Reviews

There is almost nothing about this movie that stamps it as a low-budget film. The acting was truly dead on, there were known actors in it, and the cinematography was gritty and realistic.

Plot: Nate is an ex-con working for loan sharks and bookies who gets in too deep. He is offered a job as a go-between at an upscale bar, summoning callgirls for impatient patrons. The folks hiring him are crooked cops.

He keeps being nudged deeper and deeper into the world of illicit sex, helping to cover up dead hookers, and transport underage girls for porn shoots.

However, when he is told in no uncertain terms that if he does not help kidnap a small girl for a wealthy client, his own daughter will be the "merchandise", he is pushed too far. He shoots the other kidnappers, rescues the girl, and against all odds, manages to get back to his daughter to save her.

Throughout, Nate is played as a regular guy - separated from his wife, but still loves his kid; falls for a waitress at the bar he works out of and tries to help her when it looks like she's in trouble; and agonizes over some of the revolting yet alluring things he's being pushed into doing.

While based on a true story, the tone and atmosphere of the film remind me a lot of Hardcore (with George C. Scott). In fact, I came away from this film with much the same unsettled feeling I got from that one - a major element of which is the disturbing sense that by standing by and watching the acts portrayed (even though, unlike Nate, we are not watching "reality"), you are somehow condoning them. It's a really weird sensation. Like you can't possibly enjoy the film itself without admitting you enjoy the creepy porn it's opening a window on.

Please understand, this is not a negative statement! Any movie that can bring out such strong feelings is a powerful film, indeed.

The only thing I found felt wrong was a much too happy closing scene, which my friends and fully expected Nate to wake up from. I don't know whether the director wanted to give the audience some catharsis and send them home happy or what, but it was too jarring a change in tone. I would rather have had the film end more bleakly in the hospital.

This is my favorite sports movie in the entire world.

PLOT: Just trying to get by, traveling from town to town playing the game of jugging, Sallow is finally convinced by his younger, eager teammates to take one last shot at glory and take on The League - despite the fact that Sallow, once a member of The League had long ago been kicked out for a moral transgression.

See, it's a sports movie.

It's the people and the setting that make it fantastic. The movie opens with a simple paragraph on the screen which basically says "no one remembers how life used to be, no one remembers how the game of jugging began, and no one remembers why it is played with a dog's skull." AND THAT'S ALL YOU GET. The movie expects you to figure out the rest for yourself.

I love it when a movie WANTS you to be smart... For instance, it is never stated WHY, after each match, they mark up the "game dog skull" and carry it around with them - but when they present the bag of skulls at League HQ, and the judges look them over carefully, you can't help but guess the markings must be some sort of record of the scoring...

The characters are great: Sallow (Hauer), with his world-weary airs "Juggers can't have sex with each other after a match - unless you like rubbing wounds on wounds..."; Kidda (Chen), who subs in a game against Sallow's team when her town's Qwik is injured, and gets so caught up that she decides to run away with them; the backbones of the team, Mbulu and Big Cimber - both obviously vets who, while they have no ambition, can't stop playing; and "Young Gar" (D'onofrio), the eager young pup who wants nothing more than to make a name for himself and who Sallow can see will probably follow in his own footsteps, even to the point of taking the same fall.

Even without the stellar performances, I would suggest watching the movie for the background details. Every time I see it, I see something cool and new.

The first thing you see of the jugging team, in the first ten minutes of the film, is their gearing up for a game - one uses a bedrail for a weapon, while another looks like a pipe with some kind of gearbox covering, Mbulu has an honest-to-god football helmet for his headgear, while Sallow's more makeshift helmet is wrapped in old tire treads.

And the places they travel - some have minimal electricity, while most don't, buildings are made of old tires and chain link fencing, and the man with the accordion is god.

PLOT: Sam comes to this apartment building, having been waiting years to move into a particular apartment - where his father lived 20 years ago and may have left something for him.

When he moves in, he finds out the floors have been renumbered, and it's actually the apartment above his that he wants, which draws him into the difficult life of the woman, or perhaps women, who live upstairs.

Nicely done and very atmospheric, particularly for a small independent film. The black and white cinematography is quite effective, giving this a very nice "film noir" feel, and while it feels surreal for much of the movie, in a sort of David Lynch kind of way, the movie does come to a satisfying, if not fully explained, ending.

The acting was very good, from the understated but compelling Sam, to the truly charming, yet pathetic, Audrey and Angel, and even to the overly hearty cop and the effusive, movie-obsessed, foreign apartment manager, Staci/Buddy.

Overall, a nice piece of work. Oh, and watch through the credits - the animation is really cool, and fills in some of the backstory. And the caricatures of the characters in the movie are impressive - usually animated attempts to "capture" real people turn out kind of lame.

