My Bodyguard

Director: Tony Bill
Writer: Alan Ormsby
Released: 1980
Cast: Chris Makepeace, Adam Baldwin, Matt Dillon, Martin Mull, Ruth Gordon

Masters of Horror

Directors: Mike Mendez, Dave Parker
Writers: Curtis Bowden, Mike Mendez, Dave Parker, Gary Shenk
Released: 2002
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, George A. Romero, Guillermo del Toro

The Incredible Hulk

Director: Louis Leterrier
Writer: Zak Penn
Released: 2008
Cast: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell

Rails & Ties

Director: Alison Eastwood
Writer: Micky Levy
Released: 2007
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Miles Heizer, Marin Hinkle

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

Directors: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
Released: 1996
Cast: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, Jessie Miskelly, John Mark Byers

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Director: Joseph Zito
Writer: Barney Cohen
Released: 1984
Cast: Kimberly Beck, Erich Anderson, Corey Feldman, Barbara Howard, Peter Barton, Lawrence Monoson, Joan Freeman, Crispin Glover, Alan Hayes, Judie Aronson, Camilla More, Carey More

Get Smart

Director: Peter Segal
Writers: Tom J. Astle, Matt Ember
Released: 2008
Cast: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp

Paradise Alley

Director: Sylvester Stallone
Writer: Sylvester Stallone
Released: 1978
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Lee Canalito, Armand Assante, Frank McRae, Anne Archer, Kevin Conway

STEVE says: What a load of crap this was! It looks like the Oscar nom for Rocky went right to Stallone's head because Paradise Alley was nothing if not a vanity project.

The synopsis on the back of the DVD packet reads thus: "Smooth-talking Cosmo sees his beef-cake brother Victor as their ticket out of the slums, and with brother Lenny, and embittered war veteran, convinces the big-fisted Victor to compete in a series of bone-crunching wrestling matches. But their rapid rise to success is halted when local gangster Stitch puts up his malicioius and dangerous wrestler Frankie the Thumper to fight Victor in a 22-round winner-take-all bout." While all of that does indeed happen in the movie, it's only in the last half. The first half is full of Stallone acting like a fucking numbwit asshole, exploiting Vic's size and strength, and Lenny's ability to handle the big guy. Sure, it sets us up for the whole wrestling scenario, but this should be the first 20 minutes, not the first 54.

There were some interesting bits: the relationship between Vic and Lenny had a very "Of Mice and Men" feel to it; Lenny's history with the woman Cosmo has been wooing (if his primative advances can be seen as such); Cosmo's own relationship with a prostitute; and the story of Big Glory, the "pro" wrestler at Paradise Alley. But most - if not all - of this development is wasted in the transition from Act II to Act III. Lenny is suddenly no longer the sensitive fellow he'd been set up as, turning literally from one scene to the next into a sleazy shyster; Cosmo just as inexplicably starts showing concern for Vic; the story of Big Glory is dropped, as are the plotlines involving Lenny and Cosmo's respective girlfriends.

The direction was no better than the script, with most of the characters acting like silly, cartoonish stereotypes, while the few real characters get lost in the shuffle. It would have been so much better had Stallone not shoved Cosmo in our faces, telling the story of the brothers, instead of how the brother's story is impacted by Cosmo.

1/5

George Lucas in Love

Director: Joe Nussbaum
Writers: Joe Nussbaum, Daniel Shere
Released: 1999
Cast: Martin Hynes, Lisa Jakub

STEVE says: I took this 9-minute short to a friend's house a few months back because I thought he'd get a kick out of it. He'd seen Family Guy's Blue Harvest episode and the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special (had turned me on to both, in fact), so I wanted to reciprocate by sharing one of my favorite Star Wars themed shorts.

Denied!

He had no time for a "fan-boy" movie, he told me (although he's got the entire Kevin Smith catalog, so I don't know what to make of that), and quickly turned my attention to the new Gnarls Barkley video, which I apparently had to see.

