Judas and the Black Messiah

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons

Synopsis: Darius from Atlanta fucked up.

Review: Why did I stop writing nonsensical movie reviews on here for every movie I watch even if they don't relate to the movie and make no sense?

I dunno, good question.

Judas and the Black Messiah gets 5 out of 5.

Biggest Positive: I learned another heart breaking piece of U.S. history which I was only vaguely aware of.

Biggest Negative: I learned another heart breaking piece of U.S. history which I was only vaguely aware of.

Trivia: To prepare for the role, LaKeith actually travelled through time to infiltrate the real Black Panthers of the time.

Rating: 5/5

Requiem For A Dream

Cast: Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly 

Synopsis: Drugs. Something about drugs. 

Review: Having seen this film I realize that what I love most of all about Jared Leto is the fact that any film I've ever seen him in at some point ends up with him being fucked over severely, beaten to hell or viciously slaughtered with a hand axe. 

In Short: That review wasn't short enough for you?

"I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the heroin that you have stolen."

Biggest Positive: I think I already went over the whole "Jared Leto gets fucked" thing.

Biggest Negative: I have seen more of Jennifer Connelly than I ever needed to see... 

Trivia: This film was a 5 minute short film until they pulled an arty-director out to fill the film with weird close-ups of eyeballs and bizarre imagery that doesn't make sense. 

Requiem For A Dream's Website - (it really is it's site, even though initially it might look like spam)

Duck

Cast: Philip Baker Hall, Larry Cedar, Various Ducks, That guy from "Third Rock From The Sun" with the squinty eyes. 

Synopsis:Oh, a tale about a duck who mistakes some old dude for his mother? Perfect! 

Review: This film is very dual-themed. On one hand we have the lonely tale, which many of us will have to confront near the end of our lives, of an old man who's family has all slipped away and left him behind to face a cruel unforgiving world on his own. 

On the other hand there's a cute little duckling going "peep peep peep!"!!! 

On one hand we're faced with the enormous reality that most people on this Earth, even those supposedly designated to "help" (Such as the Fire Brigade, Recycling Plant Operators, Police) are sadly unwilling, whether purposefully or not, to see the help that the people around them, the animals on this planet and the environment around them so desperately need from each and every one of is. A grim reminder that our destruction of this planet isn't some distant-future scenario but something which is happening in the here and now that all of us, in some small way can help change for the better. 

On the other hand, did you see the way that duck tilted it's head to the side and then shook it's little behindus!?!?! 

On one hand we are forced to realize that the only people with pure and deep intent, and indeed the only people who truly put the human in "humane" (Too cheesy?) are alas, those of us who have felt true suffering and faced up to it. This film, simple though it was, made me fully appreciate the Buddhist Noble Truth: "Life Is Suffering" or the Arthur Schopenhauer line "Life Without Pain Has No Meaning". Before watching this film I truly felt that philosophies which dealt with the pain of life in general were truly cynical and nothing more but now I appreciate those sentiments on a new level, realizing that life is suffering and it is full of pain if anything is to come of it. Have you ever, for instance, met someone who has seemingly had nothing bad ever happen? Chances are they haven't evaded all the hard times that come so naturally to human existence but instead have not faced up to that pain and hardship and therefor have chosen not to suffer. If you chose not to suffer you will never truly feel the pain and will spend your entire existence running scared and cowering from it but if you face up to it you can truly see life for what it is - something which, although perhaps not usually, can be the most majestic and beautiful of gifts that could ever be given (If you believe we were "given" life by anyone). That seems to be why, with very few exceptions, in my opinion the greatest minds ever known to mankind, the greatest humanitarians to live today or in the past and indeed the people most likely on a day to day basis who truly seem to think clearly and have clear unobstructed views and opinions on the world around them are those of us who have known, and faced up to at least to some extent, true suffering. 

On the other hand, that duck is pooping right in the toilet!!! OMFG lol! 

In Short: A film of many contrasts and conflicts the most surprising of which is that the guy from Third Rock From The Sun actually has his eyes open. 

Biggest Positive: Ducks! 

Biggest Negative: Life... MovieFone site for "Duck" Trivia: Quack!

Home Made

Cast: Jason Impey


Synopsis: A notorious film maker is striving to make the ultimate snuff film by killing a bunch of random people.


