el_nickster

This is a good re-telling of the old story about a small-town girl who dreams of getting away from her bumpkin friends and family to the big city. A chilling comedy of boxing, sexual deception, and religious epiphany.

Okay, that was a sarcastic comment.

Moonie is the "spooky chick" in the tiny tundra town of New Waterford. She loves reading and art. She wants to get away from New Waterford and see the world.

Her family is very close, and loves her fiercely. They won't let her go. She concocts a plot to get away involving her pugnacious girlfriend, her parent's religious orthodoxy, and the sexual naiveté of the town's male population. Hijinx ensue.

In the process of pulling off her scam, Moonie starts to realize what she has in New Waterford: she belongs. As it becomes clear that she is going to have the opportunity to leave, she sees the virtues in all the bumpkins she used to so resent: strength, faith, simplicity, and honor. Are these things from which a person really needs to escape?

This is Kurosawa's adaptation of "King Lear," set in feudal Japan. Lord Hidetora Ichimonji waged war all of his life to unify the valley. As an old man, he passes this throne to his oldest son, Taro, and grants vassal status to his other sons Jiro and Suburo. Jiro and Taro toady to their father, each harboring secret hopes to eradicate the other brothers (and old Hidetora himself). Suburo rails at his father's foolishness, warning him that by dividing power in the valley he invites generations of chaos and war. Enraged by Suburo's defiance, old Hidetora banishes him. True to Suburo's warnings, the country soon falls into strife as Taro and Jiro turn on each other, turn on Hidetora, and turn on Suburo.

This is a magnificent film. Ten stars is not enough. The plot is as moving as Shakespeare. The performances are top-notch. The cinematography is exquisite. The costumes and sets are wonderfully rich. This contends for the best film made by Kirosawa, who is arguably the greatest director ever to have lived. If you have access to a big flat-screen television, you should watch Ran on it if possible.

This film is a mighty fun 90 minutes.

The plot: a band of hatchet-wielding gangsters holds the city in terror. However, they leave the destitute people of the Pig Sty Alley neighborhood alone, as they have nothing worth stealing. Thsi peace ends when two "gangsta wannabe" bums, Sing and Bone, bumble into the slum and stir up trouble in the name of the gang. Soon the Axe Gang is locked in a battle with the paupers of Pig Sty Alley, and their bizarre and comical styles of kung fu.

This film is a very good slap stick comedy. There have been parodies of kung fu movies made before, but none this good. The laughs are reinforced by some really crazy characters (most notably the "Daughter of the Dragon" fat chain-smoking landlady who never once throughout the movie removes the curlers from her hair). The film is full of references to all kinds of other films, ranging from Kubrick's "The Shining" to the Looney Tunes Road Runner.

So you have read the plot synopses people have left. This film is about two hit men. O is Japanese, and he has a samurai approach to life. He is disciplined, clean, detached, and efficient. He kills without remorse and he kills without relish. Tok is an up-and-coming hit-man of a very different sort. He is wildly showy. He has style. He loves overkill. He loves his work, and he hates his rival, O. O is the top hit-man on the East side of the Pacific Rim, and Tok wants his title.

Some have commented that this is the same old hum-drum from the Hong Kong studios. I have to disagree. "Full Time Killer" is slick and polished in a way that most of the New Wave of HK action films are not. "Full Time Killer" does follow the common formula of two rivals hunting each other and hunting the same girl, but it is not the story that I thought set this film above others of the genre. Andy Lau gives a memorable flamboyant performance as Tok, a joker and a devil at the same time. O's repression and sense of honor make him the sympathetic rival, particularly when it becomes clear that he isn't restrained from engaging his enemy, but rather he doesn't know how to act on his own behalf.

Plus, you have to love how the lead flies in those gunfights.

I hope I didn't read too much into this film, but I recommend it to everybody. For 102 minutes I had a 10/10 experience.

