Joel's Reviews

I love the fifth one. Mainly for the fat dude with the candy bar who gets axed for no reason other than annoyance.

Yeah, definite highlight early on. I like the paramedic chewing gum crouched over the fat kids dismembered body calling everyone a p*ssy.

I picked up the DVD a couple of years back (vaguely remember seeing it in the early 90s I think) but I haven't got around to watching it yet...

It's definitely that early 80's grimy, hazy kind of silly movie, but it has elements to it that are redemptive.

The stale late 1980's, just in time for M.C. Hammer and C+C Music Factory. The movies were often suffering from a lack of identity, with experimental synth scores being replaced with honky tonk blues music all done on keyboards. The mood changed and there was a lot of new design, not necessarily good design, either. Blind Fury isn't much of an exception.

Rutger Hauer I feel, has not been properly used since 1985. Maybe it's his own fault, or maybe he just couldn't find the right material or management. Whatever the reason(s), he seems at home in this slice em' up remake of Zatoichi Challenge (which I haven't seen) as a sightless Vietnam veteran who's back years later to look up an old friend. He soon finds himself knee deep in trouble when he must protect his old military friend's little boy, and also rescue his buddy from the clutches of a drug empire out in Vegas.

Due to his lack of vision (Rutger, that is - not the director Noyce, who I'll make fun of later on), he's been blessed with honed powers of hearing which allow him to act as a human cuisinart whenever a piece of fruit is thrown in his direction. He can also memorize dial tones for easy sneaky into penthouse elevators.

Rutger plays everything loose and light, but still maintains his usual otherworldly space cadet demeanor, which is always a thrill to see. I think Hauer's best work is when he's just being himself, and here - he seems to be comfortable and having some fun. This is a funny movie, but it's not side splitting. Somewhere along the line, we the audience are forced to endure a fairly cliche ridden presntation and series of other scoogity boogities that have been done to death. The only defense for this is that maybe back in 1989 these types of things were still fresh enough to play out. They must have been. There is good news, though. Sho Kosugi makes an appearance. Someone asks for Bruce Lee's brother and they get him in there. In fact, when we first see him there's a gong sound played as part of the score. Nice touch. Damn racist filmmakers!

Terry O'Quinn (The Stepfather, Lost) plays his old military friend. Terry barely gets any screen time, but when he does you can see his acting chops almost start to swell up, just by the expression on his face. In fact, there's a scene close to the end of the film when he is on a ski lift cart, and the camera actually dedicates a semi-circle dolly shot-just for him, as he stares off into space with his sea breeze eyes, reacting to Hauer's forgiveness monologue. Philip Noyce at least knew enough to recognize talent when he saw it, even if he didn't have room for Terry to shine in this picture. I have to actually hand it to director Noyce (I have no real reason to make fun of him), he handles things well enough for a b-actioner. The editing is fine. Scenes sprawl out, wrap up and segue richly enough to make looking at the picture simple and unoffensive. The action is semi quality, though in some scenes I think Hauer comes off a bit light on his feet when he maybe could have put a bit more shoulder into his movements. But I forgive easy.

Blind Fury isn't a bad, bad movie. It's not very good, but it's also not a film made to be seen as a small masterpiece, either. This is strictly late night fun stuff. Just about everything on display is ridiculous, highly far fetched, unlikely, and damn silly. But that's fine. That's what was written down and shot, and that's what we get. High camp movie. I dug it every time I've seen it. To me that's an indicator that it's a decent enough film, the re-watchability factor.

I haven't seen that in years but from what I remember, I agree with everything you say.

John Ritter and James Belushi star in this sci fi spy comedy with a serious case of weird penmanship.

A CIA showboat (Belushi) is sent to recruit a dead operative lookalike (Ritter) to further a relationship with men from outer space.

