zzoaozz

IMDb member since October 1999
    Lifetime Total
    25+
    Poll Taker
    10x
    IMDb Member
    24 years

Reviews

Elevator to Salvation
(2015)

Little Preachy but surprisingly good movie
This is a movie about two upper management business men who are working late on Christmas Eve and take a freight elevator together because the regular elevators are locked down at 10:30. The elevator, however, is a conduit between Heaven and Hell and the two men have to confess and repent to save themselves. I won't give away the ending, but even though both men are thoroughly unlikable in the beginning, it is well activated and strangely riveting. I don't know that I would call it horror, mystery, or thriller. It's more of a religious tract made into a movie. It is still good though. The two main actors really did a fine job.

Desde Allá
(2015)

art film that just fails to deliver anything at all
The plot of the film starts out well enough, an older man with daddy issues that are never explained gets his rocks off literally by looking at the exposed backs and butts of boys he picks up on the street and pays. He never touches them, just looks. He keeps his house meticulously and appears to be obsessive compulsive, unable to express emotion, and to have an aversion to being touched. He also stalks the father he hates. Then he picks up a street punk who whacks him in the head and steals his money. He begins to stalk the heterosexual boy and finds he lives a violent life of poverty which eventually will end up with him badly beaten. He meets with him again and tells him that there is more money which he can have if he will keep him company. That's where it falls apart. The viewer would have been okay if the boy had slowly come around in response to father like kindness in a hurt/comfort manner. The viewer would have been okay if Armando had fallen into a one sided unrequited love with a straight boy. But one moment the boy is aggressively straight the next he is all over Armando who can't respond to him because of his touch aversion. The boy blames Armando's father and kills him. They finally have sex. Then Armando follows him to the store the next morning and calls the cops on him. It is possible that the plot twist was meant to be that Armando was setting up the murder of his father all along, but even so, the whole thing comes across as unbelievable. There are major holes in the believability. Probably biggest is why the heterosexual Elder would just suddenly want him enough to kill for him. There are plenty of others though. The older man shows almost no emotion though the entire film and the dialogue is barely there one liners. He follows his father and says once and only once that he wishes he was dead. Why would Elder draw the conclusion that his father was the source of his touch issues? He isn't a psychiatrist or even overly bright. Why turn him in when no one saw him and he even collected his brass? It just falls apart. It is billed as a romance/drama but there is no romance in it at all. It seems to be headed somewhere for a while and that is why I give it 2 but then it just meanders off and dies.

It Comes at Night
(2017)

This is NOT horror OR mystery it is a psychological study
The title and the genre classification of this movie are completely unrelated to its actual content. So much so that it is totally missing the correct audience for it. I sat tonight in a theatre full of people expecting horror and/or mystery and saw them start to get restless halfway in and crack out their phones out of boredom. This movie is about a family that has isolated themselves in a remote area to try and survive a bubonic plague like illness. They meet another survivor with a family and their humanity is tested as they decide whether to help him or protect themselves. It then explores their changing behavior as they think at first they have done the right thing, then later begin to doubt it. It's about how ordinary people behave in a claustrophobic, high stress environment. Violence is minimal, there are no monsters, the plague isn't anything supernatural, there is no psycho, nothing at all to warrant a horror category. There is also no mystery at all. Nothing unexplained happens and the story is linear and takes place over a few days. There is less than ten minutes of suspense in the entire movie. Once could argue it is a drama, but honestly that is stretching it as well. A study in the psychology of people under stress is what it is. It is extremely well acted. It is interesting, but it is completely mislabeled and misleading and the people that would actually love it are going to miss it.

Oceans Rising
(2017)

wow bad even for syfy
The acting is awful, just awful. A high school drama club could do better. The script is ridiculous. The science doesn't even pretend to make sense and the dialogue is completely unrealistic. The worst thing though is the special effects. The tiny model boat they use for the ocean scenes doesn't look anything at all like a real boat, let alone the boat the people are in. The ocean even looks fake. I don't know for sure but it looks like the ocean scenes might have been filmed in a kiddy pool with a fan blowing over the surface. It was not funny enough to be funny, campy enough to be another Sharknado, or good enough to be a time killer movie. Really, really bad.

The Big Bad
(2011)

Really Bad, and not the fun campy kind of bad either
I am not really sure if the people who made this film thought that by shooting it out of focus it would seem more artistic or surreal, but all it does is just make it nauseating. I normally try to point out the good and the bad when I write a review but this one is pretty lopsided. So here goes.

The good: Not a thing I can think of.

The bad: The camera-work, the framing, the sound, the acting, the makeup, the special effects, the story.

