Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Thursday, May 16th, 2002
STARWARS VOL. II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
a.k.a. YODA VS. DRACULA
This is a picture that most people already have an opinion on, that will never change, whether they’ve seen it or not. This is only one of those opinions.
First of all, I enjoyed this picture. I laughed at some of the cornball speeches, the sometimes stiff acting, and a couple bad puns. But you know, I can get into this space ‘n robots shit sometimes, and for one main reason: Dracula. As you know from my review of Lord of the Rings Part 1, I enjoy any picture where some dude has a duel with Dracula. This one raises the bar by making the dude be a little green space-elf/Shaolin monk. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 36 Comments »
Saturday, April 27th, 2002
JASON X is the future of slasher franchises left over from the ’80s, and not just because it’s about Jason Voorhees being frozen and defrosted in outer space 450 years later. No, this is the future because it finally figured out a good approach to keeping these stupid characters going. This isn’t trying to update things by infusing the same old crap with last month’s stale gimmicks. See for example the upcoming Blair Witch/webcast Halloween picture you see advertised before JASON X (although I do like seeing Buster Rhymes say “Trick or treat motherfucker!” – wouldn’t he make a better Dolemite than LL Cool J?)
No, this one works because it works as a genuine dumb slasher movie, as a parody of one, and as some weird pop culture accident where a familiar series got thrown into the wrong genre unexpectedly. It’s a more consistent attempt at the BRIDE OF CHUCKY approach to modern slasher sequels. Take the character and cliches from the earlier sequels, put them in a way more ludicrous situation (and it really is WAY more ludicrous in this case) and have fun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Cronenberg, in space, James Isaac, Kane Hodder, slashers, Todd Farmer
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 33 Comments »
Friday, March 15th, 2002
Apparently this one’s based on a video game that’s kind of based on the night of the living dead movies. So it turns out real crappy like a xerox of a xerox. And apparently the machine needs servicing. The video game is probaly better because after three of your pac-men get eaten by zombies, the game is over. The movie lasts, like, more than an hour.
The plot isn’t that bad. Milla Jovovich, who is still gorgeous even after leaving Luc Besson and becoming integrated into society, plays some kind of security agent or something in a dress. (Not sure.) She wakes up naked in the shower of a mansion with no memory. Some army goons rush in and bring her along with them into a secret underground chamber to investigate, even though she doesn’t remember how to help them.
Okay so I am not really backing my claim that the plot isn’t that bad. Well it turns out that before she lost her memory (I never understood how) she was undercover, living in the mansion to guard the secret entrance to this underground facility “the hive” where a realistically sinister corporation performs illegal genetic experiments. But somebody let loose a deadly virus, the computer put the place in lockdown, and all the scientists and dogs inside were turned into zombies. Also some monster comes out at the end. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Milla Jovovich, Paul W.S. Anderson, video games, zombies
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Videogame | 6 Comments »
Saturday, February 9th, 2002
Well once again the conventional wisdom turns out to be right. You would think that as dumb as a movie like this would probaly be, it might be enjoyable. Well, I would think that. But I would be wrong.
I’ve never seen the original, and I always meant to. I understand that it is kind of a satire of sports and american society’s thirst for violent entertainment. The great DEATH RACE 2000 was made to cash in on the same themes but is generally considered to be better. Anyway the approach that John McTiernan, the director of DIE MOTHERFUCKIN HARD 1 & 3, took was to set it in pretty much the present, since wrestling and ultimate fighting become more ridiculous and lurid than anything filmatists of the ’70s could’ve imagined. But there really aren’t new points to be made here. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Klein, Jean Reno, John McTiernan, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn, remakes
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Sport | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Now days people are always going ape shit over a movie that they think is too amoral. Rosie O’Donnel busted a few veins over 1999 Outlaw Award Winner for Best Picture since I got out of prison Fight Club, and this American Psycho deal is already getting people up in arms. They think that your average joe on the street is some kind of retard who can’t see somebody do something in a movie and make their own judgment of whether or not it’s the right thing to do. At the same time these pricks are all cock of the walk, thinking they’re immune to the might powers of the Cinema. They saw fight club and THEY didn’t go out and blow up a building but GOD SAVE US if any of those subhuman cavepeople who DON’T have their own tv shows or politician husbands ever see the movie. We’ll all be in for it.
Somebody told me that when Payback came out, the slogan was “Get ready to root for the bad guy,” as if that was some new technique. These motherfuckers don’t remember that it’s okay to make a movie about a guy you wouldn’t necessarily want to leave alone with your daughter. Everbody has to be a damn boyscout unless they’re a cop, and then it’s okay for them to torture people and play by their own rules because they’re a “good guy.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: gorillas, mad science, Michael Gough, primate horror
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
The Fifth Element is your usual Bruce Willis movie that starts out in Egypt in 1934 and ends up in some fancy space hotel in 2334 with this blue skinned space opera lady singing opera and then busting off dance moves. Bruce is introduced down on his luck, pretty much like in the Die Hards – his wife left him, he’s trying to quit smoking, his mom won’t stop hassling him and he’s “5 points away” from losing his job as a flying cab driver in space age New York.
