Reviews

There's been one great shark movie and dozens of Jaws "wannabes". This is one of the lesser efforts. The titular Black Demon shark is the biggest problem. It is only seen in full in a few scenes and they are in murky water or at night. The CGI budget for this movie must have been very small and the CGI quality is poor.

With little shark action, most of the movie is taken up with family drama. The plot revolves around Nixon Oil Co. Employee "Paul" making what he thinks will be a routine inspection of a company oil rig out in the Gulf of California. Paul has brought his family along to Baja, in what he hopes will be a working vacation. In his first bad decision, he leaves his family in a sleazy bar while he goes out to the rig. His wife and children are harassed by local thugs. They flee out to the rig in a rented boat joining Paul and the two remaining survivors on the rig and setting up the struggle to survive which makes up the rest of the movie.

There's a subplot revolving around the rape of the ecosystem by man. The natives believe that Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain and lightning has resurrected a megalodon to punish them for their sins. Paul rejects this notion and insists everything happening can be explained scientifically. This sets up numerous quarrels between Paul and everyone else.

All in all, this movie was a snoozer for me.

I loved this movie. I think it's one of the best to come out of Hollywood in years. It's a shame it was a box office bust. Hopefully it will earn its money back in other ways.

The Last Duel tells the story of two medieval knights that wind up fighting a duel to the death to prove the innocence of Jean de Carrouges' (Matt Damon) wife, Marquerite (Jodie Comer). Marquerite claims she was raped by Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver). If her husband loses the duel, she will be stripped naked, lashed, and burned to death. It was the last duel officially sanctioned by the French royal court.

The events leading up to the duel are told three different times. First from the point of view of Jean, then from Le Gris' perspective, and finally from Marguerite's side. Marguerite's version is without a doubt the closest to the truth, while Jean and Jacques' versions are heavily biased in their own favors.

The final fight to the death is one of the most riveting movie scenes I've ever seen. It beats anything in Gladiator by a mile. The movie paints a portrait of the Middle Ages that you will not soon forget. It's difficult to believe that just 900 or so years ago life was so brutish and different from the life we know.

... whatever hallucinations you have will be better than this movie. As one clever critic said, " it didn't get under my skin, it got on my nerves".

There's simply not enough information provided by the film to paint a coherent picture of what is going on. The only good thing about it is that Scarlett Johansson is in various stages of undress throughout.

It amusing to read what various film critics think the message of the film is. Most say it's about nihilism. Some think it's about immigration with the aliens being the immigrants. Others think it's a powerful feminist message. The truth is that it's like a piece of modern art, you can read whatever you want into it and you'll be as correct as anyone. There's simply not enough to go on.

My advice is to skip this turkey all together.

Forrest Gump is the story of a simple man with a 75 IQ who somehow lives an impossibly eventful and successful life. He seems to always be at the right place as history is being made or to meet historically important people. It's undoubtedly one of the most beloved films of all time. It takes you on an emotional two and a half hour roller coaster of a ride. Gump's unrequited love for his beloved Jenny, whom he meets on his first day of school and runs into at various points in his life, is a constant theme that keeps you hoping that it too will resolve in Gump's favor. There's no way to watch this movie without shedding a tear or two along the way. Tom Hanks is perfect as Gump, Robin Wright is Jenny, and Sally Fields is his Mom. I've probably seen it a half dozen times since 1994 and it still touches me. They truly don't make them like this anymore.

I don't understand how so many people, based on other reviews, apparently thought they were going to see science fiction when they decided to watch this film. I knew immediately what the gist of this movie was; the NASA astronaut love triangle that made such a splash a few years ago.

Part of the problem with this film is that more than the names were changed to protect the innocent. The facts were also scrambled. I suppose the artistic license was to head off possible legal action and ratchet up the drama. It worked in some places and failed in others.

Natalie Portman as astronaut Lucy Cola gives a fantastic performance. I've always thought Natalie was very pretty, but not really sexy. She's very sexy in his film. Jon Hamm as her love interest, Michael Goodwin, and Ellen Burstyn as her tough ole granny, Nana, were great too.

Much has been made of the changing aspect ratios used too. I admit some of it was pretty off the wall.. I hated the scene that shows Lucy floating down the streets towards the hospital were Nana lays dying, done to the tune of "Lucy InThe Sky with Diamonds". But, I suppose, director Noah Hawkey was trying to symbolize that Lucy was loosing her mind.

