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Reviews
Rûmumeito (2013)
The Less Scary but Better Side of Japanese Horror
Japanese horror is a category of its own. It ranges from super-ridiculous B-movies (or is it C?) to cult classics. This one's neither, but it's certainly above average. It doesn't go into any extremes (like many Japanese horrors do) but instead focuses on characters and on making sense.
The plot isn't very original, so it won't blow you away. Compared to most Japanese horrors, though, the story is coherent and well-paced, and acting is above average.
The premise is simple. Harumi and Reiko start living together. After a while, Reiko starts having episodes of acting strange and referring to herself as Mari, which freaks Harumi out. Harumi's trying to figure out what's going on. There isn't much more I can say about the plot without spoilers.
The movie overall isn't very scary. It's not something that will keep you on the edge of your chair. The horror element is certainly there, but most of the movie is more on the drama side. The pacing is slowish, but it didn't feel boring.
More than half of the movie seems pretty straightforward and predictable. The plot twists come later. They're nothing too unusual either, but at least they make sense, and by the end of the movie, everything is explained well-enough to make for a decent story.
All in all, the movie isn't mind-blowing, but it's well done.
Warrioress (2013)
Cute Girls Fighting... Don't Mind the Details
You have to go into this with low expectations. It's not a great movie by any stretch of imagination. It's a low-budget B movie with an unoriginal story and pretentious dialogue. The acting looks bad mostly due to the fact that it's hard to pull off this kind of dialogue without looking silly.
While fighting in most B movies is usually ridiculous, it actually looks real and functional here. Sometimes you can see the actors are too obviously avoiding hurting one another, but for the most part, it looks good. The little warrioress Cecily Fay (143 cm) certainly knows how to move around and fight. And that's what this is all about. The whole movie is just an excuse to see Cecily fight, and fortunately there's quite a lot of that in the movie.
I won't get into the story, because there's really nothing new there. A warrioress, a quest, an ancient prophecy, blah, blah... It's all a bit silly and predictable.
If you want to watch a good movie, skip this one. But if you like fantasy, medieval-ish setting, and fighting with swords, and if you know what you can expect, it's not too bad.
The Brittany Murphy Story (2014)
If you like Brittany Murphy, please don't watch this
What a disgrace. This movie might be all right if it had no connection to any real people (though it would still be a poor one), but as a biography of Brittany Murphy it's almost unwatchable. Everything is bad.
What's with the choice of actress? She doesn't look anything like Brittany, she doesn't act like her, she has no charisma (which Brittany had plenty of)... What's going on? Some other characters in the movie look and act more like Brittany than Amanda Fuller does. Chloë Crampton who plays her friend would have been a better choice. Watching that round face, I had to constantly remind myself who it's supposed to represent because there was just no resemblance.
I don't really know anything about Brittany's real life, but I really doubt she was this lame when in the movies she was so cool. It just doesn't add up. I feel like Amanda Fuller has never even seen any of Brittany's movies.
Acting is overall pretty bad. A biography of a famous person should not be a B movie with poor actors.
The movie completely fails to build up atmosphere for emotional scenes, so they just end up looking artificial and ridiculous. Crappy, boring music doesn't help either. Everything feels fake. Cheap melodrama.
A girl with a really bad wig representing Alicia Silverstone wasn't even funny.
Brittany's biography deserves a decent script and cast. This is just a bad joke.
Baghdad ER (2006)
Mostly a Disappointment
I decided to watch this movie thinking it would be a more objective view of what went on in Iraq. Unfortunately, this movie only focuses on American soldiers and their injuries. You will see nothing about injured Iraquis.
This movie shows what it's like for American soldiers to be in a war, to get injured, and what they have to deal with. The setting of the whole movie is one specific hospital. We may speculate about what the message of the movie is. With remarks about Iraqui "assholes with IEDs" causing harm to brave American soldiers, the message I see here is mostly, "Look how our brave soldiers suffer in this war."