This could have been the start of Men in Black, who's to know? The comedy is hit/miss, but the pacing of this movie allows a nice and relaxed sitting. A sitting that depends completely on the viewer to either tolerate or obliterate with a swift stop eject.

I know Real Men is a bad movie in a lot of respects but I cannot help but come back to it again and again for the sheer relief it provides. Everything from the schizophrenic score to the go-nowhere plot "developments" entrance me and make my before bed viewing a real treat.

This went mostly unnoticed due to UA being in the hurts section of financial endowment (thanks Michael Cimino), but on video its shelf life was also limited. Not many have heard of or seen Real Men.

I recommend it purely as a light distraction with a very un-PC Belushi and a very fist pumpingly corny John Ritter (R.I.P).

I'm not going to say too much about this picture because it speaks for itself fine enough.

Edgar Wright has never had a more lean and mean film. Every single solitary scene in Hot Fuzz is a martial art, choreographed with tight precision, and resolved with intricate sound design that prompts viewings to exceed just once. The jokes are fast and furious. The action is buffoonish and hammy. The writing is nothing short of brilliant, and the cast are everything you'd want in a fast paced comedy that gets from A to Z within, well, within over 2 hours.

I used to think the run time was the biggest weakness of Hot Fuzz, but no more.
Having more to hear and see is exactly what you want with a film so thick with sleeve yanking and laugh grenades.

I just hooked up my Onkyo 7.1 surround, and after trying a handful of 5.1 HD film mixes, Hot Fuzz was the only feature to completely kick the living shlt out of my set-up and drown me in its design.

So many levels of awesome from this movie, it's one of my all-time favorites!

Harry Dean Stanton's last film before he died. I wish I could say it was amazing, but I cannot. There are some weighty spiritual themes in this film, as well as themes dealing with old age, fear and dying alone. All of this makes for some very good material. Unfortunately, Lucky is too uneven to handle it in a convincing way, and often feels very mismatched and clumsily executed, right down to the performances and confused writing.

Take a scene with Ron Livingston as a life insurance salesman, and Lucky, sitting at a restaurant table. Lucky doesn't like this salesmen, but somehow within the course of 5 sentences of uninvited small talk, they begin to drink their coffees together. The salesman starts pitching Lucky a story about mortality and how getting a policy ensures the family can be at peace after their loved one dies. Lucky counters this with still having the same predicament: you're dead. The salesman acknowledges and meditates on this. I kept thinking "please don't end the scene here, pleases don't end the scene here". Well, it took a few seconds, but it ended. This kind of writing..maybe I missed something? It's not about you..it's about your family getting peace of mind. The whole existential component completely shot the enlightenment aspect's foot off with this writing.

There are more moments of forced profundity, such as dealing with the black mass of the void upon death, and disengaging earthly things, relinquishing control, and so on and so forth. I am intrigued enough with these themes, but the way in which they are handled here in Lucky made me kind of gasp, and gasp after-the-fact because the oddball handling of these themes didn't entirely hit me until minutes later where my distaste grew more.

I didn't hate this movie. That's a bit harsh. I do think that it was a bit of a misfire and I am scolding it more severely because it really could have been super special had it not been so dopey. David Lynch isn't a bad actor when he's slightly manic, but some of his delivery was community theater bad. That didn't help selling a very emotional piece of writing concerning a 100 year old turtle carrying it's life and death on it's back. I think my issue with a lot of this movie is that, on paper, this must have really shined, a lot of it, anyway. Something just doesn't always translate to the screen. It's too literal and often too convenient.

Scenes of Lucky inching towards the grave with dropping his old prejudices about Liberace, realizing the "fruit" has real musical chops, despite wearing too many rings on his fingers..I dunno. I mean, yeah, it's funny, I guess. It just didn't feel right to me. I wasn't offended. It was a bit funny. I don't exactly know what I was expecting. I took the picture as it was, I just happened to think it was equally as bad as it was profound and worthwhile.

