a house, with a murderer, and watch them get killed one by one? That'd be pretty fuckin' cool!! And that's sort of the premise of "Halloween: Resurrection".
It's three years after "H20" and Jamie Lee Curtis' character Laurie Strode is in a mental institution. The backstory is explained by Backstory Nurse. The Backstory Nurse tells us that, as we saw at the end of "H20", Laurie decapitated Michael Meyers. But what really went down was Mike strangled a paramedic, crushed his larynx, then putting his mask and outfit on him, so Laurie decapitated that dude's head instead.
You remember those old serials from the 1930's and '40's where the end of each one ended on a cliffhanger then when they picked up on the same spot in the next episode they showed something completely different happen? This is a unrelated question, I was just wondering.
Anyway, Laurie is just waiting for Michael to come back, and comes back he does, on Halloween Eve (Hey that's tonight!). She leads him up to the roof where she had a complicated rig set up to tie a rope around his ankle and to hang him over the ledge so she could kill him. So she just wandered off to the roof for three years building this thing and no one thought about it? Ok, whatever.
But not wanting to make the same mistake again, Laurie goes to double check, which proves to be fatal because he stabs her. It took him eight movies to do it but he finally killed Laurie Strode, his sister. I can hear everyone say "WHAT???"
The next day, earlier that day, next year, whatever...
Sarah and her friend Jen are picked to be on a "internet reality" show where they have to spend a night in Michael Meyers' house and find out what made him crazy. The name of the show is "Dangertainment" and it's run by Busta Rhymes. Well, not really him, but his character, Freddie. His assistant is Tyra Banks, who for all I know is really Tyra Banks in the movie because she isn't given a name.
Freddie and Tyra pick Sarah, who has this weird inexplicable talent to scream so high pitched that glass breaks; Jen, who is doing this so she can be famous; Donna, a super smart, super sexy redhead chick; Jim, some biker rebel dude; Bill, who I think is the same dude who was in the "American Pie" movies that got to bang Tara Reid; and Rudy, a black dude who's a chef which means he's really, really, REALLY into cooking, about as much as I am into movies.
Sarah has an internet buddy named "Deckard", but his real (and not so cool sounding) name is Miles, a freshman in high school who claims to be a college graduate and Lord only knows what else.
So our rag-tag group of wannabe reality stars trot into the house, armed with cameras by their ears and surrounded by cameras in the house. They all split off, naturally, and try to uncover stuff.
Donna and Jim go into the basement and at first Donna isn't interested in Jim, then not even two seconds later, she's jamming her tongue into his mouth. While getting it on, Jim finds a manhole cover type thing in the ground and finds a key that goes to it. They crawl down and find a dungeon type thing. They proceed to get it on there (woo boobies!!) when the wall breaks opens and a bunch of skeletons fall out. Donna is freaked out until Jim inspects them and realizes they're all fake.
Rudy and Sarah are checking out the kitchen, because Rudy is such a food nut, and they find a baby chair with chains inside a closet. Meanwhile upstairs, Bill and Jen are alone checking stuff out when Jen pulls a prank on Bill by pretending to be hurt. Bill is all pissed off and is about to vow revenge when suddenly Michael bursts through the wall (seriously) and kills him.
While Jim runs upstairs to tell everyone about the fake skeletons, Donna notices another entrance further down in the basement. She checks it out and discovers that this is where Michael Meyers has been hiding out for the past 8 movies and also discovers that his diet consists of rats. She gets freaked out and is about to leave when Michael returns to his home-away-from-home-that's-actually-in-his-home and kills her.
While all of this is going on, Miles/Deckard and his friend Scott go to a Halloween party, where they dress up as Vince and Jules from "Pulp Fiction". This alone would make this the most kick ass movie in the world. But Miles feels bad for not watching Sarah on the internet telecast, so he sneaks off into an office and watches it. Soon, the party has moved into there with everyone watching the telecast. People think the murders are fake. People are idiots.
Jim catches up to Sarah and tells her that the show is rigged when Freddie, dressed as Michael, comes in and scares them. He explains that, yes, everything in the house was set up because there was nothing really there and otherwise it'd be a boring show, so he needed to spice it up by putting fake demented things and him dressing up as Michael to chase them around.
Upstairs, Rudy and Jen are smoking a bong. With cameras still attached to their heads. I never said these were smart people. Anyway, Rudy catches up with the rest and Jen is the last to join them when they spot Michael going towards her. Thinking it's Freddie they say "knock it off!!" but, well, Michael chops her head off. This is real. And it's this that finally convinces the audience at the party that it's real.
Michael goes after Rudy, killing him in the kitchen to make it the biggest ironic scene ever, then he kills Jim. Sarah runs and finds a camera mounted to the wall asking "Deckard" for help. He responds via palm pilot telling her where Michael is. They chase each other around the house for awhile, until Freddie finds Sarah and they manage to wrap a camera cord around Michael's neck and throw him out the window.
But "Deckard" tells them he's still alive so they try to get the hell out of there. But Freddie and Sarah get separated and she ends up in the garage, where Tyra Banks was watching all the monitors. Well, Tyra is found dead. AW! We didn't get to see Tyra Banks die a slow horrible death. That would've been worth the price of admission alone.
Well, anyway, in one of the goofiest moments, Sarah gets hold of a chainsaw and goes after Michael. I don't know, I think anytime anyone in a movie carries a chainsaw for no reason, it's just funny, unless it's Leatherface. But the chainsaw stops and she just throws it at him, which causes gas to spill, then somehow (I forgot, ok) sparks are made and VOOSH!! flames galore. Busta bursts back in, rapping "Put your hands where My eyes can see, BITCH!!" Ok, not really, but that would've been cool. But Freddie is still alive and manages to tie Michael so he's burnt and electrocuted to death.
Later that night, his body shows up at the morgue and...well...can you say "False ending"? How about "Another sequel"?
There were a shitload of laughable moments in this movie. Like when Michael bursts into Laurie's hospital room, he just breaks through the door like it's made out of paper, which it probably was. Then Busta's character is into Kung-Fu movies, so he does Kung-Fu moves on Michael, which just confused the hell out of him. Then there's the whole chainsaw thing. I dunno, I got a few unintentional laughs from this movie, and compared to the other movies in the series, this wasn't that bad. I mean, sure I've seen better, and the first Halloween is the best out of the series, but this movie was tolerable.
The Trailer:
I gotta say a quick word about the trailer. I've noticed that the later it got in the series the more hesitant they were to say it was a Halloween/Michael Meyers movie. They just say things in the beginning like "A brutal serial killer" and "The scariest man ever" or whatever. Then when you're hooked, you hear the familar music and see the familar mask and then you go "aw not another one!" and throw your popcorn at the screen. Then I hate the way they made it look like Laurie is the big savior of the movie, like she's the new Dr. Loomis or whatever but she ends up biting it in the beginning. Oh well, this "TECHICALLY" was the final one in the series. I suppose Rob Zombie was trying to "reboot" the whole thing or something. But as we'll see tomorrow, he failed.