I gave this film a "10" not because it is a great film generally, but because it is about the best in the class of "erotic thriller." Usually these "erotic thrillers" are wholesale stink-bombs, and are neither all that thrilling nor all that erotic. They are generally cheesy cop stories about some crazed rapist, and involve lots of victimization of women of one kind or another.

Ah, but this film is different. This film rises to the level of average film-making. The plot is serious and interesting. The characters are believable. Even the evil seductress is believable in this film! Plot: Shannon Tweed and her husband are a couple of libertine yuppies in the 1980s. Their party lifestyle is taking its toll on them however. They have crushing financial problems. When her husband pulls out all of the stops to net a big client and ends u losing the deal, he kills himself in shame. Shannon is enraged and heartbroken, and seeks vengeance on the man who won the client by infiltrating his home and setting his family against one another.

Tweed is at her sexiest in this film, seducing men, women and children to further her evil schemes. In between the steamy scenes, you might find yourself actually caring about the plot. An added bonus in my book is that the usual theme of female victims is absent from this "erotic thriller." No serial rapists stalking the city, no women terrorized or chased by maniacs, etc... although Shannon is willing to degrade herself to get what she wants. This may be a bonus for any women searching for spicier cinematic fare without the emphasis on powerless women.

Well, *real* beginners. This simple film is a parable. A man goes on a quest for enlightenment, and encounters various symbolic obstacles along the way. He is a martial artist, and his art improves as he overcomes his various personality weaknesses. He must subdue his impatience, egotism, lust, anger, etc. before he can beat the various pugilists who stand between himself and his quest.

The acting is very so-so, but the fighting is kind of interesting. These are not stage fighters (Jackie Chan, for example, was trained not in competitive martial arts, but in stage fighting of the Beijing Opera style). Although they engage in actual fighting arts, it does not look as pretty or as exhilarating as do slicker kung fu movies. It is kind of boring to watch, actually.

The philosophy is pretty generic; I wouldn't even say it is "Eastern" per se, because I have read Greek authors that espoused the same values touted in this movie. However, it is interesting to watch a film that discusses the "big questions" in life, even if it only touches on the surface of them.

I first saw this film early in high school, when I was starting to attempt to make sense of the world. It gave me something to think about, and I still compare situations in life to the parables in Circle of Iron. "Tie two birds together, and although they have four wings, they cannot fly." Hey, simple enough to recite, but not always so easy to remember.

A musical romantic comedy about alien invaders? Need I say more? Three extraterrestrials visit Earth in their flying saucer to check out chicks. While ogling a sunbathing beautician, they get so excited they crash the spaceship in her backyard pool. Valerie the beautician understands the critical importance of humanity's first contact with an alien intelligence, so she fixes them up with haircuts and cool clothes, and takes them out for a night on the town. Their efforts to get laid are punctuated by the humorous pop songs of Julie Brown (of "I Like Them Big and Stupid" fame).

One look at the cast, and you know this is going to be good comedy. Jeff Goldblum was a big star when this film was made, but Jim Carey and Damon Wayans steal the show as hormone-stoked space guidos (they were both unknowns at the time). Julie Brown's songs are still cute. She plays a great ditsy Valley Girl to Gena Davis' "straight man" act.

An underrated film. Much funnier than average.

Three astronauts voyage on a historic mission to Mars. Upon return, they are forbidden from "making whoopie" (even after their isolation period) for reasons unexplained. However, because evil martian DNA has invaded the astronauts, once they cut loose and "get some" monstrous results ensue! Meanwhile, Eve, the monster from the first movie, has been geneto-scienterifically reincarnated as a good guy (sort of the like the Terminator, but I digress). She is now hanging out in a sealed bubble, attended to by female scientists. You see, if Eve espies a man, she is likely to freak out and go into the kind of terrifying mating frenzy that made the first movie such a riot. I have an ex-girlfriend like that. Anyway, these martian-DNA-tainted astronauts are out there, and only Eve can stop them. So it is a battle to the death between hot-looking naked Natasha Hensridge and some equally naked muscly astronaut dude who has become the alien.