It's a shame he missed out because this is one of the better Star Wars shorts out there, along with Troops, Trooper Clerks, and possibly Thumb Wars. What's different about George Lucas in Love - and what makes it so great - is that it's not a parody. It doesn't make fun of the Star Wars universe or Lucas (well, maybe a little bit with Lucas), but uses Lucas' USC days as a backdrop for a greater story, one of a writer who's run out of ideas, and how true love inspires him to write his greatest work ever. And if that sounds suspiciously like the synopsis for Shakespeare in Love, well-spotted.

Familiar characters fill the campus at USC; prototypes for Han and Chewie, C-3PO and R2, Ben Kenobi, Yoda and Jabba the Hutt all make fleeting appearances, and it's fun to see how they fit in to young Lucas' life.

What makes this movie most remarkable is Martin Hynes' portrayal of Lucas. Nerdy and awkward, almost as if he's channeling Woody Allen, Hynes nails Lucas without making him into a punchline.

There are some issues, of course. The girl Lucas falls in love with is named Marion - the only reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and quite out of place among all the Star Wars characters. If, as it turns out, they're actually brother and sister (somehow kept apart all these years by a woman they both recognize as their mother), why not just have her named Leia. Or Leah. Or Leigh, something. And the lame reference to Howard the Duck I could have done without.

All that aside, though, I rate this one pretty high. Too bad it's longer than my friend's attention span. Maybe if there were some dick jokes...

4/5

Monkey Puzzle

Director: Mark Forstmann
Writers: Stephen Davis, Mark Forstmann
Released: 2008
Cast: Ben Geurens, Ryan Johnson, Ella Scott Lynch, Socratis Otto, Billie Rose Pritchard

STEVE says: Yeah, I didn't get it. It started off okay, with four friends - one a secret couple and the other a match-up - heading off into the woods to find the rarest of rare trees. They stop off to buy some weed and end up inadvertently inviting the connection along on their quest. Not the cheeriest of characters, this guy, so tension builds from the outset.

Tempers flare a la The Blair Witch Project sans the supernatural elements, friendships are tested and relationships strained. Then... well, then I don't know what happened, but Monkey Puzzle started to disappoint.

Maybe it's because we were expecting some sort of horror thriller like Welcome to the Jungle, or a man-vs-nature tale like The Ruins, I don't know. What we weren't expecting was a study in existentialism with a fatalistic ending. Not that I'm against studies in existentialism with fatalistic endings (note to self: re-watch Dellamorte Dellamore), but this one kind of snuck up on me.

It wasn't a bad movie by any means. It just wasn't what I was geared up for at the time.

2.5/5

Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist

Director: Paul Schrader
Writers: William Wisher, Caleb Carr
Released: 2005
Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar, Billy Crawford, Ralph Brown

About Last Night...

Director: Edward Zwick
Writers: Tim Kazurinsky, Denise DeClue
Released: 1986
Cast: Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi, Elizabeth Perkins

Sexy Beast

Director: Jonathan Glazer
Writer: Louis Mellis, David Scinto
Released: 2000
Cast: Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman,

STEVE says: Any movie that opens with a song by The Stranglers is going to get a high mark in my book. And that's good news for Sexy Beast. Not that it was a bad movie, it just didn't live up to the hype.

I realized as we started watching it that I knew nothing at all about the movie except that Ben Kingsley was in it. It's been around for eight years and all I've heard was how phenomenal Kingsley was. At what? Well, just being Kingsley, apparently. And he was, certainly. But his Kingsleyness detracted from the rest of the movie. I didn't even know Ray Winstone was in the movie, much less starred in it, such was the Kingsley-mania.

Once you get past that, the movie itself is pretty good, albeit not much more than a neo-noir thriller, a twist on the old "one-last-heist" scenario. I find myself wishing Kingsley hadn't been anywhere near it, as he overshadowed the plot - which I would have otherwise quite dug - altogether. And that's something "Peaches" can't begin to make up for.