Review: What in the world was this film doing on a DVD collection of horror films I recently purchased? I mean, kudos to the film-maker. Not only does it seem like a fairly reasonable film of practice shots that I'm sure will serve him well if he ever makes a proper production, and fair play to him for managing to get it on any sort of official release in a foreign country (The film is from the U.K. and I'm in the U.S.) but really, this served as little more than inspiration for me to go out and make a horror film since apparently you can just film a bunch of people walking endlessly before eventually meeting their not-so-gory end in some fairly unrealistic death scenes, followed by another person walking endlessly before dying in a similar boring fashion and have it pass as a releasable work of art.


In Short: ...


Biggest Positive: The director must feel pretty fucking sweet that this got released


Biggest Negative: I don't.


Jason Impey's Website - he's the director and also plays the director in the film he directed about a director.


Trivia: Unlike other films I've given poor reviews to I might feel a pang of guilt of the director reads this...

Summer Of Sam

Cast: John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino, Michael Badalucco and a hundred other people. 

  Synopsis: In the summer of '77 New York City was plagued by the notorious killer known as "The Son Of Sam" who targetted young girls and couples in their cars with a .44 caliber pistol. Meanwhile, a bunch of things happened in the city which had no relevance whatsoever to the killings. 

  Review: This was an excellent look at the lives of a group of Italian-Americans living in New York City during the summer of 1977, the same summer in which David Berkowitz (The Son Of Sam) shot and killed at least 6 people. The film seems to try to get an everyday view on how the killings affected the regular people of New York City as Leguizamo's character goes from almost falling victim to the killer, to not giving a shit about the killer, to throwing a temper tantrum out a window at the killer (Who isn't outside the window at the time, or ever), to not giving a shit about the killer again, to forgetting that the film is supposedly about a killer for a good portion of the film, to becoming convinced by his wannabe Mafia type buddies that they know the killer and going on a viginlante hunting mission, to finally not giving a shit about the killer again. A visually impressive film, no doubt and the story of Vinny and his buddies as they come to terms with Adrian Brody's ridiculous British accent is indeed a compelling and intriguing tale however aside from the occasional mention or fleeting conversation it bares no relevance to the killer who, it would have been implied by the title of the movie, the film is seemingly about. Yes, there are glimpses into the killer's life but at no point do they cross paths with Leguizamo. 

  In Short: If all the moments in this film that bared no relevance to the Son Of Sam were removed it probably would have been a reasonable 90 minutes long but Spike Lee being Spike Lee it was instead a sixteen hour epic. 

Biggest Positive: After watching this you can make any regular household activity, like watering the lawn, seem amazing by pretending an epic Who song is playing in the background and Spike Lee is directing it by doing things like giving off-center closeups of the water spraying and bouncing in slow motion off the plants and making nauseating camera motion shots of the background slipping away and spinning while you stand stationary. 

  Biggest Negative: Jon Lovitz should have played the Son Of Sam, and done him in a comical slap-stick style. IMDb page 

  Trivia: Leguizama only agreed to do this film on the condition that Spike Lee release his wife and kids unharmed.

 

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connolly 

Synopsis: An alien named Klaatu arrives on Earth spreading good will and cheer to all it's citizens until he realizes we're a bunch of assholes who deserve to die (Roughly two seconds after landing). Jennifer Connolly acts overly concerned about everything as per usual. 

Review: All I'm going to say is that I shouldn't have listened to a single review I read about this film. All I heard about it was that firstly, it was too preachy and went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how much we're polluting and being evil to the world around us and it got glib and secondly, that the flying bug things were inconsistent - one minute rampaging through whole buildings and the next taking a tense amount of time to shatter glass. That second point seemed moot to me even reading reviews since this is sci-fi and if there wasn't gaping holes and inconsistencies it wouldn't be authentic but I assumed that either the reviewer was broken or that it was really bad in this film. However these are lies! The film is in no way too preachy. It's message that "If the Earth dies, we die. If we die, the Earth lives." is, in my opinion, a basic fact. Whether we're going to choke the planet and most of the life on it to death in our lifetime or the next or the one after that is debatable but it's obvious we can't keep pumping shit into the air and water left and right without it damaging the Earth and we already see the effects of deforestation and pollution in the world today so frankly anyone who thought a film that had maybe three pieces of dialogue referring to how much of a bunch of scum-sucking fuck-cunts we all are for not giving a flying fuck about the world around us is "too preachy" can fuck off and die. What I translate these reviewers as saying is "I got uncomfortable with someone pointing out that we really do suck and probably should die to save the rest of the animals". And the second point is less relevant. The reviewers who said this were being doubly broken because throughout the film when the stupid flying bug things (Which in themselves don't make much sense anyway so who cares if one thing they do is a little off?) tear through whole buildings in a second when there is a whole swarm of them and take ages to get through glass when there are so few of them that you can't even see them. I thought personally it was obvious being that when one was happening you could see stuff and when the other was happening you couldn't. I think that was a tricky way the film-makers went about making it blatantly fucking obvious what was going on and not being "inconsistent" like the foagy assed reviewers who all got up in this film's face about flaws in logic and preachy dialogue seem to believe, probably because they drive hummers to work and get free hand-outs and hand-jobs from rival studios who want to see Keanu Reeves fail! Fuck you reviewers who hated this film! Fuck you all! Having said all that, the film was kind of shitty - but not for the reasons anyone else said. 

