Archive for the ‘Monster’ Category
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010
SPLICE is a monster movie by Vincenzo Natali, the guy who did CUBE all those years ago. Remember that one? Really good concept, pretty good execution, but you really want to like it so it gets by. Same thing here.
Academy Award winner Adrien Brody and Academy Award nominee Sarah Polley play a married (?) team of scientists working to harvest useful proteins from a new species they’ve genetically engineered. They got two of them named Fred and Ginger (get it? They’re named after Fred Flinstone and Ginger Baker), two dog-sized lumps of CGI flesh shaped kind of like maggots but mostly like dicks. (more…)
15 people like this post.
Tags: Adrien Brody, mad science, Sarah Polley, Vincenzo Natali
Posted in Horror, Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 67 Comments »
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
I knew it. I fuckin knew Dave Cronenberg was up to something. All due respect to him as a consistently great and unique filmatist across three decades, but you gotta admit the guy is suspicious. I mean, CRASH had me wondering. And eXistenZ raised my eyebrows. Possessing in-depth knowledge of tooth-firing gristle guns isn’t a crime in and of itself, but you gotta wonder why he knows so much about the topic, right?
And then DEAD RINGERS. I mean, for crying out loud, DEAD RINGERS. So sonofabitch, why am I not surprised when I watch Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED and there’s Dave Cronenberg as a masked “baby slasher” murdering families around Toronto? (more…)
3 people like this post.
Tags: Clive Barker, Craig Sheffer, David Cronenberg
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Monster, Reviews | 64 Comments »
Friday, May 14th, 2010
Okay, good. If you’re gonna be an asshole and make a sequel to JAWS, I figure this is more how you should do it. You’re never gonna match the achievement of the first one, so you should zig where that one zags.
First you acknowledge that the directors you hired won’t have the skills to fill Spielberg’s filmatic shoes. You put director Joe Alves into the shoes and fill the extra toe-space with credit-flying, severed-limb-and-head-floating, dolphin-and-orca-jumping, water-splashing-in-the-camera, slow-motion-water-ski-jumping, harpoon-firing-just-like-FRIDAY-THE-13TH-3D-but-what’re-you-gonna-do-you’re-fighting-a-shark, fake-dragons-and-snakes-popping-out, shark-exploding-and-spraying-goo-all-over-the-audience 3-D. I mean, not on video, but that’s what it was originally, and I would’ve enjoyed that. (more…)
2 people like this post.
Tags: 3-D, Dennis Quaid, killer animals, sharks
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 51 Comments »
Friday, May 14th, 2010
Watching JAWS 2 for the first time I was thinking maybe man is actually worse than shark. Because would shark make a sequel to JAWS? I don’t think shark would. I think they’d know to leave it well enough alone. But then I thought well, the shark in this one, Jaws 2 we’ll call him, is pretty much sequelizing what Bruce “Jaws” Shark did in part 1. He sees that Bruce caused a splash (get it?) eating people at Amity Island and he thought you know what, I will do the same thing but not as good and with a higher body count.
So I guess man and shark are the same. Sharks swarm when there’s blood in the water, men when there’s money to be made. We’re creatures of pure instinct. (more…)
2 people like this post.
Tags: Keith Gordon, killer animals, Roy Scheider
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 94 Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
With IRON MAN 2 in theaters and on Slurpee cups I’d say Summer Movie Season 2010 is officially underway. And I thought a good way to welcome the season would be by watching some movies I haven’t seen before: the JAWS sequels. Only thing is, as much as I love it I never actually wrote a review of JAWS. And I’d feel like an asshole reviewing the (I’m gonna guess possibly crappy) sequels and ignoring the original masterpiece.
But wait! There may be an answer contained within the Outlaw Vault. I knew I had written something about it, I just hadn’t posted it before. Back when I was considering a book about summer movies I wrote a rough draft for part of the ‘75 chapter. So even though I’m still alive I’m gonna clean it up a little and package it as new material, like a posthumous B.I.G. guest appearance. (more…)
2 people like this post.
