Category: Movies
Ben Affleck is the New BATMAN?!
Yep-seems that we have a new Batman again, not the perfect choice of Joseph Gordon Levitt but Ben Affleck as USA Today has just reported! Not sure what to think about this, I suppose Affleck has gotten to be better through the years. Somehow though I just can’t erase that wretched Daredevil flick from 2003 from my mind! I can’t say I’m thrilled but everyone deserves a chance at redemption right?! Ok Ben, don’t fuck this one up!!!
Ok, though let’s NOT forget this bullshit though ok?
The Conspiracy: Creepy Creepy Rich People Attack!
I’ve been reading a lot of info lately on Bohemian Grove, the two week long retreat in Monte Rio California set up exclusively for the richest most powerful men in the world. It’s guests include people like George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Nixon and many more politicians and corporate icons. What do they do there?
Apparently they discuss business and political deals, talk about the “Little Men” which are people like me and most likely you and the rest of the general populace, drink, run around naked, do drugs and enjoy some strange rituals like the “Cremation of Care”. Sounds crazy huh? Well it’s true and it’s been going on for a long time. It’s gathered so much attention through the years that Occupy San Francisco has been showing up to protest their secret meetings.
Love him or hate him, In 2000 Alex Jones infiltrated the compound and exposed first hand the “Cremation” ritual with a camera he smuggled in. It was a bit of “big news” that year, and even if you think Jones is full of shit, no one can deny that his video is pretty damn captivating. Check out what happens when Jones confronts David Gergen political advisor to four Presidents Clinton, Nixon, Ford and Reagan. It’s a pretty chilling reaction, but it’s toward the end of his interview just as Gergen starts to get a little too comfy…
So Bohemian Grove sounds like something right out of a crazy horror movie huh? Well there’s a cool looking flick coming out soon called “The Conspiracy” that looks truly creepy. What if some people like Alex Jones while infiltrating a place like Bohemian Grove were discovered by it’s guests? Well it seems this movie, a mockumentary, gives us a chilling possibility of what that might look like. The clip on Dread Central kinda freaked me out, check it out as this movies already got stellar reviews. Now I’m not a huge Conspiracy theorist, but I must say a lot of this stuff really intrigues me and I do believe there’s some truth to much of these ideas. The funny thing is people are becoming much more interested about what these high powered fat cats are doing behind closed doors. People want to know what they’ve got planned for the masses as even of late the protests at the Bilderberg meetings. So this flick is going to be right up my alley let’s just hope it’s not too close to the truth!!!
Hardcore SCOOBY DOO horror!
I checked out the much hyped indie flick “Saturday Morning Mystery” the other evening with high hopes. In case you have no idea what this new movie is all about it can be summed up pretty simply: live action Scooby Doo in an R-rated horror flick. Sounds pretty fantastic right? It’s clearly a pretty great idea but beware, these characters though clearly based on the cartoons aren’t really the comic relief you might be expecting. This is a more realistic take on the group, so don’t expect the dog, named Hamlet to be talking in this one. The rest of the characters are more true to life as well Floyd(Shaggy) smokes weed and does acid, Chadwick(Fred) & Gwen(Daphne) have wild sex and Nancy(Velma) has a crush of her own on one of the team members.
The movie starts out pretty strong, with the gang investigating a haunted house, but soon like the cartoon find that behind the curtains are just some normal yet truly sick people. They’re even reprimanded by the police for messing up their covert operation-those meddling kids!! It’s not long before the gang is running low on funding for their paranormal investigations so they decide to tackle one last case in hopes of maybe discovering something supernatural before throwing in the towel. Their last case leads them in their vintage van to an abandoned “haunted school” where there’s rumors of satanists and ghosts within it’s walls.
There’s not too much more I can or should tell you about the story. It’s got a few twists and turns and for the the most part is a pretty solid horror flick with a great premise. However I think the premise of this film is by far it’s strongest attribute. If you take away the whole “Scooby Doo” theme there honestly wouldn’t be a heck of a lot to really separate this from anything else out there. To me they could have benefited by adding a little more comedy, naivety and color to the characters and the story. There could have been more of “Scooby” or Hamlet I should say, in the story as it seemed maybe the film was played a little too real, at least for what I was hoping for.