Well, excuse me if it doesn't bring me to tears. I've seen at least a hundred war-related documentaries, and I know the civilian populations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, and other places suffer a lot more than American soldiers. And let's make something clear: This war was an act of aggression by the US. The US invaded a sovereign country based on a completely fabricated premise (nonexistent WMDs) and in a course of several years completely destroyed the whole country, killing about a million people, mostly civilians, and ruining the lives of many more.
The loss of American lives is certainly a tragedy, but the movie fails to address the fact that this tragedy is not caused so much by Iraqui fighters, but rather bad policies of the US government. It also fails to mention that the cost to the Iraqui population is incomparably higher, and they were only defending their country.
It's all right if a documentary decides to focus on one specific issue. I have no problem with that. Often that's a necessity. But the message that I see in this movie is taken out of context and highly distorted. It paints aggressors as victims, and I believe this impression could be easily accepted by people who don't know better.
Some say that this movie shows what you never see on the screen. I find that sad because that's a sign of great ignorance. There's nothing in this movie that I haven't seen over and over before. All of this happens all the time in many places of the world, and more often than not, it's caused by the US. That's a sad but well documented fact.
Now, I'm not saying the movie is bad or even that it's lying. It's worth a watch if you don't know much about what war looks like. But it has to be understood that it shows a very specific and limited view of the war, and if people want to understand anything, this movie alone shows just a small piece of the puzzle, which on its own can be quite misleading. It simply lacks context. As it is, it brings nothing new to the table for people who are well informed. (To be honest, I found it mostly boring. Seen it all before countless times.) There are certainly much better war documentaries out there.
Ninja Apocalypse (2014)
American Antininjapocalypse
This movie is supposed to be about ninjas. Sadly, these guys don't act like ninjas. They act like typical Americans.
Arrogance, macho attitude, constant bickering amongst themselves instead of fighting the enemy, no sense of honour and discipline, ridiculousness and stupidity... That's what you get. It's hard to enjoy a movie where all characters are like that. Add poor acting and some cliché melodramatic scenes that don't make much sense, and you've got the whole picture.
The plot is obviously completely irrelevant in a movie called "Ninja Apocalypse", so I won't get into it.
As a side note, the group of our "heroes" consists of 3 white males, one woman, and one black guy. I'll let you guess which two die first.
If all you care about is a bunch of guys fighting, go for it. The fighting scenes weren't too bad. But that's really the only thing this movie has going for it.
Scavengers (2013)
Not as Bad as Most Say
This is a fairly low-budget sci-fi movie with nothing original to show, and it's not trying to be funny (which could potentially make it more entertaining), so there's only so much you can expect. 7/10 would be the maximum a movie of this kind could get.
With that in mind, it's actually not too bad in general. There's just one problem.
If you take all the characteristics of badly written villains from the 80s and put them together, you get Captain Jekel. His lines are retarded and ridiculous, and so is his behaviour. That, combined with crappy acting, makes this character a disaster and would be bad even for a toilet cleaner, never mind somebody who's supposed to be a captain of a space ship. Every second of the movie that this character is on screen is extremely annoying. If a person like that was really a captain, his ship would never even take off.
That said, the rest of the movie is pretty decent. Acting for the other ship's crew is fine. Jekyl's crew's acting is mediocre, but not terrible. The CGI isn't great (looks more like from a game than a movie), but low-budget is low-budget. I'm not one of the people who watch movies for special effects, so I don't mind this at all, but if you're one of those, you'll probably complain. The plot's not original or anything, but I've seen worse.
It's not a great movie, but it's not terrible either. Just try to get distracted with something else whenever you see Captain Jekel.
The Hidden Hand: Alien Contact and the Government Cover-Up (2013)
Very Decent Documentary
This movie is a decent summary of various aspects of alien contact, featuring well-known researchers like Rich Dolan or Linda Moulton Howe, military personnel like Bob Dean or Clifford Stone, Edgar Mitchell (6th man on the Moon), and many others, most of which people interested in this stuff will be familiar with. I've researched these topics for over 20 years, and I can say there's nothing wrong with the information in this movie, and nobody in it is "crazy".