  In Short: Watch this film with Al Gore and see if he thinks it's too preachy. 

  Biggest Positive: The slight change in Klaatu's demeanour from the original into being a fairly well-informed alien who doesn't get overwhelmed with compassion towards the human race in the way the original teatered on doing. 

  Biggest Negative: A film with Jennifer Connolly and no David Bowie is no film at all. 

  The Day The Earth Stood Still's preachy inconsistent website 

  Trivia: Keanu Reeves modelled his performance in this film after a maniquin he saw in a Gap store front. To see my review of the original 1951 version: The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) And here's a pre-Review I did on my YouTube account before the film was released in cinemas:

Burn After Reading

Cast: Everyone

Synopsis: I'm really not sure what happens in this film in spite of watching it in it's entirity only a few short hours ago...

Review: George Clooney's nuts and takes his shirt off, Brad Pitt's a crazy guy who, in spite of looking like a total douch-bag and dork-face, still looks hot, Frances MacDormand is quirky and says things like "Oh for Pete's sake!", John Malkovich gets all frustrated and swears at people (While in a floral dressing gown, holding a gun in one hand and a shot of liquor in the other), Tilda Swinton plays a stuck up bitch and J.K. Simmons once again plays an angry guy with a desk job.

What more could you need in a movie?

An automated sex dildo swing chair?

Done!

The perfect movie...

In Short: This review was already short...

Biggest Positive: Doesn't stop to let you cease being entertained from start to finish

Biggest Negative: I'll probably forget it existed and confuse it with a bunch of Wes Anderson and Spike Jonez films after a couple of months

Burn After Reading's Website

Trivia: I was going to see this at the cinema when it came out but when I read my ticket stub I burned it afterwards (obviously), and so was refused entry.
I set fire to the DVD Sleeve when it arrived in the mail today but fortunately my wife wrestled the DVD itself into the player before I had a chance to read the cover.
My attempts at setting fire to my TV screen were fruitless.

The Last House On The Left (2009)

Cast: Garret Dillahunt, Sara Paxton, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn

Synopsis: When the recently crumbled and bought-over movie studio New Line ended up cold and alone and without a hope for a future, Hollywood decided to ambush it in the woods! First they turned to something they owned but didn't create - Friday the 13th. They took Jason and they destroyed him utterly. Then they turned their sites on destroying one of New Line's shining stars, Wes Craven's babies - The Last House On The Left. They took The Last House On The Left and savagely raped it repeatadly in the woods and told it to fondle A Nightmare On Elm Street's breasts and piss it's pants. It promptly did so and once it was at it's lowest point, Hollywood remade Last House On The Left and turned it into a pile of excrement...

In it's dying breath, Last House On The Left fell to the ground, clawing at the dirt and croakily screamed to Nightmare On Elm Street - "Run! Don't... let... them... remake... you... too!".

And with that - The Last House On the Left was destroyed...

Review: I don't know why we feel compelled to go to the cinema to see movies like this when there were perfectly good movies like... well, I guess Watchmen is the best one out just now but hell, I bet Miss March would be in many ways a superior film to this.

It wasn't a bad film really but you have to remember that it's basically starting from a very low point given that it's a god-damned unnecessary remake (again!) so that automatically sets it at a negative score right now...

It wasn't nearly (even remotely close) as gritty and almost snuff-like as the original but that was to be expected... perhaps though it was expected too much by some members of the audience who seemed to be appalled when the rape sequence began. I mean, did they think it was just going to be left out altogether? Perhaps they were (more likely) too young to have even seen the original and have parents too dumb to realize they shouldn't even be seeing a watered down remake of Last House On the Left.

Anyway, the rape scene began and so many people left the theater that it made me want to spin round in circles and laugh! My wife pointed out all the "evacuees"; but I surmised eventually that they probably just had to pee or get snacks and chose the awkward scene to do it in.