2.5/5

Drillbit Taylor

Director: Steven Brill
Writers: Kristofor Brown, Seth Rogan
Released: 2008
Cast: Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile, Ian Roberts, Owen Wilson

Night of the Creeps

Director: Fred Dekker
Writer: Fred Dekker
Released: 1986
Cast: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow, Tom Atkins, Allan Kayser

21, dir. Robert Luketic (2008)

STEVE says:
So far this year we've had no luck with poker-cheat movies. From Lucky You to Shade, they've been boring, lame, and predictable. I don't know why we'd think a movie about blackjack cheats would be any different, but for some reason we did, and it wasn't, and we're the wiser for it. Or so we tell ourselves. It makes it easier to get through the day.

Our young hero, Ben Campbell (played by Jim Sturgess, who is so boring I was convinced he was actually Tobey Maguire) is interviewing to get into Harvard Med. While most kids grow up wanting to be cops or astronauts or something, Ben's dream as a kid was to grow up and go to Harvard. So he's not exactly career oriented. He wanted to grow up and go to school. The dean, nice guy, lets him down easy, tells him that many kids have the desire to go to Harvard, but what he's looking for is "dazzle".

That point right there, the "dazzle" bit, is where the movie let itself down. It tries to dazzle us with glitzy shots of Vegas and clever card-cheats, fails to offer anything other than the standard Vegas card-cheat story.

Ben gets involved in a card-counting ring, run by his math professor, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey doing Kevin Spacey), because he needs $300,000 to pay for Harvard in case he doesn't get the free ride he's banking on. Under Spacey's wing, Ben starts winning a lot of money, squirreling it away above the ceiling in his dorm. "We don't gamble," Spacey tells him. "We count cards." Of course Ben gets caught up in the lifestyle and starts gambling, loses it all, gets Spacey pissed at him, Laurence Fishburne out to kill him, he turns his back on his nerdy friends, but it all comes out okay in the end when Ben gets the free ride to Harvard based solely on the "dazzle" inherent in the standard card-cheat story we just watched.

Using Mr. Blonde's theory of deduction ("Either they're dead, or they're not, or the cops got 'em, or they don't."), this movie was about as easy to read as the instructions on a shampoo bottle; you don't bother reading them because how many times do you have to read "wash, rinse, repeat" before the outcome becomes inevitable.

21 reckons it's doing something different, but it's not. I've seen Vegas, and I've seen card-cheats. What else y'got?

2/5

What Happens in Vegas, dir. Tom Vaughan (2008)

NIKKI says:
It was an impulse buy, like getting a Freddo at the supermarket. You don't need a Freddo, you had no intention of buying a Freddo, but when you see it there in its shiny Crunchie-flavour-emblazoned wrapper, suddenly you've just got to have a Freddo.

What Happens in Vegas was just sitting on the counter, looking like candy. So we did it. I think the conversation went like this:

Me: "What Happens in Vegas"
Steve: "Absolutely not. But okay."

See, he was feeling it. Sugar-craving.

UH... I guess I'd better talk about the movie. Well, it was everything I expected and so much more. Predictable, tacky, slapstick-y, unrealistic, over-the-top, and entirely un-romantic. Still, I had a few hearty laughs, courtesy of Rob Corddry and Zach Galifianakis as the weird best friends.

Let's look at each of these issues individually shall we?

PREDICTABLE: Obviously, they fall in love. But this was worse. Not only did they hook up at the end, but they did so at the very place we expected, with speeches to give each other that Steve and I practically mimed along with them. I understand there are only seven stories, but you can individualise them a little, can't you? Cameron and Ashton were such carbon copies of every other romantic comedy duo that their journeys here are laid out from the start. The movie is just a by-the-numbers path to that lighthouse.

