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The Deadly Spawn (1983)
An artistic triumph for John Dods
SPFX guru John Dods managed to pull off an incredibly complicated and FX-intensive film that had a budget of approx. 25K. Let that sink in.
Top notch science fiction - horror. Snag a few copies of Don Dohler's great CINEMAGIC magazine featuring John Dods' work on the film to fully appreciate the artistry of THE DEADLY SPAWN.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Hilariously pretentious and then just tedious
From arthouse to outhouse with this stinker. The problem with pretentious filmmakers is that, in their elitist mannerisms they don't realize just how phony their films are. Never-mind the hair-brained plot, the fact that all of the characters speak with the same basic inflection makes it a candidate for a creepy Body Snatchers kind of film, but alas, it's not. Just cringy and tedious.
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
A perfect science fiction film
Many of Crichton's work adapted to film like Westworld (the original movie), Jurassic Park, are very good, but The Andromeda Strain takes the cake.
This is real science fiction, folks, not some idiotic script about people flying in space with no explanation and talking about "how many parsecs it takes."
It's totally plausible, based in science fact, and absolutely riveting.
Exorcism at 60,000 Feet (2019)
Some great comedy scenes throughout with excellent comic timing from the cast
You might call it an amalgamation of Airplane and Scary Movie with the ambience of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but at the end of the day it's just a solid farcical comedy with several great performances including Bai Ling, Adrienne Barbeau (omg the dog!), Robert Miano, Lance Henrikson, Jin N. Tonic, Bill Moseley...I could go on.
The only con is that it could have been 5 to 7 minutes shorter.
Highly recommended and free on TUBI.
The Vast of Night (2019)
The Vast of Plod
It's barely a science fiction film, more like a high concept "close encounters" fantasy. But this isn't the problem.
There is virtually no tension, suspense or anything compelling about this film.
The first 35 minutes is "character introduction" wherein literally nothing happens, and when you do know the characters, you'd wished they skipped that part.
The rest of the film is a bunch of shots of people running or driving (half of which make no sense) mingled with about 30 minutes of talking heads. Monotonous exposition. They don't even bother doing flashbacks, it's just people talking on...and on.
And then suddenly it's a bunch of quick edits on stuff to make you feel excited lol. Yikes.
VFW (2019)
Fun and somewhat gorey grindhouse throwback
VFW manages to do three key things every film should do -
1)great casting
2)solid story and character development without being stupid and boring.
3)hit the target, in this case being a grindhouse homage with some great gore and decent action.
Well worth seeing.
Assassination Nation (2018)
Predictable WOKE Teen Cringefest
Mundane teen soundtrack dominates the first hour of this nonsensical pastiche of badly developed characters, ridiculous plot line and completely predictable ending. They took a basic concept and stretched it so far beyond the boundaries of sanity that in the end, it completely loses its focus and becomes yet another two dimensional indictment of stereotypical white men. If you look closely at all of the "bad guys" you will see what I mean. Get woke, get cringe.
I Am the Night (2019)
Hysterical and Historical lies + bad plotting = 2 stars
I really despise lazy writers and producers trying to virtue signal everything they do.
In the first episode we see poor Fauna Hodel subject to racial segregation in the Nevada school she attends. Only one problem: there was NO segregation in Nevada during the sixties and Jim Crow laws were FORBIDDEN as of 1959.
You see, what these liars try to do is convince of how bad things were everywhere for minorities back then, and to prove their point they just make stuff up.
Bad plotting. Fauna's grandfather knows she's coming to Los Angeles, but how the hell does he know exactly what stop she'll be at and at what exact time?
He is in Los Angeles and the bus stops in the desert, definitely very east Ca. or Nevada, and even though she is being watched, it is the 1960's and there is no way the guy could pin down the place and exact time the bus makes a ten minute pit stop. And why does he do this anyway? Makes little sense.
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
Like watching paisley paint dry
Approximately 18 hours which could have been easily cut down to a tight 12 if they ever found the editor. Apparently he fell down the inter-dimensional rabbit hole along with the plot, the characters and those ghastly 80's style effects which looks like Lynch went back in time and hired a guy who was fairly good with the first version of Adobe After Effects.
The great cinematography is destroyed by these cheap special effects, and that is only a small part of the problem.
Various dead end characters who serve no purpose other than to pad this bloated failed finale to what was a great original series.
I understand and often enjoy slowly paced films, but you can only take watching the silent expressions of two people in a car drone on for 10 minutes without any artistic reason whatsoever. Painfully boring scenes like this occurred a lot throughout this last series, and during the last few episodes I wondered if Lynch just gave up and put the thing on auto-pilot and they just made stuff up as they went along.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Tedious like an old repetitive video game
Remember when you first played Invaders or PacMan, and for a short while you enjoyed playing them over and over again, until one day you just got bored to death with the simple action? That pretty much sums up Bandersnatch. When you first start watching it, making choices for the character is amusing, but an hour or so into it, you realize that this "interactive movie" is much like PacMan in the sense that the interactivity is as limited as the outcomes they produce. The film doesn't have enough juice to stand on its own as a feature, so it is the gimmick of "choice" and "control" which should hold your interest, but it doesn't.
First Man on Mars (2016)
Funny gore and effects
It took me a while before I realized this movie is kind of a take off of 1970's b-movies mixed in with satire of current culture, and on some levels it works very well. The story is simple. Billionaire astronaut goes to Mars on a secret mission to get even richer from the "vast mineral deposits" but discovers that there's "nothing but rocks and dust." He gets infected by a gold colored spore(?) which he mistakes for real gold and ends up flying back to earth as a mutated creature. He lands in Louisiana undetected during hurricane Katrina and starts killing animals and humans of the course of several years. Local sheriff gets on the case and goes to track the monster down. There is the reference to drive in sci-fi horror films from the 50's to the 70's, like a direct take on Corman's early films like Little Shop of Horrors and Creature from the Haunted Sea. Some very funny bits too. The bar scene with the hick and the Russian model who went from Vogue magazine to working for a low grade rag called Bullets and Bimbos is deadpan funny. There is a tent massacre scene which is hysterical, and the practical effects are "spit up your coffee" level of ridiculous. Obvious miniatures and over the top gore that is more funny than gross. It is a mixture of satire on old movies and current culture like the girls in bikinis with guns craze and a few pot shots at Harry Potter thrown in for good measure. The cinematography is near perfect and captures the look of the 70's much better than "Final Girl," a movie which supposedly takes place in the 1980's but was just digital video made to look like 80's era film. Didn't work well at all. Overall I give First Man on Mars a 6 out of 10 for delivering some very funny dialog, goofy gore and achieving the retro look it was aiming for.