Sound silly? Well, my God, it is. Don't bring your fascination with astrophysics or biotechnology with you when you pop this DVD in the player. Nope. Get some buddies, pop open some brewskis, microwave up some popcorn, and have a good laugh ridiculing the film. The alien monsters are totally hilarious. During one scene where an astronaut is afflicted with the Mars fever, she fires a tentacle out of her privates and rips her husband's head off with it. Can you beat that? So, you should get a laugh out of that stuff. Natasha looks pretty hot in her numerous naked scenes, and she isn't the only nubile actor/actress who is revealed, either.

So, good for an evening of light entertainment.

I gave this movie a "10" because it is just tons of mindless sci-fi fun. There is a load of adolescent angst-ridden philosophy, but just ignore that and watch the special effects and appreciate the cute jokes in the dialog. This film was made on a relatively low budget, but has what is arguably the best space-combat scene yet filmed (although, even after all of these years, it is hard to beat "The Wrath of Khan" in that department). If you watched the series "Firefly," then you will enjoy this film all the more. The TV characters are kind of thrown in haphazardly, so it helps to have some background.

To sum up, this is like one of the Star Trek movies. It helps to know the background and the characters, but it is a fun fun fun action movie on its own.

Features gun fights, ray fights, missile fight, evil space ships painted with blood and decorated with skulls, dead people, live people, stylishly dressed space rogues, stylishly dressed super-space-spies, stylishly dressed astronauts and spies engaging in semi-witty repartee, stylishly dressed astronauts talking about sexual frustration in space, space hookers who can't act, a guy who fights with a sword in space and knows the "five fingers exploding heart punch" from Kill Bill, sword fights in space, ax fights in space, lots of planets that look like the hills of Malibu, lost heat shield excitement, space cannibals, people gored with swords, people gored with harpoons, people shot, cosmic kung fu, big big space battles, no aliens.

Miss it, unless you have an awful lot of spare time.

This film is about the love life of "Jamie," who is the title character. Jamie is a 20-something woman who sleeps with every guy in sight. Yup, she's easy all right. She generally seems to be okay with that. However, her random hook-ups just aren't satisfying her of late. She decides to launch into a period of celibacy, just like the main character in the mainstream film "40 Days and 40 Nights." In the mean time, her friends and relatives pair up, get pregnant, and get married in unusual combinations.

While Jamie's wild ways last, this is a cute and fun movie. The characters seem slightly more genuine than usual. Jamie's sex scenes are awfully hot. However, the film quickly looses steam for lack of any sort of real plot. Well, a meandering plot less Indy film is no rarity, but the script then tries to keep us interested by springing "cheap drama" out of every futon in LA. Out of nowhere there are pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births, gay marriages, inter-color marriages, geriatric marriages, etc. Overnight, Jamie is transformed from a free-wheeling free-love adventurer to a sexually delicate and vulnerable shrinking violet.

Perhaps if this film had been made 30 years ago such an unconnected series of events would have seemed interesting for being nonconformist. It might have been taken to indicate some change in society. These days, such relationships are not interesting in their own right.

So, the last half breaks down into a soap opera.

This is the best example I have ever seen of a movie "so bad that it is good." There are two reasons: first, it is a really, really, awful film. Second, it is so damn cheap, and the script so bad, that it turns out hilarious. What I can't figure out is how they managed to cast such prominent people in this total stink-bomb of a film.

I mean, Coolio and Erika Eleniak do not have any Oscars, I grant you, but this film was so cheap it looks like a college film project.

Plot: in the far future, Captain Von Helsing and his crew of interstellar scrap collectors run across the drifting derelict Demeter, a cargo ship, in the Carpathean System. Its only cargo is coffins! Well, the crew gets trapped aboard Demeter, and they are all get turned into blood-thirsty vampires wearing red "crazy eyes." Count Dracula is about, and he is still dressed like a 19th Century Rumanian noble.

