tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80962070935673268902024-03-13T13:47:24.668-07:00Mordant AirheadStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.comBlogger313125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-31247558144307772482014-03-10T21:42:00.001-07:002014-03-10T21:42:24.405-07:00DetentionYou know how I'm always bitching about pop-culture-reference-laden, self-aware slasher movies populated entirely by unlikeable teenagers? Detention is exactly that.<br />
I really fucking liked Detention.<br />
Here's the thing: the movie bills itself as a slasher movie. I first heard of it via an article in Fangoria. I found the DVD in the Horror section at Amoeba.<br />
Detention is not a horror movie.<br />
Detention is a parody of teen movies, all teen movies, and an great deal of slasher movies are teen movies as well. So Detention has elements of slasher movie, including a villain named CinderHella (which cracked me up because about two days ago a friend of mine suggested that name as an alternate title for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sunny-Ella-Sally-Zybert/dp/1461043549/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394512804&sr=8-1&keywords=sunny+ella">my book</a>). But I wouldn't throw it into that category.<br />
It's a comedy, a smart one, the kind of parody Not Another Teen Movie probably wanted to be.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-6403272376528953102014-02-19T14:27:00.001-08:002014-02-19T14:27:21.444-08:00Rabies (and a sort of goodbye)First of all, I'm tired of writing reviews and have decided to stop.<br />
For the most part, anyway. If I watch a movie and feel I have something to say about it, I'll post something but overall, I'm done with this blog. I'm not as grumpy or opinionated as I once was and over the next few months I plan on going through all my posts on this site and taking down all but the ones I feel are well written.<br />
Thanks to all one or two of you who actually read my blog. It's been fun. See you around.<br />
<br />
That being said: Rabies.<br />
Rabies is, so the story goes, the first horror movie to come out of Israel and I have been excited to see it for at least a couple years, ever since I read an article about it (and Cuba's first horror movie, Juan Of The Dead) in an issue of Rue Morgue.<br />
Well, last night I finally got around to watching it! And!<br />
... Eh.<br />
It was okay. It was bloody and a few moments were very satisfying. But I'd read so much about how brutal this movie is that I ended up feeling underwhelmed.<br />
Sure it was plenty violent (the Strong Sad quote "And everyone died, and nobody lived." kept popping to mind) but I'd have a hard time calling it brutal since most of that violence is perpetrated against people who are one hundred percent unlikeable. I hated all but two characters, one of whom appears only peripherally at the very beginning and the other dies an hour in. All the other characters were varying degrees of asshole and, to be honest, most of their deaths made me laugh. A lot. 'Cause fuck them, they suck.<br />
And that, I guess it should be pointed out, is why I like a lot of slasher movies: the characters either have bad personalities or no personalities so the audience can feel entertained by their horrible murders at the hands of charismatic (or at least somewhat interesting) killers. Rabies fails because the people committing the murders are the assholes who are also getting killed. There's no one to root for. <br />
In fact, one death scene in particular (which I will give away to anybody who asks, because it was just that funny) was Looney Tunes-caliber hilarious and made me spend the rest of the movie wondering if I was supposed to have been taking <i>any</i> of this seriously.<br />
So, yeah, I'd really wanted to see it for a long time and it was a letdown. But I did enjoy spending an hour and a half listening to people speak Hebrew. I'm a sucker for people speaking languages I don't understand.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-45842344451896911462013-12-21T19:36:00.002-08:002013-12-21T19:36:59.854-08:00The 2013 Year End RoundupThis was not a big movie year for me. Part of it had to do with the fact that I stopped hanging out with the one person I usually went to movies with. She has her life going on and I have my life going on and they didn't overlap much. Part of me is really bummed about falling out of touch with her but, honestly, part of me is relieved. We didn't have a lot of the same interests.<br />
So this year I didn't go see a lot of movies, which is why two of the movies on my paltry year-end roundup list are movies I didn't see in a theater. One I watched on an airplane and the other was on video tape (which is the only way to watch it, to be honest).<br />
This year was less about movies for me than it was about music. It was about Local H and, to a much greater extent, The Aquabats. The Aquabats have taken over my brain. That's actually quite a good thing. For once I feel happy most of the time and I'm actually slowly starting to hack my way toward a path in my life. I hope I stick with it. I really need some direction.<br />
Here's hoping that 2014 will be a good year, that I'll keep heading toward having a real purpose in life, and that The Aquabats' twentieth anniversary will be a great one!<br />