Tags: Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, Steven Spielberg
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 64 Comments »
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
In honor of the fresh new summer movie season I thought it might be a good idea to go all the way back to the beginning, the one that started it all, the granddaddy of summer movies, JAWS. And then skip forward two years to ORCA.
Now, I don’t want to rattle any cages or nothing, but in my opinion – and it’s a free country, so I’m allowed to believe whatever I want to believe – ORCA is not as good as JAWS. To be fair, the makers of ORCA most likely had no idea about JAWS, they hadn’t heard of it, it’s probaly a coincidence. Just two completely unrelated summer movies about men in boats going to battle against deadly aquatic mammals. So it’s probaly not cool to compare them. And that’s good because as its own thing I think ORCA is topnotch. (more…)
Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Tags: Bo Derek, Charlotte Rampling, Ennio Morricone, Keenan Wynn, killer animals, Michael Anderson, Richard Harris, Robert Carradine
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 35 Comments »
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Man, here’s a solid little movie with a clever genre-mixing premise, nicely acted and directed, a fun time, but owned by the Weinsteins. So of course it was barely released or advertised. These pricks got a quiet, sad drama based on a Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece, they’re gonna pretend it’s some sci-fi action movie. Meanwhile they got this one that actually is a sci-fi action movie, but they forgot they even had it. “Oh shit, did we release that viking thing? I can’t remember. Just send some DVDs to Blockbuster and tell them not to mention it to anybody.”
Oh well, at least it snuck out. The cover art is pretty cool too, and it uses one of those critic quotes that isn’t really a compliment but just a description: “PREDATOR meets BEOWULF.” And that’s accurate. A space ship crash lands in Norway, 709 A.D. A survivor climbs out wearing a space suit that looks alot like a suit of armor (surprisingly that doesn’t come up again later). He’s Jim Caviezel, and I wasn’t sure at first if I was gonna accept aliens that look just like humans, but when he looked up Earth on his computer it said we were an “abandoned seed colony,” so I guess we all come from the same place. Brothers from a different mother. (more…)
2 people like this post.
Tags: aliens, Jim Caviezel, John Hurt, Ron Perlman, vikings
Posted in Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 45 Comments »
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
CLOVERFIELD is a new movie about a giant monster named Cloverfield who comes out of the water and attacks New York City. Cloverfield knows he has a sissy name that’s way too close to that asshole cat Garfield. He wants it to have a more rebellious ring to it, like [Holden] Caulfield, or at least semi-respectable, like Seinfeld before he started advertising BEE MOVIE. So to prove he’s not fucking around and to establish dominance one of the first things Cloverfield does on his visit to the big city is rip the head off the Statue of Liberty and throw it across Manhattan. If he was trying to bowl it was a gutterball but, poor bowler or not that shit is threatening to a human like you or me. Let’s face it, he has a size advantage. That is the main thing going on between Cloverfield and us. More weight, more reach. Not really a fair fight.
Since we don’t actually witness the incident (except for where the head lands) it’s hard to really know for sure what Cloverfield’s motive is. It’s easy to jump to conclusions that he’s making a statement about the loss of liberty in America post 9-11, or perhaps he is some sort of rabid anti-American and is threatening our liberty. He should realize that it is very insensitive in the post 9-11 world to not only attack landmarks in Manhattan but to make people think of being beheaded. I don’t care if the fucker’s from space, if you’re visiting some place you gotta do research on the local customs and not just be a big asshole like that. So he’s either very anti-american or just a prick. Or maybe he hates women. My guess though is he thought the statue looked at him funny. Or he saw that torch and thought she was armed and just acted on reflex. After all, it is New York. Okay, I have gone through alot of theories here but I’m sticking with that last one, the Amadou Diallo theory. If anybody finds evidence to back me up on one of those stupid “viral marketing” websights everybody got all caught up in please let me know.