My Thoughts: From 1998 till 2000 I lived in a city called Whiting, Indiana. There's not a lot going on in that town, it only exists to house the huge giant BP Refinery. At some point in 1998, or 99 I think, they opened a little movie theater. It wasn't a multiplex, it was one of those one screen deals, which is cool for nostalgic sakes. Since I also got my first job in 1998 I had my own money to spend. So when H20 came out (guess it was 1998) I saw it opening weekend. Michael Meyers AND Jamie Lee Curtis? On the big screen? Fuck yeah.
That night in 1998 was the first and last time I seen H20. I barely remember it. I remember it took forever for Michael to get to Laurie. I remember thinking it was stupid that "she faked her death". I remember getting annoyed at the kids in the movie, one of whom was that Joseph Gordon Levitt kid, who was riding the pussy train from "3rd Rock From The Sun". I had no idea who Josh Hartnet was back then. And L.L Cool J was in this? Are you serious? I'm guessing this started the trend of having rappers fight Michael (see tomorrow's entry). And it was cutesy to have Jamie Lee's real mom in the movie. Then the ending came and I shouted "Why didn't they think of that 80 movies ago?" I thought for sure this was the end of the series. But...
The Trailer:
Tomorrow it's my turn again. Now how do you suppose they explain Michael coming back? Hmm...? -Jason
Today's review comes from Mass Invader Adam, who's never shy about his opinions of bad horror movies.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers shouldn't suck as much as it does. But it still sucks. But why? Let's find out.
The atmosphere created by the movie is probably the scariest of all the Halloween movies. Lots of dark shots and blue filters create a mood that I wish more of the Halloween movies had. It feels sinister. And the heavy 90's soundtrack isn't too much of a distraction. This movie has a feel to it, and that doesn't happen much in this horror franchise.
But then we get down to the plot, and it is here that Halloween 6 suffers for the same reasons all the Halloween movies suffer. It's impossible to care about the victims and I never cared about the killer.
Michael Myers apparently wants his family dead, but he kills everything in his way. That should be scary, but it's boring. Everyone is a potential victim; everyone is disposable. And that's why the Halloween movies fail. You can never emotionally invest in anybody because Michael Myers is going to kill them without a witty one-liner. And since we're introduced to new family members who apparently dropped out of the sky and landed in Haddonfield in every movie, this gets boring fast. Although the half-assed ancient Druid curse subplot tries to give Michael Myers a motive, it's a little late to save this franchise and not enough to make this movie any good.
Donald Pleasence reprises his role as Dr. Loomis. Fortunately, he had the good sense to die before this movie hit the theaters. The character of Tommy Jarvis also returns, as a Michael Myers-obsessed college student who spends his time listening to conspiracy theory radio. This should be awesome, but it isn't used to its potential. Nothing in this movie is, and it's frustrating because I was re-editing the movie in my head while watching it. My version kicked ass. This one, not so much.
There is a bootleg Producer's cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers floating around out there. I've never seen it, but it supposedly makes this movie suck less. I believe it. There was so much squandered potential with the characters, plot and tone of this movie. If only the studio knew how close they were to making a decent entry into a bland horror franchise.
My Thoughts: The only thing I liked about this movie was the way the father got killed. I don't remember it too well, it had something to do with a light in the basement and he got the fuck electrocuted out of him. And it's weird seeing a young Paul Rudd in this movie, running away from Michael Meyers. Nowadays, if he was in a horror movie he'd be the comic relief.
Sheesh, I get on everyone's ass when it comes to being punctual about their reviews and here I am churning out a review 15 minutes before midnight (EST). Let's get this going!
We start off with part of the ending of the previous installment, with Michael Meyers on the truck, flying off of it, him flying into a grave, and all the tombstones falling on top of him!! But...what's this?!?! There was a hole IN THE GRAVE?!?! And he climbed through the hole?!! Ended up in a river?!?! And finally at some old dude's shack?!?! Where he just laid there for a year?!?!?! What the hell???? I wanted to see Donald Pleasence screamed "NAAL!! NAAL!!!" again!!!!
So apparently it's now a year later and Jamie, who was last seen killing her own mother and trying not to get shot by a screaming Dr. Loomis, is in some hospital and she can't talk.
Oh but get this. The mom didn't get "killed", just slightly wounded, and Jamie says (well writes) that the spirit of Michael is inside her, which is why Jamie is in the hospital. What's up with her voice, I have no clue.
And Donald Pleasence is back, as Dr. Loomis, but he's getting a tad too old for this role so I think he's losing his mind because the whole movie he just hangs around the girl's hospital bed, shaking her, saying "Tell me!! Tell me!!!!" Dude, she's not gonna tell you shit, you tried to shoot her a year ago.
Jamie's step-sister Rachael also makes a return, but Rachael got some new friends, one of them named Tina. Oh, and they got a new dog too, named Max. Rachael and Max are home alone when, surprise! Michael Meyers shows up. He lurks around Rachael's house for about an hour, then he decides to kill her, finally.
With Rachael out of the picture, we focus on Tina, who's friends with Sammy, a blonde chick who dates some dude name Spitz. Seriously. Spitz. Anyway, Tina is dating some jackass dude with a cool car named Michael. Michael and Spitz go to the store where Spitz works at to steal some beer for a party later that night. Michael Meyers thinks Michael has a cool car so he decides to kill him and take it.
Later, Michael (Meyers) picks Tina up and Tina wants to visit Jamie at the hospital. Since Michael wants to kill Jamie for whatever reason, he heads there. But Tina wants cigarettes first so she makes him stop to get some, which he does.
Cigarettes: 3.95 a pack. Condoms: 7.99 Cheap Vodka: 3.99 Getting Michael Meyers to be your chauffer: priceless.
Jamie gets freaky ass visions when Michael gets the urge to kill, so Jamie is able to see whatever Michael sees. The cops show up and save Tina before Michael gets the chance to do anything. By the way, the cops are the comic relief in this movie as noted by the weird goofy whimsical music that plays when they're on screen. I don't get the point of that at all. Anyway, the cops agree to give Tina a ride to some farm where the party is at and there she meets up with Sammy and Spitz.
Sammy, Spitz, and Tina head for the old barn on the farm, where Spitz could've asked for a threesome and gotten it with no problem, but alas, this lad isn't that bright, so Tina leaves Spitz and Sammy in the barn alone to have sex...and to let Michael Meyers kill Spitz with a pitch fork. He kills Sammy with one of those things you see the Grim Reaper always carrying, whatever the hell those things are called.