TACKY: Cameron doesn't want to eat popcorn that's flavoured with the sweat of Ashton's ball sack. That's her worst line since "I swallowed your cum!" in Vanilla Sky. And as funny as it was to see Ashton peeing in the sink, well... Ashton pees in the sink. This is the depth of these characters. I hate you because you stink and leave the toilet seat up, not because you show any sort of human complexity whatsoever.

SLAPSTICK-Y: The couple argues by throwing tomatoes at each other. They have an all-out Three Stooges-like war through NYC, pushing each other around and slipping over. It's meant to be really funny, only it isn't. And Cameron falls all over the place, which was cute when she was younger. Now, at, like, 40 or however close to that she is, kinda looks odd and pathetic.

UNREALISTIC AND OVER-THE-TOP: A judge forces the two to make something of a drunken wedding in Vegas or they lose their money? It was a drunken wedding in Vegas, why should they be expected to care at all about each other? Why not agree to separate and split the money? And then they go on to fight and bicker for the time they have to pretend to love each other where they should have just agreed to live together in some kind of harmony until the end of the agreed upon period and just split the money then. So many people read this script, and still, it got made. Boggles the mind.

ENTIRELY UN-ROMANTIC: Young and spunky Ashton works in a role like this. Older, sinewy Cameron does not. Kate Hudson maybe -- someone fresh, who should be in that phase of her career where she's falling down for a man. Cameron is way past it. And her face is so tanned that any freshness left there has disappeared behind years of Malibu-roasting. I didn't see this couple as anything but conveniently thrown together for name value. They thought we wouldn't notice Cameron being six years older than Ashton when he's married to someone nearly 15 years older than himself in "real" life. Sorry, filmmakers -- it was just as weird.

So, there you have it. A play-by-play of this film's faults. Now, to conclude, the funniest line in the movie:

Zach: "Do you even know how to drive an automatic?"

Ninety minutes of lame for that? It's like the unnecessary but exciting candy bar amid all the boring weekly groceries.

2/5

Impact Point, dir. Hayley Cloake (2008)

NIKKI says:
For a crappy TV movie about stalkers of professional volley ball players starring Brian Austin Green, this actually wasn't that bad. I mean, it was bad, but it wasn't lame bad, just slightly silly bad. We watched it because we were both tired and wrecked from a particularly horrible day. We didn't even want zombies to kick back to -- we wanted something worse. Steve wanted hard bodies, I wanted BAG who I have been enjoying since seeing him in the Terminator show. So, it was a fair trade-off. I think.

Well, BAG was good. He deserves better roles, though. Only, surprisingly, this was actually written sort of well for this sort of film. The development was actually quite good, and the twists were okay, too. Maybe we were just tired and hazy from the day? But I actually think this was an A-grade B-grade film. Has that happened before?

I'm not going to worry too much about discussing the plot, it's all very simple -- stalker at volleyball finals. Who is BAG really? Is he the reporter wanting to interview the pretty lead player? Or is he something more sinister? No wait! Is he something more sinister still!?

And who will win the volleyball?!?! And will David Silver finally deflower Donna Martin?!? Wait a minute... I joke, Brian Austin Green, because I love.

2.5/5

Brutal Massacre, dir. Stevan Mena (2007)

NIKKI says:
Almost.

It tried very hard, but it didn't quite pull off the Spinal Tap-style mocking of the horror film director giving his career one final push. The movie is a mockumentary about Harry Penderecki, who has made a string of shoddy horror films, one of which was a huge success. He hasn't had a success for a while and is back to the drawing board making Brutal Massacre, in the hopes he will be re-crowned a horror king.

But, as we all know, low-budget filmmaking comes with a range of headaches and issues. And those are made worse when the cast and crew are downright amateurs. Even the director, in this case, doesn't seem to know what he's doing. This is where the film falls down. There are so many cliches and obvious jokes that we've seen before in these sorts of films. And the comedy is far too broad with inane gags that make the characters look stupid and therfore hard to root for or really care about. And when you look at Spinal Tap, which is the touchstone for these sorts of enterprises, you absolutely adore each and every member of the band for their idiosyncracies and stupidities because of an earnestness built around them. They are developed so well, whereas the characters here are really just playing off stereotype -- naive director, dumb blonde cast members, bored casting agents, bossy ADs, bitchy producers, etc.