I also hoped for the sets to be a bit more interesting, it’s have been cool to see them an truly unique and colorful haunted setting. An old haunted school should have looked and felt more like it would have in the cartoon, but perhaps it wasn’t in the budget? The settings (at the very least the inside of the school) were a bit bland for my expectations. The film takes a turn in it’s third act and gets gory and gritty and this really would have been more effective had out gang acted a little more like their cartoon counterparts. At times it brought to mind say “Night of the Demons” or “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” but clearly operating on a lower level. “Evil Dead meets Scooby Doo” is what Aint it Cool News called it-not quite. In the end though I think it was a decent, solid effort that doesn’t quite live up to the hype. On a more positive note, I gotta give it best movie concept of the year!
Jake Busey is Most Certainly NOT Rutger Hauer!!
It was finally time to check out a sequel for one of my fave horror movies of all time, The Hitcher! Yep, what many people don’t know is that they did indeed make a sequel for the 1986 classic. No, this ain’t a sequel to the highly un-needed 2007 remake. “The Hitcher 2: I’ve Been Waiting” came out in 2003, yeah it took me ten years to finally become curious enough in this movie to check it out. Perhaps this sudden interest came in a recent conversation about the films villain, played by none other than Jake Busey.
So some might think, a sequel for The Hitcher might just be about some random folks who pick up another crazed hitchhiker. Well what kind of sequel would that really be?! Nope! This one succeeds on one level, by bringing C. Thomas Howell, the original’s hero, Jim Halsey back! Now that’s what I like to see in a sequel, the original star power return. However cool this seems it makes you wonder how in holy hell Jim Halsey could realistically ever pick up another hitchhiker after the crazy shit that went down in the original?!!
To me, it didn’t really matter at first because it was just pretty cool seeing him onscreen 17 years later, as the same character and seeing just what the hell that character was up to. Turns out he was a cop, he flies planes and he’s a little crazy. Rightfully so! Halsey has been struggling still with those visions of the events of the original film shown in flashbacks throughout. He’s wound so tight that he decides to go on a road trip with his girlfriend, flying there in his plane and then picking up a car to drive down that same highway Rutger Hauer terrorized him on in 1986!
Sounds good thus far right? Well things get real stupid REAL quick folks. Yep it doesn’t take long before they see a man crash his motorcycle and then jump onto the side of the road……..yeah….hitchhiking!!! Now there’s no WAY Halsey would ever pick up another one of these guys right?! WRONG! His girlfriend talks him into it and there you have it, motherfuckin’ Jake Busey and his big ass teeth sitting in the back seat of the car. BAD bad news. Now what are the god damn chances that the one hitchhiker Jim Halsey sees after driving the damn car for like 15 minutes down the road would be a god damn psychotic serial killer?!! Apparently Halsey is a hitchhiking serial killer magnet! The sheer absurdity of this damn story line is almost brilliant! This movie is just so damn stupid I couldn’t turn the shit off!
Let me make this point clear as day Jake Busey is most certainly NOT Rutger Hauer!! Busey’s attempt at recreating Hauer’s intensity is laughable at best. He gives a ton of lame ass one liners every chance he gets and comes across as an incredibly irritating nitwit rather than remotely frightening. When Hauer was in the car it made you cringe, but when Busey’s in the back seat you just wanna slap the shit out of him for acting like such a nimrod.
So what follows really is pretty forgettable. It’s kinda the same plot as the first one, with maybe one unexpected event to keep it mildly disappointingly interesting. Hell Busey even uses the whole “finger in the french fries” schtick in this one too as each and every turn of the film ends up with some moronic dialogue with Busey somehow convincing the cops he’s just an innocent bystander. Perhaps they just thought he was mentally challenged? Oh yeah and let’s not forget they throw in the “roped to the semi” shit again too. But as with most everything this film delivers it never amounts to anything remotely interesting just to more shitty dialogue from the oh so “crazy” Busey. I’d say this one is a full on grade A suck fest and the only reason to check this out is to see C. Thomas Howell as Jim Halsey one last time. If you’re a fan of moronic sequels that fail miserably this one is a MUST see!!!