Why did I like this movie? Well, have you ever heard of a director named Ed Wood, and his film "Plan Nine From Outer Space?" Plan Nine was so awful and so cheaply made, that it has become a cult favorite. People cannot believe how bad it is. D3k is kind of the same way. The costumes and sets are so cheap, it boggles the mind. At one point Tiny Lister enters a ship in a full breathing mask (composed of a WWII-era gas mask and a length of 1 cm polyvinyl tubing), but his "space suit" is an undershirt. The interstellar cargo vessel is set in an old, 1940s era factory.

What gets me is that they managed to cast real actors in this film. It looks like they did it as an amusement. I can't imagine anyone expected to bring in any royalties from this thing.

Ex-rapper Coolio is totally hilarious. He is a marijuana-obsessed cosmonaut, who gets bitten by the vampire while boldly searching the ship for "the Chronic." He then becomes a gibbering Renfield character, leaping around on his haunches, looking completely ridiculous.

Udo Kier plays the dead captain of the Demeter, giving the best performance in the entire film (unsurprisingly). I have no idea why he wasn't cast as Dracula, as he is one of the world's scariest-looking actors. Tiny Lister (who played the President in "The Fifth Element" and was in "Austin Powers") plays the big dumb thug with a good heart. Erika Eleniak (formerly of Baywatch, ET, and Under Siege) has gotten a little broad in the beam for the ingénue roles, and plays the supposedly-sexy first mate who isn't. Casper Van Dien (the hero of Starship Troopers... oh how the mighty have fallen) plays the least successful vampire hunter in the Van Helsing line. Then there are a few German actors I have never heard of.

So: if you want to rent a really, really awful movie to laugh at for 90 minutes, this is your film! No other film of which I know can fulfill this role so perfectly! Marvel at the cheap costumes! Lie agog at the dumb script! Hyperventillate with laughter as Coolio hisses and shows off his fake teeth!

This is another example of solid B-horror that we have come to expect from Staurt Gordon (of Reanimator and Dagon fame).

An unhappy family moves to a castle in Italy that the husband has inherited. What they don't know is that they have also inherited the castle's secret prisoner, the CASTLE FREAK! Held captive in secret his entire life, the Freak escapes from his forgotten cell and starts to lurk around the castle. He is timid at first, never having had contact with people. Slowly he grows confident and angry, soon running amok. To prevail against the hideous CASTLE FREAK, the Reilly family must discover the ugly secrets of their own past, and learn to trust one another again.

Obscene gore ensues.

This cheap film is better than most B-horror for a few reasons. For one thing, the acting is generally good (except for the blind daughter, who can't act a whit). The story is original. The script is unpolished, but it has enough going on to keep you interested, without introducing needless complications. The monster is really scary, right up there with Frankenstein's monster. The gore is over-the-top and satisfying. There was too much emphasis on sexual assault for my tastes, but who ever said that B-horror was going to be tasteful? What I really liked about this movie is that it preserves all of the sensibilities of trashy horror, while actually focusing on the Reilly family and their troubles (which did not start with the CASTLE FREAK). The film actually has a *recurring theme*: family loyalty. Breach of family loyalty created the CASTLE FREAK, and only family loyalty can defeat him.

So, I give Gordon credit for making a perfect B-horror and throwing in an iota of meaning.

My biggest gripe with this movie is that the Latin dancing is not very genuine. My father was living in Havana in the early 1960s, and reports what seems pretty obvious: this film is full of a modern, highly stylized and "hip-hoppified" version of Cuban street dancing.

But, there is a lot of other stuff to gripe about in this film.