The people writing all those negative reviews are morons so ignorant of the reality they live in that it's really mind-boggling in 2014. I'm actually surprised that there are still so many completely clueless people around. The other option is that they're government shills and are part of the cover-up, which would be nothing strange. After all, 1/10 ratings are usually a sign of a personal agenda rather than an objective assessment of the movie's quality.
The one obvious problem is that the movie is only 80 minutes long and tries to give an overview of a wide range of things, so if you know virtually nothing about aliens (if that's even possible), this would be a lot of information you have no context for, and it won't make much sense to you. Or rather, it doesn't have enough space to provide evidence for everything discussed. If you want an introduction into the topic, look somewhere else. This is more suitable for people who are at least somewhat informed.
The description of the movie already tells you what you'll be hearing about, so I just want to say that the information is not far-fetched in any way and is based on decades of research. For each of the topics mentioned, you can find endless amounts of information on the Internet. There's plenty of research to back up everything that's said here. If you're seriously looking for relevant information, this movie can give you an idea what's out there but doesn't have time to go into much detail on anything specific. It's only one piece of a puzzle. There's only so much you can fit into 80 minutes, but I think this movie delivers what it's supposed to.
Nurse 3-D (2013)
Wow. Impressive. In the worst possible sense.
I have learned that there's one step beyond cliché that's even worse. It's something like cliché with maximum lack of taste, mixed with fantasies of a disturbed teenage boy.
I have learned that I can survive 84 minutes of zero originality, terrible characters, and horrendous acting.
I have learned that a movie can be so bad that you don't really care about the nudity anymore because even that can't save it.
I have learned that a boring blonde bimbo can actually be the best part of a movie. (Not saying 'good', mind you.)
I have learned that the worst actress on the set by far can get the lead role. (I think that was the most unbearable part.)
I have learned that there are other movies than Harry Potter that can be rated 1/10.
This movie taught me so much. Highly recommended if you're a masochist.
Ground Zero (2010)
A Well-Executed Dark Comedy
First of all, this movie is currently tagged as "horror", but it's primarily a comedy. In fact, I wouldn't call it a horror at all. I'd call it a dark comedy, if anything. Just because it has a corpse coming back to life doesn't mean it's a horror movie.
Secondly, I've seen a lot of low-budget movies, ranging from terrible to brilliant. The bad ones suffer from bad acting, uninteresting or nonexistent plot, terrible dialogue, bad camera work, and boring, unrelatable, unlikable, and stupid characters that make you wish they all die a horrible death really soon (see 'Safety in Numbers' [2006]).
Ground Zero is nothing like that. The plot is quite simple. As the description says, "A small group of 'cleaners' are hired to clean up five dead bodies in an old warehouse, only to find out that one of the bodies isn't quite dead." That's about all you need to know without spoilers. The plot is coherent enough and doesn't suffer any problems.
All four main characters are acted out pretty well. It may not be award-winning performances, but at no point did I feel like the acting was bad. That is, by the main characters. The weakest point of the movie is the first 6 minutes, before the main characters appear. This part may create a false impression that the movie is going to be bad. Once Jairus and Greer appear, the movie picks up quickly.
The characters are well-defined, relatable, and likable. Not like in those movies where you can't help but think that all these stupid and boring people should just drop dead. Here you get a fairly clear idea about what each of them is like, and they feel real enough.
What makes this movie good is the dialogue. Again, starting after the first 6 minutes. For a low-budget movie, this is really well written. The dialogue goes far beyond what the storyline requires. In many other movies, the dialogue presents only the bare necessity to make the plot work at all, but everything is dull and uninteresting. Here, the plot is the backbone that holds the movie together. The dialogue is the flesh. It's what makes it interesting and sets it apart from other movies with reanimated corpses. The dialogue not only creates the characters' background and moves the plot along, but also makes each scene interesting on its own. You can watch 10 minutes somewhere in the middle of the movie and enjoy it without knowing the plot, because the dialogue is interesting and often funny.