The truth is we don’t really know alot about Cloverfield. He comes from the sea. He is not careful about damaging buildings. I heard he eats people. He has some bad hygiene, because giant poisonous spiders flake off of him. Worst dandruff ever. The movie really isn’t about Cloverfield though as much as it’s about some urban professional youths who are having a party that gets interupted by Cloverfield’s out of control behavior. As you know this is a movie like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or MAN BITES DOG or THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or THE LAST BROADCAST or GUINEA PIG or THE LAST HORROR MOVIE or the first part of BEHIND THE MASK or the last part of SNUFF or various parts of FACES OF DEATH or MY LITTLE EYE or REAL TIME: SIEGE AT LUCAS STREET MARKET or REDACTED or THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES or DIARY OF THE DEAD or WAITING FOR GUFFMAN where it pretends to be actual footage of a real event. There’s a going away party for a guy named Rob, and his brother’s girlfriend wants to make a video for him to remember them by. Then they keep taping during the monster attack “because people will want to know,” and you are watching their tape, which was found in Central Park. (more…)
Tags: giant monster
Posted in Action, Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
Friday, December 28th, 2007
VERN VS. ALIEN VS. PREDATOR DASH REQUIEM
Aliens, predators, why do you always gotta fight? Why can’t you just resolve your differences? I know they say “whoever wins, we lose” but I’ve seen both the AvP movies and clearly nobody is winning anything. We lose, and you lose our respect.
RESURRECTION and RATATOUILLE were already taken and they needed something that started with an R, so the title of this thing is REQUIEM. That might make you wanna ask who died, but you already know the answer: the remaining dignity of aliens and predators across the universe. Two proud races slandered and humiliated, on the Lord’s birthday no less. And why? For what? What the hell did aliens and predators ever do to us other than entertain and delight us, scare us, fuck up our space colonies and skin some dudes in a jungle? Nothing. And for that we give them a franchise so lazy it can’t even be bothered to spell out its own titles.
Okay, let me say this. The directors of the movie, who are credited as THE BROTHERS STRAUSE (I picture them as the Barbarian brothers, preferably holding battle axes while on set), are not entirely incompetent. I don’t believe they will ever be smokin hot directors like Ridley Scott was when he created his masterpiece ALIEN (sorry BLADE RUNNER, but you know it’s true. Why don’t you go cry in the rain now?) or like James Cameron when he made one of the best sequels ever made (ALIENS or T2, take your pick). But better than Paul Not Thomas Anderson? Yeah, I’ll buy that. On par with Stephen Hopkins? Sure, why not? I could believe that. But this is no PREDATOR 2. That’s all I ask is a PREDATOR 2 or greater level of quality, but I didn’t get it. (more…)
2 people like this post.
Tags: AvP, Predator series
Posted in Action, Horror, Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, December 13th, 2005
What’s up fellas -
I heard some shit about your butts were numb or something like that. Sorry to hear about that I hope you get well soon.
Anyway here’s the deal. I saw KING KONG. Not sure if you know about this one but it is a remake of an older picture from ‘33 or so. This version is by Pete Jackson who won an Oscar, etc. You LORD OF THE RINGS fans will know who I’m talking about. If not there is always the internet. I’m not sure if they have IMDB translated into elfish, but I’m sure you can find the information somewhere or other.
Basically the plot involves a 25 foot tall gorilla, a blonde gal and a prominent New York landmark. (not the statue of liberty.) By the end of the movie the fates of these three may or may not turn out to be intertwined. I don’t want to give too much away.
Okay I’ll be more specific. The movie is basically divided into two movements. First movement is the movie crew heading to this place Skull Island (don’t go there) where they meet the gorilla, who we will call Kong. Also there are dinosaurs, giant worms, giant bats, angry natives, skeletons (dead), things you can fall off of, and that sort of shit. Second movement, the action repeats itself in New York. (there are not giant worms and shit in New York though. sorry.) (more…)
Tags: Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis, gorillas, Jack Black, Jamie Bell, Naomi Watts, Peter Jackson, primate horror, remakes
Posted in Monster, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »
