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Point of Contact is a 2006 horror film starring Buddy Dolan (who is also the writer and producer), Mikki Padilla, and James Kyson Lee(best known for Ando in the Heroes television series). Jake McCormick (Dolan) experiences an accident in his youth resulting in him being in a coma for 12 years. Despite being clinically dead for 9 hours, Jake survives somehow and amazingly loses no muscle mass during his coma. Upon waking up from the coma unexpectedly, Jake finds he has an odd ability to "sense" people, including spirits. A year later, Jake has began a relationship with a nurse that cared for him during his coma, and still struggles with interactions with the spirit world. Ultimately, Jake begins working with a team to help those spirits.

To be blunt -- this movie is an absolute mess. According to IMDb, it was originally shot as a 60 minute pilot for a TV series, and then an additional half hour was added to make it into a feature film. As a television series, it would have been horrible. As a 90 minute film, it's somehow worse. The film opens when Jake is a youth; then there's a time jump of 12 years; then another jump of 3 months; and finally a time jump to "present day" with no indication of when that really is. The actor portraying Jake (Buddy Dolan) wears a ridiculous wig throughout the first 30-40 minutes of the movie, which is really distracting. "Present day" Jake has gone from long, thick hair (that didn't thin out or change during his time in the coma or afterwards) to a heavily thinned and receded hairline, making him almost unrecognizable as the same actor.

In addition, the movie has tons of "filler" scenes of spirits swirling around the live actors and/or flashbacks in which Jake "senses" the spirits. Unfortunately, these scenes make little sense and are never really clarified later on. There's also a nearly 2 minute scene of Jake walking through a hotel in slow motion to rock music while looking to meet a psychic book author (after being encouraged to meet her by a spirit). Sadly, the scenes with actual dialog aren't much better in terms of cohesiveness. Jake's relationship is seemingly over (with no explanation) in "present day." The scene between Jake and the author is awkward and nonsensical. And there's ultimately no ending -- the movie simply stops, which seems oddly appropriate as there was no resolution needed, given that there wasn't anything resembling a coherent storyline.

It feels as if they had enough story for about 30 minutes of film and stretched that originally to 50-60 minutes for a TV pilot, and then again to 90 minutes to make a feature film. The movie ends up being something of an incomplete puzzle -- many of the pieces are there for a story and the viewer has to try to assemble them into something sensible; but overall a few key pieces in the center are clearly missing, making for an incomprehensible image.

Out of Office is a 2022 Comedy Central exclusive film that focuses on the reality of working from home via video chats. The film begins with Eliza (Milana Vayntrub) as she interviews with a technology company via video chat, and despite having no qualifications, manages to land the job by giving the boss horrible relationship advice. The film features an ensemble cast of well-known comedic actors -- Jason Alexander and Cheri Oteri star as Eliza's parents; Ken Jeong and Jay Pharoah star as members of the new company Eliza begins working with; Leslie Jones stars as Jeong's angry wife; and Jim Rash (Community) and Oscar Nunez (who seemed to channel Michael Scott in his role) are in supporting roles. The primary story of the film revolves around Eliza's entry into the company; the awkward connections between all of the employees; as well as a healthy dose of uncomfortableness surrounding the pasts and social lives of some of the characters.

All the comedy in the film is based on the idea of the silliness and distractions that can come from working at home. While there are certainly some laugh out loud moments (typically tied to the antics of Jeong), there are also a lot of jokes that fall flat and feel overly forced. In addition, the awkward dramatic elements (which mostly feature in the last third of the film) detract from the comedy and bring the mood of the film down quite a bit, leaving a less than satisfactory ending.

Overall, the film feels like an extended pilot for a television series that may be a bit too close to The Office to really be successful. It unfortunately also struggles with its identity a bit -- it begins as a typical comedy but ends more as a dramedy.

A new virus on Earth is afflicting plant-life world-wide, ultimately threatening to destroy all life on the planet. A team of scientists racing to find a way to save humanity discover alien technology that has been buried in the planet for eons. The technology not only unlocks the ability for humanity to terraform a new planet to survive on, but provides a warp drive necessary to make the trip. A team of astronauts and scientists set out to save humankind. Unfortunately, once they begin their mission in space, they find out the alien technology may have its own plans.

