Sexy Cineplexy: Reviews

Alien: The best haunted house film in the business. I'm also struggling to think of a better 10 Little Indians style movie.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Nice reviews Sexy

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

nice reviews.

I forgot to say before, what did you think of the MU-TH-UR mode in the anthology?

Being rather stupid, I couldn't understand a flipping thing and gave up after a few minutes swapping discs.

If it had been me buying it, I'd have bought the first two films (the first definitely, the second if I got a good price) too but the Anthology was a Christmas present.

Still not watched the final two films...

Alien Cubed (aka: Brit Thesps In Spaaaaaace) is diverting, I suppose, especially the Workprint, but I've never liked Resurrection.

I got the UK (blue-striped ) one.

Alien 3 is a good watch, especially if you like Fincher and are interested in the studio wrenching control from a cocky young director (see also: Blade Runner) only for reviews to be disappointing and the young director to finally have his vision realised once he's a major player.

It's also got Brian Glover, and what's not to like about Brian? Nowt, as he would say. Were he still alive. Which he's not.

Sadly.

Thems is my discs -



No blue on the outer case though.

The pic you have is, I think, the cover to a lit edition which had an alien model included. Which looks awful.

Re: Brian Glover.

He was, by all accounts, one of the nicest blokes you could hope to meet and an English character actor staple for years in film, TV and theatre. He was also once a professional wrestler and, I think, a teacher. Kes, An American Werewolf in London (one of the locals in the pub) and Alien 3 were probably his most high profile films.

There's an instruction book in the case but I'm not really that bothered. I remember the Bourne films had some kind of pick-and-choose aspect to their extras but I've not explored much of that either. A decent commentary is usually enough for me.

If I were you I'd stick the two Alien films up on eBay and just buy the anthology - It's £20 online here, basically the same as buying a couple of the films individually.

Videodrome sounds like it'd be real interesting; i'll check it out. thanks!

The inspiration for Aliens?


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It is slightly above average. Basil Rathbone is hardly in it.

The Kids Are All Right
(directed by Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)



The Kids Are All Right is a hysterical look at lesbians played by crazy and funny actress Annette Bening and Clarice Starling replacement from Hannibal, Julianne Moore. Nic (Bening) is an anal-retentive doctor and Jules (Julianne Moore) is a laidback lesbian landscaper. They get their kicks from watching hot vintage gay male porn while using a rabbit vibrator on each other (????!!!???) They have two teenage kids, Joni and Laser (yes, that's right, Laser), both from the same sperm donor, whom the kids go in search of and meet. He's Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a dark haired, sexy laidback bad boy on a motorcycle who grows organic food for a restaurant. The movie revolves around this lesbian family's relationship with Paul, mainly the parents' reaction to him -- and it's not all good.

Right off the bat, let me say that Annette Bening is the perfect lesbian. But still, she's Annette Bening. She really only works on one mode -- Annette Bening -- but that mode is universally set for anything, and here it is tuned to "lesbian". You know, I've been talking about American Beauty a lot in another thread, and I think I might bring it up again here because Annette was in that, too. The Kids Are All Right is sort of like another American Beauty, but not really. The most striking similarity is that Annette's daughter, Joni, has a female friend that only thinks about sex and she automatically develops a crush on Joni's dad, Mark Ruffalo's character. Not a shock -- that guy is hot as hell, and thank God he got naked here a lot, like he does in most of his movies -- but this friend character was like Mena Suvari in American Beauty -- only a lot uglier. What's up, Annette? Is this the only kind of movie you star in? Is there some sort of checklist you have - Script contains a sex-obsessed friend for my daughter and she wants to sleep with her father. "Yes, check, check, check."

Early in the film, I was afraid I wasn't gonna really like the thing - that I wasn't gonna laugh - but that's just my typical movie anxiety that I have. I'm happy to say that I laughed quite a bit, but no big gaffaws. Annette Bening certainly provided a lot of laughs. She was quite a character, and always drinking up a storm, too. Anyway, I was totally into this movie for a long time but I must confess that it sort of lost me at the very end. A BIG event happened - I'll keep it a secret - and, eh, I wasn't thrilled with the outcome. I felt the film didn't end right or something. These were some great characters and a great buildup, but instead of everything making a loud POP! at the very end, the balloon just sort of had a long, drawn out squeaky fart of an ending. Slowly, the air escaped and the magic was gone. The lesbian magician couldn't find the rabbit vibrator in the hat.

Annette did a great job at handling the proceedings. The kids were... eh... all right. Julianne Moore was Julianne Moore. Mark Ruffalo was like one of the hot studs out of the lesbian couple's favorite gay porno. Beautiful cinematography and a great little movie about an unusual family -- lesbians were portrayed in quite a normal light, I guess, but why do they watch gay porno movies? Like I said, this is a hysterical look at lesbians and I do feel that the lesbian relationship was examined much more than the relationship with the dad/sperm donor, although there wouldn't have been a movie without him. I'm not hoping for a sequel unless it's mainly Annette in the movie -- well, and Mark Ruffalo, naked. What a great sperm donor character. What a great lesbian dramedy. See it and talk about it.