Jamie is all concerned about Tina and runs away from the hospital with this kid that likes Jamie, named Bill. Oh, and because Jamie is so concerned about Tina suddenly, she got her voice back. I dunno either, folks.
Tina goes back to the barn where Sammy and Spitz are found dead and Michael appears in the car when Jamie shows up. Michael decides he wants to mow down Jamie so he chases her, until Dr. Loomis shows up out of nowhere and snatches her up. Dr. Loomis then tells Michael that to end this, this meaning these horrible sequels, he must go back to his house.
So Loomis and Jamie are at Michael's old house, where he killed his sister in the beginning of the series, waiting. Well, sure enough, Michael shows up and attacks Loomis and then goes after Jamie, chasing her all over the house, through shafts, basements, attics, you name it. It was a lovely tour of the house.
Loomis comes out of nowhere (again), scoops up Jamie, and drops a chain net on Michael and shoots him with tranquilizers until he passes out. The cops show up, put Michael in a cell where "he'll be held until he can go to a maximum security prison". Well...that doesn't last long.
Throughout this whole movie, this dude dressed like Johnny Cash just wanders around town. Well, now he busts into the police station, shoots every cop, and somehow manages to get Michael Meyers. And roll credits!!
Ok, this movie was just alright. The death's were pretty cool, but this family has bad luck with dogs because Michael killed Max as well. And the fact that no one seemed worried about Rachael throughout the movie kinda bothered me. Oh, and there was this cop who was dubbed for some reason, and his death was edited rather oddly, it's kinda hard to describe. But now, who the hell is that dude in black? Why did John Carpenter just give up on this series? And why, oh why, did they not include any nudity? Sheesh, it's a horror film.
The Trailer:
I don't remember him being unmasked. But whatever gets people to watch your movie. -Jason
After taking two months off from doing this feature, I'm back to tackle "Revolver" this month's LAMB Movie of the Month.
"Revolver" is a Guy Ritchie film so going in I thought I'd get a lot of cool characters, violent scenes, and neat plot story arc's. One out of three isn't back. Not that some of the characters were cool, but it was severely lacking. In "Snatch" you have Bullet Tooth and Brad Pitt's gibberish character and a bunch of others. Here, the only character I thought was neat was the balding hitman with glasses.
Jason Statham stars as Jake Green, a gambler who we first see getting out of prison. He's been in for seven years. What his crime was, it was never said. But he gets out. Then we're introduced to Ray Liotta's character Macha, some type of mob/casino owner guy. He hears about Jake and is then put on high alert.
Two years go by and suddenly Jake has a shitload of money and a small crew himself. Jake pays Macha a visit, who talks down to him. While taking the stairs down (Jake is claustrophobic and doesn't like elevators) he blacks out. While visiting a doctor, he finds out he has some kind of rare blood disease and he's gonna die in three days.
He then is paid a visit by Big Pussy and Andre 3000. They know about Jake's disease and promise to keep him alive if he gives them all his money and does what they say. He eventually gives in and he more or less acts like a butler/servant while they go around collecting money from people.
Around here the movie should've soared into normal Guy Ritchie territory but it takes a weird left turn. Macha is suddenly working for some guy named Mr. Gold. Jake, Pussy, and Andre steal Macha's safe, which has cocaine in it. The cocaine belongs to Gold, so Macha needs to replace it, so he makes a deal with some Chinese mob guy. Pussy and Andre hear about it and they steal both Macha's money and the Chinese coke, so now a war starts between them.
And for some strange ass reason, these scenes are suddenly animated. Don't get me wrong it's cool looking but it doesn't really fit in, kinda makes you think Guy Ritchie saw "Kill Bill" one too many times or something.
During all this, we learn Jake is a chess expert and he tells the story of when he was in prison. He chose solitary confinement and the only thing he did was read books about chess and apparently quantum physics. The two guys on both sides of Jake are also into chess and, apparently, quantum physics. They pass notes to each other via the books and Jake learned the other two are gonna break out soon. They do without so much as digging a way out or busting out a door or anything. Kinda like Bruce Willis did in "12 Monkeys".
Then the whole thing devolves into something about "where the enemy?" "The enemy isn't really there, or is he?" "You're the enemy but you're not." In other words it gets really fucking confusing. Jake spends the last 30 minutes of the movie yelling at himself and we're treated to layers and layers of voiceovers.
The cool character, the balding hitman with glasses, pops up now and then, working for Macha, and taking out anyone trying to kill Macha. At the end, he kills most of Macha's men cause they were gonna hurt Jake's neice, who's only a child. We don't really see what happens to him or her.
We're treated to a lovely scene with Ray Liotta in his underwear, while spitting out lines and crying. Jake figures out that Pussy and Andre were the two guys he was in prison with and somehow quantum physics and the ego played into not only their escape, but the entire movie. Jesus, did the "Donnie Darko" dude co-write this movie or something?
It's probably a good thing Guy Ritchie divorced Madonna, cause the entire him he was with her, he made shitty movies. So maybe now he'll get back on track. And yes I am in fact blaming her for this awful movie, even though she wasn't in it. I think her Kaballah whatever seeped into Guy's brain or something.
Oh and why the hell was Jason Statham wearing that awful wig the whole movie? He doesn't need hair! He's Jason FUCKIN' Statham! You don't give him hair! The hell were they thinking???
My Thoughts: The only thing that makes this movie even remotely watchable is the ending. It's hilarious to see Donald Plesance just overact. It's so funny that someone posted it on Youtube. Warning: This clip is a bit spoilery so if you care about that kind of thing don't watch:
I should be Dr. Loomis for Halloween and run about yelling "Nooo!!! Naaaalll!!"
Here's the Trailer:
Tomorrow is my take on Halloween 5 so be sure to check that out. NOO!!!! NOOOO!!! -Jason
Fletch at Blog Cabins gave each of us an interesting challenge. Can we list 50 of our FAVORITE movies without going completely insane? I think I'm up to the challenge. And me being me I'm gonna group in some b/bad movies in there since I do have a bunch of those I like.
Noticed I stressed the word "FAVORITE" not "BEST EVAR!!" or "IF YOU DONT LIKE THESE MOVIES THEN YOU CAN SUCK ON IT LONG AND HARD!" just MY FAVORITES. So if you don't like these movies then you can suck on it long and hard.
Just kidding.