The premise has a grain of what could have been made into a good horror movie. Werewolf falls in love with a normal woman who has a kid. Misjudges and accidentally kills her while changed. Daughter hunts him down only to find there is a hidden underground of werewolves who are also hunting him. That could go several different ways. She could have met up with the underground and helped them only to have them turn on her in the end. She could have found her stepfather, forgiven him, then fought by his side against the underground. She could have started a revolution in the underground. She could have hunted them all down and killed them indiscriminately becoming either a hero or a worse monster than the werewolves.

None of that happened though. The entire underground subplot was introduced then abandoned completely with no explanations. In fact many things in this movie have no explanation. Where on earth do you find clear liquid silver in an eye dropper bottle? Why did she have "you have 3 days left" written in her notebook when there was a full moon that night and at least two months had passed since her mother was killed based on Molly's story? Why did all the women in this movie look like they never took a shower, brushed their hair, or wore makeup except for the lead? Why bring up the werewolf biting Molly's son then not mention him ever again? Why did throwing water on her dissolve Annabelle like the wicked witch of the west in Wizard of Oz? If she put some of her silver supplement in the water it never showed it. How did she say her final line when all that was left of her was a scarf and some smoke?

This movie lacks any coherence at all. It's not scary, funny, interesting, or artistic. I would hope that half of it got cut and that created the problem rather than think that someone actually wrote a script like that.

And the werewolf special effects... We won't even go there. You can buy a better werewolf mask at the dollar store.

This movie is a complete waste of time. I couldn't in good conscience recommend it to anyone.

The Purge
(2013)

Not very interesting
Having heard many positive reviews of the Purge I watched it expecting it to be a fairly straight forward family in peril fighting for their lives type movie, something along the lines of panic room. What took me aback about half way in as I got up to get a drink without bothering to pause it, was that it was actually rather boring. Let me break it down into the good the bad and the ugly.

On the positive side, the premise is interesting. Once a year the government suspends all law allowing people to murder rape steal and pillage. (makes you wonder if the insurance companies have anti-purge clauses like the current anti-terrorism clauses) A little background exposition via your friendly neighborhood TV set leads us to wonder if the purge really is for the mental health of the people allowing them to release pent up aggression and violence legally or if it is all an economic ploy to get rid of the poor and sell security systems, guns, and weapons to those who can afford it.

Also on a good note, the character of Charlie was interesting. He did seem morally conflicted about their lifestyle and the plight of the less fortunate and his spy camera doll was one creepy little critter, ingenious really.

Sadly we must now go to the bad. Other than the smallest glimmer from Charlie, the characters were totally unlikable. You don't get to know the homeless bloody stranger well enough to know if he is interesting or not. He just doesn't have many lines or many scenes revealing his character's personality or humanity. The father is a jerk who only shows a few redeeming characteristics way too far into the movie to make a difference. The mother is about as deep as a blow up kiddie pool. The daughter is supposed to be a moody angsty teen in lust with an older boy but again they just kind of throw all that out in a few expository lines from mom and dad. The neighbors are almost Stepford Wives creepy from the first time you meet them yet not really as creepy as the central family. There is also not one spark between any two characters in the entire movie. The parents don't even seem to like each other, let alone love each other. There is no feeling of warmth between either of them and the children, or between the siblings. Even when the daughter is fooling around with her boyfriend Henry, she seems about as engaged as someone watching the paint on the ceiling dry. The movie was also boring visually. Most of it takes place in what looks like a enormous rich house on the outside and looks like any boring suburban split level on the inside. Even the art on the wall and the furniture arrangements were so very, very middle class that the very idea of the neighbors feeling that they were uppity, just fell flat.

And now the ugly, and by that I mean the atrocious acting. The characters are flatter than a pancake, played with a sort of listless boredom that infects the viewer as well. The father comes across as plastic, the mother as bored. The daughter is completely unrealistic as a teen as is her boyfriend. The neighbors and the gang of rich thugs were as overblown and cliché as actors in a parody. They had no place in a serious movie at all. The acting was honestly about what you would expect in a high school play. I except the characters of Charlie and the bloody stranger from this criticism. Charlie seemed rather distant, but there seemed to be some potential there and the stranger as stated before wasn't on screen enough to judge. He seemed a fairly competent actor when he was so I suspect he may actually have some talent.

This movie was a complete and total waste of time. Most of the action is just gun shots in a dark room and over acting thugs. The characters are too poorly played to bring any drama into the script. I am not sure who failed this movie, the director, the casting company, the actors themselves.... but this movie as a whole fails completely. It is not entertaining.

A Haunting at Silver Falls
(2013)

exceedingly boring (mild spoilers)
apologies, the contains spoiler box was not working so I put it in the title and on the first line.

This movie was incredibly ordinary. It was neither good nor bad, just there. It's the kind of movie you would watch on TV if there wasn't anything else on.