And now here is my Top Nine Movies Of 2013:<br />
<br />
9) <strong>Hansel And Gretel Witch Hunters</strong> - Forgettable, CGI-laden borefest.<br />
8) <strong>Gravity</strong> - That opening shot that goes on for, like, fifteen minutes was very cool. Overall I thought it was well made, it just couldn't make me care. I am not the target audience.<br />
7) <strong>Mama</strong> - Parts of it were creepy and I wanted to like it but I couldn't stand the lead character and the ending could not have been sadder.<br />
6) <strong>Monsters University</strong> - This one has a happy ending, at least, but most of what led to that happy ending made me sad.<br />
5) <strong>WNUF Halloween Special</strong> - Creepy fucking movie that I still think about and get the chills. But there were a couple of parts where I just thought "They wouldn't have shown that!" and it kind of ruined the illusion.<br />
4) <strong>The Conjuring</strong> - I love James Wan movies and The Conjuring is a good, solid, creepy one.<br />
3) <strong>Insidious Chapter Two</strong> - When I saw them I felt this one was stronger than The Conjuring but right now I think they're about tied. I may switch them later. This was a solid sequel to a movie that I still think didn't need one.<br />
2) <strong>Evil Dead</strong> - Solid story, lots of gore, great fun was had by all. I just wish they'd left out all the references to the original Evil Dead series. You've got your own thing going on, guys, and you shoved me right out of it by deliberately reminding me you're a remake.<br />
1) <strong>The Lords Of Salem</strong> - I could sit here for hours trying and failing to articulate why I loved this movie so much. It's not the easiest to watch. Rob Zombie is my favorite director and this one is, in many ways, so different from his other movies but is also still so obviously his. It's beautiful and haunting and creepy and sad and bonkers. I'm glad it's nothing like the book.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-34747473210780288892013-12-21T15:25:00.001-08:002013-12-21T15:25:16.254-08:00The Canterville Ghost and Henry Hamilton: Graduate GhostAlso known as the Twelve-Year-Old Christian Jacobs Ghost Double Feature.<br />
The Canterville Ghost is based on an Oscar Wilde story and is about the ghost of a nobleman who allegedly murdered his wife, and who befriends a little girl who helps him break a spell.<br />
Henry Hamilton: Graduate Ghost was made for ABC Weekend Specials and is about the ghost of a Confederate soldier who needs to scare a family to get his diploma, and who befriends a little girl who helps him reach his goal.<br />
Of the two movies, The Canterville Ghost is better-acted and has a stronger story. It's also pretty boring.<br />
Henry Hamilton: Graduate Ghost, on the other hand is a (as The Cinema Snob puts it) shot on shitteo affair with barely competent storytelling (there's a completely pointless tangent about two burglars that takes way too much time) and is a hell of a lot more fun to watch. It's full of brilliant little moments of lousiness that make me want to show the movie to, if not all my friends, at least to my friends Kristin and Tom who would enjoy it the same way I did.<br />
Oh, and Christian Jacobs is in both movies as The Oldest Of Three Kids. He was about twelve. It's cute.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-63164147745642692892013-12-18T08:58:00.001-08:002013-12-18T08:58:13.804-08:00Judy Moody And The Not Bummer SummerJudy Moody And The Not Bummer Summer is the story of a whiny, entitled brat who we're supposed to like for some reason. Extreme, uncomfortable closeups for no good reason abound.<br />
Ugghhhhh. Kill me.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-6300242055131593532013-12-17T22:09:00.001-08:002013-12-17T22:09:41.031-08:00ExileA bunch of diverse teenagers from a bunch of different schools are headed out on a school-funded excursion to a village in Malaysia for four months. For school reasons. I think they explained it at the beginning of the movie but I missed it. And it turned out not to matter anyway because when they transfer from an airliner to a little seaplane, the little seaplane crashes and strands them on a deserted island. Their teacher, who was the only adult chaperone (not counting the asshole drug smuggling pilot, who I'll get to), insists on leaving with the pilot to get help, thus stranding all the teenagers.<br />
Hilarity ensues.<br />
Well, sort of. Not really.<br />
There were some funny moments, most of which were provided by a comic relief character named Derf, played by Christian Jacobs (so we all already know 1) why I was watching this movie at all and 2) who my favorite character was). But the funniest moment was provided by a different character, who promptly and abruptly died offscreen less than a minute later, putting a damper on my moment of joyous laughter. Thanks a lot, movie.<br />
A lot of the movie focuses on how different characters get along (or don't get along, as they case may be) and how they build a society on the island. There were a few plot points I felt were sort of abandoned or not really looked into (I thought the kid who talked to monkeys was cool but they didn't do much with that). And Derf faded into the background as soon as the movie decided to be pretty much completely serious. So there's that.<br />