Plot: our heroine is an American gringa whose family moves to pre-revolutionary Cuba because her dad's company promoted him to a position there. We don't know anything about our heroine (let's call her "La Gringa Caliente," because she eventually learns to loosen up and let strange men touch her butt), except that she gets good grades. So, she moves to Havana and becomes mesmerized by afro-Cubano dancing. This leads her to fall madly in love with a waiter in her hotel, and enter a dance tournament with him. Her family is scandalized. Then they are not scandalized any more.

The plot is totally predictable, and the acting is downright bad. The love story lacks guts. None of that matters if what you want is to see cool Latin dancing and listen to cool Latin music, which was my goal. But, even that goal is sadly disappointed here. There is some cool music, but most of the music is just hip-hop with a Latin beat. A lot of the dancing is just 2000's club freak-dancing... it looks more like Lambada than Samba.

The three features that pushed me from silent disappointment to derisive laughter were:

(1) They make a big deal about "Old Havana," and show all of these landscape shots to impress the viewer. But the city they are showing is San Juan, Puerto Rico! This might not be so obvious, but they show the most famous landmarks in San Juan, so that you cannot possibly even pretend the setting is Havana. So much for the "Havana Nights."

(2) For some God-awful reason, they throw Patrick Swayze back in! First of all, his character has no role, no background, and no reason to be there. He plays the gringo dance teacher who somehow teaches La Gringa Caliente how to loosen up and let guys touch her butt (he has a great line: "It can be very scary when someone touches that part of your body." who wrote this?). They dance around ballroom style. Second, the guy has had a really bad face-lift or something. He was only 52 when this film came out, but he looks 65. I was worried that his hairpiece was going to come flying off during some of the spins.

(3) The pathetically weak attempt to illustrate the social pressures that led to the Cuban revolution left in me stitches.

Conclusion: stink bomb. If you want a movie with cool Cuban music, rent Buena Vista Social Club. If you want to watch cool Latin dancing, rent the 1980s Robby Rosa film "Salsa!" If you have a desperate need to get rid of four dollars and be bored for 90 minutes, rent "Dirty Dancing Havana Nights."

Whoo wee. What a stinkbomb of a film. As the gentle reader has no doubt gathered from other reviews, this is a dirt-cheap movie with a single virtue: Alissa Milano getting buck nekkid and making out with everybody in sight.

The plot: titular vampire must "do the wild thing" with Alissa, or die in three days. She is his reincarnated love from before he was a vampire. For some reason, he is going to rest in peace unless he can get jiggy with her pronto. There are rules: she must be willing. There is also a catch: Alissa is an ultra-prudish virgin college student who is in love with her boyfriend. So, this sleazy vampire dude sets out to convince both Alissa and her boyfriend that they need to break up and start hooking up with random people. He casts some kind of spell on Alissa that makes her libido go ape (kind of like the alien cockroach in _The Outer Limits_ episode "Caught in the Act" made a virgin Alissa Milano become a cosmic nymphomaniac -- I wonder if that is where the script writer got the idea).

So, the film is Alissa getting naked, acting sexy, making out with boys and girls, interspersed with this "playa" vampire trying to seduce her and her boyfriend. Once in a while the vampire kills somebody, for no readily apparent reason. Well, its a vampire movie. Even though the vampire is out for tail instead of out for blood in this film, I guess people have to die.

This movie is good "MSFT2K" material. Rent it and laugh at it. I know, there are a lot of very bad horror movies one can use for that purpose... but hey, how many feature Alissa Milano stripping buck nekked?

This film is not an adaptation of the Bill Burroughs' novel. That book would not translate well to cinema. This film incorporates many literary elements of Burroughs' work (particularly the stories from Interzone) to a semi-biographical plot. Burroughs had an interesting life as a fugitive and drug addict, so I think the plot turns out well.

In the film, Bill flees New York after accidentally shooting his wife as part of a drunken parlor trick during a party. He flees to the international city of Tangier, where his search for inspiration embroils him in a conspiracy of humanoid creatures ("Mugwumps") to manipulate the people of the city using their addictive secretions. The film is full of surrealistic images of insects, drugs, writing, and homosexuality.