Project Gemini is a Russian film, released in the US by Well Go USA on blu-ray and DVD. The premise sounds quite good, and the trailer looks solid. Sadly, the actual film simply misses the mark. Billed as a science fiction thriller, the film borrows ideas and effects from other popular sci-fi films (such as Alien), but unlike the Alien franchise, the "thrills" in Project Gemini are more the calibre of a SyFy Channel original. The film clearly isn't a low budget production as the special effects are decent. But while the effects are adequate, most everything else falls short -- the characters are quite cardboard with little depth; the twists and turns aren't that new or interesting; and the overall story just falls flat despite having a lot of promise.

Interestingly, despite being a Russian production, the US release is entirely in English, although it looks as if the actors may simply be lip syncing, because the audio and lips don't always line up perfectly (some of the listed online credits do list a separate set of actors for the main characters who are credited as providing the English voiceovers, but it's unclear how accurate that is). The blu-ray release does include a very short (3-4 minute) "Making of" featurette, but it doesn't shed a lot of light on the movie.

Overall, this should have been better, and ultimately comes off as below average sci-fi fare.

Les Boys, le Documentaire follows an adult, amateur hockey team from a suburb of Montreal as they ultimately make their way to Paris to compete against similar teams from around the world. The team is comprised of players of all walks of life -- a baker, a singer (who seemingly entertains at nursing homes), a grocer, a millionaire (and oddly, his brother), a couple of father and son combos, and many others. From some quick reading, the team (La Bande à Jap's) is one of the oldest adult, amateur teams in the Montreal area.

The documentary gives you a bit about the team members' background, with the first half of the film being quite sparse on actual hockey footage (aside from a few scenes of practice). Ultimately, the documentary attempts to establish more about the people and the team itself initially. The second half of the film combines the team site-seeing around Paris while also showing off their skills on the ice while competing against international teams in a tournament.

Overall, it was relatively interesting for a documentary that follows an amateur sports team. Viewers should be aware though that the film is entirely in French and the DVD release does not have the option for English subtitles (so some knowledge of French is helpful in viewing). The film also features some interesting music at times (although this is a bit inconsistent -- there are sections of the film where some background music would be appropriate and there is none). The DVD release also includes ten minutes of extra scenes that delve a bit more into the day to day lives of some of the players.

First off, I'll state up front that I wrote this because the vast majority of the reviews (both positive and negative) for this film are clearly from people who have not watched it (and certainly not watched it all the way from beginning to end).

I've watched several films by the director, Christopher Forbes. They mostly share a couple of common characteristics -- they are ultra low budget; they are mostly filmed in the same area (often with the same locations appearing from film to film); they primarily feature a rotating cast of amateur actors who, at best, have honed their skill at a small town community theater level; and they are not good.

Most of the films are set during the Civil War or in the "Old West" (despite mostly being filmed in Georgia or southern South Carolina). Die by the Sword, though, takes place in "medieval England" when the Roman empire has pulled out of Britain leaving the British (led by King Vortigern -- whose name is pronounced several different ways throughout the film) to defend themselves against the Picts.

The problem, though, is while the film seemingly starts off with that plot, it quickly shifts gears to a conflict between the Vortigern's men and the Saxons who they invite to aid them in their defense against the PIcts (who quickly are forgotten about 15 minutes into the film). At the same time, a Saxon witch named Roweena entrances Vortigern and becomes the new queen. Then, there's a subplot with a former Roman soldier and a British woman who have two children who seemingly go on to play some sort of larger role later in the film because there is a time advancement described in text (although... that's seemingly forgotten by the end).

Overall, the result is a mess of a film that's simply hard to sit through. The fight scenes are truly cringe-worthy (even when slowed down to mask how bad they are); the "Saxons" talk about Valhalla and raiding parties (so are seemingly vikings?); most of the plot points setup throughout the movie are never developed or resolved; and, best of all, the film simply ends on a seemingly random point with no resolution or explanation to anything that occurred throughout.

The first Straight Outta Oakland was a low budget film about four youths taking different paths to get out of a bad environment. The actors are all amateurs, and while it wasn't a great film, it at least had a cogent storyline one could follow. This film has no connection aside from many of the same actors (in different roles, in a different storyline altogether). The major problem is the storyline makes little sense and is hard to follow. The movie is about a guy who starts dealing a new drug called "milk" and ends up in a rivalry with another drug dealer. Many of the main actors give good performances given their lack of experience, particularly Phaethon Brown as a very over the top dealer named Cecil. Unfortunately, the storyline is quite hard to follow and ultimately makes little sense.