And then ... Okay, this is getting spoilery from here on in so if you have any interest in seeing Exile, maybe stop reading now. Okay, so it turns out the pilot crashed when he went back to get help. The teacher died and the pilot stranded himself on the same island as the kids. The kids find him and offer to let him come live with them, where he proceeds to be the world's worst houseguest: bossing them around, stealing their stuff, making sexual advances toward underage girls, peeing too close to the only water source, that sort of thing.<br />
Now I'm going to be extra special spoilery and give away the end of the movie so stop reading if you care about that: Asshole Pilot kidnaps one of the girls and everyone goes all battle mode to get her back. Which they do. And Monkey Kid clocks Asshole Pilot in the head with a rock, which knocks him out. Then they end by saying "We've been on the island about a month and we're doing pretty well for ourselves and it's funny that the first thing we built is a jail."<br />
What?! No! Kill that asshole. He's going to break out and commit all the rape. I'm pretty sure he already did rape that girl he kidnapped. One guy even brought up murder in one of the "what sort of laws are we making?" scenes and so I thought that was going to be a pretty important plot point. But nobody murdered anybody. Yet another thread the movie picked up and then dropped without studying it. Annoying.<br />
But I did really like the fact that the movie just ended without any real closure. They may not ever get rescued but they have society now.<br />
(If I were feeling a little more awake and clever, I'd draw a comparison between the fact that this movie has Christian Jacobs stranded on an island and how now he's a superhero from a little island called Aquabania but you can go ahead and make up your own silly fan theories 'cause I just don't feel like it right now.)<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-67817405699412960752013-12-01T16:35:00.001-08:002013-12-01T16:35:21.478-08:00Human ExperimentsPoor Rachel Foster has terrible luck. When her car breaks down and she needs to use a phone, she just happens to ask for help at the house where a kid has just massacred his family. He turns his gun on her and Rachel shoots him first in self defense, rendering the kid comatose and getting herself wrongfully convicted of lots of murder. So she goes to prison and prison sucks.<br />
Human Experiments is a movie that got itself on the Video Nasties list (if you'd like to know more on that subject, my buddy <a href="http://dpp39.blogspot.com/?zx=bcd74a52376e1d">Justin Case can help you out</a>) and for the life of me I can't figure out how or why. It's like the BBFC didn't even watch the movie before they condemned it. (Oh, wait...)<br />
It's not even a horror movie, which is the genre I always assume the Video Nasties fall into. Human Experiments basically a women in prison movie, a really boring one. The last fifteen or twenty minutes kinda pick up but even then it wasn't enough to make me really interested in what was going on. There was just more going on then than there was in the first hour or so of the movie.<br />
Highly recommended for people who are planning on watching all of the Video Nasties. Sadly, I haven't set that goal for myself so really there wasn't a lot in the movie for me.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-67707779063220331612013-11-14T20:41:00.000-08:002013-11-14T20:41:24.063-08:00GravityGravity is a very good movie but I can't say that I liked it. It was exhausting and parts of it were too sad and all of it was too heavy and serious for my taste.<br />
The visuals were fantastic and the acting was good enough for me to forget for the most part that I was watching actors. I think a making-of documentary about this movie would be very interesting.<br />
When I first saw the trailer for Gravity I kind of thought "Well, I just saw the whole movie so I don't need to see that one" and I was kind of wrong. There was definitely a lot of movie other than what went on in the trailer but to me it all kind of felt like filler.<br />
I'm just not the audience for this movie. It's supposed to be an incredibly harrowing and moving story and no matter how well it's done, that sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me.<br />
As far as I was concerned there was a point, probably about twenty or thirty minutes in, where I felt like it could have ended and I would have been completely satisfied and probably also a sobbing mess on the floor.<br />
So for me, I guess, it would have worked much better as a short than a feature. But, like I said, I am not the audience for Gravity.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-9602923299782346942013-11-08T23:42:00.003-08:002013-11-08T23:42:37.533-08:00WNUF Halloween SpecialI am not exactly easy to scare anymore. When I was a kid practically everything frightened me but I have grown up to be a gorehound horror fan who is easily bored and angered by "found footage" movies. I have a personal vendetta against The Blair Witch Project and I sincerely believe anyone who found Paranormal Activity scary is a little bit stupid. (Oooh, arguing and sleeping, I'm so scared!)<br />