Burroughs fans may be disappointed by the way that Burroughs' drug addiction and homosexuality are played down (in fact, he has affairs with two women in this film, but has only one pseudo-sexual relationship with a man). These were, of course, the central focus of most of his writings. In this way the film is not true to the man's writings. To be fair, Burroughs did participate in making the film.

Burroughs fans will also be amused that the homely author was played by 1980s heart-throb Peter Weller. Weller does a good job impersonating Burroughs, considering the distinctive nature of the author's voice and affectations.

To sum up, if you like surreal film, then I recommend this highly. I rate this as Cronnenberg's best film, possibly tied with Dead Ringers for that title.

I liked this film because it does a good job of making the viewer consider what is important in life, and why. On the other hand, it is not the most exciting movie ever made. I recommend this if you want a story to ponder that exposes modern values to criticism. I give it a 7/10.

Peter and Katherine are a typical couple of California yuppies. They want to be cool, the want to indulge themselves, they live lavishly on their credit cards, and they hold "spiritual values" above wealth and work. Unfortunately, when their careers go down the toilet during the recession in the early 1990s, they fall upon hard times. They try to start an independent business, but their easy and hedonistic lifestyle prevents them from putting in the blood, sweat, and tears that are required for success in retail. Their spiritual values are of no help when things get rough, because their "New Age" values are really just a justification for selfishness and egocentricity.

The movie is the story of their loss of innocence. To get their lives back on track, they have to work hard at jobs that simply are not cool. Their elitist attitudes must give way to sacrifice and common sense. It is not clear whether this is a triumph or a tragedy for Peter and Katherine. That is left up to the viewer in this one.

This is more of the good stuff we have come to expect from Pixar. It has memorable characters, funny dialog, and lots of action. In the movie, superheroes have all been forced to retire due to liability issues. Their super-battles did so much damage that society has decided to battle evil the old-fashioned way. Mr. Incredible and Elsatigirl try to make a go at "normal" family life and forget their super-ness. However, Mr. I cannot let go of the old days, and his longing is manipulated by an evil genius to perfect killer robots. Soon, the whole family must emerge from normal life and use their super powers to bring down the bad guy. Thrilling action sequences and witty dialog ensue.

If you want to find something wrong with this film, the only obvious flaw is that it is formulaic in plot and the characters are recycled from some comic book or another (in fact, the three quarters of the family is very similar to Marvel's "Fantastic Four": a strong man, a stretchable person, a girl who can turn invisible and create force fields).

An added bonus to this film are the philosophical nuggets it throws out. There is an obvious message that one should be true to one's self, instead of trying to conform to society. More subtle is the constant barbs against normal people the superheroes make. They bridle against the mediocrity that they are expected to imitate. The bad guy was not born with super powers, but made himself super through his hard work and inventive genius. The bad guy goes so far as to threaten to provide the world with inventions that will give all people super powers. Mr. Incredible opines that if all people are super powerful, than nobody is super.

What does it mean? Do the Incredibles represent old inhertied wealth, despising the crassness of the nouveaux riches bad guy? Is it better to simply be born with advantages, or to create one's own opportunities?

This was the best animated series of its time. Star Blazers was made at a time when American cartoons were trite junk like "The Super Friends" and "The Brady Kids." When Star Blazers hit syndicated TV in America in the early 1980s, it was still categorically more engrossing than any American cartoon, any American science fiction... heck, it was better than 90% of American TV period.

In case you missed the plot summary: hostile Aliens (the Gammalons) attack Earth and defeat all of her military might. The Gammalons then proceed to launch a years-long nuclear attack against Earth which renders the entire surface unfit for life. Cowering in caves, humanity awaits its final extinction...

Until a message is received from the Planet Iscandar, offering aid. Iscander can provide "Cosmo DNA," which can resuscitate the Earth's entire ecosphere. Iscander also provides the blueprints for a powerful interstellar propulsion system: the wave motion drive. Desperate beyond measure, Earth refits one single starship, the Argo, with the wave motion drive, and sends her and her brave crew to cross 100,000 light years of Gammalon territory to reach Iscandar.