1. Pulp Fiction 2. Clerks 3. Clerks 2 4. Planet Terror 5. Dead Alive 6. The Re-Animator 7. The Odd Couple 8. Die Hard With A Vengence 9. Rear Window 10. Rope 11. The Birds 12. Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade 13. Kill Bill 14. Ferris Bueller's Day Off 15. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure 16. Star Wars 17. The Blues Brothers 18. Wayne's World 19. Wayne's World 2 20. Dawn of the Dead (Original) 21. Santa's Slay (Seriously, I got a new "every Christmas" movie) 22. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 23. Slugs 24. The Big Lebowski 25. Bubba Ho-Tep 26. Evil Dead 2 27. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 28. Fantastic Voyage 29. Galaxy Quest 30. The Jungle Book 31. Noises Off! 32. Snakes on a Plane 33. Waiting... 34. Baseketball 35. The Warriors 36. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 37. Pee Wee's Big Adventure 38. The World According to Garp 39. Ginger Snaps 40. Run Lola Run 41. Fight Club 42. The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy 43. Memento 44. Seven 45. Leon: The Professional 46. The Shining 47. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter 48. The Comedians of Comedy 49. Back to the Future Part 2 50. The Time Machine (1960)
Perhaps one day I'll go ahead and do 51-100. -Jason
Here to tell us her thoughts on "Halloween 2" is Devon, a Mass Invader that's written two reviews for the site. To check those out, click here and here.
Devon's Review of "Halloween 2": Halloween 2 begins with an opening sequence that appears nearly identical to that of the first film, featuring a sloppy Jack-O-Lantern blazing against a black backdrop with orange block-letter credits. As we approach, however, the gourd splits down the middle, revealing a grinning, blue-lit skull nestled amid a cobwebbed mass of pumpkin guts.
This sequence pretty much sums up the entire film -- it tries to totally freak your shit out by constantly one-upping the first movie, brutally and unexpectedly rending apart the conventions that that film established; it fails because it is silly, redundant, and flaunts its petty shock aspirations so thoroughly as to unneccessarily strain the viewer's suspension of disbelief.
Released in 1981, Halloween 2 clearly represents a response not only to the first film in the series, but to the several genre knockoffs which had already begun to appear by that time (perhaps most notably, the first Friday the 13th movie). It's a pretty solid slasher flick and a decent horror sequel -- likely the best in the series -- but it unfortunately can't hold a candle (no pun intended) to Carpenter's groundbreaking original.
My Thoughts on "Halloween 2": I was pretty impressed on how it picked right up after the ending of "Halloween" and we just see the continuation of stuff happening that night. I wasn't too impressed with the paramedic dude that had a crush on Laurie. He sees bloods and starts losing his shit? He even goes into a comatose state afterwards! Jeez, I wouldn't want this guy to show up if I get into a bad car wreck. The killings were pretty cool, especially the hot tub one.
The Trailer:
Tomorrow's my turn when I redo my "Halloween 3: Season of the Witch" review. -Jason
Here we go, kicking off 9 days of "Halloween" flicks. First up is a review by Rachel over at Rachel's Movie's Review. If you haven't checked her blog out, you should. She's a MST3K fan to boot! Anyway, here's her review of the one that started it all.
"Halloween" starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleseance.
My Take On "Halloween": Thinking as a person back in 1978, seeing this for the first time, it'll probably freak me out cause not a lot of movies like this were made at the time. And it's always good to see where a long ass series started from. Kinda too bad it's gonna get stupider the more it goes on, but that's for later. Jamie Lee does a good job as Laurie and The Donald is great. He'll always be Dr. Loomis to me, no offense Malcolm.
The Trailer:
Man, audience's back in 1978 were probably shitting their pants after seeing that in theaters. See you tomorrow! -Jason
Normally I'd probably make this one of the Five but I figured screw it and make it a individual post.
You know those Direct TV ad's where they show a quick clip of some movie, then they managed to get one of the actors to look like they did back in that movie and they prattle on about watching Direct TV? Well, I was kinda "eh" about them until this one:
Now I got all kinds of problems with this one. First, wasn't the filming of "Poltergeist" like really fucked up and supposedly haunted? Then there was that whole curse thing where people were getting into car accidents or dying left and right. And speaking of dying, the little girl in the ad, Heather O'Rourke died at like a young age. Maybe I'm being old and cranky or taking this way too seriously, but does anyone else see anything wrong with them "reinacting" this movie just to sell a stupid satellite dish? Like maybe it's a bit morbid?
Shame on you Craig T. Nelson! What, did your "Coach" money run out? -Jason
If you're familar with the "Halloween" series, especially "the one that doesn't belong", you'll know where that's from.
Starting Thursday October 23rd, I and some other brave souls, some fellow LAMB's, some fellow Mass Invaders, will be tackling each of the "Halloween" movies, including the Rob Zombie remake that came out last year. I originally called this "9 Days of Halloween" but I'm now changing it to "The 9 Days HE Came Home". Cause...you know...it's the tagline from the original film? Remember? Well, when you get it, you'll see how clever it is.
Anyway, good ol' Mrs. Thuro from Rachel's Reel Reviews will be kicking things off on Thursday so come back for that, eh?
Why I'm suddenly Canadian is beyond me. See you on Thursday! -Jason
This edition of The Five is dedicated to my mom, who had a birthday yesterday! Aww...aren't I sweet?
1. Don't Be Religulous-We saw the Bill Maher movie "Religulous" last Saturday. The entire movie was just him questioning different beliefs but he was never mean about it, at least I don't think. He did make fun at different individuals, but it wasn't ever about their beliefs, so that's a plus side. What I liked about the movie was the certain movie clips or TV clips he'd insert to punctuate a point. If you are highly religious then you probably shouldn't see this movie. But if you are a fan of Bill's show "Real Time" then you should enjoy this movie.
2. America, Stop It Already!-Ok...maybe I was a bit harsh last week. Maybe you read my blog and said "Screw you Soto!" and just went and did what you wanted. So now I'm asking nicely. Don't let "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" be the number one movie for the third week in a row. Look! You got options this time! "W" opens! "Max Payne" opens! That Movie With The Black Chicks and Their Big Boobs (Oh and Dakota Fanning's Somehow Involved) open this weekend! Hell even the "Superbad" rip off "Sexdrive" opens this weekend! See one of those!! For the love of GOD DON'T SEE BEVERLY HILLS RAT AGAIN!!!! Seriously, it's #91 on the Bottom 100. That don't make sense! UGH! My head...
3. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!-We are now in Defcon 4. Or 5. Whatever. They made a FOURTH Fast and the Furious movie. And it's called..."Fast & Furious". Need proof?
5. Speaking of Drunks-We are going to see "W." tomorrow. I have my doubt's that it's a real look into the life of George W. Bush, but just some made up account through the eyes of Oliver Stone. So expect cartoons to appear in the background for no reason and a lot of shaky camera movements.
Sorry if the majority of this Five was just me ranting and whining but you get what you pay for. -Jason
Last Friday I said I was gonna create a whole post about the movie "Postal". So here it is.
One thing you should know going in, in case you're not aware, is that it is in fact a Uwe Boll film. Before you get discouraged, hear me out. It's actually not a bad movie. I guess it's not a good one. Honestly, the entire thing is just weird, so weird that you're not thinking if it's good or bad. You're just like "Uh...am I really seeing this?" the entire time. Unlike "House of the Dead" where you go "Ok this sucks ass".