Plot: Neesom is tracking Brosnan, in order to kill him. He has a bunch of hired pokes with him. He's gruff and bitter and unlikeable, and it's way too far into the movie before you find out why.

Brosnan gets injured immediately and therefore has our sympathy from the beginning. Oddly, he will kill in self-defense early in the film, but not later. Or possibly just won't kill Neesom. Again, you don't find out why until it's pretty much too late to care.

So Neesom's been tracking Brosnan for some three years or so, and can't even keep up with him when Brosnan is injured and on foot and Neesom is on horseback. Sigh.

I wanted to like the film. I like Brosnan, and every time the scene changed, there was another of my favorite character actors hidden under a pile of scruff and a really hoarse voice. But unfortunately there were way too many unsatisfying elements.

First, the plot of chase - almost capture - escape - chase - chase - kill - don't kill.... and on and on... gets pretty dull when there's nothing to link everything together. And nothing to really make you understand or root for either of the main characters until way too far into the film.

Second, the people they meet and places they go feel like a strung together series of vignettes of "what the filmmakers thought was cool in the west" rather than any sort of unified backdrop for a story. They also don't feel quite right - *almost* over-the-top without ever quite making that satisfying leap into Sam Raimi territory. And they throw everything in - missionaries, tarnished women, Chinese railroad workers - everything, but none of it feels like it belongs TOGETHER.

Third, the freaky folk. There are several encounters which may be dreams, or delusions, or the product of sunstroke - the "Injun" at the waterin' hole, the snake-oil saleslady, and possibly even the missionaries. All of this was kind of cool. Very unreal feeling, almost, but not quite, in the tone of "Dead Man" (Johnny Depp movie). And, from what I recall, they all wore top hats. Even Huston's hat is top-hat-ish. Unfortunately, since these weird encounters begin very late in the film, the segue from "probably real" into "possibly not" is jarring and feels tacked on. If the film had this thread noticeable throughout, it would have been much more interesting.

Fourthly, the racial slurs. The funny thing is, I have no problem with racial slurs in historical context - unfortunately, the ones they actually chose to use made almost no sense from the perspective of a modern audience who may or may not be up on their "wild west" trivia.

OK, Brosnan calling this one guy "Paddy" seemed to really tick him off - but the guy was the one roughneck WITHOUT an Irish accent. What was up with that? Plus, how many average modern public-school educated people actually even remember that the Irish were the east-coast immigrants who worked the railroad much the same way the Chinese were the west-coast ones? Then, the missionaries - were they supposed to be Jewish? They didn't sound or look Jewish from a modern perspective, and no one actually said anything except "God's chosen people", and the leader was wearing what might have been a shawl - or a Navajo blanket... I was pretty confused.

The one that really cracked me up, though, is the missionary leader mentioning offhandedly that he'd been injured by Mormons. The audience laughed at this (one of the few laughs in the entire evening), without even realizing this was a serious historical comment! Without a passing familiarity with Riders of the Purple Sage, most people won't realize this WASN'T just a joke or a slur - the Mormons were a tough desperate bunch in the days of the old west.

Finally, the reason for the guys' conflict. Ay-yi-yi. Brosnan and his confederate soldiers burned down (Yankee) Neesom's house - apparently after the war had ended, and with very little excuse - and accidentally killed his wife and children.

Um. Neesom's wife has the guts to RUN into a BURNING house to save her baby and then just stands there at the window, unable to get it to open, until she collapses? Um... I don't know if you noticed, ma'am, but it's GLASS. I just can't believe anyone, particularly a frontier woman, wouldn't think of SMASHING THE DANG WINDOW. And Brosnan just stands by, looking on in horror (almost teary), since he never meant to kill anyone, rather than try and get his men to help her? The whole back story showed up too late (2/3-ish of the way into the film), was feeble and unbelievable, and bent WAY over backward to try and make sure that you don't hate Brosnan for being "mean". PC ALERT!!!

All this film really did was make me want to go and watch "Dead Man" again...

I am just lucky there were only about four people besides me and my friends - this movie kept me laughing so hysterically (with those startled whoops that are so embarrassing later) that I am surprised someone didn't try to stick a spoon in my mouth or offer me a Valium.

The premise - Gabriel Snow is a man with a phobia of Santa Claus, but who works for "The Xmas Files" a tabloid devoted to all things weird about the holidays. He discovers his wife Noelle is cheating on him with a mall Santa (since GABE obviously won't wear the beard for her) on the same night that he finds himself hunted by an evil vampiric Santa and a bunch of creepy elves (who look like a cross between Gollum and Catwoman - ugly creeps in stitched together leather).

They seek help of a ... Well, an African American gunslinger type who lives in a trailer and wears an Australian duster and sixguns. Um. Later, these combat nuns with a vow of silence (and, presumably a vow of violence) show up, calling themselves the Silent Knights.

