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Reviews
Sightings (2017)
Fun fun fun
I do not understand why this has such a low rating, it's one of the most entertaining bigfoot movies I've seen and I've seen many. A few decent jump scares, moderately competent acting, nice scenery, and the story is absolutely in the "so bad it's good" category. Sure it's goofy, sure there are plot holes, for pity's sake it's a movie about bigfoot! There was an everybody-running scene that the great Buster Keaton would have smiled at, I certainly did. I wish I could show you just how many low budget creature features I turn off after five or ten minutes, it might help my cause here, in any case I was very amused and happy to have given it a chance.
Brigham City (2001)
This could have been so much better
...if only the actors hadn't radiated their holiness quite so self consciously. Come on folks, even Gentiles can recognize decent folks without being beaten over the head.
Good story, I enjoyed seeing the Mormon services, and I found the ending moving but the "see how good I am" acting made me cringe so many times I could barely make it through.
Midnight Mass (2021)
Magic and Mystery
Every single character so finely drawn they could be people you know, you get to see them that intimately. Stunning cinematography, beautiful soundtrack, great script, and a solid story. I was impressed with all the acting and Hamish Linklater's portrayal of the priest was brilliant, he had that perfect blend of utter sincerity with an underlying tinge of used car salesman.
I loved the dialogue and I'm sad to see from reading some of the other reviews that many apparently just don't like to hear other people speaking.
The Report of the Week: I React to Mean Comments (2018)
Unparalleled poise
Imagine your most chill, well spoken, professor responding to insults (some vulgar, some cruel, some abysmally stupid) and you have this. For such a young man John is witty and mature in his "reviews" of some pretty obnoxious criticisms of himself, fun and funny!
La llorona (2019)
Moving and dreamlike
Set against a backdrop of genocide and betrayals La Llorona is a beautiful movie. Visually stunning, eerie, sensitive, and tragic, it tells the tale of a Guatemalan dictator haunted by the folk figure of La Llorona and his family's attempt to escape with something left of their own souls.
Discovering Bigfoot (2017)
Jesus wept
I knew I was in for a bumpy ride when a mere four minutes in the brilliant narrator/star/director blandly states that bats are blind. Now I'm not a zoologist, nor a naturalist and I know bats aren't blind, how come he doesn't?
He shows some very clear and wonderful "photos" of bigfoot and even mentions that they look like drawings, well yeah. And the one where it blinks looks like a GIF!
I was especially amused at Jeffrey Meldrum who dances and sidesteps and smirks his way through the film. I've seen him in any number of bigfoot programs but never where I felt he was going to break down into hysterical laughter at any minute.
If you believe in bigfoot your feelings are going to be hurt by this piece of garbage, if you don't, your intelligence is going to be insulted like never before. In any case it did make me laugh and there was some pretty country shown so I gave it an extra star.
The Vampire Conspiracy (2005)
Painful
As I'm writing this there are three other reviews posted all praising this as a low budget gem. I'm here to tell you either something is rotten somewhere or they didn't see the same film I saw.
The plot was something about a vampire trapping five people in a maze and playing games with them, not a bad premise but not carried through very well. The films biggest problem was the quality of the acting -- I now know that I could act in a vampire movie, yes even I who can hardly act pleased believably when somebody gives me a chartreuse sweater for Christmas, who sweats blood at the very thought of public speaking. To get to the point (and don't whine at my ramblings, if you watched the movie you know how to waste time already and if you didn't I'm saving you from losing an important block of time better spent clipping your toenails) the acting was C- for a high school drama class. It was so awful I felt sorry for the actors. Really it ... well it stank, a lot.
I gave it two stars instead of one because even with the horrible acting it had a bit of style. The bleak and moody atmosphere was pretty nice but couldn't make up for the lack of coherence in the story itself and nothing could make up for the ghastly acting.
L'Atlantide (1932)
So very beautiful
If you're expecting an action filled bit of camp desert adventure this isn't the movie for you. If you're happy with an almost surreal look backward into time and film making you're going to love this.