The acting is acceptable, not great but okay. The guardians come across as wooden, the main character as vacuous, and the romance factor utterly flat.

There are several events in the movie that are very difficult to buy even when you are very good at suspending disbelief. Some of the worst: A psychiatrist who sees patients in his kitchen and asks his son to stay in the room while having a session. A cop who brings a file on teen suicides who all claimed to have seen ghosts to said psychiatrist's house, drops it on a table, then leaves. A prison system that would allow teenage girls to talk to a man on death row about to be executed for murdering his daughters because a psychiatrist thought it might be therapeutic. There are other things but those are the most glaring.

The ghosts are the kind we've seen a million times lately thanks to current cgi technology. The pasty white girls with scraggly hair who move in jerky frame edits and occasionally shake their heads very fast for no apparent reason.

It's okay, good enough to watch all the way through if you have nothing better to do. I'd recommend you skip it and rent or stream a good movie and wait until it shows up on Fox or ScyFy.

Apparitions
(2008)

An excellent drama wish there were more
This is one of the best television dramas I have ever watched. I sincerely wish there were more episodes. The acting is superb. The characters are believable and well fleshed out, even the seemingly unimportant ones come across as real. This show evokes emotion and makes you care deeply what happens next. It also beautifully filmed. The locations and sets are rich and engaging, the use of light and sound to evoke mood masterful. The attention to even small details is astounding.

I cannot fathom why this show did not have a long and rich run. I believe if its creators were to revive it for American audiences it would be a smash hit.

Under the Dome
(2013)

Disappointing
I've watched the first three episodes but to be honest I'm not exactly on the edge of my seat waiting for the fourth. There are just too many negatives against the series for me to really get into it. Here are the biggest ones to help you decide whether or not to watch the show.

1) It deviates way too much from the book. I know they said ahead of time that it was based on the book not a direct interpretation, but man come on.

2) Missing and combined characters. Major characters are missing or combined into one. Sammy Bushey and little Walter are gone, as are Junior's buddies who raped her including Carter a major character. Ollie, the most likable kid in the whole story and his whole family are missing. Brenda is gone or possibly combined into Julia. All of the original deputies are already killed off except Linda. No Gina either. Apparently for the TV show they decided to keep a fully stocked and personnelled hospital. All of Joe's friends except Benny are gone and they made Norrie an out of towner passing through Trouble is she looks old enough to be his mom ... who also has been edited out. They left her on the other side when the dome came down. Thurston Marshal and his teeny bopper gal pal have been exchanged for a same sex mixed race couple who are the parents of the aforementioned Norrie. The list goes on.

3) Major personality changes in characters. Dodie far from being a drugged out torturer of Bratz dolls is a tech in the radio station who has the amazing ability to turn a dial and get info from outside the dome since unlike in the book they cannot hear through it and have no internet or outside news or radio feed or phone reception. "Chef" Bushey has been changed to a respectable radio host instead of a drug addled quasi religious zealot and his radio station is rock not gospel. Junior, one of the most pivotal characters in the book has been changed from a serial killer to a spurned guy who went nuts and locked his girlfriend in a bomb shelter. I don't know if they wanted to make him more sympathetic or what but they failed. Barbie, the main character of the book is no longer a good guy. He is a debt collector who doesn't hesitate to murder a man who threatens him and bury his body in the woods.

4) The acting and characterization. The acting is soap opera quality, far too melodramatic and occasionally stilted. The exception is the character of Julia Shumway. The rest are pretty weak. The characters are also very flat and undeveloped. It's hard to care for any of them.

5) Not enough drama to be dramatic or action to be exciting. Directors have still not quite grasped that slice of life moments are inherently boring. There are too many long scenes of talking heads going blah blah blah. Politics are not interesting, speculation is not interesting, motivational speeches are not interesting. Most of the action in the whole show took place in the first half hour setting a mood that was not maintained. In the absence of action they should have filled the time with drama or even romance. They did not.

It may get better as time goes on. I don't know if I will be able to stick with it until then though. My advice is read the book, forget the TV series.

Evil Dead
(2013)

A pretty average horror movie
First of all, I'll address this movie on its own merit without taking into account its cult classic predecessor.

The acting in this one was decent though nothing special. The pacing and effects were just okay. The plot was very straight forward, no twists or surprises. There were a few really large detractors for me. The relationships between the friends seemed forced. The dead dog puppet looked so fake I almost laughed. The contraption David rigs up to defibrillate his sister back to life is completely ludicrous. All those things can be overlooked though if your expectations are not too high to begin with. It's one of those movies I would watch on late night TV if nothing better was on.