A L I E N 3
(directed by David Fincher, 1992 / 2003 Special Edition)



Alien 3 has balls but nothing else. No heart, no lungs, no brain, no feet. Even its balls are nothing but crabby, saggy old man balls, with the grey hairs. Definitely belonging to a British man, too, since most of the guys in this movie were British. If it had a healthy pair of virile Jake Gyllenhaal balls, it would have at least been the testosterone/adrenaline fest that was Aliens and perhaps then Alien 3 would have been another fun roller coaster. But no -- Alien 3 is nothing but a pair of grouchy old man balls that shout, "Kill everyone from the last movie! Kill Ripley, too! Kill them all! Get off my lawn!"

The movie picks up not long after Aliens. Ripley and the other survivors of that movie crash onto a planet filled with violent male criminals in prison. They are very religious and are lead by Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) a killer and rapist of women who spouts off a lot of obnoxious Bible talk. Ripley survives the crash - Newt and Hicks from Aliens, however, do not. Ripley gives herself a serious haircut (which the android Bishop, who briefly comes back to life, likes) and for the first time ever, shacks up with a very cute guy called Clemens (Charles Dance). I'm sorry, but what happened to the very serious Lt. Ripley from the last two films? Did she suffer some brain damage from the crash? Why did she suddenly decide to have a social life? Everything she worked hard for in Aliens just got wasted, she's on a scary planet with scary men, and so she decides to spread her legs? I don't blame her, though, because Clemens was hot, but this to me was just one of the first odd things to happen in Alien 3. At least it happens in the 2003 Special Edition -- I dunno about the 1992 Theatrical Version.

Before you know it, there's an alien loose in the enormous facility where all of the men are living and of course the plot continues with them trying to capture it or kill it. Ripley later learns that a queen alien is growing inside of her. Because so many central characters die in this film, Alien 3 is a ballsy attempt at crafting a darker, richer concluding chapter for Lt. Ellen Ripley, but the execution is pale, tedious and uncharacteristic of the previous Alien films. The first film was a divine miracle of the macabre, the second film was a big bang of the universe -- the third film is an ant farm with only one surviving ant and cracks in its corners.

The alien itself has never looked worse. Most of time it just looks like a CGI effect. The characters are uninteresting, hard to differentiate, annoying and depressingly comical without being funny. Ripley seems off and tired and not at all commanding like she was in the first two movies. Often, she speaks with a whisper, as do some other characters. I had quite a difficult time understanding what everybody was saying. It wasn't even just the whispering -- sometimes the soundtrack of the film going on in the background made it worse. None of the actors were really well known - I'm surprised they went with some of the people they did. I mean, it's Alien 3 and it's obvious they're trying to make it more of a blockbuster movie than ever. This was David Fincher's first movie and it does not come across as a David Fincher film for the most part. Scenes drag and drag -- the ending went on forever and did not satisfy.

The only really good thing about this movie was the relationship between Ripley and Clemens. It's not bad that Ripley finally got some action -- she was flirty with Hicks in Aliens and I'm sure she had a lot of pent up sexual energy -- but it does feel strange that Ripley, upon waking up on this strange planet after an accident occured on her ship, doesn't take everything very seriously. Her character was not written right and there definitely could have been a much better story for Alien 3 thought up.

Still, some of the basic ideas for this film were pretty good and age has given those crabby old man balls some wisdom, but Alien 3 is not recommended unless you need to see Ripley's big send off. Since she is cloned in Alien: Resurrection, I feel that's not really her, so, yes, Alien 3 ends with the death of Ripley and if not for Ripley in this film, Alien 3 would be completely unwatchable.

Loose Cannons
(directed by Bob Clark, 1990)



This is an incomplete movie review for an incomplete movie about some incomplete people that'll only cause the completion of one thing -- you shutting off the film 10 minutes before it was supposed to end, which is what I did. Hell, you might shut it off even earlier but after reading this review, hopefully you'll never even start this plane crash of a film.

Dan Aykroyd and Gene Hackman play an unlikely teamed up cop duo that go in search of an Adolf Hitler porno film, or something, while battling a bunch of bad German guys with guns and other assorted mayhem. This is supposed to be a comedy crossed with Lethal Weapon or something, though it is an odd experiment and a very, very lifeless motion picture.