But then out of the ten or thereabouts that left only a couple seemed to return to the theater...

I guess people generally don't want to sit and watch a girl get forcibly fucked in the ass.
At least not in a room full of strangers anyway, that's awkward!

The film has promise but falls way short of being either as gritty as the original or able to be a mainstream "re-imagining" and popularized version of the it. Instead it is some sort of middle ground for lazy people who can't be bothered to locate a copy of the original.

There's too much cutting between "shaky-cam" and regular camera work too and the shaky-cam is extremely forced, you can tell someone's trying to make it seem cheap and nasty but failing, since you can tell they're trying.

In Short: A decent enough, watchable film but a few too many attempts at arty shots and close ups of girls panties - done in a way that makes you feel like the director thought that's all you had to do to make a film dirty and raw.

Biggest Positive: It stayed fairly true to the original film, a lot more than it could have and a lot more than many remakes do.

Biggest Negative: The original wasn't that good to begin with so they were pretty much fucked from the get-go.



Trivia: In order to fully experience this film in the best possible way pick up a pair of the super-special dark 3D glasses on the way in and put them on right away so no-one can tell you're taking a nap!

Disturbing Behavior

Cast: James Marsden, Katie Holmes, Tobias Mehler, William Sadler

Synopsis: In Disturbing Behavior we follow Cyclops from the X-men (I'm telling you that so you don't spend the entire movie thinking "Where do I recognize that chin from?" like I did) as he moves to Cradle Bay Island where John Connor (From Terminator 3, so not the real John Connor from Terminator 2 or the really fucking angry, unprofessional, "ADEDADEDA" John Connor from Terminator 4) is the resident weirdo along with Katie Holmes (prior to her reprogramming by Tom Cruise) and everyone else is some sort of whacked out zombie frat boy.

Spoiler Alert: You're reading a review of a film I've seen. I'm going to talk about that film and therefor will talk about things that happen in it. Therefor, spoilers will lay ahead. Big ones. With sharp teeth.

Review: This film is a deep exploration of the isolation felt not only by "the new kid in town" (Cyclops) but also by the outcasts of society (Pre-Cyborg Holmes and Reject-Connor) when the popular kids begin to lure the underclass into their midst with temptations of such wonders as blue sweaters and... stuff? Anyway turns out the whole thing os being carefully orchestrated by the football coach or something, using mind controlling drugs to alter kids perceptions and get them to do their bidding. It's a brilliant take on society with the coach representing all authority figures who constantly barrage our modern society with their controller devices. The drugs in this case are a metaphor for the educational vices that most of us grow up in school being forced to accept in order to fit into the norms of society, in this case represented by the mysterious frat-boy zombie types and as demonstrated by Reject-Connor when he finally submits and joins the frat boys. We are forced to believe, by our preconceptions of society and how we believe it is that Reject-Connor will eventually turn around and be as he was but the fact that he does not is representative not of some deep evil force controlling our minds but merely of growing up.
The film is littered with subtle, hard to catch, references to such pieces of work as Clockwork Orange, 1984 and Slaughterhouse 5, as well as social references to a soviet-era Russia.
It may take you a couple of watches to really get how deep this film was but believe me it's absolutely worth at least 3 or 4 views to really catch all the subtleties through...

Oh who the fuck am I kidding?

This film was a filthy piece of 90's era Scream-Wannabe trash littered with shit alterna-rock, stereotypical teenage characters you want to choke and the worst acting I've ever seen a man with such a prominent chin ever perform.

ONE SMILEY!



Here's The Gay Ass Website

The Man Who Sued God

This film I've been meaning to see since it came out but hadn't gotten around to it until last night. The reason it took so long, I think, is because I had basically all but lost hope in films starring Billy Connolly. Not that he's not funny, quite the opposite in fact, I think he's an extremely funny comedian but no film that I had seen to date truly made his character even remotely as funny as the man himself (A few films had him play roles well and very well - A Series Of Unfortunate Events, Fido, Who Is Cletis Tout? - but just not any roles as funny as he is) and others, such as Beautiful Joe, seemed to believe that by just having him present they didn't need to worry about having a funny script because he was there, which obviously isn't the case when someone is acting out your script. You need to have a script written to match the comedian.

So I was hesitant to see The Man Who Sued God perhaps because I expected it to be really lame and have Billy's character be another waste of a great talent but fortunately enough, I was wrong - The Man Who Sued God makes perfect use of Billy and is (almost) as funny as his stand-up routine for at least 50% of the movie and I realized what made his character better in this film...