To compare it to the original Evil Dead:

There is absolutely no humor in this one at all. There are only two very thin homages to the original at the end. None of these characters have anywhere near the on screen charisma that Bruce Campbell's Ash had. The basic reason for the friends to be at the cabin and their staying when things get weird is much better in the new movie. The tree rape is in the new movie though significantly changed and very brief.

This new version will never be the cult classic the original was because it doesn't stand out in any way from the tons of other horror movies with the same premise. All in all it's just average.

12/12/12
(2012)

Not a very good movie
There were quite a few strikes against this movie from the beginning. First, the acting is not very good over all. No one really stank but no one was very good either. It rather reminded me of the level of acting you see in a high school play. Secondly, the sound was a problem. There is not very much background music in the movie and many of the shots seem kind of flat sounding as if they were shot in a padded warehouse or something. Even the street scenes are oddly empty sound- wise. There is a lack of motor vehicle sounds, animal sounds, people sounds, even the wind is missing. Third, the baby/monster looked ridiculously unbelievable. It looked like a wooden or plastic dummy being jerked along on strings or in some cases just thrown at people. It's face never even moves. Fourth, the dead rats that are left everywhere are laughably fake looking. You can buy more realistic ones at Walmart near Halloween. Fourth, the plot was beyond predictable there was no mystery, no twist at all. It laid everything on the table from the first scene. I usually try to find some good in any movie I watch. Oddly enough, the only I can think of to say in a positive manner is that Sara Malukal Lane, the main character, has truly lovely breasts. I am a straight female with no interest in girls at all, but I could not help but notice how perfectly shaped and placed they are. Showing them a couple of times was probably the best decision the director made in this movie. Other than that, it is an utter waste of time.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation
(2013)

It's boring
I can't believe I am saying this since I am a huge GI Joe fan... but this movie is just kind of boring.

I loved the first movie and had high hopes for this one even though I knew most of the cast of the first movie weren't returning. It just did not deliver. The acting was good, no problem there. The visuals were well done and the special effects were alright. It had plenty of fights and best of all Storm Shadow came over to the good side at least temporarily, something that didn't happen for years and years in the comics. Snake Eyes, Jinx, and Storm Shadow were fantastic. Their relationships came across as complex and their emotions deeply suppressed but real. There is no reason this should not have been a fantastic movie but it wasn't.

No one thing failed, but as a whole it failed. Some things I can put my finger on:

Too much time was spent early on revealing that Roadblock and Duke had a deep friendship both on and off duty.

Too much time was spent on a couple of missions at the beginning of the movie. The only reason for them seemed to be to show that the Joes were a military team and that Snake Eyes was away for some reason unknown to them. These scenes were filled with jerky camera fighting and creeping through dark industrial settings and while these are both super popular movie devices at the moment they are old and stale to audiences.

It took too long for the surviving Joes to escape the desert establish a base of operations and gather allies. It was just one long boring stretch from the firefight in the dessert with the occasional jump to what the three ninjas were doing to keep you from wandering off or dozing off totally.

The fight scenes were too long and tedious, especially the factory scenes previously mentioned and the climax fight between Roadblock and Firefly.

There were way too many dialogs that were obviously meant to explain things but were unnecessary, Zartan was the worst offender going on about how he was enjoying being president, how the president was still needed, how the nanomites made him immune to injury, he even took eternity when threatening the nuclear powers of the world. Others were guilty of explaining things to death too, but he was the worst.

The ending was good but it just took too long to get there. Maybe if they had spent more time on the ninjas' story line it would have flowed better. I think the editor is the one who dropped the ball on this movie. I am disappointed.

Sightings: Heartland Ghost
(2002)

Much better than most ghost hunters meet more than they expect movies
I actually thought this movie was far better than most of the others like it, even those made more recently.

Since the success of Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Activity the movie industry has been churning out tons of movies where paranormal investigators - some skeptics some believers - have gone into a supposedly haunted locale to prove or debunk the claims only to run up against real supernatural events. Most of them go the unfortunate route of trying to look like found footage. Most rely on annoying night vision shots to build suspense and sadly, most use the same tired old clichéd activity and sudden jump scenes to achieve their scares. Worst of all the acting is generally horrible in these films with characters that are flat and unlikable. They could all go back and learn a lesson from this movie.

This movie relies on a strong back story to support the events going on in the haunted house. The events themselves are really interesting. Toys levitating, vivid dreams, automatic(ish) drawing. The acting was very good, particularly Beau Bridges character and the actor playing the psychic, Allen. They were perfect in their roles and the rest of the cast supported them wonderfully. The ghosts when seen were spooky yet real looking instead of the overdone white faced, bug eyed, ratty hair ghosts that are so prevalent today.

I truly enjoyed this movie.

