Category: Features
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Phantoms (1998)
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Read more: Phantoms (1998)Phantoms is awful, in that special way movies like Lawrence Kasdan and William Goldman’s Stephen King adaptation Dreamcatcher are awful. Author and screenwriter Dean Koontz is often considered the poor man’s King (perhaps unfairly, as his novel Intensity is one of the best thrillers of the 1990s), so it is fitting that Phantoms should have…
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Monkey Shines (1988)
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Read more: Monkey Shines (1988)George A. Romero’s Monkey Shines is the story of Allan Mann (Jason Beghe), an athlete who is struck down by a semi-truck at the start of the movie, rendering him quadriplegic. He is forced to use one of those wheelchairs operated by blowing into a straw in order to get around, and after he hits…
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Deep Blue Sea (1999)
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Read more: Deep Blue Sea (1999)Deep Blue Sea, like the slasher movies it emulates by way of movies like Alien and Predator, is less a compelling narrative than it is a sort of delivery system for gruesome death scenes. And that’s fine. When a movie realizes its ambition, however high or low that ambition may be, it succeeds. It is…
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Brain Eating, Gang Rape and Other Funny Stuff
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Read more: Brain Eating, Gang Rape and Other Funny Stuff“I’d walk a mile for a chuckle.” Great line, huh? It comes from 1957’s excellent Sweet Smell of Success. It’s a simple statement that perfectly captures a sense of ennui. In seven short words you get a feel for how the character’s been numbed by the daily grind, how he’s surrounded by unremarkable people and…
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All Hail, King of the Runts!
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Read more: All Hail, King of the Runts!Great art is one thing, but consistently pumping out the stuff quite another. I mean, how many artists do you love (whether it’s film directors, musicians or, er, sculptors) only to admit a fair chunk of their work is actually pants? Take a fucked-up little bald girl like Sinead O’Connor. Her first two albums are…
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Hey, PE Teacher! Leave Them Kids Alone!
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Read more: Hey, PE Teacher! Leave Them Kids Alone!I’ve never quite gotten over my first PE lesson aged eleven at a big school. After surviving a bruising game of rugger in which I was sometimes mistaken for the ball, I tried my best to change back into my uniform and sneak home as the prospect of a group shower at that somewhat self-conscious…
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Quills (2000)
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Read more: Quills (2000)“Why should I love God? He strung up his only son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he’d do to me.” –The Marquis de Sade I guess that it is pretty obvious by now that I rarely review bad movies (EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s a lie) or even movies that I don’t…
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We Can’t Interfere With People’s Beliefs*
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Read more: We Can’t Interfere With People’s Beliefs*I used to be an ESL teacher and I’ll never forget having a chat with my students about ill health and medicine. A Nepalese woman told the class she once caught a life-threatening fever and was immeasurably grateful to her husband for beating her up. It was one of those blink-a-few-times sort of moment as…
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Venom: Let There Be Carnage
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Read more: Venom: Let There Be CarnageIn order to understand how low my expectations were for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, think about some of the movies that have come out this year that should have been entertaining, but absolutely crapped the bed. Without Remorse, Mortal Combat, F9, and Snake Eyes were terrible and that is coming right on the heels…
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Carter v. Shand: Battle of the British Gangsters
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Read more: Carter v. Shand: Battle of the British GangstersThere are many people who like to grapple with the Big Questions, such as whether we’re alone in the universe, what happens after death and what celeb has the best tits. Luckily I’m in a position to answer the last one in that God has the best tits because (a he’s Perfection so it stands…