Billy was pissed off!

In other films he had been complaisant, quaint, quirky but in this he rants, swears, shouts and screams just as much as his better stand up routines therefor making this film a much more compelling view than most of his films - if you're looking for Billy himself to be funny that is.

The only flaw, as far as I can see, is that it's a relatively dull plot and extremely predictable. You know right from the start that the ending is going to be a good one and the only challenge we have is trying to work out how it's going to get there and what amusing obstacles might stand in the way of our angry hero. Call me "weird" if you must, but I think I just prefer watching a film that you don't know is going to end up good or bad and leaves you a little tense. Unfortunately I suppose most comedies don't really do that which is probably why I spend much more of my time watching horror films that are probably 50/50 in how often they have happy endings.

I also think the love story could have been completely dropped from the movie without doing it any harm. No-one needs to see Billy Connolly do a full on open-mouthed kiss with anyone at anytime and expect to keep their lunch.

Sorry Billy!



The Man Who Sued God's NetFlix page - you can actually watch this online for no charge if you already have a NetFlix account if you go to that link before the 31st of December. Hurry!

Next

If I wanted to see a dumb movie that should have been an episode of "Fringe" at best or a creepy science fiction thriller at worst but instead was turned into a cheesy action flick starring Julianne Moore as a unconvincingly harsh FBI Agent and Nicolas Cage as a balding has-been who creeps on the younger ladies (It was quite the stretch for Mr. Cage to play that role let me tell you!) then... well I guess I'd watch this movie again...In Next a bunch of stuff happens but then Nicolas Cage sees it's going to happen and stops it happening so it doesn't happen anymore. He doesn't see himself fixing it though until he does, then when he does, if he doesn't like the way things turned out he can not do it that way too...

An interesting directorial note for this movie; At any point in the movie in which Nicolas Cage is in a scene, if you skip ahead two minutes and keep doing that over and over, you'll find you're at the end of the movie and you just saved yourself 96 minutes of wasted time watching an inane waste of cinema reel.



Next Movie Website

Ocean's Eleven

Remember when people said things like "Did you know they're making a sequel to Ocean's Eleven?... it's called Ocean's Twelve!" as a joke?

It was funny! Get it? Because "eleven" is just part of the title and not a number indicating the film's part in a series? GET IT? Hilarity!

And then remember how they went ahead and made the sequel and went and called it Ocean's Twelve... like they were in on the joke?

Was George Clooney just trying to mess with our heads?

That's all.

The Happening

If you don't want to know anything about The Happening, then why in the name of God are you reading a review of it? Hop off!
The Happening (Winner of the "Vaguest Movie Title Since 'The Thing'" Award), for those of you who were living in a sensory deprivation chamber throughout the earlier part of the year, is the most recent offering from visionary wank-fart M. Night Shyamalan. Of course it's filled with social points, surprising performances from actors you previously discounted as being completely cardboard and of course the mandatory unnecessarily uncomfortable close ups of frustrated looking people.
That's pretty much par for the course in an M. Night film.

What's different is that this one was rated "R"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!!!!one!!!!!! OMG U guyz!

The trailer and pre-release press were very aptly set up in a way to make people watching think "Oh my God, what if the things happening in The Happening really happininged?"!
Such is the way with semi-epic "Oh Gosh, what if something slightly weird, but not too chaotic, happens?" films.

In this film Mark Wahlberg's character (who should have been played by William H. Macy in order to make this film about 523 times less douchey) is a school teacher (See? Why is Wahlberg teaching children things? Truly this is a work of horror beyond compare...) and soon becomes aware that trees are communicating with grass and sunflowers and telling them to send out magical "Take 4 steps backwards then kill yourself" beams to all the humans in the vicinity.

"I can't stop furrowing my brows any more than you can stop looking all 'indie', dear"

A truly magnificently terrifying concept that Mr. Shyamalan has presented us with. If plants could make us all take 4 steps backwards and kill ourselves what would happen, man? Good God! It would truly be The Happening!

Yeah, unfortunately the whole concept of plants being able to release some sort of spore into the air that evokes the exact same reaction in every single one of the highly developed Homo Sapien psyche's it encounters is about as likely as M. Night Shyamalan's next movie not trying to mess with your head in one way or another.

Yes, bees are disappearing and yes, if we're to believe the crazy cross eyed weirdo in the movie, plants can emit some sort of spore that attracts a very specific wasp to deter a very specific caterpillar when it feels threatened by it's presence - but these things are insects.