They Wait
(2007)

A Good Solid Horror Movie
This movie is a very entertaining ghost story. It really deserves a higher rating than it has got on here. The acting is good even if the mom does come across as a little hysterical at times. The story is well developed and the characters well fleshed out. Shanghai provides an interesting backdrop to the story. The production quality is very good and special effects used sparingly to great effect. It really isn't anything new, but that is not always a bad thing.

If you like ghost stories or just horror movies in general, you will find this one satisfying and worth the time.

Please disregard the low rating this movie has. Apparently there is a lot of hatred for Uwe Boll and even though he was not director, he was listed in the credits and a herd of haters went through and gave everything related to him a 1 whether they had watched it or not.

Parasitic
(2012)

truly awful
Usually I can find something good to say about any movie, but unfortunately not this one.

The writing is awful. The dialog is ridiculous and utterly unbelievable. To top it off there is something weird and tinny about the audio, only the spoken parts though, the obnoxious music comes across loud and clear. It actually sounds like a porno movie where they dub the sound in post production. Every one of the characters is unlikable so there is no one to root for.

The visual quality is bad too. The whole film (except the opening shot and one end shot) is set in a bar with the lights turned out. It is too dark to see much of what is going on. The action is too slowly paced to keep your interest. It seems as if the movie spends hours sitting around the bar in the dark bitching about being stuck in the bar, then hours searching for the missing people. It becomes tedious especially since the characters are so disgusting to be around.

This movie is too bad to be entertaining and not even remotely funny. It's a complete waste of time.

100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck
(2012)

Another Really Predictable Found Footage Movie
The whole found footage genre has really gotten predictable and boring. I don't know why I keep watching these... maybe I am just really bored.

The premise is exactly the same as so many others. A paranormal research team goes into a haunted location and the ghosts turn violent and kill them all. This is not a spoiler. The typed header at the beginning of the movie tells you the group were never found.

The atmosphere is exactly like almost every other film in this genre. It's set in a dilapidated institutional building, shot in a combination of black and white and night vision for the most part, and full of echoing bangs, knocks, and whispers.

Like the others, the characters are flat and forgettable. You don't particularly care if any survive. The acting is not very good.

The only difference between this and other movies in the genre is that the deaths are a little heavy handed and start right away. They also shot the film without any credits to make it feel more like found footage. Basically this movie is a waste of time like most others of its kind.

The Dark Knight Rises
(2012)

An impartial review
I am not a fan of Nolan's Batman franchise. I think he made the superhero too emo and angsty in general and glamorizes the villains too much. I think his movies are lacking what makes comic books comic books- the grain of comedy that comes from clever one-liners and the heroes ability to laugh at themselves. In other words, this batman takes himself way to seriously for a man swinging around in a costume playing vigilante. That said, I am not a hater of the franchise low- balling the ratings just to hurt its standing. I am being fair and honest in my review of the title so those who read this review can decide for themselves whether they want to see it or not.

This movie is entertaining. I did find myself interested in what happened next. The action moved along at a good pace and the story unwound in a timely matter. There were only two places it dragged on a little. The first was Batman's first fist fight with Bane. It just lasted too long, the audience started to get restless and whisper and fidget. The same thing happened again when Batman was hauling the bomb out over the bay in his new flying machine. It was several minutes of watching him fly over the bay without any real tension to make us anxious. We knew he would make it away from the city or there would be no point to the movie. So why have us standing there gazing after him for so long. If the audience in theater gets restless enough to rustle, the timing is off.

There were far too many very dark scenes. Movie makers think it is artistic to shoot in full dark or dark lit only by a fireplace or a strategically placed blue light. It may be artistic but it is annoying to the watcher who is peering at the screen trying to make out what is happening. Hearing is not enough. Unless it is a monster movie and something is going to jump out of the darkness at us, we want to see what is going on. We have no way of knowing if the sex scene was hot or romantic or even boring because we didn't see anything but the occasional flash of fire lit skin.There were other places in the movie too where the screen was so dark we just had to guess what was going on.

Bane's diction was probably the worst problem with the movie. They made Bane talkative and gave him a rather cultured sounding way of speaking totally out of keeping with the comic book Bane. Then they slapped on the mask. Muffled is a kind way to put it. People were whispering and asking their seat mates what he just said. This was bad movie making. When Star Wars was filmed, they dubbed in Darth Vader's voice using a separate actor than the one in the mask. They could have spent the extra time to fix this problem in post production or just filmed and recorded the dialog separately then put them back together. It would have been easy since they didn't even have to worry about matching lip movement.

Characterization was good though there were way too many extra's without personalities. The main stay characters and the villains were well fleshed out.

Once again, Batman's motivation is saving Gotham City, though to be honest, seeing how the people behave when they are in a state of anarchy makes you wonder if anyone other than Robin and his bus load of orphans is worth saving.