And the movie ends with a Santa on Santa martial arts scene like none ever seen before. Can you even picture a guy in full Santa gear doing the classic karate kid crane pose? If it weren't for the hilarious dialog, the movie would be just another cheesy horror movie take-off, and if it weren't for the perfect actors, it would have been just another "hey look my friends can recite lines!" film.

Surprisingly, it has all the right elements in the right places. The dialog and sight gags continually catch you off guard and crack you up, and the actors - Gabriel, with incredible facial mobility and a complete lack of any vestige of macho; Noelle with more balls then hang on her Christmas tree; and Pete the gunslinger with his gritty revelations about the true meaning of Xmas, but who can still naively exclaim "What? Wrassling is fake?"

And - god help us all - there's this awesome and awful flashback sequence done in the style of cheap Christmas cartoons, complete with flaming corpses and bloody spatter.

You just have to see it. And watch through the credits. Trust me.

"Clausferatu!" Oh, no... the hysterical giggles are coming back.... help....

I'd heard of the Broadway musical, though not much about it, so when I got a free ticket to see Dreamgirls, I figured what the heck? The plot is simple - the rise of a girl group in the 60s, dealing with tensions between members, romantic entanglements, the pushiness of their manager who wants to homogenize them and make them more salable, and the relation of all of this to the racial tension of the era. Dreamgirls is a more serious drama than, for example "That Thing You Do" which is set in a similar time in the music industry, and which flirted with some of the same issues that are explored in this film.

I agree that the performances really made this film. I wasn't surprised at all that Eddie Murphy could sing ("(My Girl Wants to) Party All the Time" ring a bell with anyone?), and I never watched American Idol, so I had no idea who the new girl was - and she totally blew me away. She was soooooooo good - both acting and singing.

The look and feel of the film was very good - the 60s and 70s came frighteningly alive, in their full and gruesome excess. The clothing, furniture, and holy cow the album covers! The music really fit with the different times too, and I have to admit that everyone in the theater began to giggle hysterically when the "not the Jackson Five" band, led by "not little Michael Jackson" sang a song very not unlike "ABC". The fringe on their costumes alone will haunt me forever!

The story in a nutshell: A young man from an unwanted and unloved upbringing, pursues his obsession with making the perfect scent. It happens that the ingredient he want most to preserve is the scent (equated with the soul) of a beautiful young woman - who, unfortunately, dies in the process.

This murderous tendency would lead you to assume that you won't like Grenouille, but it's kind of surprising that you don't hate him as much as you would think. The movie manages to make the character just understandable enough to make you sad that he couldn't figure out another way to get what he wanted, and regret the dead girls, he is also engaging enough to keep watching.

(While it is arguably possible that the scent could be taken without the girl dying, it is not possible for THIS MAN to do it - he is simply not socialized enough to know what to say or do to make someone "work with him". The time period is also a drawback - getting a modern girl to undress and let you cover her in lard TODAY would probably just involve a newspaper ad and $50.) Grenouille really came across as very nearly a "wild child" - someone who knows enough language to communicate basic needs, but doesn't really understand how to "speak" to people. He almost lives in an entirely different world from most people, since his primary sensory input is smell - rather than sight or hearing, like the main run of humanity.

The imagery the director used to conjure up the audience's smell-memories was very nice. Everything you saw, you could almost smell. I saw a preview of this last night, with the benefit of a Q&A with the very funny and charming director afterward, and he mentioned how he didn't want to go so far as to actually incorporate scents, a la William Castle and Ed Wood - not only because it is a silly idea, but also because the theatre would reek after every show.

I'm not rating this in numbers because I would have to give it several different ratings all at once. I enjoyed this movie a lot and yet would have probably felt ripped off if I hadn't seen it for free.

This movie is action. Skip the plot, turn the sound off, who cares - but the action is awesome. I'm usually a heavy plot/screenplay/subtext person when I watch movies, but I do make certain exceptions for martial arts, since there is a whole different rating scale in my head for them.

Um, plot. Cam's elephants are stolen from his home in Thailand by mob boss in Sydney, AU. He follows them. Lucks out and runs into a non-crooked cop who speaks Thai. Kicks some butt. Finds his elephants. Kicks more butt. Yup. Well, there's actually about four really big butt-kicking sequences, but some of the linking scenes are forgettable.

Actually, the movie is plotted an awful lot like a video game. Motivation (elephants are stolen) / fight scene / vague linking text / fight scene / vague linking...

You get the picture. Actually, one sequence which was both awesome and vaguely dislocating was in a restaurant where he is going up from floor to floor around an open rotunda, basically plowing through everything in his path - it reminded me DIRECTLY of a first person shooter, and then I realized why - it's filming in a series of excruciatingly long, single-take follow shots, just like a video game.

