Rather good WW2 action flick, with some great locations (it really did look like war-torn Europe during WW2), great costumes, and some crazy adventures of army criminals who get free when their convoy is ambushed, and figure they will head for the Swiss border, only to end up on a mission. Good story, good casting, and quite enjoyable, though maybe a tier below the best of the WW2 action movies (such as The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare).
A podcast about a nice little time capsule of 50s invasion paranoia, Invaders From Mars.
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Rather fine comedy, and a successful transfer of the small-screen ‘the thick of it’ to a big screen version. It never really flags, and because it’s so fast and furious, it stays fresh for a rewatch.
Capaldi is brilliant in this.
Passable scifi with a solid cast and one of the worst monsters I’ve ever seen. Lee Van Cleef in an early major role is solid, as is Peter Graves, and the acting quality is fine, and it was reasonably entertaining except for (a) a ridiculous monster, and (b) one of the worst closing monologues I’ve ever heard.
It was redeemed somewhat by the graphic, exploitation death of the monster though. I also liked the flying bat/skin-pizza monsters the alien sent out to control people – that reminded me of similar beasties in original series Star Trek.
This was rather poor, but I admit I was kind of excited to see a Hulk/Iron Man pairing, so perhaps my expectations were too high. To break it down
– Good: a few (a very few) of the shots and action sequences were quite good. I liked seeing the Hulk wearing a little Iron Man armour.
– Bad: Quite shallow, childish script that really made this not suitable entertainment for anyone over, say, 13, but at the same time it seemed a little strong and full on for younger kids. The CG mostly looked very poor.
– Odd: A section where the guys had to fight off monsters that seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the main story. Yeah, watching the duo fight a pack of wendigos was cool, but made no narrative sense at all.
The is amazing. Whilst there are some slightly better horror movies made in the 1930s (I’m looking at you, Bride of Frankenstein), this is definitely among the handful of really great pulp/graphic horrors of the 30s, before the Hays code kicked in. I’d lump this in with Freaks and The Black Cat as in that class of great 30s pulp horror that still stands up today.
The really weird makeup and dialogue, and memorable setups such as the panther woman, the ‘house of pain’, “The Law”, and the weird mudhut village in the jungle, along with Charles Laughton leering over his creations, the women, and his use of the whip really build to something special.
Here’s to never being in The House of Pain.
Idiocracy
An interesting but not entirely successful satire of the state of America, where a reasonably likeable Army slacker and a prostitute are used in a cryogenics experiment that goes wrong, and they wake up 5 hundred years in the future.
They wake up in an America that’s an extension of what was the Bush years, where the stupid have completely outbred the smart, so everyone is pretty much mentally deficient. These people make Beavis and Butthead look like Carl Sagan.
Whilst it doesn’t have enough laughs to be a really good comedy, it’s got some spot-on observations (The Fox News inserts, with a topless, buff anchorman, and a anchorlady wearing a sexy basque are funny, as is a president who is an adult movie star/wrestler), and can be kind of depressing because it does hit the mark of how America sometimes seems to be going.
The two leads are quite likeable, there’s some meandering parts, but on the whole, I enjoyed watching it.