A few highlights, though, include every single line Brian O'Halloran speaks because I love him. And the only true Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen, as a crazy former property owner saying "motherfucker" a lot. Hilarious.

Otherwise, the film just did not know where its humour was, and became a jumbled mess of potentially interesting ideas.

2/5

How She Move, dir. Ian Igbal Rashid (2008)

NIKKI says:
And here we are again. Steve goes out for the night, and I sit down with a dance movie. They're everywhere lately. I'm barely keeping up.

So, this one has exactly the same story as all the others -- girl has something to prove to herself, her family, and those around her because of the struggles she's endured and continues to endure. And how best to do it? By dancing her ass off. If only life were so simple.

This stands apart, however, for two reasons. First, the dancing is hardcore stepping, which I don't think I've seen in one of these before. Maybe Stomp the Yard? But, still, this dancing looked and felt different. Whereas in Stomp the Yard it was about creating unity, here is seemed to be about releasing aggression. Dunno, a subtle difference? Not that I know the first thing about the intricacies of step dancing... anyway, that's how it felt to me.

Secondly, this one dealt with some fairly hefty issues like heroin abuse, and the family breakdown surrounding that. I felt early on in the film that it had something personal to say. It felt like more than a standard build to a big step-freak-out at the end. I mean, it was that, but it tried to be something else, too. I got right into Rayanne's struggle for acceptance. It might have had much to do with the lead actress being so good, and seeming so much deeper than the usual perky Step Up girls.

For me, this was a cut above as far these movies go, and while I don't understand stepping at all, I loved watching these bodies just flick and flip and pulse. How do they do that? WHY do they do that? It doesn't look like dancing. Sometimes it looks like self-exorcism. Which may just be what it is. That's where the release ideas comes in, I guess. It's most apparent when the dancers work alone, but in groups, when they're all doing the same pulsing, pumping moves, they look fucking sensational. The cheoreographers are amazing, and the dancers are just -- I can't even describe it. The timing, the discipline, the body-control -- stepping should be in the Olympics.

So, yeah... let's see if Feel the Noise can top this in a few weeks.

3/5

Steve did not view.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, dir. Don Siegel (1956)

Death Defying Acts, dir. Gillian Armstrong (2007)

Hell Ride, dir. Larry Bishop (2008)

The Fisher King, dir. Terry Gilliam (1991)

The Onion Movie, dir. XXX (2008)

NIKKI says:

One word: Cockpuncher. What's with all my favourite jokes lately featuring the word "cock"? I blame Frisky Dingo. And Will Ferrell.

Beautiful timing with this one. I was in the mood to just sit and laugh at something ridiculous, and this turned out to be perfect for that. I actually thought it had a plot, but it turned out to be sketches loosely tied together to make sort-of connections. This turned out to be a good thing, too, as with my scattered head these days, five minute segments were just what I needed.

So, the ultra-loose plot involves old news anchor Norm Archer fed up with the corporate sponsorship of the news. It's all very Network, and a bit like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, so the politics of the situation is a bit tired. Still, The Onion is funny enough that even though the jokes are old (Britney Spears' is really singing about sex, for instance), they're still funny. Norm tries to make do, but he eventually cracks and goes off at TV Land while on air.

I have to say, I was probably expecting the satire to be a bit more biting, but this felt like a strung-together series of greatest Onion hits, like the Internet outage that increased productivity all over the US; the bank robber who wanted a job instead of money, the "Area Man" with the missing socks. I guess, though, the Onion's job isn't hit my brain, but just to make me laugh at the ineptitude of the entire universe. And it does that again with this movie.

And Michael Bolton is in it.

The best Onion story ever: "A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullshit Again".

3/5