Holy cow! Talk about timing - Can you imagine having to make it through even one full minute of an average American action movie without ever cutting away, let alone two or three? A single shot is like - punch this guy, kick that one's feet out from under him, knock that guy out with a chair, tip this one over the railing, kick open a door (don't attack the civilians!), break some glass - oops, there's more glass, have to break it too! - smack that guy WITH the door and break some more glass, trip one guy with another one's body... And it just goes on. My jaw dropped.

Also, talk about real-looking fighting! Wow! And the chiropractic noises that go with it just make you squirm! One scene I particularly liked was a fight in a temple, where fire has set off the sprinklers, so everything is ankle-deep in water. First off, Cam has to face off with this black guy with some awesome spinning kick acrobat kind of style (no, I can't really name any styles but monkey, drunk, and drunk monkey) and starts whaling on Cam, but even as you watch, he picks up the guy's rhythm, and starts playing his own signature moves back on him! That was cool! Then a swordsman attacks, and finally a huge muscley guy. Hmm, one combat after another, all with different styles... Wait, that sounds like ... a video game! 8)

In case anyone cares, where I'm coming from - I'm a big Jackie Chan fan, both his old stuff and his new stuff. I also love movies like House of Flying Daggers, Iron Monkey, and The Duel, as well as The Swordsman, Deadful Melody, Spooky Encounter, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu and even Rush Hour. My general preferences run to the "fantasy asia" style rather than the modern settings though I generally prefer "real" looking fighting to lots of special effects and wire fu.

My friend Pat and I, after watching this film, had to sit in the theatre and figure out exactly what we hated about it. She: Nicholas Cage, everything else; me: the feeling that some significant elements were lost in translation from the original.

OK, that wasn't ALL I hated, but I like to be specific.

First, I didn't find the movie UNWATCHABLE. Watch it for free, and you will TOTALLY get your money's worth.

The first HUGE thing I found annoying was - in the original, a police officer goes to a small insular island community on an anonymous tip that a small girl has gone missing. The town/island of Summerisle, however, is fairly NORMAL (normal for Scotland in the early 1970s, anyway). It has a pub. It has a castle. It doesn't get many visitors, or want many visitors, but it is pretty average, if a little behind the times. In the remake, the island/town is just plain WEIRD. Rather than "behind the times" or "hick-ish" it's practically Amish - well, OK, it looks like something from around 1900-1917 - and women are in charge, and men don't talk.

The problem I had is this: "creepy things happening in a normal setting is MUCH MORE creepy". Once you're in a weird town, finding weird things seems normal. In a "regular" town, finding weird things is eerie. You wouldn't expect a drag queen in full showgirl regalia on the streets of Des Moines Iowa (apologies to any Iowan drag queens if I am wrong), but wouldn't look twice at one in Las Vegas.

The second thing was belief. In the original, the Laird of Summerisle basically admitted (whether truthfully or not) to the cop that he himself didn't actually believe any of the old religion, it was just a way to keep his people happy. Which makes it MUCH MORE creepy that the Laird would condone, and in fact take part in, the final ritual. You may not agree with true believers, but at least you can figure they are passionate about what they do - an opportunist, however, that's creepy.

OK, and the whole bee thing was weird - plus they didn't get it right. Males shouldn't have been working at all, since the only "bee males" are drones and don't do any work. Sigh.

OH, and I think in the future I will stay away from any movie set in the San Juan islands which involves a church or church ruin. Apparently Summersisle is just across the channel from the Isla De Muerte (from House of the Dead). ...shuddder...

I still have grainy, late night, no-cable, cheap VHS dubs of this show from waaaaaayyyy back when, late-night-commercials and all, when I would stay up to whatever weird hour they would slap this show on -- just so I could tape it.

The series wasn't really ABOUT Freddy Kreuger - only the first couple of episodes actually involved him as anything but a Rod Serling-esquire announcer. Instead, each episode was a distinct nightmare, using the traditional horror themes of horrific childhood, dating, cannibalism, dating, money, death, dating, and... hmm... dating.

From the episode where a teenage boy accidentally says "I will love you forever" to the wrong girl, and is stuck with her (literally, at least for a moment, they grow together...), to the one where a young stewardess goes home with a strange man, only to find herself in his cabin, where he has a trophy room full of other stewardesses, and one I only vaguely remember which compared blind dates to hockey (and the injuries and penalties that go with it) - dating was definitely the scariest thing in the series.

One episode had Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, etc.) as a motivated pizza merchant with a tasty new secret ingredient. Not original, but still creepy and fun....

Even so, some of the episodes were great. My personal favorite was "It's a Miserable Life" where a young man is trapped working in his parents' burger joint, when he wants to go off to college. Stuck talking to himself and doing little puppet shows with old cheeseburgers - until one late night when a weird guy comes through the drive through and suddenly his life is not the same. No, not Freddy, just a thug with a gun - turns out the whole mind-blowing episode is just that - the last thoughts that pass through the kid's head... along with a bullet.

The second half of the same episode (many of the Freddie's Nightmares episodes were essentially two vaguely connected short stories) followed his girlfriend, who was also wounded, but not killed in the drive-by, and who is taken to "the hospital from heck" - they cram in all the most creepy hospital nightmare clichés, and then some - from accidentally having your mouth sewn shut - or waking up during an operation - to having your dead boyfriend try and lure you into the morgue for a little cuddle.

Again, that was my favorite.

Some of the episodes were much dumber, like ALMOST ALL OF THE ONES THEY'VE MADE AVAILABLE ON VIDEO. They put the crummy ones out as representative of the series, and then nobody likes them, thinks the show stunk, and then they don't put any more on video. It's a Miserable Life is only available on PAL DVD in England - but I'm still gonna buy it.

While the story of St. John's Wort is something I could easily imagine coming out of Hammer Films, or a classic Vincent Price movie, it's not BAD, and the visuals more than make up for it.

PLOT: Nami inherits a spooky old mansion, takes her ex-boyfriend along so they can scope out using the place as a setting for their video game. Turns out she may have had a twin who died when she was a child. Also turns out her father was a crazy artist, who painted creepy pictures. Is the house haunted? Is the twin still alive? Who is the spooky caretaker? See what I mean by it being very Vincent Price-ish? Anyway, the plot is fairly solid, though I did find at least one of the ending plot twists useless and incomprehensible, but since it really affected nothing else in the film, I ignored it.

The VISUALS, on the other hand...

The whole movie is oddly colored, which is unsettling to begin with, and which makes sections of it look like they might be CGI, or bluescreened, or might just be badly tinted - all adding to the unreality of the whole thing. Also, the camera "view" keeps shifting, from "reality" to the ex's hand-held camera, to B&W surveillance cameras, and even to a "video game version".

My favorite bit of unreality involves the caretaker - when they arrive at the place, the caretaker gives Nami the keys, but the scene is played out as a video game sequence, with the caretaker icon's lines being printed on the screen, rather than spoken - thus making it impossible to determine anything, even gender, about this "person".

Overall, I found it very watchable.

First, since I'm sure there are many reviews exhorting the excellence of this film, I want to make a public service announcement - WHEN TO GO TO THE BATHROOM.

If you are unfortunate enough to not think ahead and go to the 3+ hour-long movie with a soda in hand, here's when you can go without missing too much of the plot. I'm not saying the scenes I mention are something you should miss - they're not!!! - just that you don't lose continuity.

1. Chasing dinosaurs through a gully; 2. Giant bug fight.

Each is a sequence long enough to run down the hall, and miss only exciting and freaky action sequences, which you should come back and see the movie again for.

NOW... I read King Kong many years ago and never felt any of the movies did the book justice. Now I am afraid to read the book again, figuring it will not do this film justice.

The look is good. The setting is good. The creatures are really cool. The action doesn't move too fast to comfortably watch, like many movies these days do. The acting is good. The character development is reasonably good (considering this is an action/monster film, it's very good). I can't think of a single thing to say anything negative about.

I was particularly moved (very glad I wore a turtleneck the first time I saw it, since I forgot to bring tissues and needed something to cry into) by the crafty way the movie develops the relationship between Ann and Kong. That's brilliant.

OK, maybe I just like big, hairy, misunderstood guys, but Kong is one of the great tragic films of our time.

Good plot. Good twists. Good characters. Good action. And the Rock with no shirt. Who could ask for more?

The reviews raked this movie over the coals, so I almost didn't go and see it. I am so glad I decided to ignore them!!!

Where I'm coming from: I don't play these video games. I LOVED the movie Resident Evil, but the sequel was lacking. The movie House of the Dead was only missing the robots in the front row to be a MST3K episode.

DOOM is not only cool-looking, but it is stunningly well written (for a video game-turned-movie).

The plot: Something bad has happened on Olduvai outpost and marines are sent in to kick patoot. They find that there are some kind of creepy monsters up there, and the dead are returning to life to fight the living. Turns out the outpost was home to some genetic experiments, and the monsters may not have come from outer space at all.

The main "marines go shoot monsters on space outpost" storyline was intriguingly woven with various other conflicts and personality disorders. Each of the marines was a distinct character (which was even lacking somewhat in Resident E), and was interesting, though not always likable.

I particularly liked the fact that for once we didn't have to watch another "oh, no, my EX works here - and we had a really bad breakup!" and then a reconciliation scene (most likely under water, just before someone dies). Instead, the tension came from an estranged brother-sister dichotomy, which was very well handled (including a cleverly downplayed audio-only flashback sequence, WOW!).

I suspect that people who haven't played the game will object to the "first-person shooter" sequence that occurs near the end of the movie (similar "video game view" sequences were almost unwatchable in House of the Dead), but it's not only a sly nod at the game/players, but it also works as showing the change of perspective of the character it's portraying - he's just gone through a drastic attitude adjustment, and this shows it very well. It's also just long enough to never quite get annoying.

I wanted to like this. I generally love Wes Craven. I generally love suspense. And while this was (as many others here are calling it) "an action packed thrill ride". It was a very flawed movie.

I did enjoy it. It's not by any means unwatchable, but it is implausible to the point where I couldn't stop laughing at the insane twists by the end of the film. Unfortunately, since the first 2/3 or so of the film were set up so well - very gritty, realistic, suspenseful, and very evocative of helplessness, that made the last part of the movie that much stupider. Suddenly we've gone from a creditable Hitchcock pastiche to a Warner Brothers cartoon. If it had been goofy all the way through, it would have been better than switching styles in mid-stream.

Also, while I like Wes Craven, he's got some serious issues - for one thing, the main two characters look AND ACT almost exactly like Sydney and Billy from Scream, and the dichotomy (she good/he bad) is identical, it just becomes clear a lot earlier. Wes needs to play with his own stereotypes and make a BAD brunette GIRL for a change.

SPOILERS BEGIN

Again, the first two-thirds of the movie is a reasonably good thriller - he says he has a man ready to kill her dad unless she calls the hotel she manages and moves the head of homeland security to more assassinatable suite. That's quite a good plot. There are even some excellent twists as she tries to get a message to SOMEONE that there is something wrong.

But once the plane lands, she suddenly turns butch, escapes, steals a car, makes phone calls, saves the head of homeland security, gets home, saves dad, runs over killer. OK, that part was even interesting, but not very believable. This is when Hitchcock suddenly turned into THE TRANSPORTER.

And, of course, "Jackson Rippner", the guy from the plane, shows up at her house. (I can sort of buy that, he's checking to see if his guy succeeded...) EXCEPT that she stuck a pen in his throat on the plane (apparently hitting the exact tracheotomy place, not a vein - bummer). And now it's PERSONAL. This is when the movie turns into TOM & JERRY.

Suddenly it's the standard Nightmare on Scream Street chase through the house, blah blah blah, knocking him on the head with vases, blah blah blah, and he just keeps coming. He's NOT a supernatural creature or two guys who trade off and can rest between getting kicked in the head! They should have SHOWN a point where he took some PCP - that would have made it a teensy bit more believable.

How many people do YOU know who would even get up again with a pulled muscle and chase after an ice cream truck when they were starving, let alone be seriously injured and continue going after the person who injured them? Not to mention, if he's a professional terrorist/ assassin/ whatever - he wouldn't come after her, to her house, while injured - it's not plausible in ANY world. He would come to her house three months later, after he healed up and she got lazy, and he would kill her AND her dad in the middle of the night. That's "assassin personal".

Happily Ever After, blah blah blah...

Such a good recipe. Nothing was out of place. I was stunned when I saw it - the ads had me expecting some stupid clone of "we created a monster out of our heads" movies, or I Know What You Did Last Arbor Day. Instead, it's more like classic Hitchcock, just with very short plaid skirts and SLIGHTLY more gore.

This is one of the best suspense movies I've seen in years. I wouldn't even really call it a horror movie, since it's much more of a psychological thriller.

A group of students at a private boarding school let "the new kid" into their private clique/game - which is, they try to manipulate one another into revealing things. Then the girl behind the game decides to take it up a notch - there's been a murder in town, and she proposes that they create a rumor that this killing is related to a similar (fictional) killing at another school elsewhere, and they create all sorts of details about the imagined prior incident, and send it around in an email as "fact".

This starts off various chains of events, including mysterious appearances of the killer (as described in the email), not the least of which is a dozen or so copies who show up for the Halloween dance!! Well-painted and well-played portrait of manipulation going on on MANY many levels at once, without ever being so muddled that you can't figure out what's going on and WHY it's going on. And a very well-crafted portrayal of a surprisingly believable, yet very downplayed sociopath - both in the acting and the little clues in the writing. Kudos to the writer(s).

Oh, and it has Jon Bon Jovi in it. And he's not a bad actor. That was a surprise too.

The devil in this is really sleazy. He makes the movie.

The plot is a fairly common one from the 70s (which also brought us The Phantom of the Paradise - with another good devil) - would you sell your soul for rock 'n' roll? A folk duo, Jan and Dan, break up when the devil offers Jan a chance to sign on and she jumps at it, leaving sweet, dopey Dan behind. Jan goes on to fame, fortune, and some really flashy outfits. Then, when her contract comes up, the devil decides to collect her soul and ever-faithful Dan shows up to defend her in a kangaroo-court (or rather, ghost, snake and shark court, if I remember correctly), judged by the big bad horned one himself.