The plot in the second half gets actually more interesting than I expected, though I admit I didn't expect much. Still, the way it all plays out at the end is pretty cool, makes sense, and wraps up the story well.
As long as you know what you can and can not expect from very-low-budget, the-dead-coming-back-to-life kind of movies, you shouldn't be disappointed with this one.
Noreuweui sup (2009)
Quality Entertainment All the Way
Three small groups of people find themselves in the same forest, for different purposes. First they each mind their own business, unaware of the others, but later on some individuals wander off for various reasons and start meeting people from the other groups, which leads to a series of complicated situations that they have to solve somehow.
Very simply put, this movie is hilarious from the beginning to the end. The way the story unfolds is great and leads to a lot of almost Pulp-Fiction-like situations, accompanied by well written dialogue that keeps you entertained the whole time. As a comedy this is a huge success. There isn't really much of the 'horror' element, except that there's blood and dead bodies, but you certainly won't be scared during this movie.
The center of the action is around two guys who need to bury a body. Neither of them seems to enjoy digging a hole in the ground, much less digging more than one. And they certainly don't need other people to pass by and see what they're doing there. But it wouldn't be fun if things went the way they want them to. It's just one of those days at the end of which you sit down exhausted and ask yourself "What the hell was all of this about?" That is if you make it to that point alive.
Excellent and very entertaining comedy.
Famine (2011)
Not what I expected but the surprise was overwhelmingly positive
IMDb has misled me once again, presenting this movie as a "Horror." Clearly it's a comedy, just with a horror-ish setting. It's more bloody than scary, but in a non-offensive way. If people are approaching it as horror, I'm not surprised about the bad rating. As a horror it can't possibly work. Also the first 10 minutes or so I thought it had some really bad acting, before I realized it was all intentional. The more I watched, the more I noticed the acting was actually pretty good and showed some skill. It is very exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness, but it's done really well and makes the movie quite hilarious.
Special credit must go to Christine Wallace. Just seeing all the faces she makes the whole time is a good enough reason to watch this movie. I actually entertained myself going through the scenes frame by frame, just to see that in detail. Her mimicry changes so fast that I wished at times the movie had a higher frame rate, because the camera was barely able to capture all the nuances of her facial expressions. She can go from looking bored, to widely smiling, to eyes popping out of her head, to frowning, to looking ridiculously dumb, to screaming furiously, plus a few other things, all in about 2 seconds. She seems to be enjoying acting tremendously and I hope she does a lot more of it in the near future.
Probably the most obviously overdone character is Cathy (Beth Cantor), who was the first to give the initial impression of bad acting. Once I realized that it was simply the intention, I couldn't help but laugh. Nothing about this movie can be taken very seriously and you certainly won't be scared. It's definitely entertaining and amusing though.
I've seen plenty of B-movies, especially in the horror category. Many of them have terrible acting, extremely poor camera work and barely existent directing. Not the case here. I think the acting was really good, within the framework of what the movie was going for. All that ridiculous exaggeration was intended and worked perfectly well for the purpose of a comedy movie. The camera work was, in my opinion, surprisingly good, which rarely ever happens in B-movies. It suffers from neither boring static shots, nor terribly shaking Blair Witch type nonsense. I think some scenes were actually really well shot. By the end of the movie I had to acknowledge that this was actually pretty well directed too, despite the initial impression. No dull moments or endless crawling through corridors while music is trying to build the atmosphere because the acting can't, like in many such movies. This is well paced, which might be why it ended up pretty short. I could say this movie is 20 minutes shorter than other movies because it doesn't have 20 minutes of pointless material.
The dialogue goes along with what I said about everything else. There are lines that are ridiculously dumb regarding content, and in bad B-movies they sound hollow and unconvincing, but here they are uttered with some kind of grace that may be coming from the fact that the actors aren't trying to look "serious." They're acting out silly lines with passion and no hesitation, and do it really well. If I rewatch some segments, I'm actually impressed they were able to pull off something that on paper must have looked terrible, while in reality making it look almost natural, which technically shouldn't even be possible. Still, there are other lines that are just brilliant. I can imagine working on this movie must have been a lot of fun.