I think people like to tee off on this film because it was supposed to be Academy Award worthy. It isn't, but I enjoyed it and think it's well worth watching if you haven't seen it. Make up your own mind about it.o.

I saw this at a drive in with my family back in the Sixties. I also owned a comic book of the same title that told the story. It wasn't one of my favorite films back then because it had no real monsters, but still, I was fascinated by it. I just watched it again for the first time in over 50 years and I was very impressed by how well the visuals have held up.

With a 6.5 million dollar budget in the mid-sixties, this was certainly one of the most lavish sci-fi movies ever produced. The plot is preposterous, a submarine and its crew are somehow shrunk down to microscopic size and injected into a scientist's bloodstream on a mission to relieve his blood clot and save his life. The first part of the film is filled with techno babble about the shrinking process, but once they're inside the scientist's body and the 1960's visuals begin, the magic starts. There are two ancillary factors to provide extra drama. After an hour the miniaturization will wear off and there is a saboteur in the crew.

I remember a biology teacher raving about the educational value of this movie. Indeed, the producers spent a lot of time making the journey through the body as medically accurate as possible. It's a pleasant little time capsule that will take you back to the sixties again. It's well worth the watch.

If you're too happy and want to bring yourself down a notch, watch this movie. That wouldn't even be so bad, except that at the end, you realize that you've been duped.

As the film starts, we're introduced to an, at first, seemingly happy young couple, Adrienne and Metteo, with a new baby and a new house. But, as the layers of the onion are peeled back, we realized that they're not really happy at all. In fact, there's major doubts about fidelity and commitment on both sides. They've way over extended themselves financially and have to depend on her parents for babysitting and support. Matteo and her parents do not get along at all. The fact Matteo hasn't ask her to marry him probably doesn't help.

It's date night and Matteo has forgotten all about it. In the car they argue and there is talk of splitting up. Matteo is distracted, causing a terrible wreck. At this point the movie takes a "Jacob's Ladder" turn. Don't believe anything you see from here on.

After the big reveal, the movie ends on a sappy note designed to wring a final tear from the audience. Sienna Miller, who plays Adrienne, is the main reason to watch this, if you feel like putting yourself through it.

I enjoyed this oddly named film quite a lot, better than the Academy Award winning "The Shape of Water" with which it shares some common themes, such as interspecies sexual relationships.

The story starts with a young Englishman, whose name we never learn, but who will be called "Friend" throughout the movie, arriving at a desolate island near Antarctica just before the start of WWI. He is to spend an entire year logging meteorological info. The man who he is to replace cannot be found. The only other inhabitant of the island, a deranged lighthouse keeper named Gruner, says the man died of typhus. Friend scarcely moves into his shack and logs any weather entries before he is attacked the first night by strange, blue humanoid creatures from the sea, which destroy his equipment and almost kill him. The battle for survival between the humans and the sea creatures comprises the main plot of the movie.

Friend bribes his way into the heavily fortified lighthouse with coffee and ammo against Gruner's better wishes. Friend is surprised to see Gruner keeps a female creature as a pet. He treats her badly, beating her and sexually abusing her. Friend feels sorry for her. He names her Aneris and slowly a relationship begins to form between the two.

The ending of the movie was a bit puzzling to me, but all in all, it's a worthwhile watch. The cinematography is beautiful and the CGI isn't bad.

Of the dozen or so Coen brother's movies I've seen, this is my least favorite. The plot can best be described as meandering. It follows the depressing life of an aspiring folk singer, Llewyn Davis, over a period of a few days back in the early sixties. The soundtrack seems to be more important than the plot and boy, what a soundtrack, one depressing folk song after the other.

Meanwhile, when he's not singing, we get to see Mr Davis alienate one friend or family member after another. Llewyn has no home and very little money. He depends entirely on the kindness of strangers and acquaintances who aren't angry with him at the moment. He's a jerk who makes fun of other singers while they're performing and who we learn has impregnated two women, paying both times for them to about the fetuses. We also learn his former partner in a duo committed suicide by jumping off a bridge, probably to get away fro Llewyn.

I give if 4 stars for the cinematography and the dreary atmosphere it creates.

I admit that I'm biased when it comes to Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters. I saw it at a drive in with my family as a little kid and it scared my pants off. I still watch it from time to time and it always amuses me.