"Postal" is pretty much a character driven film, with a wide array of odd characters. Before getting into what little plot there is, let me tell you a bit about the characters.
First there's our main "hero" (I put hero in quotes cause he does the things he does in the movie just to save his own ass) who doesn't have a name until mid-way through. He gets called "Postal Guy" cause he gets blamed for a big shoot out that happens in the middle of the film and they think he just lost his mind.
Postal Guy is married to a very obese woman, who does nothing but lay in bed and watch TV. Well and have sex with every guy in town, besides Postal Guy. Hey, she's literally the biggest slut in town. HA! Now that I think back on it, I don't think she had a name either.
There's Uncle Dave, played by Dave Foley. He started his own cult/religion and he made up a bible full of weird rules that was written on the spot. He constantly has sex with tons of hot chicks while coming up with these Dave Commandments. He's also literally Postal Guy's uncle.
Uncle Dave has a devout follower named Richard, who takes everything Uncle Dave says literally. He ends up causing big trouble towards the end.
I swear I'm not making this up but the main villain in this movie is Osama Bin Laden. He's hiding out in the back of a convience store in this town.
Finally there's Verne Troyer, who plays himself.
Now that you know the characters, here's the slim and weird plot of "Postal".
All of the above characters live in the town of Paradise, which is ironically a shit hole town. It's mainly full of hicks or terrorists. After discovering that his wife is literally the biggest slut in Paradise, Postal Guy goes to his Uncle Dave for advice. Dave has a plan to make everyone millionares and finally get out of this shit town.
Dave reads on the internet that this new doll named Krotchy is sweeping the nation and they're going for, like, a thousand dollars a doll on Ebay. So Dave finds out that there's gonna be a special shipment of Krotchy dolls (they look like dicks, hence the name) in a part of Paradise called German Town. Postal Guy is in and the plan is set in motion.
What they don't know is that Osama is planning his biggest terrorist strike on America by having some chemical weapon smuggled in. And how are they getting smuggled in? Why through a special shipment of Krotchy dolls of course.
But Dave and his gang of hookers, his nephew, and devout follower get to the dolls first. Osama is pissed about this and start shooting up the place. I should mention that Uwe Boll himself makes an apperance as himself where he more or less makes fun of himself. And Verne Troyer is the spokesman for these dolls.
So during the shootout, we only see kids getting shot and killed. Postal Guy is blamed for the shootout and he's now a wanted man. He gets chased by this racist cop who thinks everyone calls him the N-word (he is black btw). While Postal Guy is on the run, Richard kidnaps Verne Troyer and they all go back to Dave's place.
Postal Guy shows up eventually and Richard has really flipped out and using the Book of Dave had a guide to life, he's decided to end the world once and for all. He kills Dave, then throws Verne Troyer in a room full of horny monkeys where he gets fucked to death. I wish I was making that up.
So now it's up to Postal Guy to stop Richard and Osama from destroying the world and/or the country. From this point on there's nothing but violence and blood and shooting and whatnot. He eventually meets up with a chick named Faith who helps him save the world. But Osama gets the last laugh when he calls his old friend George W. Bush and asks politely if he'll nuke Paradise. W agrees. As the town is getting nuked, Postal Guy and Faith make it out and we see Osama and President Bush skipping in a field holding hands while a mushroom cloud forms behind them.
I told you it was a weird movie. But I like weird and this definately was different. Like I said I dunno if it's good or not, I wasn't thinking about that. I was just trying to process everything I was seeing. Oh yeah, if you think Dave Foley is hot, you see his dong. Full frontal male nudity, kids getting killed, and a shot of Osama and Bush holding hands. I think Uwe Boll was making SOME kind of statement.
I was looking at my site the other day and decided to really crack down and figure out all the reviews that need to be updated. After writing all of them down, I went to see how many of them are available on DVD. To my dismay, I found a bunch weren't on DVD and probably never will.
Not knowing what to do, I decided to leave these reviews the way they are and seperate them into a new feature called "The VHS Dump", which are movies that were only reviewed on VHS and I have no ways of getting the images for.
"But Jason, there are ways to hook up a VCR to your computer to get images" True, but it costs money and computer installation know-how and I don't have neither, so hell with it, VHS Dump it is!
This also gives me a good excuse to review these VHS movies that have that also appear to never show up on DVD. So if you'd like to see what these VHS movies are, take a look at this page. -Jason
This is what I call the catching up edition, since I'll be covering some things that happened, Jesus, almost two months ago already? Ugh. Where does all the time go? Oh, right AT&T stole it from me. Jerks.
Anyway...
1. Number 1 Rat-America, America, America...I'm so dissapointed in you. YOU made "Beverly Hills Chihuauha or However It's Spelled" the NUMBER ONE FUCKING MOVIE?? Are you insane?? Isn't Dark Knight still playing? I mean what the fuck? Ok so maybe there wasn't a WHOLE lot to choose from but still! Anything is better than that. You know what this means now? We're gonna get 10 more movies about talking animals singing about their heritage or some crap. Jeez, just shoot me now.
2. Bill & Jason's Excellent Movie Watching Day-Back in August (That seems so long ago now), as a going away present, my friend Bill hosted at his house a movie watching marathon, where we rented a shitload of movies that we've wanted to see, or wanted to show the other. So that fateful morning we hit two video stores and we rented and watched the following (Let's hope my memory is in tact):
Clerks 2-I actually own this but Bill hasn't seen it before. Of course it's the greatest movie ever (ok maybe that's a stretch but it's damn good) so he loved it.
D-Wars-I really don't remember this coming out in theaters but I think I know why. Jesus this movie is awful. It's about some dragons from old school Japan coming back, one good and one evil, and each dragon has a dragon master dude or something and there's something about a kid and a newspaper reporter and a cop. It totally sucked and I nearly threw it in the shredder but Bill reminded me he paid for the rental so I showed some restraint.
The Mist-Oh my God this movie was good. But...the ending. Oh god...the ending. Should I spoil? Eh I must get it out.
SPOILER FOR THE MIST!! SPOILER FOR THE MIST!! SPOILER FOR THE MIST!! Jesus Christ could that be any more depressing? I mean Tom Jane shoots his own son, then five minutes later here comes the military to the rescue! I'm like Jesus that's horrible! Makes you wonder if he got put on trial or something. God that was horrible. END SPOILER!
Still a good movie.
The Fog-Yeah, we got cutsey. Fog, Mist, haha. Anyway, I liked this movie but Bill didn't for some odd reason. I blame the monitor cause it had this weird darkness to it and it wouldn't get any brighter. And if you seen The Fog, the original in case you were wondering, you know it's kind of a dark movie, lighting wise. So I think he should give it a chance on a normal TV.