Very sweet. The music is fun (in the same way Xanadu is - VERY 70s), and some of the moments still give me goosebumps.

Also this is VERY CLEARLY a precursor to Nelvana's much more ambitious work Rock and Rule, where a similar boy-girl team (plus two more band members) are broken up when the girl is given a shot at fame (by a representative of the devil), etc., etc.,....

You have to watch this with the eyes of a child to truly appreciate it. It is a sweet, slightly scary, story for kids.

Two robots, Rome-0 and Julie-8, created by competing robotics companies, meet by accident at a big trade show and fall in love. They try to run off together. There's a big scary robot made of junk named "Sparepartski" who decides to marry Julie-8, and Rome-0 has to save her. There's also some heart-tugging songs and everyone lives happily ever after.

I loved this as a kid, and coming back and watching it always makes me happy. What more can you ask for?

Plot: Dad and daughter move to the boonies after mom commits suicide. Daughter starts getting weird - playing with an imaginary friend "Charlie" and damaging things. Much vandalism, all blamed on Charlie.

Then even worse. Things (dolls, cat, etc.) die at Charlie's hand.

Final revelation of Charlie could have been better handled, perhaps with more of a struggle between Charlie and the dad.

Possible spoilers now: Some of the things I really liked - in fact, liked enough to make me watch the film again sometime to see what I missed: The kid's comments about Charlie "I think he's sleeping now" mean something VERY different after you know what he is.

In trying to figure out what's going on, there's some very nice misdirection, such as: Everyone in town seems a little creepy (sort of "Rosemary's Baby" neighbors) and comments on "what a pretty daughter you have," which just makes a parent paranoid.

The neighbors next door have "lost a daughter" recently, which if you don't notice that the photos they have of her imply she died of cancer, might lead one to believe Charlie's been around for a while...

OK, I found it very interesting. Watch it if you liked Secret Window.

OK, if you are a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and love to mock movies, then you will have a lot of fun with this. Otherwise, it may really be TOO painful to see.

Plot: Obsessed cryptozoologist sneaks a huge crate containing a Chupacabra onto a cruise ship (apparently not having to declare it at customs, or even mention that he's bringing aboard a live animal -"no really, it's research equipment, the air holes are just an accident"). Some dipsticks he hired to lade it open the crate, figuring he paid bunches of money, maybe there's something to steal. Once the WOOD CRATE is open, the Chupacabra breaks through the STEEL BARS inside and goes on a killing rampage.

Yeah, whatever.

By a stroke of sheer coincidence, a Marshall (I assume a U.S. Marshall, since he was in the gulf war, not just some guy named Marshall) is on board, investigating some money that went missing from the ship's safe. He's posing as an insurance salesman ("Lady, I'm the best insurance you've got..."). Other scintillating characters include the captain (John Rhys-Davies, and sadly his dignity is the first victim of the film), his tae-bo instructor daughter (snicker - Tae-bo), an annoying old stuck-up lady with a tiny dog which should be fed to a cat (guess WHAT eats it...?) and an incredibly unpleasant gigolo who might have been believable in a movie made in 1964, not in anything more recent. Much of the acting was really bad, and the characters were just there so that you can laugh hysterically when they died.

Overall - SCREAMINGLY bad. Bad on many levels. BAD BAD BAD. What??? Bullets don't even make Chupacabra flinch, but the Tae-bo bimbo can punch him and scare him away???? Hey Sci-fi Channel, you desperate for scripts or what?

The production in this movie is wonderful - particularly if you're able to accept the strange cross-genre world the movie is set in. Much like the world of Tim Burton's Batman was sort of the 40s and sort of the future, this takes modern day and mixes it with touches from ancient Rome, to make a weird fantasy realm where anything can happen. A DARK fantasy realm.

This serves a couple of really good purposes - first, some of the touches are inherently humorous, thus lightening a play which could be called "the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of Shakespeare." Far more importantly, however, is the visual cues which it gives a modern audience.

The average person, even someone fairly versed in Shakespeare like myself, sees two guys walk into the Roman senate, dressed in togas, and orating, and there is NOT A SINGLE visual cue to tell me who these guys are. I don't know toga styles! On the other hand if one of them (Bassianus) is progressing to the senate, chilling in the back of his convertible, wearing a leather jacket, addressing his followers with a bullhorn, and his brother Saturninus is encased in a full-on pope-mobile with a leather greatcoat and a greased-down forelock - that tells me something about these guys!!!

OK, the plot - nearly everybody dies. I would call this a spoiler, but anyone who knows that (a) this is Shakespeare and (b) this is considered a tragedy, then knows that - by definition - nearly everybody dies. The cool thing is the plots and counter-plots as the various characters try to take down, take out, or take on the others.