I like the way nothing fazes this hardy band of scientists who've come to find out what happened to an earlier team that disappeared altogether from this Pacific island. For instance, right after they step off the boat onto the island, a Naval crewman falls overboard in what should be very shallow water. When he's pulled back on board, they see that he's been beheaded! His commanding officer just snarls something to the effect of "tag him and bag him". There's no curiosity as to what or how he lost his head. They act like it happens all the time. Similarly, when the sea plane that brought them explodes on take off, they're attitude seems to be "oh darn, that's a shame". Do they look for survivors? Nope. They just head up to the house they're staying in and get on with their work.

They soon learn that the probable cause of the first team's disappearance is two gigantic, radiation-mutated crabs. Crabs that absorb the knowledge of people they've eaten. The crabs are hilarious looking. They have large human eyes. When they move, their legs stay still. You can practically hear the wheels the paper machete crabs are riding on squeaking.

For some reason the crabs are destroying the island in large chunks, presumably to be able to eat all the humans. But wait! They didn't need to resort to that to catch all the members of the first team. How come? Don't ask. Just go with and you'll have a good time.

I am also amused by the films finale. By the end, the island is only a hundred feet wide. The crabs are dead and the hottie and boyfriend are the only ones left alive. The film fades to black, but it occurs to me that Marty and her beau are probably going to die. They have no food, water, shelter or anyway to communicate with the outside world and they're a thousand miles from nowhere. If this film was made today, I'd expect there to be an Attack of the Crab Monsters, Part 2 to finish the story.

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of "Piss Christ", a famous photograph of a small crucifix suspended in a glass tank of the "artist's" urine, which received critical praise and awards. It's just crap masquerading as art. Don't listen to those critics who will try to convince you there's something important about this film. There's nothing particularly interesting or intellectually stimulating about it.

Two psychopaths enjoy torturing and murdering a family of three. The director gives us false hope from time to time that the family will somehow triumph. He plays with the rules, the psychos break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience at times. He even hits the reset button and the psychos get a do over at one point. It just depressing nonsense. Don't waste your time.

This is one of my favorite films of all time. Guy Hamilton, a rookie Aussie journalist played by Gibson, is posted to Indonesia just prior to a civil war breaking out between communists and the government run by Muslim Generals and headed by Sukarno in 1965. His predecessor has left the country before he could meet with him. He has no contacts and is dead in the water until he meets photographer Billy Kwan, portrayed by Linda Hunt in an Academy Award winning performance. Kwan knows where all the bodies are buried and takes Hamilton under his wing. He introduces Hamilton to his political contacts as well as to the gorgeous Jill Bryant played by Sigourney Weaver.

Through Hamilton's eyes we see the abysmal poverty that the average Indonesian lives in while political corruption steals the people blind. Kwan is an idealist who wants to help the poor. He's adopted an Indonesian woman and her son and tries to help them, but it does no good, as we watch her boy dying slowly. Hamilton doesn't like to see his fellow Westerners use the poor, but above all he wants to succeed and advance his career.

Hamilton and Jill Bryant's relationship gets off to a slow start, but with Billy Kwan pushing them together, there's no doubt where it's headed. The on screen chemistry between Gibson and Weaver really cooks. This is a great love story layered upon an explosive historical background.

The Year of Living Dangerously has not lost any of its appeal since it first came out. Check it out.

I'm a Baby Boomer. The year this movie came out i usually went to lunch with a bunch of Millennials. They kept raving about this movie, so naturally I wanted to see it. I rented it and the wife and I sat down to watch it and be amused. After 30 minutes she said it wasn't funny and that it was just plain boring and left the room. I agreed with her, but thought it's got to get better. I hung in until the end. After it was over, I was just stupefied that all my lunch buddies, intelligent people all, could find this to be a funny movie.

For one thing, I hate comedy that tries to make you laugh by watching other people humiliate themselves. That scene where the main character makes his "speech" before the whole school is one of the most uncomfortable movie scenes that I've ever watched.

Terrible movie.

This almost plotless film is two hours of nonstop, nonsensical, pyrotechnics and violence.

Nicolas Cage plays an Army Ranger who killed a man in a fight while defending his wife. He's done his time and is going home. Unfortunately for him, he winds up on a flight home that is filled with mass murderers, serial rapists, and every other type of criminal. It's as if Ted Bundy, Hannibal Lecter, Osama bin Ladin, and the Unibomber we're all being transported on the same plane at the same time. Of course, minutes after the plane is in flight the prisoners have freed themselves and overwhelmed the guards. The remaining hour and a half of the movie is Cage cheating death and foiling the bad guy's plans at every turn.

