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.

 

Who Can Kill A Child?

Cast: Lewis Fiander, Prunella Ransome, Bunch Of Annoying Spanish Brats

Synopsis: An English couple decides to take their vacation on a remote island which has no contact to the mainland and with no idea who lives there, where they'll stay or why on Earth they don't just find a quiet village on the mainland like any other normal vacationing couple only to find that the island is all but deserted save for the occasional snotty little vicious kids, a bunch of corpses and a creepy looking Spanish dude rocking an awesome 'tache.


Review: The idea of the film is simple: A group of kids on an isolated island decided for reasons unknown to up and kill all the adults and take the island as their own. The adults could have easily overpowered the children but didn't because... (dun dun DUN!)... who can kill a child? A nice premise and one that surely could be thought provoking and deep in a "let's discuss it over a few pints while we all get shit faced and laugh about the piss poor special effects" kind of way if the film hadn't begun with about ten minutes of lengthy tedious intro voice-over telling us that there have been hundreds of instances during man's inhumanity to man (Wars, famine etc etc.) where the kids, either inadvertently or deliberately, are the first and the most plentiful to be killed. So the film basically shot itself in the ass from the get go on that one

Who can kill a child?

All these people can and did

Oh...

The end!

Instead we follow a couple of fairly obnoxious English people as they trek through the island contemplating their own failed existence and wondering when the silly bitch is going to realize that she should just let her husband brandish the biggest Gatling gun available and plow through the hordes of snotty pre-teens like it was a ridiculous 'Nam movie shot by Michael Bay.

I think this movie had some real potential - it could have had the creepy kid element, it could have been a real gut-wrnecher as far as the kid killing was concerned and it had the isolation down but I feel overall the movie fell way short of it's potential...


In Short: Worth a watch? Sure, but don't get excited just because it got an X rating in Britain and was banned in Finland. I dunno what that means, for all I know Bambi is banned in Finland...


Biggest Positive: The realistic language barrier. You half expect the main guy to just start yelling at the "crazy foreigners" when they start to struggle with words... wait, that's my biggest positive? That sucks... oh well


Biggest Negative: It's hard to watch without thinking how much creepier, scarier, gorier, better it could have been no matter how much you enjoy it...


IMDb Page


Trivia: The spanish word for A-Bomb is "bomba atómica"

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:

I've been lazy...

The title says it all...

Plenty movies have been seen but for some reason coming here, clicking "log in" and rambling nonsense has seemed like quite the enormous effort!

I shall do my best to try and get back into some sort of a routine of posting my reviews here... I know there must be hundred of you out there awaiting my next review! It will come... soon...