Indiana Jones is Expendable?!
This is pretty crazy news, that by now everyone knows, but really Harrison Ford joining the Expendables 3 is quite a surprise! This clearly is going to add a different dimension to the movie and give it some serious star power. It certainly seems as if Sly is going for it again with his casting but what does this mean for Ford’s character? Is he a villain? Part of the team? I’m hoping that injecting him into the movie will perhaps bring on a more “adventurous” vibe to the movie, maybe having him play slightly off his Indiana Jones role and taking the team to some truly amazing remote places! How cool would it be if they had to hire him as a guide for the team in search of some strange artifact of some sort.
Perhaps his involvement means what Stallone mentioned, that the third film might shift genres? I for one hope Ford brings the team into new territory and that the movie does shift into maybe a more sci-fi element, or even better as was predicted, the movie may be based on the discarded “Rambo 5” script “The Savage Hunt”. The ideas for that was that Sly and his team have to hunt down a genetically modified mutant super soldier gone psycho. Now I’d pay to see that! Let’s hope this is the case and that Ford is their guide into the jungles where he or rather it is hiding! Come on Stallone make it happen!!!
The Perfect Wolverine Movie……ALMOST!!!
I just had to give my two cents worth on this weekend’s big hit “The Wolverine” since I totally trashed, heavily here, many times, the god damn awful X-men Origins: Wolverine any chance I could get in the past! So “The Wolverine” was something I was completely ready to hate, however before the movie started I decided I would forget that last venture as hard as it could be. I’ve got to say though, once The Wolverine started rolling I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. It was clear from the first five minutes we were getting a completely different type of film. One that was ready to let Jackman finally shine as everybody’s favorite feral mutant. This was NOT a hokey dumbed down cartoon Wolverine movie, like it’s predecessor. Nope, this one was straight up Wolverine from the comic books!
Here Wolverine is done far better that any of his previous onscreen appearances. Jackman proves and practically erases those past movies except for the referencing of the third and worst X-men film of the franchise. Still though I give it props for sticking with the continuity- So no problems there. Wolverine in this one is a mean bastard, ready to kill, drink, swear and thoroughly fuck up anyone who pisses him off-FINALLY!
Jackman not only proves he loves Wolverine, but actually makes you feel something real for the character. It makes you root for the poor soul, hoping that maybe he’ll get some peace of mind for once in his life and maybe, just maybe find real love, if anything so he can stop having weird ass fantasies about a kinda creepy looking Famke Janssen every ten minutes. However weird these dream sequences were with her popping up all over the film, it still made sense as we all know Wolverine’s past obsession with Jean Grey, that made for a great love triangle in the comic books. Yet I couldn’t help but want to yell out at the screen to Logan to “get the fuck over it already dude!!!” But in a way I felt strangely sorry for the guy.
So this movie finally gets it right, almost and I’ll get to that. Continue reading
The Conjuring: A Scary Breath of Fresh Summer Air!
I checked out ‘The Conjuring’ last night, a movie I was looking forward to for quite a while amidst this season of over blown shiny rubbery looking blockbusters. My verdict? It was a helluva lot of fun and was jam packed with scares a plenty and then more scares after that! I’ve gotta say I’m really kinda liking James Wan as of late, the guy who I originally considered a hack, mainly for my loathing of movies like Saw and Death Sentence. I’ve got to admit though the guy, though not pulling out anything ultra original has pretty much mastered the Ghost Story / haunting horror genre. I was a huge fan of Insidious and this latest offering is just as good if not perhaps an even more solid haunt flick.