To make matters worse, it's as if Cage decided to play his character as an Elvis impersonator. No wonder Cage's career begin to nose dive.

Saw this little ditty with my future ex-wife and friends back in '72. I liked it then and I still like it today. Sure it's corny. Many of the events are entirely predictable, but after all, that's part of the charm.

Gene Hackman is the fiery preacher who's been banished by his church to some country in Africa that he'd never heard of before, and no wonder, he seems to be at war with God. Ernest Borgnine is the ex-cop married to the ex-hooker, Stella Stevens, that he used to bust all the time so she couldn't ply her trade. I must say, she's a looker for a former street walker. Stella spends half the show in wet, white panties decades before Sigourney Weaver did in Aliens. Shelly Winters is an overweight, Jewish, former swimming champion (you just know that's gonna come up again, no pun intended) There's other celebrities from the seventies that faded away like Pamela Sue Martin and Carol Lynley. I thought Carol sang the title song, which was a minor hit, but I read on Wikipedia that they dubbed her voice. Leslie Nielsen is the ship's captain who bows to pressure from the greedy ship's owner and runs the Poseidon full speed ahead, balls-to-the-wall, which is always a recipe for disaster.

At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve the Poseidon is struck by a monstrous tidal wave and capsizes and the adventure begins, and all-in-all, it's a pretty exciting one too. Oh sure, you keep hoping the annoying little kid will drown and Carol "I Can't Swim A Stroke" Linley's whining gets annoying after a while, but it's worth a watch, especially it you are old enough to remember the early seventies.

We use to gather around the old black and white TV to watch this film and the 1938 version of "A Christmas Carol" at Christmas time. I recently purchased a digital copy of Holiday Inn and was surprised to have to read a disclaimer before the show began about the racism in it and how that the racists attitudes had been left intact to document our racist past. That made me laugh because they hypocritically accepted my money to purchase the film while decrying how awful it was. What does that say about the provider?

Anyway, I still love this show. It's beautifully shot and is perfect for setting a Christmas mood. Although the film flits from holiday to holiday, all the important moments happen at Christmas time. I like the symmetry of the movie. It opens and closes with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire dueling over winning a damsel's heart with singing vs winning with dancing. They're tied by the end of the film 1-1. Bing wins Linda Mason (Majorie Reynolds) with singing and Fred gets Lila (Virginia Dale) with dancing.

There's more than a few iconic moments; Bing singing "White Christmas " is the most famous. That song would hold numerous sales records for decades. It also became the namesake of the Holiday Inn hotel chain, of course. Fred Astaire's dancing is just amazing to watch. Marjory Reynolds was quite the hoofer too. I'm surprised she never became an A-list movie star. She had it all, looks, voice, dancing.

Anyway I highly recommend this movie.

This film's plot is as corny as Kansas. A famous magician dies but, like Houdini, vows to return from the grave. He leaves his entire estate to his long lost daughter, if she can stay in his old spooky mansion for seven days. The house is rigged with falling skeletons, cabinets that open into other rooms, and other nonsense.

The daughter is played by Connie Stevens. Most of the movie revolves around a developing romance between Stevens and costar Dean Jones. Jones is a reporter tasked to dig up a story on the magician's death and promise to return. Jones hides his true identity from the daughter, which leaves him in a tough spot when, of course, he falls in love with her.

There's a couple of jump scares, a cute bunny rabbit (magician, bunny, get it?) that keeps popping up, a mysterious locked room and lots of other haunted house cliches.

Connie Stevens was in her prime and cute as a button. I had a problem taking Dean Jones seriously. I guess I saw him in too many Disney movies.

This film was made in the mid-sixties, just before Hollywood began to push the envelope with Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, etc. Jones wore a sport coat and tie throughout, even on a carnival date. Stevens is dressed to the nines also. It's got that 60s TV vibe to it. The romance never evolves past a few smooches.

This movie isn't horrible, but I got bored with it after an hour or so. The central mystery is easily discernible well before the reveal.