As for the plot, well, I think it wasn't really important at all, because the scenes were just entertaining enough on their own, and this isn't something you're gonna watch for the story. It was still decent for a B-movie though.
Again, the highlight of the movie is Christine Wallace, who is simply awesome. It's not just the faces, it's how she talks, how she walks and moves. It's simply eye candy in every aspect.
In summary, I think this movie deserves much better rating than it currently has (3/10). Like I said, it might be largely due to people not knowing what they were getting into... I don't know. I'll admit I probably enjoyed it more than most people will, which my own rating reflects, but for anyone who likes zombie-type comedy, or let's recall Evil Dead II/Army of Darkness, this should still easily pass as 6/10. It would certainly help if you like the Parody subgenre, because this movie makes fun of itself and is often absurd on purpose.
As a side note, if by any chance you like Bill Zebub's movies, definitely go for this. There's some death/thrash metal as well.
It may not be a "great" movie, but it's certainly an entertaining one and most definitely not a bad one, as the ratings might lead you to believe.
Creature of Darkness (2009)
From Dumb to Dumber and Beyond
Note: I checked the 'spoiler' thing just in case but believe me, there's nothing to spoil.
So, there's a kind of 90 second introduction before the opening credits. It paints an abundantly clear picture that this is gonna be a really bad movie. If after the first 90 seconds you think that this could somehow turn into a decent movie, you must be either from the past, or out of your mind.
After the credits we see a bunch of American kids on some trip. Never mind the details like why or where because clearly this movie wasn't made to make sense. Having seen the intro, it's no surprise all the dialogue is hopelessly stupid. I don't know how old these kids are supposed to be - they look like 25 but act like 14 with brain damage. At this point I'm thinking this movie might actually be funny because of how stupid it is. Well, I was right, but it gets dumber by the minute, and in the end it's a bit too boring to be funny anymore.
Let's move on to paint a bit more of the picture. We get two military guys investigating a corpse... or at least I think that's the idea. They look like 2 actors whose script says "you're investigating a corpse," but they have no idea what that means, so they're just standing around looking dumb. As they're standing there, in their military uniforms with their military helmets next to their military jeep and a big sign that says U.S.A.F., one of the kids identifies them as "the cops." That was pretty funny. I didn't see that level of stupidity coming. To save the day comes a blonde chick who explains to the dumb lot that those obviously military guys are the military. Well what do you know, only 7 minutes into the movie and already this amusing. But that's about the peak of it.
Quickly enters another blondie who shows her breasts because one of the guys asks for it. Uhmm.... OK, they're Americans, so I try not to think too much about that one. And then I try not to think too much about the rest of the movie, which consists mostly of incredibly dumb arguments among the kids (like who's whose girlfriend and who's to blame for whatever's happening), very poor visual effects right out of the early 80's, and a pointless storyline that reaches a new level of absurdity when one of the guys starts telling a story about his uncle. But at least you learn about this Hunter called "The Catcher." Very inventive.
This is not the kind of movie where you speculate about whether the characters behave rationally or even realistically or not. They don't. You can see that. It's not up for debate. This is the kind of movie where you don't care who gets killed, because all the characters are so dumb that for all you care they can all get killed 10 minutes into the movie and get it over with. It would save you a whole hour of really bad "entertainment." If this was made in 1979, I'd give it 4 points. It being 2009, it gets 2. And one of those 2 is only because at times it was actually funny. Oh wait, was this supposed to be a horror movie? Ooops. For something to be scary it has to be at least a little bit realistic. This is about as realistic as a two-headed Yeti in your closet munching on your snack that it stole from the fridge.
One more thing. At some point I actually had one scary thought - if people in the US are actually as dumb as the characters in this movie, we're all really doomed.
This movie is not recommended to anyone who managed to read this review in less than 2 days without needing a dictionary.