Month: August 2014

Total Retribution (2011)

The intros from a couple of the companies that joined forces to make this are cool.

It maintains the illusion of competence until people start talking.

Badly written pretentious sh1t with a slight zombie presence.

Wretched. Kinda fun to watch in a cheezy sci-fi way, though, at times. So I’ve upped the grade.

And the, umm, special FX. Really…interesting. Wow.

Inspirational Alteration: FUBAB

Inspirational Quote: “That’s for robots only!”

Grade: F

Safely In The Warm Embrace Of Finality – An Homage By Puppy

Book One: Come To Home, Thou Cast Outwards Before

Chapter One:
Music music man man man man greetings.
Door man man man man man Mynril?
Put bound Gods man one hold no!
This door do chatter pause… humanoid this.
This you head images he third he.
How pause do that’s things stops nod.
Just door third both Mynril? give Mynril.

Coming Soon – Details By Puppy, 8/21/14

An homage to D+D, the GOOD parts of FK (just to be clear), Lovecraft, John Carpenter and Michael De Luca.

The reference should be obvious when it’s done, if not now. This is a work of fanfiction, an homage to a movie I have a weakness for.

THIS IS NOT A COMMERCIAL WORK.

Please consider this when reading, and I hope you enjoy.

The movie’s better, of course. But it’s fanfic…give me some slack here.

-Puppy >.< Yip!

The Master (2012)

Post-WWII Joaquin Phoenix, obviously traumatized and attempting to find a life for himself, makes several bad stops on his way to the eventual premise of the film.

It’s interesting, at first, especially wondering where exactly it’s going to go and knowing Phoenix will be there for 2 hours. And he
is, and he’s good as always – welcome back, JP.

But it never truly takes off beyond the pleasure of watching him act, and to a lesser extent watching Philip Seymour Hoffman.

It’s just too generic, too scattered, too unfocused to be the triumphant return I had heard it was for Phoenix. I mean, his PERFORMANCE is up to it…but he picked the wrong film. He just doesn’t get enough help.

You might disagree at first, but I found the more I watched the more disappointed I became in everything except JP and PSH.

Basically it’s another example of a hopeless, vulnerable, sad and tremendously damaged person being taken advantage of by a prophet of false hope. And I don’t mean that religiously; cruelty and abuse of that kind are very mortal, simple, basic human things…for some people.

Unfortunately.

Grade: C

Memento (2000)

I saw this a long time ago and I remembered it as being: pretty good, odd in terms of sequence, and with a twist. So I watched it again before it went off my NF list:

Watch a man with short-term memory unravel things, often many times, in a very unusual order and with an interesting method.

Basically the story unfolds backwards, and semi-repeatedly…so if that sounds interesting you should watch and if it sounds annoying you shouldn’t.

The conclusion is disappointing to me, I expected better. But it was interesting to watch until then.

On Netflix Streaming until 8/15/14.

Grade: C+

3/20/17: Back on Netflix Streaming. I had a feeling I had underrated this…and I think I did. A little.

Better than I thought; creepy and weird, weirder as it goes along.

Some parts still don’t fit (even knowing what to expect), and it might test your patience at first, but overall I think it’s worth it.

Inspirational Quote: “Do I lie to myself to be happy?”

Grade: B-

Demonic (AKA ‘Forest Of The Damned’) (2005)

Don’t look this in the eyes. Or with the eyes.

Awfully bad.

Yes, it’s really Tom Savini. He brings with him the moon from NotLD and some bad acting to go with the rest. He leaves behind his gore fx/writing abilities, which could have helped.

As it is the gore fx can be described best in one word: Snausages.

Grade: F-

8/5/14: Alternate Title: “Forest Of The Naked Hungry Hissing Chicks Some Of Whom Aren’t All That Hot And Make Angels Seem Sucky”. Rip courtesy of some Horror Movie Chick whose horror-movie-review website I can’t remember but who wrote a decent review of this flick. Grade: F-

Headhunter (2005)

This should have starred Joe Estevez. Or Frank Stallone.

It tries to be creepy, but since the acting and script are really
mediocre at best it’s mostly just silly.

On the positive side, the painting reminds me fondly of ‘In The Mouth Of Madness’ (gotta watch that again…) and the FX that don’t suck are creepy. The one that inspired me to write this bit in particular – you’ll know it when you see it. It actually gave me some hope/interest for the rest, that actually endured.

It’s bad, it’s cheezy, it’s absurd…but it’s sorta…fun? A definite level of interest for weirdness and cheeze-enjoyment. But you MUST like cheeze.

If this was re-written, with good actors, and a good director, and good music, and everything else except (some of) the fx…it would be pretty darn good I think. Or would it ruin what little charm it has? We’ll never know.

See if you can spot the grammatical error and spelling mistake.

My GOD does it get cheezy at the end.

On Netflix Streaming until 8/8/14.

Grade: D+