VISITING HOURS is up there with the best slasher movies I’ve seen. You think you’ve pretty much exhausted them and then you find out a gem like this that was sitting there all throughout the 1980s, its distinctive VHS box staring at you from the optical illusion eye sockets of its hospital room windows lit in skull formation. I knew that image like I knew my own hands but it never once occurred to me to ask “What is this movie? Should I watch it?” Not until you guys recommended it to me for the hundredth time. So thanks for that.
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Posts Tagged ‘Michael Ironside’
Visiting Hours
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
Scanners
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
SCANNERS is a story about mutants with psychic powers, a generation of babies messed up by a medicine their mothers took, now grown and finding their brains too powerful, causing them to hear other people’s thoughts, and giving them dangerous powers like they can drop you to the ground with a nose bleed just by thinking about you too hard. If you get a greeting card from a scanner that says “Thinking of you,” take that as a threat. (more…)
Terminator Salvation
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
Here’s my TERMINATOR SALVATION review. Sorry it took me a few days – everybody else on the internet has already reviewed it two or three times each and moved on with their lives. I figured I ought to go the extra mile so my review includes an optional soundtrack:
(note: I'm not really gonna pussyfoot around the spoilers in this one, so beware)
I got so much trouble on my mind. I refuse to lose my hope for McG. I had this fantasy – what if McG made an undeniably great TERMINATOR movie, and everybody who ever talked shit about him had to eat crow? They’d be so unprepared to admit they liked a McG movie that their minds would pop like balloons. It would be like reading in the newspaper that a squirrel had built a working rocket ship – just completely out of left field. They wouldn’t know what to do. “Well, his name makes me uncomfortable, but TERMINATOR SALVATION changed my life.” “You know, I went back and gave CHARLIE’S ANGELS FULL THROTTLE another look, it turns out it was ahead of its time. There was no way to really know back then that it was good, only Vern ever understood it, but now it works.”
Well, that ain’t happening. SALVATION doesn’t seem to be winning anybody over and even to the McG/McG-curious it’s somewhat of a disappointment. The sad part is that it really has some slices of that great sci-fi action movie I was holding out hope for. I absolutely love many aspects of it. It quickly draws you into this post-apocalyptic California and the war being waged there. Christian Bale as John Connor has a badass introduction landing his helicopter on a Terminator and shooting into its skull – the camera gives him a classic pan-up-from-the-feet hero shot as someone on a radio somewhere buzzes “Connor is on the ground!” There he is, this guy we’ve been hearing about since 1984, not yet the leader but he’s going into battle followed by 52 brothers, bruised, battered and scarred but hard. (more…)
Heavy Metal 2000
Saturday, January 1st, 2005Let’s face it, only nerds watch cartoons.
Okay so I know the above statement will rile up alot of male individuals of the internet. I know it is an overgeneralizational type deal especially since I have been known to like the cartoons. Such as the Miyazaki fellow hailing from the island of Japan. That is one individual who knows how to make a fucking CARTOON.
But jesus. I mean, Heavy Metal 2000. Need I say more? Probaly not. But I will.
Let me frame this with a little anecdote. I went to the video store and checked out some new releases with a gay individual. You know how a gay guy often likes movies such as Bedrooms and Hallways, Edge of Seventeen, Queer As Folk and etc.? These are apparently some of the higher quality new releases from the gay Cinema. However there are many other titles out there of a lower quality. There is one called Vadim’s Story, which is not about Roger Vadim, it’s about naked boys riding around on horses in Siberia. But most of them are about a bunch of gay guys in the city who are waiters or whatever and how they all have a bunch of friends and relationships and what not, and how it’s all funny that they are gay and everything. There’s one called West Hollywood Stories and on the back, I swear to fucking christ, it says “These are the gays of our lives.”
So my gay buddy is reading these boxes talking about how great these movies are and suddenly he just turns to me disgusted and says, “Gay people are so stupid.” (more…)
The Machinist
Saturday, January 1st, 2005Not sure if anybody else has noticed this, but this guy Christian Bale is a good actor in my opinion. AMERICAN PSYCHO would have to be up there with Eric Bana in CHOPPER as one of my favorite maniac performances of the last 2-7 years. (Now they’re playing Batman and the Incredible Hulk. They shoulda got the guy from DAHMER for Superman.) Mr. Bale was also pretty good in SHAFT 2K and REIGN OF FIRE, where I wouldn’t've even known it was the same guy if I didn’t know how to read and recognize names.
Well here in the machinist he gives another great performance but this time with a special nauseating gimmick: the guy lost a bunch of weight for the movie. He looks like a fuckin skeleton with a pair of pantyhose pulled over it. You know how DeNiro and Del Toro ate a bunch of donuts for RAGIN BULL and FEAR AND LOATHING and that was supposed to be so brave? Well Christian says FUCK THAT, eats nothin but grass and grapeskins for like three months or something, turns his muscles into fuckin corn husks. When I heard about it I figured he gets skinnier over the course of the movie, but no, he looks like this from the beginning. That’s the character.
At first it’s pretty shocking because he walks around with no shirt on and, in my opinion, that is not something you want to look at. You feel like if somebody bumped into him on accident in the hallway they might snap his head right off the neck. But put clothes on the motherfucker and it seems more acceptable, he’s just a skinny, wirey, unhealthy dude. He even has relationships with women. They try to get him to eat more food but they don’t vomit when they see him naked. Later on as things go badly for him in the movie he starts to look worse, and you’re not really sure how much of it is makeup. Like, his right eye is so sunken in you can see the outline of the eyesocket. Which I am against. Keep your pants up, keep your shirt on, and keep your eyesockets covered, is what it says in the bible I believe. No shirt, no shoes, no eyefat, no service. (more…)
The Next Karate Kid
Saturday, January 1st, 2005Two time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, hailing from Bellingham, Washington, stars in the explosive finale to the Karate Kid quadilogy. This one was Swank’s first starring role and came out in 1994, when movies were just as crappy but not quite as funny as their ’80s counterparts. The director is Christopher Cain, father of Dean Cain and director of The Amazing Panda Adventure.
Swank plays Julie, a pouty, sullen teenage girl who lives unhappily with her grandma after the death of her parents. Anything anybody says to Julie, she takes offense and throws a hissy fit. You know how old people are, they try to be nice but they don’t really understand where your teenage mind is coming from, so they offer you some lemon bars or something and you’re like “GOD DAMN IT WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?!” and run out of the room crying. So then Julie goes in and stabs grandma to death in her sleep, while jerkin off. Or was that a different movie? I can’t remember.
No, that’s right, I was thinking of Ken Park there. The grandma doesn’t get stabbed to death in this one (spoiler). This grandma wants to straighten Julie out, but she’s too smart to send her off to one of those teenage deprogramming ranches that Montel Williams would’ve suggested. Instead she accepts an offer from her old friend Mr. Miyagi to go stay at his garden while he looks after the teen.
You remember Mr. Miyagi, played by Pat Morita. He was nominated for best supporting actor for the original Karate Kid, but unlike his pupil, he went home in shame. If you are too young to know of the Karate Kid, I gotta explain that Mr. Miyagi was once a beloved character in American culture. He’s a short old guy who speaks in broken English and purposely annoys young people by getting them to wash his cars and crap like that. But they will soon see the wisdom behind his foolish appearance and how he is actually training them to be great fighters. And when shit goes down, like some bullies pick on him at the gas station, he will use his very slow and stiff Dolemite-like karate master skills to somehow whoop their ass. (more…)