WNUF Halloween Special fucking got to me. It got under my skin. It was creepy and unsettling and even though it was chock full of unpleasant characters I was on the verge of tears by the end. For some reason this one succeeds where many others fail.<br />
Watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it! (Even if you're not into the "Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault" style investigating-a-supposedly-haunted-house news story angle, watch it for the spot-on 1987-style local commercials. They're beautiful. They are perfectly imagined little globules of the past.)<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-91229889104205954342013-10-05T10:55:00.002-07:002013-10-05T10:55:40.103-07:00Hansel And Gretel Witch HuntersThis movie may as well not even exist.<br />
I watched it on an airplane. It was the only movie in the Horror section of the plane's movie choices. I want to have a stern talking-to with whoever put it there because it is not a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination.<br />
I couldn't hear much of the dialogue but it turns out I didn't have to. At no point was I lost, dialogue or not.<br />
The special effects were large, abundant and uninteresting.<br />
Gretel is set up as a strong character and then spends the entire film needing to be rescued by men.<br />
The highest compliment I can pay Hansel And Gretel Witch Hunters is that Famke Janssen is in it. I like her. I think she's cool. I didn't like her character, I didn't think she even did all that great a job in it (she wasn't terrible, either; none of the actors were bad at all, it just wasn't a good movie), she just happened to be there and that's the nicest thing I can say about it.<br />
That and I laughed really hard when Gretel's ogretroll friend punched a guy's head off.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-33339679004339691162013-10-05T10:51:00.000-07:002013-10-05T10:51:06.923-07:00Wreck-It RalphJeezus what a sad movie.<br />
Everything involving Ralph made me sad. The whole beginning where all he wants is to be included and acknowledged as part of the game I was sitting there cringing, on the verge of tears, because I knew what he should have been saying to explain himself and he just kept saying the wrong things and making the situation worse and I couldn't leap in there and help him.<br />
Everything involving Vanellope made me sad. At first I just flat out hated her because the way we're introduced to the character is her being an obnoxious jerk (and I just don't care for Sarah Silverman). Then we see her getting viciously picked on and even though I never totally warmed up to the character, every time something bad happened to her I wept. And a lot of bad things happen to her. The movie could have just as easily been called Gang Up On Vanellope.<br />
So my overall feeling toward this movie is unimaginable sadness. There were great chunks of it that just plain hurt me to watch.<br />
I was also annoyed that there wasn't a lot of game-hopping. I thought it was going to be a movie about Ralph going from game to game, all through the arcade, trying to become a hero, not Ralph going to one other game, then a second game and then just staying there the whole movie. That's boring!<br />
I did, however, love Fix-It Felix and Calhoun. Both those characters were interesting and lovable (I wish I could say Ralph was lovable; I really wanted to like Ralph. But I just didn't. I didn't dislike him, either. He was just there and he made me feel sad) and their scenes together are the best in the movie.<br />
I had planned on seeing Wreck-It Ralph ever since it came out but now that I've finally gotten around to it, I wish I hadn't bothered.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-33151123756133972332013-10-05T10:27:00.001-07:002013-10-05T10:27:05.257-07:00The Woman In BlackI saw the movie of The Woman In Black back when it came out and was not terribly impressed by it but liked the story enough that I decided to go see the play while I was in London.<br />
The play is a lot better than the movie, more interesting a creepier, and I considered going to see it a second time while I was there. (Didn't actually make it, but I did think about it.)<br />
That being said, creepy things are a lot less creepy when a theaterful of teenage girls screams at every single tiny little thing and makes the next several lines of dialogue impossible to hear.<br />
There's also a thing that happens in the play that I think is supposed to be a surprise but is pretty obvious from the moment it's set up much earlier in the show, and it makes the whole thing very sad.<br />
I still highly recommend going to see it if you happen to be in London. Just try to go to a performance that isn't full of teenage girls.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-70061867573298016942013-10-03T13:33:00.001-07:002013-10-03T13:33:19.358-07:00Django UnchainedLast week I took a trip to England and watched more movies on that trip than I had in months, starting with Django Unchained on the plane ride to London.<br />
I had been meaning to see this movie since it came out but apparently I didn't mean to that much, since it took me almost a year (or however long it's been) to actually get around to seeing it. On a plane. Because it was the closest thing to a worthwhile movie they had to choose from.<br />
I liked it.<br />