Snakes on a Plane-I wanted Bill to watch this classic masterpiece. He...didn't seem thrilled. Hm. I need a new best friend. Wake up bitch, you're my new best friend!
Postal-I don't know what to say about this. I'll save this movie for it's own post.
Mulhulland Drive-Bill never seen it. Bill saw it. Bill will never be the same again.
Feast-Since I seen this already, I decided to get some sleep in. Unfortuately so did Bill, so he missed it. He NEEDS to see this!
The Transporter-Awesome as always.
Inside-This is that French movie about the pregnant lady who's attacked one night by a crazy lady and fucked up shit happens. I recommend it totally.
Lost Boys 2-At this point it was the next day and Bill had to go to work, so we only watched the first hour of it. I don't know what I thought of it, it had it's up's and down's. One down is Corey Feldman's voice. Picture Christan Bale's Batman voice but tone it down half a notch.
So that was that night. I think we watched more but I'll be damned if I can remember them. Plus this number is getting a bit big anyway so let's move on.
3. Bill O'Reilly Made A Movie??-When I saw the ad's for "An American Carol" I thought I was making shit up. I mean it's a spoof type movie with a Michael Moore type guy in it? And Bill O'Reilly makes an apperance? Well, I found out since then that this movie is nothing more than Republican propoganda, which sucks cause they sucked in the director of "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun" who is awesome in my book. By the way, them idiots that make the "Blank Movies" should watch the Naked Gun series and see how a real spoof movie is done, dammit! Here's a quickie. Did you know that "Kingpin", the Woody Harrelson bowling movie, is more or less a parody/spoof of "The Natural"? Think about it.
4. Read After Burning-A couple of weeks ago I saw "Burn After Reading" and, honestly, I was a bit let down. It wasn't as funny as I thought it'd be. I did like Brad Pitt's turn as the stupid guy. But all the criss-crossing of characters made my head spin and it seemed like they made George Clooney crazy for no real reason, like he just had to be crazy for this situation. It was shocking when the one character killed the other character, oh and when the other character killed that other character. And why was the entire ending just told to us through dialouge? Couldn't they have showed us or did paragraphs or something? It was kinda weird. That's two weird endings the Cohen Brothers gave us.
5. Delete From Playlist-And this past weekend I saw "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", and I saw it with a shitload of teenagers, which maybe is what ruined the movie for me. Cause every 5 fuckin minutes I heard a bunch of teenage girls go "AWW" to EVERYTHING! It's like when I saw "Juno" and they went "EWWW" everything! What is it with Michael Cera movies that invoke that? And why can't he stick to "Superbad" type of movies? He was awesome in "Superbad"! Ok I guess I should explain my problem with "Nick and Norah". First off, it wasn't as funny as I thought it'd be. Normally movies that take place during an entire night, they go through funny crazy things. The only crazy thing I can think that happened was Nick meeting a homeless Andy Samburg. The rest was just Nick whining about his ex and his friends whining about his ex and how neat it is that everyone but Nick is gay and how Norah has a nice rack and is obviously the right choice for him but it takes them the ENTIRE movie to figure this out. Then there's the drunk girl. And the gum. Oh god that was awful, I refuse to think about that. Anyway, I guess I'm too damn old for this movie cause I hated it. BAH!! STUPID KIDS!! GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!
That'll do 'er. Sorry it's been forever since I did one of these. Hopefully I'll now get back on track. -Jason
I figured instead of having the sidebar over to the right all cluttered up with all the DVD's I've watched, every 4 months or so I'll take them down and start new. But I'll keep an archived list as a post in case anyone's curious.
DVD'S That I Watched: June-October 2008 (Newest One First): * Student Bodies * Patton Oswalt: No Reason To Complain * Dogma * Mallrats * Baseketball * Masters of the Universe * 12:01 * Idle Hands * Dude, Where's My Car? * Where The Heart Is * Crank * Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows * Tenacious D In The Pick of Destiny * Cellular * Sleepaway Camp * Inside * The Conversation * Super Sweet 16: The Movie * Showgirls * The Onion Movie * Be Kind Rewind * The Warriors * Bratz: The Movie * National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets * The Fast & The Furious * The Big Lebowski * The Jungle Book * High School Musical 2 * Lifeforce * National Treasure * High School Musical * Empire of the Ants
Yay!!! I got teh intarwebz in my brand new (read 3 and a half week old) apartment in Indy!! Can I get a wha-wha!!
So as you probably guessed I got shitloads to catch up on but I don't have a lot of time (I do have a job and a new life, sorta) so what I'll need from you guys is:
Tell me anything that you think I need to know that happened in the movie/internet world from August 31st to September 24th. Just the main stuff. This includes movie news and interesting blog posts I should check out.
In the meantime I'll be scanning the LAMB (Sorry, probably gonna have to miss out on this months LAMB Movie of the Month again, but Eurotrip is a pretty funny movie and it would've gotten a great review from me.) and other reputable online sources.
That's it. So...when is Diaster Movie coming out again? -Jason
So AT&T said they won't be by my place until the 16th. That's an extra week of no internet and no cable. How am I coping with all this?
I'M NOT!!!! I'M GOING FUCKING INSANE!!!! I MURDERED 18 HOBOS ALREADY AND I'M GONNA KILL THIS TALKING DUMPSTER CAUSE IT'S TELLING ME TO KILL SANTA CLAUS AND I CAN'T KILL SANTA CLAUS AHHHH!!!!!!!!
Oh lovely pills.
Sorry. Anyway.
Yes, I am at a local library, using Felicia's library card to catch up on the intarwebs. So far it seems like no one misses me, which isn't that hard to believe honestly.
To update I did finally find a job, at Staples. I'll be making copies and business cards n crap. That should be cool. It's not, but it should be.
Anyway, I'm doing fine, Felicia's doing fine, and I hope you guys are doing fine. The hobo's however, aren't. -Jason
This started as a conversation with Felicia, which made me feel like a weird freak and a bad movie guy, but now I'm listening to the Cinema Diabolica guys mention this and I don't feel weird anymore.
So tell me where do you sit when you see a movie in a theater.
For the record: 1-Felicia said she and her sisters like to sit in the front rows cause (and I quote) "I like to be engulfed by the screen, almost to the point where you literally have to turn you head left/right to see the whole screen. It's fun to watch movies with a lot of action that way." 2-I like to sit anywhere in the center section but near the isle so I can easily run to the bathroom (I tend to have bladder problems. Sorry for the TMI) 3-The Cinema Diabolica guys more or less agree with me, but it sounded like they like the center part but in the back.
I like the center cause you get a clear view of the screen without having to move your head too much and you can take everything in. So anyway...if I left something out in the options post in the comments, please! -Jason
There's something that I've always wondered about so maybe my readers (all four of you) can help me out.
