A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
I think the subs must have improved since I last saw this because it made sense!
In 1994, a group of teenagers discovers that the terrifying events which have haunted their town for generations are all connected — and that they may be the next targets.
Erm. No. This needed to lose a good 15 minutes. I actually got bored.
I confess that I might be a victim of my own expectations on this one.
The first remake of the paranoid infiltration classic moves the setting for the invasion, from a small town to the city of San Francisco and starts as Matthew Bennell notices that several of his friends are complaining that their close relatives are in some way different. When questioned later they themselves seem changed, as they deny everything or make lame excuses. As the invaders increase in number they become more open and Bennell, who has by now witnessed an attempted "replacement", realises that he and his friends must escape or suffer the same fate. But who can he trust to help him and who has already been snatched?
You’ve got to love how this builds. It keeps a lot of its shocks back for the final third and it’s way more effective. The visual effects are, frankly, excellent.
Sidenote: Amazon Prime was telling me this was a PG! It surely is not.
A young Peruvian bear travels to London in search of a new home. Finding himself lost and alone at Paddington Station, he meets the kindly Brown family.
Love it.
Watched on Sunday June 27, 2021.
A quirky, dysfunctional family's road trip is upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity's unlikeliest last hope.
This movie has many wonderful moments but it also has plenty that just don’t land.
Three detectives in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner.
This film doesn’t like women much but it’s still a great story.
A recently slain cop joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest in Peace Department and tries to find the man who murdered him. Based on the comic by Peter M. Lenkov.
I didn’t think this was anywhere near as terrible as people made out at the time.
Some obvious comparisons with MIB (which has not aged as well as you think, guys) but it mostly made me think of the terrible, terrible Ghostbusters update.
This is also stuffed with shonky CGI and is not taking itself seriously at all. And, actually, has a very similar plot, now I come to think about it.
However, unlike Ghostbusters, this actually made me laugh. Several times. I feel like Jeff is drawing very strongly on Rooster here, who also drew many chuckles from me “That didn’t pan out.”
RIPD certainly entertained me on a wet afternoon.
I’m really not sure if this is “a bit racist”. Roy certainly mentions “Injuns”, which now seems very dated. But the whole “Chinese grandpa” thing? Surely, you would be unhappy to spend a 100 years looking like ANYONE you deemed to be “less attractive” than your former self? I guess the joke would have worked as well if he had just been an old white guy? I dunno. The Chinese thing certainly makes them look more incongruous as a pair ?♂️
An embattled NYPD detective, is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy. As the night unfolds, lines become blurred on who he is pursuing, and who is in pursuit of him.
Chadwick is pretty good in this. That’s about it.
The Shadow Mountains, 1983. Red and Mandy lead a loving and peaceful existence; but when their pine-scented haven is savagely destroyed, Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire.
It was cheaper for me to buy this movie than it was to rent it, so I now own it. Fortunately, I really loved it. It is a masterclass in creating insanity on screen:
Explain nothing – this film raises so many more questions than it answers. Just so, so many. It doesn’t even bother trying to answer them. They are not there to be answered. And you quickly understand that, in this world, the inexplicable happens and you don’t need to understand the why or how.
Don’t set yourself any rules – basically, dialogue, motivations and context are your enemy. The more information you give, about ANYTHING, the higher the likelihood you’ll have to roll back on that later. So, don’t bother. Is Red a recovering addict? Probably. Does it matter? No. Do we need to be told? No.
Hire Nic Cage – in all honesty, we do flirt with self-parody here. I mean, at this point, it is somewhat inevitable. But this is perfect Cage doing Cage. It’s like the cinematic opposite of Orlando Bloom’s casting in Kingdom of Heaven.
This part contains spoilers.
Here is just one of the things I really loved about this.
In most revenge movies, the anti-hero (revenge is never heroic, right?) has a real attritional battle. This tends to escalate as he (almost always a he) works his way up the “food chain”. This often reaches peak with the “number 2”, the lead henchman, usually the inflicter of motivation, the one with actual blood on his hands. After this confrontation, the anti-hero will reach “the boss” half-dead but usually the boss is a bit of pen-pusher so it doesn’t take much to see him off.
This is nothing like that. He simply starts where he can and despite a few mishaps and some fairly serious injury, he goes through ALL of them “like a fat kid through cake”. And, honestly, not even with a great deal of style. Just a relentless, brutal efficiency.
Bravo ?
Seven years after the Monsterpocalypse, Joel Dawson, along with the rest of humanity, has been living underground ever since giant creatures took control of the land. After reconnecting over radio with his high school girlfriend Aimee, who is now 80 miles away at a coastal colony, Joel begins to fall for her again. As Joel realizes that there’s nothing left for him underground, he decides against all logic to venture out to Aimee, despite all the dangerous monsters that stand in his way.
For me, this is one of those movies that turns “ratings” on it’s head.
I have to give this four stars on the basis that it, in my eyes, it does everything just right. It does exactly what it sets out to do, it’s tight (in terms of economy and timing), it looks good, the dialogue is good. It also sticks steadfastly to it’s own “rules”.
People will draw comparisons with Zombieland but that’s pretty lazy in my opinion. The lead characters are polar opposites in two main ways: aptitude and likeability. I think a lot of people will also see Michael Rooker’s character as some sort of budget Tallahassee and that, also, would be an incredibly superficial comparison. And, this is not a comedy being played for laughs.
This is, comparatively, a solid three star movie. It doesn’t have the budget (for effects and cast) to elevate it above that. It doesn’t have a “worthy” cause or lesson that it wants to bring to your attention. In fact it is pretty devoid of gravitas. It’s not going to enlighten you.
But for what it is compared to what it wants to be, I can’t fault it.
