As soon as I began watching this fine little gangster flick, I knew that it was going to be a good one. Why, you ask? Oh well, let me count the ways. First off, it was directed by Abel Ferrara, the king of the depressing downer film and to have him directing a gangster film just made it all the more a joy. Second, we have the excellent cast including Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Annabella Sciorra. Third, a well written gangster film involving family, ethics, and grief as opposed to straight violence and cursing. Finally, the film opened with my favorite Billie Holiday song, "Gloomy Sunday". I love watching Ferrara's work and this cast and story accented his understanding of silence, shock, and pain. Although the ending was slightly underexplained, I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of gangster dramas, any of the cast members, or Ferrara's other work such as "King of New York" or "Bad Lieutenant".
Evil Dead 2 - Dead By Dawn (1987)
I haven't seen this one in years and as any good horror fan would, I recently picked up the letterboxed reissue. It all came back to me quickly as we see Ash (Bruce Campbell) back in a cabin with a cast of laughing demons. The character again takes on more abuse than a normal man would bear and is soon joined by some supporting victims to make this a feature. I enjoyed the first half of the movie the most with Campbell being abused by himself in the house and one can easily see where Jim Carrey got much of his inspiration. Raimi has his signature evil point of view camera shots and the effects in this are charming, cheesy, and cool. Watching this again really makes me wish that this director would stop taking huge breaks between his movies and build up a bigger library of movies for us to look forward to. I must also mention again that Bruce Campbell is probably one of the most "method" actors around and if the rumored "Spiderman" movie ever gets made, this man IS Peter Parker.
This could be the weirdest movie I have ever seen. The basic plot involves a family that is a cross between the Jetsons, the Flintstones, and the Bundys and how they deal with the father's perverted boss coming over for dinner. There is lots of slime, cool appliances, a mutant dog, Juliette Lewis singing, gore, a pervert invalid old man, and Bobcat Goldthwait not acting like an idiot. If you can find this movie and like strangeness, rent it. Some of the stars include John Glover as the happy go lucky dad, Nancy Mette as the June Cleaver-with-issues mom, Juliette Lewis as the Madonna-wanna-be alcoholic daughter, and Joshua Miller ("River's Edge", "Near Dark") as the son's bad influence, bug splatting best friend. This movie had some total originality, ultra cool production design, and you never knew what they were going to throw at you next.
A lot of critical acclaim has already been bestowed upon this indie film from a couple of years back so I am not going to go on and on about how great it is. I wouldn't anyways because although I enjoyed it very much, it was not that wonderful and was similar to many of the other twentysomething comedy dramas that occupy our video store shelves. It had the usual quirky writing, relationship problems, and comic relief moments that usually come with these films but was not anything exceptional. I thought that Catherine Keener was excellent as Amelia who has trouble dealing with the fact that her best friend Laura (Anne Heche) is tying the knot. She then goes on a quest for love and meets a guy named Bill (Kevin Corrigan) who is a film geek, video store clerk, gorehound who reminds me of me but I was assured was nothing like me. We also have Liev Schreiber ("Scream 2") as Amelia's other best friend. Enjoyable and light, this is a good one to watch when you and your mate are just kicking around the living room in your underwear. I think that is right but I was wearing jeans.
Another 80's horror movie that I has to watch again and I don't know why. Actually, I was drawn to the Fastway soundtrack and I had the name Sammi Curr in my head all day before I watched this. For those who are unfamiliar with this, Eddie (Marc Price) is a high school headbanger who worships his idol Sammi Curr. He is tormented by the jocks in high school and his only solace is his heavy metal music at home. Eddie is horrified one day when he discovers that his idol has perished in a fire so he goes to visit the local DJ, Nuke (Gene Simmons from KISS). Nuke proceeds to give Eddie Sammi Curr's last record which also happens to contain backward messages that allow Sammi to come back from the dead and wreak havoc on the town that wouldn't let him play. It is a fun rock and roll trip down memory lane for those that were into heavy music in the 80's and remember the PMRC and loser jocks in high school. Speaking of loser jocks, the lead one is played by Doug Savant (Matt from "Melrose Place") and he is quite good at it. There are also cameos from Ozzy Osbourne and director Charles Martin Smith. Finally, Marc Price was Skippy in "Family Ties" for those that ever watched that show.
The Love-Thrill-Murders (1971)
I started this once and turned it off. I started it again, watched the whole thing and wished I had turned it off. This is a pointless film with nothing going for it. A blatant Manson inspired film takes the character of Moon (Troy Donahue), a cult leader who recruits young women who believe he is Jesus Christ. He then sets up a "party" at a pregnant movie actress' house whose director husband is away... yadda, yadda, yadda. This was a dumb movie. I hate to use that type of word but there really is no other word for it unless it is a synonym for dumb. "Dumb" seems to sum it up the best though. An hour of sex and drug taking followed by 15 minutes of bloody murder is simply not my cup of tea. An attempt at some sort of plot or character sympathy would have been nice. I really hate to give a Troma movie a bad review but this one is OK because it was made in the seventies before Troma was the Troma it is today. In fact, I think they probably just picked this up an re-released it. God only knows why.
This is one of the infamous gore classics of the late 70's/early 80's starring Ian McCulloch who made another splat in Lucio Fulci's much better "Zombie". We have a few people going to a remote island to investigate the root of a slew of hospital mutilations and cannibalistic activity in New York. Naturally, they run into some cannibals pretty quick but there is a twist. The cannibals are terrified of the zombies that Dr. Butcher in creating in his little shack elsewhere on the island. Our heros need to try and escape the clutches of the zombies, the cannibals, and the sadistic mind of Dr. Butcher and his twisted experiments. We are shown in detail scenes of flesh munching, impalings, lobotomies, and other types of graphic entrail antics. This was better than many of the spaghetti splatter movies but be careful that you get the uncut version for full effect or else it would be pretty boring. Also known as "Zombi Holocaust".
I wasn't too keen on this when it first came out but it was hard to be when you are looking at it as the follow-up to "Aliens". I tried it again with a different perspective in that I tried to pretend that it wasn't even part of the "Alien" series. You know what? It worked and this was actually a pretty cool sci-fi actioneer on second glance. You can see director David Fincher was developing his dark and plot/character driven style well before "Seven" and "The Game" were released and what the end result brings us is a creepy and bleak film with no heroes and no hope. I liked it. Sigourney Weaver stars as Lt. Ellen Ripley who is rescued and brought to a forgotten prison colony where there are no other women. She has an alien inside of her and there is also one running around the colony picking off prisoners from time to time. Co-stars include Charles S. Dutton ("Mimic") and Pete Postlethwaite ("The Usual Suspects"). For those of you who hate this movie, see it again in a different way. You might just change your mind.
I thought this would be an interesting little departure as I have not seen an old war movie in quite some time. This one was a little different in that it had WW2's most decorated war hero playing himself in this biopic. The hero in question is Audie Murphy and he is a likeable chap who quickly moves up through the ranks due to his stunning acts of bravery and his desire to do so. We see Murphy from his childhood through the war to his impairing injury which forced him to give up his career (and start acting I guess). I was entertained even though it was four in the morning and I really liked this guy. One of the more notable co-stars is Denver Pyle (Uncle Jesse from "The Dukes of Hazzard").
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