I believe Stanton's previous picture, Partly Fiction, dealing with this agnostic existentialism theme, is much more suitable because it is essentially a documentary and not so much a full fiction, like Lucky. I'm thinking maybe this film Lucky wasn't really necessary because we already got Partly Fiction. It felt to me like the filmmaker was basically saying, "Well, just in case you missed Partly Fiction, let me retread with THIS!" And then proceeds to kind of club you about the face and neck with the same themes and vast space of the former film.

I lightly enjoyed Lucky, but may not recommend it very highly. I was disappointed with things that should have been, well, enlightening. This seemed like rehashes of things that people basically know and have dealt with using realism at very young ages, especially today, where, despite the trappings of "internet knowledge", the collective seem more aware, if not often shrouded with soap boxers that have shlt- for- brains.

OK, this is interesting. Control is a movie directed by the guy who made River's Edge, co-wrote Over the Edge (Tim Hunter - edgy fella, right?), and stars Ray Liotta, Michelle Rodriguez and Willem Dafoe, but - here's the thing; it went straight to video.


The short answer to that question is yes. It is a good little movie that utilizes the cast very well. Also, the story is interesting. A convict sentenced to death gets an opportunity to stay alive as a lab experiment for a new pharma drug that is being tested to strip away violent rage from its subjects.

Willem Dafoe plays the pharma dude and, you guessed it, Liotta plays the psychopath.

I don't want to spoil anything but I will say this film has a very strong message underneath the layers of cliche and convenience. Big Pharma doesn't get a free ride, either. Shocking, right? Well, it's a little complicated. The twists aren't as pointed as I expected, which makes this movie another one of those "still thinking a bit about it the next day" kind of experiences.

Now for the bad. This should not have been as much of an action movie as it got made into. Why? Because of the story and the acting. Liotta does such good work here, it's a real crime this got no distribution. Willem Dafoe also does great work here. Michelle Rodriguez, same thing. The issue with this movie is that it was made as a moderately budgeted Hollywood action flick and it could have easily survived and been shuffled into history as a heavyweight drama had the guns and war drum music taken a hike.

Still, for a grade B action picture, this was a nice surprise. It isn't perfect, but it has a good heart, despite some Michael Bay silliness.

A housing community in the middle of a giant land plot is home to professionals and their 14 and under children. The kids hang out at the rec center, run by an attractive and easy going woman who seems to care about her young punk friends. They play air hockey, drink a little beer, smoke a little hash, and sometimes shoot bb gun pellets at cop cars down on the freeway. I choked on laughter when I saw that happen.

Soon or a later, the parents and town officials get involved and try to stifle the kids' activities in hopes of bringing in new lucrative businesses. Well, things may or may not go south.

I really appreciate the acting and direction of this movie. The photography is beautiful, the shots are set up nicely, and the action is composed tightly. All of the kids are completely natural and believable, and the adults, though slightly demonized, still retain some realism because, hey, they are concerned about their kids...right?


A young Matt Dillon is featured, rocking a half shirt and light brown feathered hair for all you Dillon fans out there who wanna get a glimpse of the young stud.

There's something else. This is a beautiful film. I cannot quite explain why. There is something so authentic and lovely about the locations, and the feeling I got while watching it. If I were to pick a time capsule for the late 1970's, the film would be my first and only choice.

This road movie stars John Turturro and Sam Rockwell. It is directed by the man who made Living in Oblivion.

Instead of covering the plot I'll just say that Turturro plays an uptight electrical engineer who cannot connect with his employees or his wife and child. He's starting to see life backwards, literally. A boy rides his bike backwards. Coffee pours back into a pot backwards. What is going on with his mind?

After his plant has an early shut-down, Al Fountain (Turturro) decides to take a car ride to an old swimming hole from his youth, since he is far from home and in the area he remembers it from. He almost gets into a car wreck avoiding hitting The Kid (Sam Rockwell), a free spirited man-child who just wants to have fun.