Every time Harry Street (Gregory Peck) starts to light up a cigarette in this film, it seems like a beautiful woman pops out of nowhere and brazenly sticks her ciggy into the flame too. Must be nice to radiate that kind of sex appeal. Little do the ladies know, Harry has an overwhelming personality. It's so strong that his true love, Cyn (Ava Gardener), doesn't want to tell him she's pregnant because it will slow him down. You see he bounces from continent to continent looking for stories for his novels.

The story consists mostly of a series of flashbacks by Street as he lays badly wounded on a cot in Africa. He has a gangrenous leg caused by a minor wound he let fester. He is married and being tended to by a beautiful woman, played by Susan Hayward, whom he cares nothing about. In fact, near the end, he tells her "I've never really seen you before". That's because it's all been about Harry and whatever Harry wanted. For example, he thinks nothing of endangering her and two natives by maneuvering a canoe too close to a group of hippos. One of the natives is mauled and dies in the incident.

This film is a little too overly dramatic for my taste. The last 20 -30 minutes of the movie, after all the major flashbacks are done and his health takes a turn for the worst, seems to drag on and on. The director should have had Harry blow his brains out, as Hemingway did.

Alex Honnold's ascent of El Capitan, a feat which takes most climbers days to accomplish, in 3 hours and 56 minutes, with no safety net or climbing aids, other than chalk for his hands to help him grip the rock, is the most incredible sports accomplishment ever. Bob Beamon's long jump in the '68 Olympics pales in comparison. As does anything Pele, Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods ever did. Best of all he's not some pampered millionaire getting paid to do it. He did it because he loved climbing and he was willing to bet his life that he could do it. One slip and he was history.

This film captures the climb beautifully. It certainly deserved the Academy Award it won for best documentary. The final 20 minutes is heart pounding drama. They had camera men who were skilled climbers hanging off the rock to get closeups. An inspirational film that I could watch over and over.

I loved this movie. It's so much meatier than the usual tripe Hollywood dishes out these days. I applaud whoever had the guts to green light this film.

I won't pretend I understood all the the symbolism. It's the kind of movie that needs a second viewing. I did read "Sir Gawain & The Green Knight" in college, but didn't recall much about it except the beginning and the end.

This film sets up the story just like the poem, the Green Knight rides into King Arthur's court and challenges anyone to play the beheading game with him. Since none of his Knights are willing to play, Arthur is about to accept until Gawain jumps up and says he will play. Gawain lops the Green Knight's head off, but to everyone's surprise, it doesn't kill him. He picks up his head and tells Gawain to come to the Green Chapel one year to the day and he will take his stroke. The second act involves Gawain's quest to get from Camelot to the Green Chapel and the ending takes place at the Green Chapel. The movie changes the ending dramatically and, I must say, for the better, in my opinion.

This film has one scene that shocked me, that shows something I haven't seen outside of a non-xxx rated movie, it shows ejaculate. The odd thing is there's almost no nudity in the movie and the sex scenes, except for that, are pg13.

It's a beautiful movie that will get you thinking. Well worth the watch.

I was lucky enough to see the first Bond in a theatre in '62. I'd never heard of James Bond. The Bond/spy craze wouldn't take off for another 2 years with the release of Goldfinger. To me, it was an action flick.

It's still my favorite Bond movie after all these years. It had the best Bond in Connery, one of the hottest Bond babes in Ursula Andress, and one of the hottest villainesses in Zena Marshall as Miss Taro. Joseph Wiseman as Doctor No was great too.

The plot was a precursor to many of the Bond movies to come; madman has somehow secretly set up an elaborate facility with hundreds of workers from which he plans to cause world chaos. Good stuff.

This flick is silly fun. You need to watch it through your inner child's eyes and you'll have a good time. There's nothing scary about it and not that much gore.

I thought the premise was interesting; mankind is down to half a million survivors 30 years in the future due to alien invaders. The future people time travel to 2021 to recruit soldiers. What doesn't make sense is that they just just dump the new people into combat with zero training. You only have to serve for 7 days, but only 20% return and most of them are maimed.

I got a kick out of J. K. Simmons, the Farmers Insurance spokesman, playing a bearded tough guy. Without his Guardians of the Galaxy swagger, Chris Pratt seemed a little lost to me. You'd have thought Pratt would have used his recent successes to star in a better film.

You may recognize elements from Alien, The Thing, World War Z, Stargate, and lots of other sci-fi movies in this film. It's not original in any sense, but there's enough action and sappy sentimentality to make it fun to watch.