The basic premise is, however, that Titus Andronicus is a great general who has just returned from war with captives, including defeated Queen Tamora, her three sons, and her servant Aaron (ooh, is he evil!!). Despite the queen's desperate pleas for mercy, Titus sacrifices Tamora's oldest son to the gods, as a thank you for victory, and thus starts the chain of back and forth murdering which goes on for the rest of the film.

Two things which will probably be of interest to no one but myself, but I have to express are the theme of the play/film and Titus' fatal flaw.

First, in screenplay classes you work hard to get "theme" - some concept which is not necessarily brought out in the plot, but is supposed to be woven throughout your movie and generally never is, or is something really simplistic and obvious. However, the theme of Titus is actually exquisitely done, and was in the original play, which makes me wonder quite why people generally regard it as a throw-away piece among Shakespeare's works.

The theme I see is "what we do for our children", which seems an odd one for such a bloody play, but it is the killing of Tamora's son which sets off the maelstrom. When her sons attack and mutilate Titus' daughter Lavinia, he gets his revenge, and then does for Lavinia the greatest, most honorable thing he can - kills her. The two sons of the recently deceased emperor, the aforementioned Bassianus and Saturninus, have no father to look out for them, and he didn't name a successor before his death, which is what leads them astray, and finally, Aaron, despite being a self-proclaimed villain (and who tricks Titus into cutting off his OWN FREAKING HAND - now THAT'S a villain!), kills whoever he has to in order to protect his own progeny.

Now for the fatal flaw - again, a fascinating concept which struck me like a ton of bricks when I "got it". (For those how don't know, each of Shakespeare's tragic heroes is fatally flawed in some way, and when I was in high school our teacher made us always write essays on these, which is why I look in the first place - Hamlet's, for instance, is indecision, while Macbeth's is being "wife-"whipped.)

Titus's fascinating flaw is "Tradition". Every decision he makes, until he goes mad (or pretends to), is entirely dictated by tradition, and every decision is a bad one. He is offered the job of emperor and turns it down, then selects Saturninus to take the job - on the grounds that he is the dead emperor's eldest son, despite the fact that he is obviously going to be a petty despot. Then, when Saturninus asks for Titus' daughter in marriage, Titus agrees, even though she's already betrothed to (and in love with) the younger son, and when her brothers "rescue" her so she can run off with her true love? Titus kills one of his own sons - executing him as a traitor.

Time after time, tradition and "the right thing to do" is Titus' downfall. By the end of the story, he deliberately turns his own flaw back on himself by asking Saturninus what should happen to a woman who has been dishonored and damaged - should she be killed, as set forth in historical precedent? When the emperor flippantly agrees, Titus kills his own daughter, right there at the dinner table. To her, it is a mercy, but to everyone else, it's a real eye-opener!!!

OK, enough ranting. THIS time...

I am one of the select few people who ever saw this movie in its entirety. From what I recall, this was actually made for AMC (I'm pretty sure it was AMC) as a series of vignettes which would run in pieces between the various movies they showed throughout the month of October. To my knowledge, it never ran in one entire piece - except once.

I happened to be up at 2 or 3 in the morning, finishing some Halloween costumes, and was looking for something to watch - the TV Guide channel said that "Dr. Phibes Rises Again" would be on AMC, so I flipped over there. By the time I realized the listing was wrong and this was something else entirely, I was hooked!!!

The Plot: 2 interns at AMC, Catherine and Joey, have been sent down to the vaults to help Dr. Goreman (played by Roger Corman) pick out the movies for the Halloween season. Instead, the crazed Doctor sends them into one old film after another (WONDERFUL parodies of classic horror!!!), advising them to use their knowledge of bad horror movie clichés to survive and escape.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS...

An example of using the clichés is when Catherine, in a "Horror of Party Beach/Creature from the Black Lagoon" spoof, hears the monster following her as she walks down the beach at night. She reasons thusly "In these movies, the creature NEVER attacks until the girl turns around and looks. So I won't look!" and she goes miles and miles, the creature always ten steps behind, and makes it to safety.

My very favorite scene is another one with Catherine, where she is put into an old silent film - she's manacled to a wall, with a fiendish looking fellow menacing her with a branding iron. His subtitle card comes up saying "I will mar your beauty if you don't give into my foul wishes" (OK, so I'm paraphrasing - I only saw this once, a it was a long time ago!!) All you see from her is a vigorous nod "OK". He looks surprised, but puts away the branding iron and unchains her. Then she knees him in the groin and starts jumping up and down, ranting. When her speech card comes up, it is so full of words you can't get through it all, but it basically is a diatribe about the portrayal of women in horror films, and the evils of mixing sex and violence in such a way, etc.

I nearly died laughing.

The only thing I hate about this film? IT'S NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO!!!!!! arrggghhhh!!!!!