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Reviews
Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
Thigh Slapper
My brother and I went last night. It's a good thing it was a Monday night and the theater was lightly attended. We were laughing so loudly at so many times during the movie. We weren't alone. Laughter from every corner of the theater.
A great successor to the original.
Alien Reign of Man (2017)
Complete waste of time
Incoherent exposition. Bad CGI.
Someone needed to proof read the script this pre-teen wrote.
Man with the Screaming Brain (2005)
Campbell Still King
Bruce Campbell retains his crown as King of the B movies.
I haven't let as much as this in a long time.
The Tree of Life (2011)
A Waste of Time and Crew
The Tree of Life: Lots of promise. Big named actors. Great cinematography. Failed execution. In reaching to be art it failed at it's core need; capturing emotion. Actually it failed with a dearth of acting; filling the hour and a half with Discovery Channel HD footage, some voice overs, a canonical sound track, and 15 minutes with those previously-mentioned big names actors. It's meant to be about a family that lost a son and how they deal with it over the years. You get that from the 5 to 10 minutes of acting in the first 30. From there the screen writer loses his way and flails around, unsuccessfully grasping for it the rest of the time. I'm reminded of how Ed Wood shot random footage of Bela Lugosi and cut it into Plan 9 From Outer Space. Both directors must have done similar things with their lead actors. "Now give me anguish". Only later editing in the 15 to 30 minutes of script with an hour of filler stock footage from the Hubble Telescope, Hawaii's volcanoes, some CGI dinosaurs left over from a SyFy Channel movie, and various travelogues.
If you're in the mood for drama and loss, then put your time to better use by watching Beautiful Boy instead.
The Hideous Sun Demon (1958)
Example of the Genre
Getting in on the tail end of the 50's sci-fi/horror movies, this typifies the B-grade man-in-a-rubber-suit monster movies of the atomic age.
Observations: They could have tucked in the neck portion of the mask into the torso suit so that it wasn't left to flap around every time the actor moved. Creases and folds at the elbow are excusable but not flapping necks.
Climbing to a great height to fall in the "dramatic conclusion" was cliché after Kong did it.
"Did he wet his pants just before that big climb?" His path to destruction was pre-ordained since, in the opening scene it was made clear that he created the accident with the "experimental isotope" because he had a hang over. Clearly anyone who drinks (and, later in the movie, picks up a lounge singer for a quickie on the beach) is not someone to whom you should get emotionally attached. That means it's okay when a physical transformation leads to an emotional break and, ultimately, homicidal mania.
Why are there so many isotopes on which to be experimented? Not to the high quality of, "I Was a Teenage Werewolf", or "The 4-D Man" but a good example of the genre. Better acting than the original, "Invaders from Mars". If you're curious about what the genre is all about, this is an example worth seeing. If you're a "collector" of bad sci-fi atomic monster movies, this is one of them. If you expect high quality production values and acting then skip the whole genre. This is the kind of movie that, "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra", spoofs.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)
Excellent
This send up of old 50's sci-fi movies hit the bullseye.
I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.
The writer/director and cast nailed their portrayals.
The dialog was a hoot.
This is destined to be a new cult classic. If you're a fan of old B movies, then this is for you. The framing of shots, the locations, and even the fact that you can see the pants legs and boots of the mutant as well as the wires in some shots of the skeleton make this a great film for the whole family. Shot in black and white in 10 days with a script that took 5 days to write makes it true to that old tradition in more ways than one. In the extras is a cast Q&A session during one screening. The audio is poor and some comments are hard to follow but the worst are subtitled. In any case, it gives you insight into the motivations behind making the movie. A film by fans for fans.