For years now I've noticed on video covers and movie posters, during the little part on the bottom that lists the credits, that one of the actors names would have a box around it.
For example, here's the poster for John Carpenter's "The Fog":
So if you look at the credit part:
You'll see that Janet Leigh's name is boxed in. Now, I figured maybe it was to highlight this particular person was in this movie for some strange reason, but then I noticed it on other movies, and the people in the box were people I never heard of. Sorry, can't provide an example of that, I can't think of any right now and all my movies are in boxes right now.
So my question is: What up, yo? Why the boxing in names? Does it mean something? Did that particular person in the box do something special or something? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? -Jason
This Five for Friday is bought to you by The Guilty Pleasures Blog-A-Thon which ended it's ten day run on Wednesday. It was a huge success thanks to everyone that participated. So if you're one of those people, thank you so so much.
1. Kid Free Cinemas- I read this article earlier this week, which I think was written in England, about how very young children should be banned from movie theaters. I hate to sound all anti-children but I have to agree with this. You don't know how many times I've been to the movie theaters and there were children that shouldn't be there to begin with. Like when I went to see "Prom Night", I swear a whole friggin family came to see that thing. I mean why would you do that? Granted, it's a shitty PG-13 horror movie but still. Kids shouldn't be there in the first place. So maybe some reasonable age limit should be imposed. Like maybe no one under the age of...oh....6? 7? That sounds reasonable.
2. "The Dark Knight" Kicks Ass And Takes Names- How many weeks was "The Dark Knight" number one? 4? And interesting that the one film that took it down to number two was "Tropic Thunder". Now I really wanna see this.
3. "Death Race" Hate- What's with all the hate on the Jason Statham film "Death Race"? I personally think it looks cool. Yeah it's a remake to a cult movie and the plot is probably nothing like it (original was about a cross country race where the participates had to kill as many people on the road as possible) but still. Seems cool to me. But there was tons of hate on "Stepbrothers" and I loved that freakin movie, so I dunno. I suddenly feel alone.
4. Speaking Of The Dark Knight:
And
5. LL Cool J IS...Dolemite?- Another article I stumbled across was from Cracked.com, where the listed 6 movies that ALMOST got made. It's a very interesting read cause if you think movies are in a sad state now, you should thank your lucky stars.
That's it for this week! Any suggestions on what should be on The Five, email me at invasionofthebmovies at gmail dot com . -Jason
I was a kid in the early 80's when He-Man was out and about and me being a typical boy in America I of course was obsessed. I had everything He-Man. The toys, the bedsheets, even curtains. And I had all the toys, including Castle Greyskull! Fuck yeah!!
I remember this being the first movie my dad took me to see in the theaters when I was a kid and I don't remember what I thought of it back then (I probably crapped my pants a few times) but now, I must admit, this movie is really cheesy.
Then again it was made by Golan-Globus, the Michael Bay of the 80's, so what do you expect?
First thing I notice is how similar parts of this movie is to "Star Wars". The start has Skeletor marching down a hallway and a dark ominus song is playing. He's taken over Castle Greyskull and managed to lock up this Sorceress chick, who more or less runs the universe or something. But He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) and his rag tag group including Duncan, the man-at-arms and Teela, Duncan's daughter lead the resistance and fight off Skeletor's army.
They meet Gwildor (Billy Barty), some keymaker that made what he calls a Cosmic Key that can open a doorway to any planet in any dimension. Skeletor stole this Key and used it to take over the Castle (This happened before our story starts so we don't see this happening) but Gwildor has a proto-type, which He-Man wants to use to sneak into the Castle.
But they could just use the backdoor of the Castle instead, which they do. When Skeletor's army attacks He-Man & The Gang, Gwildor opens a door to some random place and they all jump in, "Sliders" style.
I know this pre-dates "Sliders" by probably 7 or 8 years, but still.
Gosh, where could He-Man and his friends possibly go? Mars? Jupiter? The Restaurant At The End of the Universe? Well...
No. They land on Earth. Good ol' Earth. How come every movie version of a cartoon from the 80's has all the action happening on Earth? Like the stupid recent "Transformers" movie (hey speaking of Michael Bay...) the Transformers JUST HAD TO come to Earth. And here. He-Man and the gang HAD TO COME to Earth. I dunno. I'm guessing it's so little kids like me in the 80's would go "OOH! COOL!! He-Man could land in MY neighborhood!"
So on Earth, we meet Julie (Courtney Cox...seriously) who's leaving whatever city we're in to go to New Jersey. Jeez, why Julie? Whereever you're at now seems really nice, why go to Jersey? Gonna join the mob or something?
(No offense to any readers from New Jersey.)
Julie's leaving cause her parents died (remember this) in a horrible plane crash (remember this) about a year ago (remember this). She and her boyfriend Kevin plan on spending one final night together. But then Kevin finds the Key, which somehow flew 100 miles away from where He-Man and his Junkyard Gang landed. Kevin, cause he's a moron, thinks it's a Japanese synthesizer and starts pressing the keys.
All this key pressing sends signals to Skeletor and he sends a group of "his best killers" to get He-Man and this other key. The Best Killers arrive at a high school where Kevin's band is gonna play the prom and chase after Julie. He-Man hears her pleas for help and comes to the rescue. I put "best killers" in quotes cause Julie literally threw random crap at them and they got all terrified of it and practically wet themselves. Jeez, I'd make a more effeciant killer and I'm a movie blogger.
(No offense to my fellow movie bloggers reading this.)
Anyway, the "best killers" trash the school and the cops show up, lead by the dude who played Strickland in the "Back to the Future" series. He's given a name but I think he's more well-known as Strickland so I'll just call him that. Anyway, Strickland finds Kevin and thinks he and Julie trashed the school, so they go to Julie's to wait for her.
Meanwhile Skeletor kills one of his "best killers" cause they all really suck, but gives the other three another chance to redeem themselves.
Eventually, everyone in the cast meets up at a music store where Strickland is confused by He-Man and The Pips. A big gigantic war happens in the music store between He-man and Skeletor's army. This chick that works for Skeletor seriously named EVIL-LYN (I guess Evil-Ann or Evil-Emily was taken?) tricks Julie by pretending to be HER DEAD MOTHER! Julie stupidly falls for this (Yeah her and Kevin were meant for each other) and Julie gives her the key.
Another fight ensues and He-Man chases after some guys on a cool flying platform thingy then Skeletor shows up! On Earth!! The 5 year old inside me is squealing in terror!! Skeletor can show up IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD!! BOO!!! He destroys the key and takes He-Man back to Eternia (their home planet) as his slave, while Duncan and Teela and Gwildor stay on Earth to die.