This movie is grim, slower paced than its predecessors and has more moral ambiguity. The end twist on who the real villain is is good however the conclusion of the movie is not satisfying. I won't spoil it, but if you are a serious fan of this version of Batman it may let you down.

Airborne
(2013)

Wondering if the first couple of reviewers actually watched the film
I don't know what movie the first couple of reviewers watched, but it was not this one.

There is no snowstorm contrary to the plot synopsis. The plane is the last one out to to a hurricane or tropical storm moving into the flight plan. It can clearly be seen in the credit sequence that rain and high winds not snow is causing devastation. There are also no zombies or reanimated dead in this movie.

The plot is a little ridiculous but not at all twisty. The last plane out to New York takes off just before a storm makes flights impossible. There are very few people on board. At the last minute, one of the stewardesses is replaced by a steward who looks middle eastern. Great pains are taken to play on Muslim = terrorist sentiment. You also see a crate loaded. The crate contains a priceless Chinese vase. The vase contains the earthbound spirit of a lightning God who is looking for a soul to possess. The crate occasionally shakes and makes gas like shimmers in the air. Meanwhile, the passengers board. Most of them are not nice people. There is a gun runner and his two thugs, two soldiers being sent home from Afghanistan accused of war crimes, and an annoying drunk. The rest of the passengers are pretty much clichés, the young couple who just want to have sex all over the plane, the doctor whose daughter was just killed, an American who talks all the time, a woman who is traveling to see the world, and an old man who is actually some sort of government man who has devoted years to getting the vase into his hands.

People start disappearing shortly into the flight. After much unnecessary yelling and screaming and posturing that is frankly just boring and annoying the doctor notices the plane is turning off course. After quite a while longer of paranoia and turning on each other you find out the truth. The head stewardess, a manly woman named Harriet, is in league with one of the weapon dealer's thugs to hijack the plane and steal the vase. Between them they killed the pilots and all the dead people except the white steward. No one takes credit for him. The doctor then appears to be possessed and kills himself prompting the government agent to tell the story of the vase.

Harriet while possessed shoots the vase freeing the spirit to jump among the plane passengers still living. There is much mayhem and most of the remaining characters are killed. The government agent takes over the plane and attempts to crash it into the ocean. The possessed thug tries to stop him. The blond stewardess realizes the old man is right and they all need to die to contain the spirit. She goes into the cargo hold and after some violence and more death crosses two wires that apparently make the plane "drop out of the sky" in her own words.

Unfortunately, the possessed traveling girl screams into the microphone seconds before the crash and the spirit is able to possess someone in the airport tower who was trying to save them.

The acting is actually not bad, but there are many places where the scripting just plays out as unrealistic. People don't really act like that or say things like that. It isn't the actors' fault. Mainly it was an unbelievable plot that took much too long to start unraveling and contained way too many extraneous details and side stories.

The Amazing Spider-Man
(2012)

Nowhere near as good as the last trilogy
While not bad, this version was nowhere near as good as the Raimi take on Spiderman. Here's why, in my humble opinion.

1) Peter Parker is supposed to be a goody two shoes at home and a nerd at school. That's part of the legend. Tobey Macguire hit it spot on. The new Parker comes across as moody, whiny, and a little selfish. He doesn't respect his Aunt and Uncle the way he should and he is irresponsible more often than the one time he fails to do the right thing and costs his uncle his life.

2) Speaking of Uncle Ben, his death scene in the the new one has almost no emotional impact at all for the audience. It is just not shot well.

3) There is very little romantic spark between Gwen Stacey and Peter Parker. It just isn't there. In the Raimi films the emotions between Peter and Mary Jane Watson were a potent part of the story.

4) Batman is the one driven by obsession over his dead parents, not Spidey. He was raised in a warm loving household by parental figures who helped him get over it and grow up relatively well balanced. Leave the angsty back story and Freudian neurosis to the Bat, he is unhinged enough for both comic universes.

5) The visual effects were far less impressive than in the previous films. There were way too many night shots that hid the acrobatics. The reptile monster looked kind of Barnyish compared to Sandman or Doc Octopus. Even Spiderman's costume looked less impressive.

This film just comes up short compared to the old one.

Chichibu Demon
(2011)

too slow paced
This is yet another "found footage" type movie. This one fails worse than usual however. It is about a film crew looking to make a DVD about haunted areas in the province of Chichibu. While investigating the story of will'o'wisps that appear after suicides jump from a suspension bridge, they inadvertently get involved in the dangerous legend.

The main problem the story has is that it is too slow paced and dull. It seems as if there are hours of random conversation that lead nowhere. Hours of footage of walking through the woods, most of it in grainy, shades of gray. The footage looks cheaply made whether on purpose or not. It isn't interesting enough to keep you listening to the lame dialog. When action finally happens it is mostly people running and screaming from something neither seen nor heard.