Quentin Tarantino is very hit-or-miss for me; I loved Reservoir Dogs, liked Kill Bill, loved Grindhouse but prefer the parts he had little-to-nothing to do with. On the flipside, I don't care for Pulp Fiction, never saw Jackie Brown and can't come up with a third example to go here.<br />
Django Unchained falls into the "good" half of the Tarantino repertoire but, that being said, I barely remember it now. I know it had some brilliant moments and I liked Christoph Waltz's character in particular.<br />
But my opinion doesn't go any deeper than that. Of the three movies I watched on airplanes this trip, it was certainly the best but I'm also struggling to come up with anything to say about it.<br />
Make of that what you will.<br />
(In all fairness, I was on a red-eye flight and was very tired when I watched it. My lack of anything to say could be based on the fact that I fell asleep about five minutes after it ended.)<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-21893336832179988792013-09-08T16:13:00.005-07:002013-09-08T16:13:54.570-07:00The Lords Of SalemThe novel this time, not the movie.<br />
What I mainly want to say is that I think it's fascinating that Rob Zombie managed to tell essentially the same story that the movie tells but with almost none of the same things happening.<br />
Where the movie is beautiful and hypnotic, the book is mostly just kind of gross. I'm sure if what's in the book had been put into the movie, I still would have liked it. But I don't think I would have loved it the way I love the movie.<br />
The book tells more than the movie does, explains more about the effect that the Lords's music has on the women of Salem, which was interesting. But something about that, something about the drastically different dream sequences and the only-vaguely-similar scene progression didn't sit right with me.<br />
They're very different entities.<br />
I like the movie much, much better. (I wonder what the verdict would have been if I had read the book first.)<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-66062491162728630872013-08-31T00:09:00.000-07:002013-08-31T00:09:08.688-07:00Repo ManRepo Man is about Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton (and some other guys) stealing cars. It's also about aliens. And people who rob convenience stores. And it's also about nothing.<br />
I really enjoyed it but man am I having a hard time thinking of anything to say about it. It's meandering and silly and I liked it a lot.<br />
My favorite thing about it was the fact that all the crazy stuff that happens in the movie sort of just happens around Otto (Emilio Estevez's character) and he goes along with it all, but he never seems all that involved. He just goes with whatever is going on around him.<br />
I also enjoyed spotting a very tiny Michael Nesmith on a TV screen in one scene.<br />
And I enjoyed the bits that have since been referenced and sampled by The Aquabats.<br />
A whole lot of things in the movie just cracked me up, it's a fun movie. It's almost like a Some Shit That Happened movie but I can't quite put it into that category because, for one thing, I actually enjoyed it and, for another, it had an element of the fantastic in it that Some Shit That Happened movies sorely lack.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-54128845254415799772013-08-29T23:50:00.002-07:002013-08-29T23:50:53.549-07:00I've lost my enthusiasmI haven't been writing many reviews lately for two reasons:<br />
1) I barely watch movies anymore<br />
2) a very long-winded reason; see explanation below<br />
Like most blogs, mine exists on the internet, which means anybody in the world can access it at any time. So people can wander in and out and they're not all going to agree with me. The whole reason I started this blog was because I never agreed with movie reviews so I figured I should just start writing my own.<br />
A few months ago someone posted a comment on an review I wrote about two years ago of a particularly pandering and insulting movie that I really, really hated. They took offense at my review and essentially called me an asshole and I responded by essentially telling them to fuck off. I believe we were both in the right.<br />
I will say right now that I probably used way too many curse words in that review (especially since it was for a "family" movie). I haven't read it since I wrote it but I seem to recall feeling remarkably angry at the movie and I tend to curse when I'm angry.<br />
And that's the thing about these reviews: what I write is mainly my emotional response. If I hate something, boy howdy you will know it. If I love it, I have a very hard time writing about it because love is too strong and intangible to put into words. If I don't love or hate it, the review will be pretty boring. I try to write reviews as soon after I watch the movie as possible because I want the emotion to be fresh.<br />
Sometimes that's good and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I try to say something nice even when I have nothing nice to say (Paranormal Activity); sometimes I say something nice only to have the emotion change later and I grow to have nothing nice to say (The Hunger Games); sometimes I never have anything nice to say and fill a review with profanity and anger (a whole bunch of things).<br />
But that one comment on that one two-year-old review really got under my skin. It made me feel like I'm an absolute bully who abuses people for no good reason.<br />