What compelled me to purchase this $6 DVD that I totally wasted my money on was the prospect of seeing nutty Dan Aykroyd play a crazy schizophrenic with a bunch of personalities that surface at random and supposedly aid him in his police business. At the very beginning of the film, I actually thought this movie might be going somewhere -- it was very odd and quirky, not laugh at loud funny at all, but I thought Aykroyd's character was interesting. He is an extremely analytical character who can't help but be annoying to the laidback character played by Hackman. I sympathized with him. But when they later walk into an S&M club and start trouble -- the film, directed by Porky's director Bob Clark, features a lot of odd sex themes in it -- Aykroyd's multiple personalities start coming out of him and I suddenly realized this movie was gonna be a very big mistake.

I'm fine with getting to know Aykroyd's character and even Hackman's character. They seemed okay together. There's a rather good scene with them at Aykroyd's house - which has no color in it, everything is white - that I thought made the film live a little. However, after this scene, it was back to the movie cemetery for Loose Cannons. I couldn't get interested at all in the whole plot about whatever it was they were supposed to be doing as cops. There were a bunch of stereotypical German characters and everything was meant to be serious, but stupid. There's lots of gun play in this movie and if that's all you care about, well, there's that, but I honestly did not give a damn about the story. I shut this movie off near the ending just because how it ended did not matter to me. Loose Cannons had potential, I thought, but it was an abortion. Dan Aykroyd's strange work when he starts unleashing his multiple personalities, imitating Road Runner and the Cowardly Lion and a bunch of other characters from children's TV shows, was disastrously bad and on a comedic level that's worse than the immature humor I witnessed in the Police Academy movies. It's even more weird and wrong in a movie that deals with porno kings, Hitler sex tapes, S&M clubs and bathhouses.

Loose Cannons, I wanted to like you, but you failed me. You completely failed me.

i liked the Joni Mitchell scene in The Kids Are Alright.

Stanley & Iris
(directed by Martin Ritt, 1989)



Stanley & Iris was mostly a wonderful romantic movie starring Robert De Niro as an illiterate bakery chef named Stanley who one day meets a co-worker that works back in the plant, Iris (Jane Fonda), when a purse snatcher steals her purse on a bus and they both go in pursuit of him. We later meet Iris' family, which includes her married sister (Swoosie Kurtz) and her husband, her teenage daughter (Martha Plimpton) and son, and we learn that there's a missing family member - Iris' husband died from some illness eight months earlier. Money's tight and the time is tough and here comes Robert De Niro on a bicycle, looking for sex and a reading teacher.

I thought the movie was spectacular until about the end. It did not end on the right note for me. Even though it has a happy ending, something was off. All of a sudden, Stanley can read perfectly fine enough to get a great paying job in Detroit and he leaves Iris for awhile. He begins this movie as a charming simpleton who lives and takes care of his elderly dad, rides around on a bicycle everwhere, and suddenly by the end of the movie he's got a car, a great paying job and is doing a hell of a lot better than Iris. I know part of this is aided by the discovery late in the movie that he's suddenly this incredible inventor, but boy, I almost felt like this film was a slap in the face to women. Iris goes from being a hard working, smart woman taking care of a man who is clearly lost in the world without being able to read... then suddenly she's the one lost in the world and it becomes all about Stanley finally getting a car and picking her up and telling her he's gonna take her whole family back to Detroit with him and give them a great life. Wow, this movie blatantly tells you a man will always do better than a woman.

However, something about Iris wasn't exactly perfect either. There's a scene where she leaves Stanley on the street with some directions telling him to get to someplace. He gets lost, night comes and finally he finds Iris again, who feared something terrible happened to him. He leaves angry. Of course she should have known he'd still be stupid enough to not know where to go.

The film is kind of sappy and it is in the style of other movies where some character helps another character change their life, and it's also another movie for women who, I guess, fantasize about having a dumb guy come into their life and need them and need to be taken care of by them, kind of like Mel Gibson in Tim or maybe even Forrest Gump. However, Iris doesn't really throw herself at Stanley so quickly. It's obvious that they have feelings for each other, but a romantic relationship between the two of them doesn't develop until late in the movie when they finally have sex -- which is a nightmare because she cries during it, missing her dead husband, who we learn used to give it to her good three times a week. This upsets Stanley for awhile. Stanley was always getting upset!

In a way, though, I thought Stanley & Iris was rather realistic, though with a big touch of dramatic elements thrown in for good measure -- the daughter unexpectedly gets pregnant, the father dies, Stanley loses his job, etc. I know I'm giving away practically the whole movie, but none of this stuff really matters. What does matter in this film is the chemistry between Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda, which was pretty good, although I think Jane Fonda is ugly and Robert De Niro deserved a more attractive co-star. Like I said, I really liked this film up until about the end, when it became just alright. I do recommend it and if you see it, let me know what you think.

I had completely forgotten the movie Stanley and iris

you keep making me add more Netflix!

I never saw it and forgot I heard of it. My recollection it got terrible reviews.

I liked it when I saw it I saw it at the movies