Hopefully movie makers will soon figure out that "found footage" has already been done to death and will get back to making actual movies again soon.

Ice Spiders
(2007)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen
I actually like killer animal movies. I love night of the Lepus with its giant bunny rabbits and Bats with its genetically altered bats eating people. This movie however is flat out awful.

First of all, the acting is utterly atrocious. The lines are delivered in a stilted manner as if the actors are embarrassed to be in the movie. Their emotions are as flat as an elementary school play. I have seen a few movies with acting this bad but never one worse than this.

Second, the dialog is terrible. Even if the actors weren't so awful, the script is totally nonredeemable.

Third, the spiders weren't big enough to be terrifying or plentiful enough to be overwhelming. There were many instances when one of the characters could easily have crushed one, but instead they chose to panic and run about mindlessly. There were exactly six spiders about the size of a big dog and one was killed early on when it was struck by a snowmobile. They didn't even look horrifying. The CGI made them look rather like a child's toy spiders.

It was very hard sitting through this movie. I think it might fairly be called one of the worst of all time.

Dark Shadows
(2012)

A Gothic Drama Not A Horror Comedy
First and foremost, if you are thinking of seeing this film and expecting a horror comedy, you are going to be sadly disappointed. This movie is not a comedy at all though it does have a few humorous moments. It is not a horror movie even though it has a vampire and he does kill victims and drink their blood. This is instead a very good Gothic drama.

If you are a huge fan of the Dark Shadows TV series and want to see a big screen version of your beloved soap opera, you will most likely be a little disappointed by the amount the characters and back story were changed. Everyone's history and nature has been thoroughly changed Barnabus, Victoria, Caroline, Angelique, I mean everyone.

If you are going to see it just because it is a Tim Burton movie, you should know it is closer to Sleepy Hollow than any of his other movies. It takes itself seriously and the mood is very melodramatic. The acting might seem over the top in another setting but it is actually a good match for the period feeling of the setting.

The music is fantastic, actual 70's rock. I happen to be a fan of Alice Cooper and his appearance and performance was just a little extra icing on an already tasty piece of cake.

I truly enjoyed this movie. It was entertaining and something different which is rather hard to come by here lately.

The Cabin in the Woods
(2011)

No it isn't original or scary but it's not bad
First of all, regardless of the rumors there is nothing original about this movie at all. It is a mash-up of clichés. It is not funny and does not try to be funny. It is not anything at all like Evil Dead or its sequels. It is certainly not scary either. That said, it's still entertaining right up to the really lousy ending.

It starts off with some rather badly acted businessmen preparing for a big project at the work place. Then it cuts to the gathering of 5 stereotypical teens ready to head out to summer house for a little vacation. Others have already mentioned that the characters are very flat and the movie tells that they were chosen for that very reason. It also implies that there personalities have been altered with chemicals to make them fit more into their roles. There is the slut, the jock, the scholar, the fool -in this case a stoner-, and of course the virgin.

The businessmen in their control room plan every stage of the trip, watching the teens leave, having one of their own planted at the only gas station on the road, making sure the road cannot be tracked on GPS, and surrounding the area of the cabin with a forcefield so that there is only one way in which can be blocked so the kids can't get back out. They have the entire place rigged with cameras and electronics so that when the kids get to the cabin they can watch everything that happens.

The businessmen have arranged all kinds of stereotypical western monsters from horror movies ranging from good ole zombies to special redneck pain worshiping zombies. Some when you get the chance to see them are truly creepy like their nod at the Cenobites from "Hellraiser" and an evil clown a la "It". Some are just sadly lame like a Merman and a giant hissing Cobra.

The teens have to choose to go to the cabin then choose their method of death. The means of choosing is a cellar full of props. There is a dollhouse, diary, creepy old dolls, conch shell, and tons more stuff. The virgin makes the choice for the group unknowingly by reading from a diary. Yep, you guessed it... the redneck pain worshiping zombies it is.

Apparently there are ancient evil gods sleeping underground. For them to remain asleep, a ritual sacrifice has to be made periodically. The businessmen orchestrating the scenario with the kids in the woods are the ones entrusted to carry off this sacrifice. If they fail, the gods will awaken and destroy all humanity. Fortunately, there are rituals being carried out in other countries besides the US. Unfortunately all those have failed this time and it comes down to our kids in the woods. They must die and in the proper order or all humanity is toast.

Things seem to be going mostly according to plan. The zombie family finishes off the slut. The stoner gets pulled through a window by a zombie. The jock crashes his bike into the forcefield trying to go get help. The scholar is drowned when he and the virgin crash the motor home into the water. The businessmen go ahead and start to celebrate because the virgin's death is always optional as long as it is last.