It made me not want to write movie reviews anymore.<br />
It made me not want to write anything anymore.<br />
It made me want to delete all my blogs forever.<br />
So I haven't been watching movies and I haven't been writing much.<br />
And I really am sorry if I upset anyone but sometimes I just irrationally hate stuff.<br />
Because I'm human.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-21503705048237669632013-08-21T11:51:00.002-07:002013-08-21T11:51:21.685-07:001408I think the most interesting thing about 1408 is the fact that I watched it on Monday afternoon and <br />
didn't think much of it but it kept me up with a good case of the jibblies on Tuesday night.<br />
The movie's about a guy who investigates supposedly haunted places and then writes books about how it's all a bunch of hooey. He gets a postcard one day telling him to avoid room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel in New York (which he would have had a much easier time doing if you hadn't sent the postcard, dingus; it's easy to avoid what you don't know exists) so he immediately checks in, even though Samuel L. Jackson really doesn't want him to.<br />
Everything that happens after that follows intense nightmare non-logic. There's a guy with a hammer, the lead character has a bunch of flashbacks, people turn to dust, John Cusack crawls around in the air ducts, there's a flood, walls crack, et cetera.<br />
It's rad. There's something to be said for a movie that barely has a narrative flow but is chock full of crazy shit going on and, most importantly, keeps me interested the whole time.<br />
One thing happens at the end that didn't quite pass my suspension of disbelief's standards, but considering all the wackiness that made it past without question, I'd still say the movie wins.<br />
This movie was also the first time in my life I ever understood why so many of my friends have had crushes on John Cusack.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-55997345885761128202013-08-21T11:42:00.000-07:002013-08-21T11:42:39.118-07:00ConstantineJohn Constantine can see scary demon shit and has been using this ability to try to keep the world demon-free, in the hopes that it'll redeem him from a vague Something Terrible he did when he was younger. Rachel Weisz's sister Rachel Weisz jumped off a building a couple days ago and needs Constantine to help her sister's soul get to Heaven.<br />
Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare are badasses who aren't in the movie enough. Occasioncally Shia LaBeouf (is that how that's spelled?) and Djimon Hounsou show up, too.<br />
Constantine is dark, fiery, CGI-filled, Keanu Reeves-y fun-filled goodtimes. The plot exists and I think I followed it but we all know the plot is not why I tuned in. I tuned in for the dark, CGI fire explosion nonsense and Tilda Swinton being a badass.<br />
I liked Constantine. Don't know if I'll watch it again but I wouldn't object if someone put it on. It's fun. I like fun.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-67787003987032342122013-08-14T14:14:00.001-07:002013-08-14T14:14:15.819-07:00ElevatorSome big, fancy company is having a big, fancy party and nine people have boarded an elevator in the big, fancy building to get there. One of the passengers is particularly loudmouthed and mean, which makes the boss's equally mean granddaughter press the emergency stop button.<br />
Then it turns out the stuck elevator is not so easy to get unstuck. And one of the passengers has a bomb.<br />
Yippee.<br />
I watched Elevator 'cause the premise sounded interesting to me; as I've said before, I love "bunch of people locked in a small space" thrillers but this one didn't work for me. I don't know if it was because it was grounded in reality or because I thought (strangely, coming from me) that it was unnecessarily gory or what, but I just wasn't a fan.<br />
There wasn't really anything wrong with it, I just didn't like it. Oh well.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-32832931434891175882013-07-29T23:05:00.003-07:002013-07-29T23:05:30.566-07:00Punk Rock Holocaust 2There are two glaring problems with Punk Rock Holocaust 2.<br />
The first is one I expected and had come to terms with before I even put the DVD into the player: there is a severe lack of Aquabats through most of the movie.<br />
The second problem is the movie's misguided attempt to have a plot.<br />
While all of Punk Rock Holocaust 2's script is stupid (product placement abounds!), parts of the movie are very funny, the violent scenes are incredibly entertaining and I enjoyed the live concert footage sprinkled throughout the movie. It was made to promote the Warped Tour, after all, so the live music (and, sadly, the product placement) is necessary. Even when I wasn't particularly enjoying a band's music, it's always fun to see people performing.<br />
The Headless Executioner running around, pulling off people's heads, wearing victims's heads and killing even more people was lots of fun. Those scenes were also much fewer and further between than the cover art (and even the name of the movie) would lead one to believe.<br />