Ok, so right off of the bat this may not sound too original. But it is. You have to see the film to know why. This is the kind of movie you either like or don't. I mean, sure, you could say it's OK, but at that rate, you might as well just say it's good. Both leads give very funny performances and things always seem to get really strange, but not in a sadistic way. Aside from some male nudity, foul language, and an implied scene of adultery, this really is kind of an innocent movie. I've seen this film about 5 times since 2000, and it grows on me more every time.

Di Cillo really sets the picture up having a great assortment of locations and set design, namely an outdoor wonderland of Christmas lights, bbq and lawn ornaments, with the moonlight collecting in a wooden box with blue felt lining.

I believe it took DiCillo 5 years to make this film, and he had Rockwell picked out long before he got financing for the film. This is definitely a very early Rockwell role.



Box of Moonlight is a quirky, feel-good movie for adults who enjoy a go nowhere tale that isn't too scatterbrained to stop and enjoy the scenery and life's comic moments, usually accompanied by a hand over the mouth.

True that some of the stunt work was reckless and sometimes equally well-staged, the plot was a giant bore. The acting was a giant bore. The story was not only a giant bore, but an elongated and nonsensical story. So, let me get this straight. A biker whose parent have supernatural dealings with the frog devil can summon back life generating power from their badly decorated witches coven of a home, and the son decides to convince his bike gang to all commit suicide to return from the dead and do what, exactly? Terrorize people?

The kills were even boring and bloodless, and I'm not usually someone who champions gore. There was not a single scene of nudity, and as far as "light kink", well, if you call a few miniskirts peppered throughout in basic 70's era wardrobe "kink", you'd better just give up writing reviews. I'm serious. This movie was so dumb that after it was over, I turned to my movie partner and told him that I think I may actually need psychiatric help from enduring this film. He chuckled a little and I layed in to him. No, I'm serious. I don't feel good. I'm afraid to drive home.

He apologized for suggesting we watch the blu ray release of this cult film which was probably reappraised by hipsters who saw a few scenes in the beginning, watched the trailer, and then decided to make it their pet movie and write great things about, all the while totally oblivious to how stinky it really was.

There is no way in hell anyone who has actually suffered through this whole movie can think any of this was good, decent, mildly interesting, or even entertainingly bad.

In typical british fashion we get super long takes of self important eye blinking before every long winded sentence that would indicate we the audience may as well take our coats off because this dialog is going to take FOR-E-VER!
But nothing comes out of these cake holes that warrants such bloated screen time. We actually witness walks from cars to the middle of fields for no reason. No cuts, no expediting here. All tedium. We get camera zooms that serve zero purpose. We get scenes with promise of a suspenseful chase only to be clubbed over the head with a bad editing job of what looks like a reshoot that doesn't make logical sense. (see first scene of film involving driver and bike gang sharing dialog about not letting some poor road sap off of the hook).

This movie is below garbage. It's been praised as something it simply is not. It's absurd that anyone would have the balls to claim this movie is anything of interest aside from what the previews make sure to include (very smart move), and the opening scenes (which are quite poetic and beautifully photographed). But that's it!

Skip the film, watch the trailer. You will not only thank me for it, but if you decide to spite this review and watch the film, you will damn me for it, too, because I'll be to blame for luring you in to see it, even if it's only because of your own dumb decision, which it most certainly will be.

Stuart Gordon has made a name for himself by being responsible for some very big cult films; ReAnimator and From Beyond, not to mention his foray into Disney with a picture you'll have to research yourself if you're interested.

When producer Charles Band assigned Gordon to direct a film between Reanimator and FB he supplied him with a picture of a little child holding a scary looking doll. Writer Ed Naha and Stuart then went nuts and made a bunch of dolls be the stars and added a fairy tale element that often keeps this horror film unbalanced.