Did you know that there are parasites that can completely envelope ants, snails and spiders minds and have them do their bidding? Turning them into effective "zombies"?
It's true! But there's a very good reason why no-one with half a brain created a movie in which those very same parasites were responsible for a zombie outbreak and it's because it doesn't make sense. There's a huge difference between controlling, distorting or completely destroying the mind of one of the most simple and low functioning creatures on the planet and being able to control the mind of any mammal, never mind the human brain.
Don't get all environmental on me!
The Human brain would be far less susceptible to any sort of mind controlling spores, even in as simple a way as we have communication and understanding to get us through such crises.

It's not like a movie couldn't exist where weird spores were affecting us in some way... why not make the spores just make people go a little nuts? Sure, suicide rate is up but everyone isn't killing themselves in exactly the same damn way!
That doesn't make any sense!
You could have murder rates up... people pressing their own eyeballs out through their noses, people hallucinating that their long deceased ancestor is talking to them through their bathroom mirror beckoning them to kill every pet Pug in the neighborhood, people stapling pancakes to peoples heads... a whole manner of messed up shit happening! People going nuts in their own little ways all over the place creating chaos!

But instead we have a bunch of people calmly stepping off buildings and Mark Wahlberg looking like he's on the verge of a very minor breakdown, from which he will only recover with a huge dose of Chamomile tea.

Screw this film, M. Night, your next one had better be about 100 times better.

(It wasn't that bad actually, just unrealistic... unlike Unbreakable, that made perfect sense!)



The Happening Movie Site

NOTE: To see how this film should have gone down, watch The Signal, which I reviewed a couple of posts back...

The Butterfly Effect

We recently had the good fortune to find The Butterfly Effect for $1 on VHS on the bargain racks at a Video Store recently...


... a movie which is easily worth at least one and a half times that amount! Score!

The Butterfly Effect is a movie I've seen a few times and is by far one of the best time-travel based movies there is (Just below Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure! Of course!), and easily one of the ones with the least time-travelling plot holes that most fall prey to. Coupled with the fact that Ashton Kutcher is the lead role who had, until then, mainly played "the goofy stoner kid" in anything else he was in made for interesting viewing given that he made an awesome performance in this. You hear that Ashton? Awesome! Where are you now? Stop playing dumbass pranks on celebrities and trying to produce failed attempts at sit-coms and get back to acting in slightly edgy films, dude! Duuuuuuuuuuuude! Saaaweeeeeeeeeeet!

So, Butterfly Effect = Awesome! All the way through until the VHS tape gets to the end...

It's then I remember that the version I've seen countless times was the Director's Cut in which (SPOILERS AHEAD) Ashton's character realizes that in the end it is inevitable that no matter what he does he is going to fuck things up for someone in some way and so he watches the home video reel of his mother giving birth and goes back to then when he was still in the womb and strangles himself with the umbilical cord! Awesome! Thus, he never is born and the girl he loves never decides to hang around in that shitty town to get abused, the brother isn't hanging out with them to fuck things up by blowing up a baby and making Lenny crazy and his mother probably doesn't go chain-smoking because she doesn't get her hopes up with a surviving baby (Also something left out was all the still-births his mother had before Ashton's character's birth, though I think that was a deleted scene that didn't even make it to the director's cut! For shame! It implied that there had been many other time-traveling stoner kids before Ashton's character who had all come to the same conclusion that they had to kill themselves before they were born! Extra awesome? I thought so).
Instead the version we bought (Which I call the "shit-assed version") ends with him just going back and not killing himself but still managing to fix everything and make everything perfect and thus destroying any point that the film might have made about inevitability and the dangers of changing things in the past to change the present. Instead we end with an ending in which Ashton's character has potentially perfected everything, instead of fucking up everything, which is exactly how the movie should have ended... and it did! In the director's eyes...

"I swear! I didn't know we bought the version with the lame ending, Lenny!"

It was still enjoyable. Funny, exciting, at times disturbing. But all in all, I think if I had seen this ending first, I wouldn't have remembered The Butterfly Effect as being such an awesome movie all these years...

Still, I think I give it 4/5 all the same:



The Butterfly Effect - Apple Movie Site

The Signal

Who doesn't like movies about fucked up shit happening because of weird telepathic, radioactive, mind controlling hypno-signals coming through the T.V.?
Well, a lot of people... probably why this film wasn't terribly popular as far as I know but it should have been! And it's popular in my book, gosh darn it!