It seemed most of the movie's running time was devoted to two female reporters, one doing in-studio interviews with a man insisting that devil worship is involved with the massacre and one wandering around the tour trying to uncover the truth behind the Punk Rock Holocaust, and almost all the fun of the movie came to a screeching halt whenever the story turned to one of the reporter women.<br />
Some funny scenes emerged from the woman wandering around at the tour (her encounter with a girl and her new boyfriend horse was pretty funny) but for the most part it was boring. Every time a dialogue scene began all I could think about was either "I wish they'd get back to killing people" or "I should just give up and watch that Aquabats part again."<br />
So basically Punk Rock Holocaust 2 is a movie that made me not interested in sticking with it 'til the end because there was too much story and not enough slaughter (and because the people I tuned in to see were the first victims). I did make it all the way through and can say with absolute certainty they have not piqued my interest in any of the other Punk Rock Holocaust movies.<br />
It would have been much more entertaining as ninety seconds of plot exposition followed by ninety minutes of punk music and wacky decapitations.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-4002015302354028502013-07-21T00:34:00.000-07:002013-07-21T17:00:21.879-07:00The Aquabats at the San Diego House Of Blues, Thursday July 18, 2013My home has become awash in Aquabats Fever over the past several months, thanks to my decision to introduce my niece to The Aquabats! Super Show!. Usually when I'm obsessed with something, nobody really listens to me but Mokey took it and ran with it and now we're all crazy about them. Thanks a lot, me! (Or something like that?)<br />
(Fun side note: my brother, who first introduced me to The Aquabats back when I was in high school, was the last one in the house to grow to enjoy the TV show.)<br />
So it was only natural that I would spare no expense in getting to see The Aquabats in concert when I found out they were playing in San Diego. The show was tied to Comic Con, which is something I haven't been to in five years and have no intention of going back anytime soon (too crowded and expensive) but I have friends who live in San Diego who have an air mattress they let me sleep on and, since they were going to Con, let me ride into downtown with them the day of the show.<br />
I shan't bore you with what I spent most of the day doing (short version: walking around) and skip straight to the good bits.<br />
The Aquabats opened with Fashion Zombies, enhanced by some pretty sweet classic horror movie clips playing on a screen behind them and my brain shut down and went into Fangirly Concertgoer Mode, where I turn into a screaming, cheering, dopey smiling, bouncing fangirl nutball. I usually have this terrible need to always be in control of my actions and my brain, to always have some semblance of decorum in pretty much every situation. The only time that shuts off and I revert entirely to instinct is when I'm at a concert, I'm in the front row and a band I love is playing loud, awesome music directly in front of me.<br />
And if that band is The Aquabats and The MC Bat Commander is standing on the barricade and stepping on my stuff, so much the better.<br />
My memories of the show come in fits and starts; I remember bits and pieces of the evening but not what order they go in, just that they happened and they were wonderful. A few standout moments:<br />
- Jimmy popping a bubble with his mind<br />
- The MC Bat Commander trying on an audience member's Warriors vest<br />
- throwing plastic balls at a wizard who came onstage to jeer The Aquabats<br />
- blowing a kiss to Crash and him blowing one back to me<br />
- the Commander making up a song called I'm So Sleepy I'm Gonna Go To Sleep<br />
- Warren Fitzgerald of The Vandals coming out to sing I Have A Date<br />
- Jimmy saying "purple is a fruit" and then smiling at me when I cheered<br />
- Eaglebones and Chainsaw having a guitar duel that quickly devolved into playing each other's guitars<br />
- the title card from Rad popping up on the screen behind them during Super Rad and the weird pink dragon that "flew" across the stage during Luck Dragon Lady<br />
- The MC Bat Commander periodically opening bottles of water to fling onto the overheating front rows of the audience (and subsequently fogging my glasses but what are you gonna do)<br />
- Jimmy mumbling his way through Robot Dreams, even with the lyrics in front of him<br />
I tried my best when I got back to Shelby's that night to write down all the songs they played but I'm certain I missed some. If I had any complaint about the show it would be that they didn't play much of their older, ska-ier stuff.<br />
If I had a second complaint about the show it would be that The MC Bat Commander did not do a backflip.<br />
But those complaints are so miniscule that they may as well not even exist.<br />
Remember when I saw Local H and was completely blown away by them, so in love with the concert that I couldn't believe I hadn't been listening to them all along? I had a similar feeling during this Aquabats concert but for reasons on the complete opposite end of the spectrum.<br />
That Local H show was small, intimate and consisted of two blow-you-away talented musicians on stage, performing for an audience. Then Scott Lucas duct taped a microphone to his face and jumped into the audience and I had a "where have you been all my life?" mental reboot. It was small and magical and chaotic.<br />