Based this time on the “true” story of Ed & Lorraine Warren who were demonologists back in the late 1960’s and 70’s and their most bizarre case which involved the haunting of The Perron Family in their new home in Harrisville, Rhode Island. From the get go you can tell it’s going to be one heck of a creepy ride as the films opening sequences, which involve once again a creepy ass doll (I love creepy dolls!!) foreshadow what’s yet to come later. This is a great back to basics summer horror/suspense film which doesn’t rely on explicit gore, green screens or video gamey CG to get the crowd’s blood pumping. It relies on what you don’t see(yet many times what you do!) to craft it’s chills. It had me squirming in my seat and at times wanting to cover my eyes. It’s well acted, well shot and the special effects are perfectly executed in a way that makes you feel as if you’re right there in the creepy house with the rest of the family.
It’d have been a damn near perfect viewing experience had it not been for the guy in front of us who for some reason felt like he had to narrate the scares for the whole theater, somehow feeling as if perhaps everyone in the theater had actually paid to come listen to him attempt to be a stand up comedian while a tense horror flick played alongside him. Uggh…perhaps I’ll see it again with out the annoying live commentary, however seeing it for the first time won’t ever be as good as the scares run rampant in this one and you never know exactly when the shit is yet again going to hit the fan. It certainly will make you think twice about playing hide and seek! Now however, what I really wonder is how much of this story was actually true? This film delved pretty heavily into the Catholic church and the power of religion to ward off evil spirits so hopefully the real story bares some real resemblance to what we saw onscreen and Wan wasn’t trying to convert it’s audience.
I really recommend this one if you’re looking for something different this summer. It may not be the most original idea to hit the screen but it’s easily one of the best movies out in theaters thus far this summer. Take a chance and test your nerves and if you got a loud mouth who can’t refrain from thinking he’s part of the MST3K crew make sure to creep up slowly behind his seat and scare the bejeezus out of him, then quietly tell him to shut the fuck up!
And here are a couple clips of the real Ed and Lorraine Warren!
Just a Reminder, This IS Electro….
In case anyone out there was confused, I just had to take a second to show you all in case you forgot what Electro really looks like. That is all. carry on true believers….
All Hollywood Blockbustered Out?!
We keep hearing about how worried Hollywood is that the huge blockbusters are going to flop since the mega poop bomb “The Lone Ranger” dropped into theaters. What’s the deal I wonder? Is all this worry for nothing? Is Pacific Rim going to be the the next big thing or the next big monster turd?! I can only really speak for myself and that’s that I’m kinda all blockbustered out already. For me Iron Man 3 was the cream of the crop and after seeing a few more big glossed over CG stuffed over hyped films I’m currently not feeling that there’s anymore room in my stomach for more fluff!
Could it be that I’m not the only one? Because I feel as if maybe, just maybe people might be looking for a bit more from their summer movies? Even a movie like Pacific Rim, done by my man Del Toro for some reason hasn’t really gotten me fully amped up and at this point I’m not really sure I’ll even see it at the big theater. That movie should technically should have me salivating at the mouth but for some reason it hasn’t quite ignited the spark, even with all the hype. Now maybe what I’m really saying is that a lot of these blockbusters simply have no soul and are purely there to feed the cash cow. However, early reviews of Pacific Rim seem to be pointing to the opposite of my assumptions.
Perhaps I shouldn’t second guess Guillermo? From what I have heard in the last couple days it’s got more than a bunch of big shiny CG (though it’s got it’s fair share of that) it’s got heart. So perhaps I’ll jump back in the blockbuster game again or hell maybe I’ll see The Conjuring instead? It’s gotten some great reviews thus far from a ton of horror sites..It might be a breath of fresh air to see a great little horror flick in the midst of rubbery cg monsters and explosions….then again? Hmmm….
‘Curse of Chucky’ Trailer Arrives but What Kind of Chucky are We Getting?
Chucky is back! But is that a good thing? After two ridiculous Chucky flicks can anyone take the little guy seriously anymore? Watch the new trailer to find out! What do you think-does Chucky still have the chops?
Universal Dork 