Every scene was worth capturing and putting into a frame on your wall. From the dreamy starkness of the desert to the marvelously vulgar flashback of the Paris dancers my eyes just couldn't get enough.
I've read several reviews that complained the story was slight and or incoherent but I didn't feel that way. Dreams don't have to be epic tales or follow a strict pedestrian logic and I was happy that this dream of a film allowed me to feast my eyes and wonder.
The score was almost as gorgeous at points as the camera work, flowing from one theme and bursting into another sometimes shockingly but always beautifully.
Purple Death from Outer Space (1966)
Eye candy
Steampunk meets art deco meets fairy tale, but it works. I'm not sure the greater realism possible in science fiction films today make them any more enjoyable, after all it's a purely imaginative genre why not make it pretty and fantastic? The story may not be much since it is a mishmash of the serial but the sets and the energy the actors bring to whatever story there is make it all somehow wonderful. I happened to watch a late 50s sci fi film right before I watched this and was surprised at how much better the production values are here. Loved the mountain climbing scenes, I could feel the cold and the dizzying heights. And Buster Crabbe is just so darn beautiful!
A Name for Evil (1973)
A real period piece
From the beginning city scenes where Robert Culp's character shows his dissatisfaction with the establishment by throwing a TV out a high window (omg it could have smushed somebody) to the funniest orgy you could ever hope to see this movie epitomizes the spirit of the times. I wish I had seen it then it would all have seemed quite sensible and topical. Today it's a marvelous window to the past, Robert Culp wears beads and The Best Nehru jacket and proudly shows his bits during the aforementioned orgy.
The haunted house story is incomprehensible ... well okay the whole movie is pretty much impossible to follow but the visuals and the atmosphere make up for much IMHO. As long as you're looking for an odd slice of history or some giggling nostalgia you can like this movie.
La montagna del dio cannibale (1978)
An astonishingly tedious movie
Okay I know that with the title I saw it under "Slave of the Cannibal God" I shouldn't have expected much, but I did expect something. It had Stacy Keach in it for heaven's sake to my mind that signified that I would at least see real actors acting.
But alas.
Icky people go to find other icky people and hopefully some treasure. Blah blah blah. Every animal and person in New Guinea is alternately demonized or tortured. Blah blah blah. When we finally hate EVERYONE in the entire movie two of them escape and I for one was extremely disappointed, I wanted them to get et too. And yikes I knew Ursula Andress couldn't act but I didn't remember that she couldn't even change facial expression.
I love bad movies but this was more worthless than bad.
The White Gorilla (1945)
Call me peculiar but I liked this movie
I hadn't read anything about The White Gorilla before I started watching it so it took me a while to realize most of it was an old silent film.
Ah but what a silent film it was, ginormous flocks, nay herds of male lions tearing up the landscape and chimps and orangutans and tigers all mixed and stirred to give you a world view of raw nature of the 1920s. I thought the narration was pleasant although I did notice the one point where he just stopped speaking for no reason at all.
Was it a bad movie? Maybe but it made me smile and kept me wanting to know what would happen next. And I found the sight of those droves of terrifically excited male lions trying to eat everybody in sight considerably more chilling than similar scenes in many "better" films.
Finally I LOVED the fact that due to the impossibility of actually merging the two films at the end the fate of the silent film cast was left up in the air as 'missing but there were a lot of bones laying around where they were last seen' -- outstanding!
Yep I'll watch this one again.
Fleisch (1979)
Huge, gaping, black (plot) holes didn't hurt this film
They simply made it less predictable.
The story concerns a pair of newlyweds terrorized by organ thieves. When the groom is kidnapped by a pair of sinister ambulance drivers the bride runs off shrieking then spends six days with a kindly trucker before thinking to rescue her husband. Why didn't she go to the police? Why, later in NYC did she just sit and stare at the hospital where said hubby was being held instead of doing something? Why did the song that opens the movie make my ears bleed in the beginning and yet by the end had me singing along? Not sure I have answers but somehow it all worked, the story itself made an odd sort of sense and the characters pulled me right along with them on their madcap journey.
Visually bleak with the film makers choosing the grimmest shots possible of New Mexico and NYC it's worth looking for, give it a try.