Right away, one can see that this cartoon has a much more intelligent plot than any shows intended for kids and adolescents. It is also notable that this series is a serial: each episode is part of a larger, evolving story. It would be decades before any American shows that are not "soap operas" would develop this format (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The plot is also dead serious: the world is ending, and ending in a way that was plausibly frightening to Japanese kids in the wake of Hiroshima and American kids in the wake of Three Mile Island. This didn't so much scare me as a kid, but it made the show totally riveting.

On top of the smart and emotional plot, the series had some other virtues. The "cinematography" was great, with good drawing and well-composed scenes. The lessons of the episodes were more serious and adult than typical kids shows, focusing on duty, loyalty, teamwork, and honor. The episodes themselves got a bit formulaic in the middle of the first season, usually ending in a desperate battle with Gammalon ships which can be won only be use of the wave-motion gun.

Sorry to be so long winded. If you like anime and you like sci-fi, you should watch at least the first season. Its better than a lot of anime than came after, and much more original than most anime. The second season was very good, too, although it was even more serious.

This film is a ghost story in space. A rescue spaceship is sent to Neptune to rendezvous with the _Even Horizon_, and experimental ship that disappeared years ago after testing its hyperspace drive. The rescue crew reach the vessel, only to find it a derelict. As the rescue crew slowly uncovered what happened to the former crew of the unfortunate vessel, the rescue crew find themselves hallucinating and going insane.

I gave this film a 5. The setting is really good. Neptune feels alien and creepy. The derelict Event Horizon feels like a real place... a serious achievement considering that it is supposed to be a starship. It feels like a visitor to another dimension. The dead ship filled with evidence of a murdered crew makes the _Event Horizon_ spookier than many a haunted mansion or isolated cabin in a Hollywood horror.

Unfortunately, the plot never really progresses much. There is some lurking influence in the ship, but we never learn anything about it. People see things, they go nuts, but the whole thing lacks climax.

Do not, under any conditions, rent this reeking pile of dog-doo that purports to be a movie.

My lady and I thought this disk might make for a steamy evening's diversion. After all, the box describes the movie as being all about passion, love, etc. Well, it was a big disappointment. The film can be summed up as having the rich plot of a soft-core porn film, without any of the sex. That's right. It is a scam. There are very few love scenes. Most of them are brief, and involve the main characters getting into an argument. The plot is dull, and the dialog is totally awful. The acting is about on par for a porn film, too.

The only redeeming feature of this film is the fake parrot that appears in one of the dream sequences. A stuffed parrot is lying on its belly in a cage during two scenes. The thing is so fake, we both burst into laughter when the sound track included a parrot squawking. It might have been a dead parrot, but I think it was a doll.

This may be John Carpenter's most enjoyable film. He busts out of horror to make an action/comedy that satirizes both American-style "two buddies with guns" flicks and Chinese kung fu action flicks. Don't let the movie's low marks with the critics fool you: the critics back in the 1980s didn't watch kung fu movies, so they didn't get the jokes! A rambling tough-guy truck driver gets lost in the city, and accidentally pulls his truck into the middle of a massive kung fu gang fight in Chinatown. As a result, he befriends a local Chinese guy whose fiancée has been kidnapped by a triad who follow an evil spirit (Loh Pan). Said evil spirit had decided to marry said fiancée himself, as part of a ritual to summon said evil spirit into the physical world. The two men lead a group of civic minded martial artists into the depths of the earth to rescue the fair maiden and put an end to the dastardly deeds of Loh Pan.