There are many low budget movies that are still entertaining or at least watchable. This one is tough to get through. It's roughly 100 minutes but feels like a 3 hour movie. The acting is community-theater level and while the storyline is okay, the dialogue is really, really bad. The movie really needed some better sound and much better editing. Removing about 20 minutes of some of the hokey dialog and pointless scenes (a weird scene of a kid doing an embarrassed dance at a dinner reception, a pointless conversation in a music room, some hokey scenes in a diner, and a modern dance scene that comes out of nowhere) would have improved it. In addition, it's tough to really understand what the movie is trying to touch on. The description seems to indicate it's a movie about PTSD and while there are a couple of scenes that touch on that, it focuses more on a story of an innocent war veteran being shot during a police stop. Then there's the backdrop of a group of friends trying to build a community center. Ultimately, all of these different threads just don't come together very well.

This is really bad in so many ways. The animation is very bad. The mouths don't come close to matching the words coming out of the characters. The characters pass through background scenery when in motion). The villains are Bad Clyde, a wart hog, and his minions -- Frizzlebun (a rat) and Frizzlebutt (an owl). Bad Clyde speaks with an odd Scottish acccent that really sounds more like someone mimicking Mike Myer's Scottish accent. His plan is to ruin Easter for everyone and get rid of Benny the Easter Bunny forever. Santa and his reindeer sidekick, Gargaff, must save the day. There's lots of dialog and not much action. Most scenes just show characters speaking to each other. Lots of annoying background music that's looped and adds nothing to the scene. Many of the scenes are repeated again and again with new dialog (again, there's no actual action beyond characters walking a short way -- it's just connected scenes of characters talking). With the poor script and bad animation, this would have been a long 25 minutes. Somehow, they managed to stretch it out to 70 minutes.

There's little good you can say about this movie. Overall, I gave it a 2 out of 10, and it got that high only because of the scene with the nuns, which is the only funny scene in the entire movie. It seems as if the entire thing is geared toward junior high students, since the comedic level is that which you would find while listening to 13 year-olds at the lunchroom table. It also relies heavily on stereotypes. While I'm sure there are pro wrestlers who fit the mold of Jimmy "the King", the majority do not. Likewise, not all wrestling fans are as idiotic as the two who are featured in this flick. If you're a wrestling fan and you want to see a good pro-wrestling movie, then check out Beyond the Mat. You may have to drive a few more miles to find a theater showing it, but trust me, it's worth it if you're only other option is this cruddy movie.

After sitting through the "ending" of this movie, I spent a few minutes reflecting back upon the entire thing trying to pinpoint something good I could say about it. Sadly, I couldn't think of anything. The acting in this movie is horrid (Mike Tyson and Allan Houston need to stick to boxing and basketball respectively) and the plot was not only unbelievable, but boring. The stereotypical nature of the movie is horrid, and the whole idea of these rich, white kids acting so completely foolish is far from believable. And who would allow Mike Tyson to dole out advice on ANY matter?? Overall, don't waste your money on this flick. I give it a 1/10.

I'm really surprised to see as many negative comments about this movie as there are. Overall, the movie isn't going to win any major awards, but it's damn good for what it is. Vin Diesel does a great job as Riddick, and the plot, while predictable for the most part, still has many little twists and turns that most people would not have anticipated.

If you're a fan of sci-fi/horror, then I think you'll like this. If you're looking for some sort of artistic and deeply meaningful film, then this isn't the one for you.

Overall, this movie wasn't that bad if you judge it for what it was: an action movie with a lot of fight scenes. Both Piper and Chiba were great in the fight scenes, and had the script been a bit better, the overall movie would have been fairly good. The problem was, too many scenes that were unneeded or outright stupid. For instance, the scene where Ms. Keeler is caught trespassing and Piper comes to her rescue was annoyingly badly written and unnecessary overall. The one surprising thing was the supporting acting was fairly good, with the exception of Deron McBee who needs to go back to American Gladiators. The acting by Piper was quite good, with the best example being at the beginning of the movie in the inital fight scene which was well choreographed, and quite comical with the addition of Chiba. Overall, I can't say it's one of the best movies ever made, but, as an action movie it's fairly good.

All things considered, this wasn't a bad movie... definitely an improvement from some of Piper's others. It was nice to see him go through a movie without using (hardly any) wrestling moves. The fight scenes were good, and Piper did a good job in his role throughout the movie as a sort of "bad cop", however, the ending left a lot to be desired. I had never heard of Ong before, but he seemed to do a decent job as well.

I still want to see how Piper would fare with a truly good script and several well-known supporting actors. I think he has potential, and it'd be nice to see him in a true action flick as either the protagnoist or antagonist.