Anyway, the film is split into three parts (It also has three directors - coincidence? Or a sign of something more sinister?) each of which deals with, firstly the fact that a strange transmission is coming through all T.V.s, telephones and radios that is somehow driving everyone who watches or listens to it crazy but mostly following the steps of a young woman named... uh... I forgot her name... whoever! Who is being pursued by her enraged husband Lewis and her secret lover Ben both of whom have different degrees of "the crazy" from watching the strange broadcast.

This film is excellently done, each director manages to get you to really see how every single character genuinely thinks they're the sane ones and everyone else went nuts and then quickly switching it up and reminding you that "Oh! That guy's crazy too, I forgot he likes to spray rat poison in people's mouths! Silly me!".

Point is, excellent movie, excellent point, excellent acting, excellent excelsiur, excellent overall.

Definitely see this one if you like movies about people going nuts and talking to severed heads.


Do You Have The Crazy? - Official "The Signal" website

The Reaping

Don't read this review if you haven't seen The Reaping! It contains spoilers...



You see, ladies and gentlemen The Reaping has (drum roll, please) a twist ending!!!

Whatever will they think of next? A huge twist at the end that flips the whole film on it's head! How brilliant and original...
That was a little sacastic...
Don't get me wrong, a film has to have some surprises at the end, otherwise it just sort of fizzles out but I am absolutely sick of endings that make you are supposed to make you think "Oh! I'm sooooo shocked! What brilliant innovative wonderously sexy masterpiece of a director made this film? I must know so I can offer myself to him sexually", but alas most twist endings are forced and entirely and completely unnecessary.

This film did not need a twist! (Here come the spoilers), if the silly little bitch at the end had turned out to be Satan as was implied and flat-out said all throughout the film and was just playing a vicious Satan-like trick on the silly cynical cow that starred in this pile of tripe, all would have been good!
Hilary Skank would have then slaughtered an entire innocent village and fled with the child of Satan into Safety! Brilliant!
But, oh no, she has to go and discover the truth that the whole village is evil and in fact God has been punishing them with these plagues and they weren't coming from the little girl... wah wah wah...

If that's the case though, and it was God who was doing all the big magic plague shit, then why did "God" decide to let that priest who was trying to help Skank explode to death in a rather unnatural fireball? That made sense when you thought Satan was up to his old tricks but God wouldn't have done that would he? Maybe God lost his shit for a moment there and forgot how the film was going to end...

I don't know...

I do know this film wasn't as good as it should have been



The Reaping's Website

Shutter (2008)

Not that many people read these reviews but just on the off-chance that someone out there is checking regularly with a plan to off themselves should my outlandishly pointless movie reviews ever ends I thought I should make it my duty to inform the world that for the next 2 weeks I most likely won't be making any reviews as I have family visiting from Scotland and frankly I'm not going to be bothered with logging in and typing random nonsense about films no-one gives a shit about.

I'm not sure the world-wide-internetwebs will survive my absence and when I return I will no doubt be returning to a blackened charred hollowed out shell where once my blog lay in all it's glory. I'll lift my head to the sky and scream for answers but none will come.
I will turn to the dark side (Yahoo!) for answers but where the might Y! once stood so strong and proud, looming over the web with a bright red (or purple) tempting light, trying to draw the droves of people away from the Google empire, there will be nothing.

All "social networking" sites will have crumbled into obscurity and people will be doing weird things like letting people know what they're up to in person and leaving the house.

Yes sirree it will be a dark dark day for mankind...

But on my arrival back, in two weeks, surely a glimmer of hope will be awakened in the masses and gradually and painstakingly we'll all find a way to rebuild the web and make Google mighty again!

Oh yeah, Shutter was a mediocre American remake of a fairly decent Japanese horror film (I couldn't believe someone came up with the brilliant idea of remaking a film either! I mean, remake, brilliant!). It was fairly pointless and followed exactly the same plot as the Japanese one with very little added, changed or taken away except that it had some guy from Dawson's Creek in it and a weird man with an unusually large forehead. In it some people went "blah blah blah" while scary things apparently happened.

The end...

Face/Off

Basically what happens in Face/Off, for those of you who are unaware, John Travolta steals Nicolas Cage's face. The reasons for this are obvious, you see, Nicolas Cage is a terrorist (A true movie terrorist, who seems to have no motive or reason and just enjoys blowing things up and killing people) and the only way to get answers about where the big scary bomb is, is to steal his face and talk to his brother! Obviously waterboarding, electrocuting and pistol whipping suspects wasn't quite as popular back then... in fact I wonder how Mr. Travolta's anti-terror unit functioned since I'm not sure I saw them even try and question their suspect before they resorted to complicated, dangerous and fairly implausible surgery to get their answers.

This all essentially leads up to a random scene where a bunch of guys get wasted and just keep saying "Face.... off!" over and over again. To me, it seemed like just a little bit of "Movie Masturbation" (A term I think I just invented, thank you!), essentially to give the guys down at Crap Trailers Inc. something to work with.

At the beginning of the movie you may wonder to yourself why it seems like Nicolas Cage is seemingly trying to act, something very rarely seen from him and with good reason, and why John Travolta isn't being a loud-mouthed obnoxious fuck-hole as usual but it becomes apparent that they sort of had to try and be one another at first since they both had to swap places for most of the film.

If you haven't seen Face Off some of your well intentioned, booze hound friends may tell you this movie is "Worth a watch at least" or worse still, "Good for a laugh" but believe me when I tell you that you should fuck them in the earhole and run a mile before they can catch up with a copy of it on DVD. Seriously, what kind of fucking maniacal sadist makes a movie like Face Off? And on top of that, what kind of a shit-faced mental patient decides to cast John Travolta and Nicolas Cage? In the same movie? I nearly died from sheer disgust trying to watch this film through to the end! But I made it, and believe me, you don't want to even try and go there... save yourself and burn every copy of Face Off you can find.

Having said that, it's worth watching... for a laugh.

If you're reading this review on my actual blog, and not through my notes in Facebook, I've attached a video in which someone quite wisely summarizes Face Off into a 2 minutes and 21 second long video, to save people the trouble of watching the whole movie...

Frontiere(s)

I may have gotten the title to this film wrong, it may be Frontier, The Frontier, The Frontiers, Frontiers, Frontier(s) or The Frontier(s), or it may be all of those combined, I really have no idea.

Anyhow, in (this film) a bunch of rebel crazy anarchist French teenagers go on the run from the Paris police in a recently-turned-crazy-right-wing France only to find themselves right in the middle of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre nowhere surrounded by Neo Nazis, who in actual fact aren't very "Neo" given that the father of the inbred crazies seems to have been around since the first Reich.

As is inevitable in these situations the teenagers try and fight their way out but are shockingly slaughtered, hung upside down and gutted one by one because (duh!) they're a bunch of teenagers and they're trying to take on fully trained inbred super-race type Neo Nazi crazy motherfuckers.

That is until, our leading lady gets a nice short haircut which, of course, turns any self respecting lady into a bad-ass Nazi killing machine! Suddenly the bullets fly, the (non-Aryan) blood flies and it's as if Rambo just showed up to take care of business...

Then she does a jittery "I'm a crazy person" walk right at the end and you suddenly realize the whole film was really a comedy and you just didn't get it.

For serious, watch it yourself to find out!

Diary Of The Dead

That's weird, I thought I already reviewed this film when I watched it but I guess not... Unfortunately it means that in my head I've already expelled all the information I have on the matter and I really don't feel like repeating myself. I shall, however summarize my favorite things about the film

• The line near the beginning about how the undead cannot run because they'd snap their ankles, which I took to be a fairly obvious stab at a few modern (and a few older) Zombie flicks on Mr. Romero's part.
• The line near the end about waiting in the panic room "for all this to blow over", which I do believe must have made Simon Pegg shit his pants, for George A. Romero to actually reference his zombie film. Possibly more than he shit his pants when he was asked to be in George A. Romero's zombie film. Possible more than he shit his pants when he was asked to be in both of George A. Romero's newest zombie films. Simon Pegg probably just shits his pants every day out of sheer excitement for his life.
• The fact that George A. Romero's political themes and sub-themes aren't in any way trying to masquerade themselves behind the film like some film-makers would do, but instead are completely blatant and transparent. I always feel that if you have a political message (or any kind of message for that matter) to make with your art, there's no point in pussy footing about trying to show your distaste for the Bush administration by painting a dying Sunflower... subtly is for giant fuck-tards and David Lynch. Oh wait David Lynch is...

Moving on... this film was by no means perfect. It definitely had it's moments of tedium. The main flaw was in it's "realism", in a sense, because everyone kept going on about how annoying it was that some idiot was filming everything that was going on. This was, I felt, terribly realistic, as this probably would be people's reaction, but didn't make for a good film. Unlike Cloverfield which wasn't realistic because I think they only told him once to "turn the fucking camera off", far less often than they would in reality, but it made for a less tedious film because of it... That was really my only major gripe with the film, and since the film was trying to be as realistic as possible I should just pretty much shut my cake-hole