Gwildor says he can take everyone back to Eternia if they could play the right notes to open the door. Kevin remembers the notes and they set up this thing that looks like the thing E.T used to phone home to open the doorway. I should mention quickly that Skeletor shot Julie's leg with some poison and "only the sorceress can save her" blah blah blah. Oh and Strickland has had enough and is about to throw everyone into prison when the key is activated and everyone lands in Castle Greyskull.
At the Castle, Skeletor managed to soak up some powers of the universe cause something was aligning with something else and well...nah I won't say it. But all looks lost until our musical doorway opening A-Team shows up and starts kicking ass. Soon enough He-Man breaks free and he grabs his sword and...damn I said I wasn't gonna say it anymore. So I won't.
There.
Now the 5-year-old in me is squealling in delight cause now it's the final epic battle between He-Man and Skeletor. Well, come on now. Who do you think wins? Yeah, He-Man. He throws Skeletor down some abyss that's just there and with one transistion, Julie is ok, everyone is decked out in gold (Hey! Like the ending of "Star Wars"!) and for some weird ass fucking reason Strickland is staying behind cause somewhere he found a woman. Ooook.
Gwildor tells Julie that suddenly this key can also send people back in time and so he sends Julie and Kevin back a year before Julie's parents died. She stops them from getting on that plane and...just leaves the house. He runs outside and meets Kevin who also went back in time. They hug and kiss, He-Man says you-know-what one more time and the end.
Ok wait.
(WARNING! TIME TRAVEL GEEKERY AHEAD! TURN BACK NOW OR JUMP AHEAD A PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT YOUR HEAD TO EXPLODE!!)
Ok. Gwildor sent Julie and Kevin back in time a year. A year ago Strickland was there, on Earth, being a cop. So...what? Now there's two Strickland's? One Strickland is on Eternia getting serviced by an Eternian babe while the other one is a prick? Or did the Strickland that stayed behind at Eternia cancel out? UGH! Forget it.
I really hate to love this movie but god damn it I can't help myself. It's He-Man!! HE HAS THE POWER!! (Sorry sorry) But did it need to be so damn cheap lookin' and cheesy? I would've been happy with a cartoon movie version, mainly cause it meant I didn't have to look at Dolph Lundgren's beefy nipples the entire time. And I won't get into the whole gay undertones cause I think it's been talked to death. Oh and I should mention that both the opening and closing credits rip off the "Superman" credits. Even the music sounds similar. Weird.
Oh and I know I complained yesterday about people who nitpick movies to death and how movies don't have to always make sense, but this did go a bit too far. All the time Skeletor and his army is on Earth, they're riding around these suburban streets in big ass loud machines with literally ten thousand army dudes all with guns and lasers and flamethrowers and stuff and not one single person in this city is out and about, noticing this or whatever. It's like everyone in this town is on vacation and the only people left were Julie, Kevin, Strickland, and the guy at the music shop. Or maybe the Langoliers took em.
In other words, if the makers of "12:01" made this, the instant Skeletor showed up, he would've been shot to death by the army, the navy, the coast guard, the national guard, and for good measure have the C.I.A erase everyone's memories. (Pictured: Not A Single Person On This Block)
And with this, "Masters of the Universe" is my tenth and final guilty pleasure on this list. I quite enjoyed this week and will possibly be visiting it again in the future. I wanna take this time to thank every single person that wrote out lists on their blog, sent me their lists through the email, and everyone reading these posts and supporting it.
"12:01" is bascially a bad ripoff of "Groundhog Day". It's kind of interesting that the makers of "12:01" thought the whole "day repeating thing" was a "fresh" idea and decided to do their own damn version. But this version, while I like it, is very annoying.
Jonathan Silverman is Barry, a typical guy who works in personell of some science place. He's constantly getting threatened to be fired and has to deal with stupid pranks done by his friend Howard (Jeremy Piven). Barry is in love with this scienitist chick named Lisa (Helen Slater) but can never find the right thing to say to her. Later that day, he and Howard watch her get gunned down in front of work. After drinking his sorrows away, he goes home and gets electrocuted.
Right at 12:01 AM.
When he wakes up he finds that it's the same day he just had and he goes through the whole thing again, but totally confused. He gets yelled at for the same crap, he falls for the same pranks, and Lisa is alive.
So what's going on? Well the science place Barry works at is working on some accelerator thingy where if misused can cause what this movie calls "A time bounce" which means the days will repeat. Barry figures this out so now he has to convince everyone around him that it's happening to him and that Lisa will get murdered.
When Lisa is murdered again, Barry's arrested cause he kept telling everyone about it. But no matter, at 12:01 he goes back to repeat the day again. This time he sneaks around, trying to stop the time bounce from happening and save Lisa. He uncovers a bunch of crazy shit going on between the lead scientist Dr. Huxley (Martin Landu) and Lisa. Barry is finally able to convice Lisa that he is repeating the day and that she will get shot. He saves her and a cool car chase ensues, cause a day repeating movies NEEDS a car chase. They find saftey at Barry's parents cabin where they proceed to get it on. Before 12:01 hits, he finds out as much as he can about Lisa and suddenly we're back.
Barry keeps on convincing Lisa, even getting killed a couple of times in the process (does any of this sound like maybe they were watching "Groundhog Day" a BIT too much?), and they discover that Dr. Huxley is running the time thingy illegally cause the government wants it shut down.
Finally, Barry and Lisa goes to the science lab and tries to stop Huxley and the machine. Right at 12:01 instead of the time beam going out to the world, it hits Huxley and he blows up, causing the time bounce to stop. Everyone's happy! Yay!!
So here's what annoying about this movie (besides being a blatant rip off). You know how a lot of people like to nitpick stuff that happens in movies, like a character would sneak into an office to get information and get away scott free, so your typical watcher is like "Oh he couldn't do that without getting caught". Well in this movie, Barry gets caught REPEATEDLY!
He sneaks into an office, he's caught. He hacks into a computer and is caught. He breaks into places he's not suppose to be and is caught and fired. And at the end, when Huxley explodes, cops show up cause Barry and Lisa basically broke into the place. So the cops show up and Barry and Lisa is like "Dr. Huxley ran the machine illegally! We had to stop him! He was gonna kill us!!" Instead of the usual "Oh ok. Glad you're ok" and the police move on, our two lead characters, THE HEROES mind you, GET ARRESTED! It's the final shot!! How many movies has the balls to have their final scene with the heroes being put in handcuffs for breaking and entering and blowing up a man? NONE!!!
So pretty much if you're one of those annoying nitpickers (I'm sorta guilty of this but I'm able to let a movie be a movie) this should be your favorite movie ever! And yes, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis (Director of Groundhog Day) did it way better with funnier results, no argument there. But I like this movie. It's not very well known (I don't think) and if I recall correctly, it was made-for-TV. At least that's where I saw it back in 1993, a good few months after "Groundhog Day" hit theaters. Despite all the annoying problems and being a rip off, "12:01" is my ninth guilty pleasure.