The red phone rings. It would seem the celebration was premature. The stoner is still alive. Apparently the weed he is smoking has made him somewhat immune to the various chemicals they have been using to guide the teens in the choices they want them to make. He comes to the virgin's rescue and they run away into a mausoleum that leads to an elevator shaft.

At this point the movie goes downhill hard and fast. The ending feels like something just cobbled together to make a conclusion. The scenes are hectic and filled with torrents of gore. The story line is tossed aside for cheap action shots. The ending of this movie is probably the most unsatisfying ending in movie history.

The virgin and the stoner realize the elevator accesses glass cubes holding monsters and ghosts and that someone let the zombies they have been running from loose on them. The virgin realized she chose which monsters were unleashed on them because she read the diary out loud. Now they have to battle security forces armed with automatic weapons with orders to kill them. They hide behind a big console that controls the monster so she turns them loose. The monsters attack the guards then make their way through to whole complex slaughtering everyone.

Eventually after many corridors and rooms of gore, the two survivors reach the sacrifice room. The director of the complex who is played by Sigourney Weaver, explains that Marty, the stoner must die to save all humanity. She urges the virgin to kill him. After a struggle in which the director is killed, the two teens light up a joint and discuss how humanity is not worth saving as the ancient gods burst up from the ground under the cabin.

This moving is entertaining enough to watch once. I would wait to rent it or stream it rather than pay high theatre prices though. If you want something scary or funny, this is not the one for you. The first two thirds of the movie will appeal to those who like traditional teen slasher movies. Pretty much everyone will hate the ending.

Emergo
(2011)

"Ghost Hunters/Paranormal Activity" style movie with a twist
This movie starts off like many others trying to cash in on the popularity of such shows as Ghost Hunters and the Paranormal Activity movies. A team of paranormal researchers respond to a distressed man who claims to have fled one haunted house only to move into an equally haunted apartment.

The researchers themselves are likable enough. There is an older and very learned professor type, the ultra professional female, and the the chipper young technician. The family they are trying to help consists of a widower and his young son and young teen daughter.

You don't have to wait long at all before the supernatural phenomena start to occur. They begin while the team is getting set up with sounds of banging in the walls and ceiling and continue on throughout the movie at a quick enough pace to keep you jumping and keep your eyes darting about to catch doors swinging by themselves, lights swinging, and furniture moving.

As the investigation proceeds you soon notice the family is not as close as it seems in the beginning. Father and daughter have some issues involving his deceased wife. Her behavior is erratic and unnatural. It is only when the father finally breaks down and tells the truth about his wife that it becomes plain just who is causing the phenomena.

I will not spoil the ending by telling you any more than that, but I do strongly encourage you to give this film a chance. It is far better in both story and acting than most of the other entries in the paranormal investigation genre. There is only one cheesy jump scene in the whole thing and they placed that at the very end where it can be overlooked.

Try it, you'll like it.

21 Jump Street
(2012)

Gets Old Fast (spoilers)
This movie seems to be confused as to whether it was supposed to be an action movie or a comedy and fails to achieve either. It isn't really very funny at all and it drags too much to be exciting. It has other problems as well.

The jokes try to hard to be hip and end up being just plays on stereotypes. For example, in a misguided attempt to look cool one of the characters punches a guy for being nerdy. The victim mistakenly believes he was punched because he is black and gay which makes the cop look uncool. In another example, throughout the movie the head of the jump street program acts like a stereotypical bad tempered black cop, even calling himself that. It is vaguely amusing the first time, but the next umpteen times it gets a little lame as do the frequent jokes about the guys not looking like teenagers. The visual and verbal humor are like this through the whole movie.

The movie portrays alcohol and drug use as a funny joke. It shows scenes of the cops high on the supposedly deadly drug they are supposed to be in high school stopping. It shows them buying booze for an underage party and it's supposed to be funny because they have to use false IDs. It shows them stealing marijuana from the evidence lockup to share with the kids. I know it's a comedy not a message movie, but this is just not funny. To top it off, they don't even get reprimanded for any of the illegal things they do from giving drugs to minor to engaging in a high speed chase on a freeway, to reckless discharge of firearms, to taking further police actions when technically fired.

The action is boring. The interminably long scenes of bicycle, car, and limousine chases do not even begin to liven up this bomb. They are not interesting.

The juvenile behavior the two leads exhibit ruins any dramatic elements of the movie. They don't act like two adults pretending to be kids, they act more like two kids pretending to be cops.

I used to watch the 21 Jump Street series and it was a serious drama about serious issues like homosexual bullying, drugs, suicide, and peer pressure. It may have been a little soap operish at times, but it was dramatic and interesting. I think it deserved more respect than this.

See all reviews