In fact this is a lot like a Die Hard movie except in a cartoony comic book space world instead of a building. Instead of talking to a cop on a walkie talkie, he just talks to his mom on the phone, and instead of terrorists there’s this big ball of fire hurtling toward the earth that turns light to dark, life to death, sometimes has a giant skull for a face, eats missiles and sattelites, and calls himself Mr. Shadow during phone calls. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brion James, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Luc Besson, Luke Perry, Milla Jovovich, Tiny Lister
Posted in Action, Bruce, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 78 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
This is a science fiction picture from the Hammer Studios over there in Britain, and you know what that means: I saw it on American Movie Classics. The hero of this story is a dude by the name of Quatermass who apparently stars in a bunch of movies and TV shows over there like Quatermass and the Pit, The Quatermass Experiment etc. No it’s not one of those weird shot on video shows they do marathons of on PBS when they need money. You’re thinking of dr. who and the red dwarf. What the FUCK is up with these college dudes that think that shit is funny? You know how they repeat the jokes in a phoney british accent I hate that man. Anyway I wouldn’t try to pull that shit on you don’t worry this is a whole different thing here, this Quatermass.
Quatermass is a college professor looking dude with the tweed suit and vest, bow tie and beard. He is not an action hero, everything he does is completely with the brains, I mean this guy is a real rocket scientist. And by rocket scientist I mean he is the type of scientist who studies rockets. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Quatermass, Roy Ward Baker
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
Saturday, December 15th, 2001
Vanilla Sky is an american remake of OPEN YOUR EYES, the second picture by the young spanish gentleman Alejandro Amenabar, who also did THESIS and THE OTHERS. After the movie I was saying to a gal that the ending was kinda different on the original, and the guy next to me was saying the same thing to his friend. Except he was just getting out of OCEAN’S 11.
Everything is fucking remakes now, huh? The above took place in Seattle, Washington, where as we speak the Dreamworks company is hard at work on an unneccesary remake of (the) RING. History has not been kind to american remakes of foreign pictures. Even when you get the same guy to remake it – like with THE VANISHING or NIGHTWATCH – the movie will piss everybody off and the director will be forgotten forever. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cameron Crowe, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, remakes, Tom Cruise
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 5 Comments »
Sunday, October 28th, 2001
I gotta admit I was surprised by this picture. It is about a young man (named Donnie Darko [that is why the movie is called Donnie Darko, it is the dude’s name]) to whom all the weird shit happens. Like for example a demonic rabbit lures him out of bed to a golf course, whispering mysterious type business to him in a spooky voice. In the morning he comes home and, you know, a plane engine has fallen onto his bedroom. Only one thing is, nobody knows what happened to the plane the engine fell off of. And it would be bad enough to have a plane engine fall into your room in the first place, then you gotta throw in all this mysterious bermuda triangle type business too. I mean he has a hard enough time just with school work now he has to deal with this shit.
This movie didn’t get much of a release and I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s coming out in a time when Donnie Darko’s life doesn’t seem all that different from ours. Engines do fall out of the sky. I mean they have ax fights on planes now. They have shoe bombs and shit. They’re gonna have baboon attacks pretty soon, the way things are going in my opinion. Pilots gored by elephants after that. I mean why do they allow elephants in the cargo hold anyway is what they’re gonna say. We shoulda seen that loophole. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Patrick Swayze, Richard Kelly
Posted in Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
Saturday, August 25th, 2001
John Carpenter is one of the most controversial directors of our time. Not because he gets into touchy subjects, like he goes and does some movie about jesus doing somebody in the ass or whatever it is that offends people these days. But because of his actual work. Because no one can really seem to agree whether he sucks with a few brilliant exceptions, whether he used to be brilliant and now he sucks, or whether he is really one of the great masters of the horror and Badass Cinema and that some of these new ones are just an off day.
The correct answer is c.
This new one follows many of the great John Carpenter stylistic motifs and thematic type themes. For example, if you ever read an interview or listened to his dvd commentary tracks, you know that practically every movie he ever did he claims is “really a western.” So he always has some stranger walking into town, or has some prisoner being transferred from a jail or a new sherriff in town or what not. In Assault On Precinct 13 he has the gangsters doing blood rituals like evil movie indians in a John Wayne picture. In They Live Roddy Piper strolls into town, walking down the middle of the street even though it’s LA. In Escape From LA he does the old jumping from horse to horse routine, except with motorcycles. Vampires takes place in a sunny Mexican ghost town even though it’s about fuckin vampires. Even Big Trouble In Little China and if I remember right the Elvis TV movie started as western scripts but were re-written to modern settings. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ice Cube, Jason Statham, John Carpenter, Natasha Henstridge, Pam Grier
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