If you are looking for a solid horror film, this is not it. Everything about this screams 1980's low budget b movie. The stop motion, though impressive for its time, mixes with the sometimes stilted acting and missed comic beats into a sort of porridge. A boiling witch's brew of down home dark fantasy with inventive atmosphere.

I admit to really liking this movie. It has a cozy location and the more "scary" scenes are filmed in a peculiar way. It's kind of like art but not the kind of art that demands attention from seasoned art film buffs. This is not an art film. At all. It just has some style to it. Style that may not be easily seen by those conditioned to more ambitious films.

This doesn't feel like a Stuart Gordon film. It's mostly light hearted and goofy. It's extremely campy and self aware but also packs a message for hardened adults. It is a cautionary tale to embrace the inner child or else suffer the fate of becoming trapped in a lifetime of service. In this case - be trapped as a doll - to give service to children who need something to play with. "Toys are loyal, and that's a fact". That line pops up twice in the movie, and it seems like a cartoon slogan except in this cartoon it's live action and there is graphic violence.

This is a true story. I saw this in the theaters at an art house cinema with a buddy. Most of the film - we'd look at each other out of boredom and disgust because this thing was going nowhere fast! Then a scene came on with aliens landing on earth and exclaiming the words"BO-RING! BO-RING!" and my buddy and I started losing it, totally cracking up in our seats. It kind of won us over because this quick scene summed up our experience watching this film. About 30 mins later, out at the parking lot, as I got into his Mazda Protege, I realized something very strange: I liked the film. How did this happen? This has never happened before. This is not natural. I can think for myself. So how do I go from hating a film so much while watching it to absolutely being entranced by it moments after it has ended?

Waiting for Guffman is one of those pictures, the only picture, that has ever had that effect on me. I watched it again some years later to reassess. It was funnier. I got it. I watched it with different eyes. The characters are clueless and pretentious and obnoxious. I'd never seen anything like this before. This was an invention of cinema. Christopher Guest had created something that had never been done before, and it was glorious, but required a twist of fate to catch on to it. That twist was laughing at a scene that summed up how awful I thought it was. It ultimately won me over. And my friend. I am still convinced to this day that anyone who had the good sense to see this film as it was - was informed by industry force and writing, which clued them in to how to accept this new brand of film. The Mock-u-mentary. Sure, it'd been done with This is Spinal Tap, but that film was nothing like this. Nothing.

The characters are inflammed with passion and silliness. There's a heart underneath this picture. Local theater tries to win over an important NYC manager and goes through their own personal boot camp to pull it off to impress, in hopes to make it to "Broadway". Perfect.

I really loved this movie. It's hilarious but you have to listen to the improvisations of the actors and not zone out to their "matter-of-factly" way of presenting their dialog to truly appreciate the absurdity of it all.

Finally saw Over the Edge and Hot Fuzz recently and I was surprised to find that I didn't like either one of them. I do like Dolls though.

Is Psychmania the movie where they all turn into stone at the end?

"Waiting for Guffman" is quite possibly my favourite Chris Guest film it just about beats out "A mighty wind" for me as one of the best films he's ever made. it takes the Anti-humour formula that made his mokumentaries and really drives it to its logical conclusion. its colourful and silly and fun and wonderful and I love it



If you dig this style of comedy man you may really like Stewart Lee he's a stand up but he's done some really good stuff

Yes, it is.

Quick review -

Thinner - dir Tom Holland


it was good, man. I don;t see why people hated on it so much. It'll never be as good as the book. I read the book and the book was very nuanced. Stephen King doesn't play. But Tom Holland knows a thing or two, too.

TU-TU.

I wish the studios would give him real money again. I wonder if this film exiled him from the system.

The fat suit wasn't super realistic but I learned to live with it.

The movie wasn't scary but it was entertaining and reminded me of the book in a , dare I say, faithful way. No question mark. That wasn't asking, that was me telling...it's a decent little movie. So much better than a lot of other King adaptions.