Okay, enough plot summary. This is one fun movie. Crazy feats of kung fu. Ridiculously campy dialog. Actually funny dialog. So-campy-its-funny dialog. A main character who can't do anything right. Whacky monsters that seem to be modeled after Ming figurines on your Aunt's coffee table. An old herbalist who dispenses super potions and fortune-cookie wisdom. Kung fu gang fights. Kung fu gun fights. Gorilla fu. Kurt Russel fu.

All that fu aside, there is a reason this is a cult classic. If you like cult films, you are going to like BTLC.

This is not a spy film about flying cars, laser rifles, or daring acts of burglary. In fact, this isn't really a spy film at all. If you want that, rent any of the James Bond films. It doesn't matter which one.

This movie is really about a caper. Without spoiling the plot, it can be said that a crooked English spy takes advantage of a tailor's idealism to defraud England and the United States out of a fortune in funds intended for a pro-democracy movement. The action is set in post-Noriega Panama, a Panama sick with corruption, fraud, and graft. The spy comes to town, and convinces the tailor that his mission is to take down the drug-enriched aristocracy left behind by the Noreiga regime. Still idealistic from his days as a liberal activist, the tailor clues the spy into Panama high society. Using that information, the spy concocts a story about a pro-democracy rebel network, and runs off with the secret aid money.

This film illustrates an aspect of international morality that is sobering yet compelling, and that you will not get from many Hollywood movies: the near-futility of idealism. The tailor and his crowd are the only characters who care at all about their country, but they are oppressed, depressed, down-and-out. Meanwhile, the scumbags who supported Noriega and continue to make a living from cocaine are rich and influential, always at ritzy cocktail parties and smoking fine cigars. What's a person of conscience to do? BTW, ignore the ending. It is some crap Hollywood threw in to satisfy focus groups. The book doesn't end that way, and it seems obvious that the film shouldn't, either.

The film's plot, script, and acting are only average, but the film is buoyed by some sizzling chemistry between Jolie and Banderas. Their sex scenes are extremely memorable, so make sure you get an un-edited version (unrated).

Banderas plays a wealthy Cuban coffee farmer whose dedication to his trade has thus-far distracted him from the important business of finding a good wife. Using a matchmaker, he agrees to marry a woman from Connecticuit. He has been dishonest, however, in describing himself as a man of only average means. Banderas admits his dishonesty to his new wife (Jolie). However, it soon becomes clear that there is more to her than meets the eye, as well. Soon Banderas becomes so obsessed with Jolie that her lies destroy his entire life. He is well aware of what is happening every step of the way, but he doesn't care.

So, this is an interesting movie for a few reasons. As stated above, the sex scenes are among the best ever filmed. It is also novel to see a film about a man who is actually obsessed about his own wife. I personally could identify with Banderas in his willingness to give up everything for woman he knows he cannot trust. Heck, it happens to the best of us.

A hugely important film. One of the *most* important zombie movies of our time. This is a parody of horror films, in that the gore and monsters are "over the top" in a way that is too crazy to believe or fear. Our hero is a zombie-fighter. He is a self-appointed zombie hunter, because he manages the cemetery where the dead rise, and he is afraid that if anyone else finds out what is going on, they will close the cemetery and he will lose his job. So, every night he is at work, trying to inflict fatal brain damage to zombies. This is set against a sub-plot involving the woman of his dreams, who he repeatedly loses (he kills her twice), and repeatedly returns to him with a new identity (played by Ana Falchi: what a fox!). If you watch it twice and think about this movie too much, you realize that everything in the film is about the hero's limited world, which is continually throwing the old back at him, instead of introducing anything new.

This is just another nudity vehicle from the early 1980s. The plot... there is no plot. A bunch of "good" guys enter a ski competition, and they don't like some of the other contestants, so that group is the "bad guys." There are sex scenes between the good guys and the bad guys, and some long skiing scenes. If you like to watch skiing and sex, you might rent this and just turn off the sound. Granted, you will have to sit through a lot of "filler," so keep your finger on the fast-forward key.

A previous poster got it right when he wrote that the skiing and sex put together might amount to 30 minutes.