The Aquabats show was much larger and not nearly as intimate, size-of-venue-and-audience-wise, but it was just as magical and chaotic (possibly even moreso), and they made up for the lack of intimacy by the guys in the band doing their best to interact with the audience, providing us with plastic balls to throw at the wizard, doing their best to banter with and talk to the crowd, and in the out-and-out chaos that was Pool Party.<br />
You see, the show was all-ages and The Aquabats pulled onstage as many of their little homies as they possibly could (as well as a bunch of kids from backstage). Then they re-brought out their special guests, Chainsaw, Rick-the-guy-on-the-bike and Warren Fitzgerald, as well as opening act DJ Lance Rock. Then the song started, beach balls and inflatable sharks and plastic balls started bouncing around the audience, along with pool floaties and two giant Rover balloons. Then the confetti came. And there were plenty of smoke-filled bubbles floating out over the crowd and the stage all night, so those were there, too. And midway through the song I realized that I have been to concerts where the band interacts with the audience, I have been to They Might Be Giants and Gogol Bordello shows that feel like parties (and in the case of TMBG, have included confetti), I've been to punk shows where things have gotten crazy or out of hand.<br />
But I have never been to a show that felt anything near like the family friendly punk rock party insanity that The Aquabats invoked during Pool Party.<br />
After the show I drank pretty much an entire bottle of water in one gulp, bought some stuff from the merch table and went outside to wait for the band to come out. Which they did and, being the super awesome and friendly guys that they are, they hung around to talk to people, sign things (in my case, an Up All Night trucker cap) and take pictures with the fans.<br />
So I got to meet Crash:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-auz5IysOamk/UeuG84_d6pI/AAAAAAAAAo0/f6-9XjGFbZU/s1600/Crash+and+me.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-auz5IysOamk/UeuG84_d6pI/AAAAAAAAAo0/f6-9XjGFbZU/s1600/Crash+and+me.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
and I inadvertently said something that I think made him feel old and I still feel bad about that and cringe at myself a little bit when I think about it.<br />
Then I got to meet Ricky:<br />
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and I guess Ricky Fitness is my camera's favorite Aquabat because it was so excited to take a picture of him that it fainted out of my hand and smashed on the ground and broke its lens and I had to get the rest of the pictures on my phone's lousy camera. (Ricky tried to make me feel better by telling me he'd had, like, three of those cameras and the lenses broke on all of them.)<br />
Then I got to meet Jimmy:<br />
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and it turns out he was the one person in the band who froze my brain more than any other. I wanted to talk to him but just couldn't make words form.<br />
Then I got to meet the Commander:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pCeQFf8DtOc/UeuH2EQAm4I/AAAAAAAAApM/g04BGPi7sI4/s1600/MCBC+and+me.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pCeQFf8DtOc/UeuH2EQAm4I/AAAAAAAAApM/g04BGPi7sI4/s1600/MCBC+and+me.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
who turned out to be the easiest member of the band to talk to, which surprised me because I assumed he'd be the one I'd be the most starstruck by. But he was so friendly that I managed to chat with him like he was just some guy. (Which, in a way, he is...)<br />
Then I got to meet Chainsaw:<br />
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with his remarkably dashing beard.<br />
And I thought I had missed Eaglebones but it turns out he was just standing a bit away from everyone else, so I not only got to meet him:<br />
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but I also got to see him say goodnight to Jimmy and as I was leaving he handled it very well when I momentarily forgot how handshakes work.<br />
(Also, before Jimmy said goodnight to his bandmate he tried to talk to me about the trucker caps and how they looked just like the ones on the show but my brain froze again and I don't recall if I actually said anything to him in reply. I know I opened my mouth to offer to give him one, realized that was silly and then shut my mouth again; I certainly do hope I said <em>something</em>.)<br />
It was an amazing show, a fantastic night and words can't begin to express how much fun I had and how much I want to go to another one.<br />
They <em>may</em> have beaten Local H for Best Concert Of 2013.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-23654428263397949762013-07-14T16:16:00.001-07:002013-07-14T16:21:08.411-07:00Monsters UniversityBut first, The Blue Umbrella, the pre-movie short. My review of The Blue Umbrella will be written in the form of a letter:<br />
<br />
Dear Pixar,<br />
Tacking on a happy ending does not make up for the abject misery you just made me sit through.<br />
This letter applies to almost all of your pre-movie shorts.<br />
Sincerely,<br />
Sally<br />
<br />
Okay, now on to Monsters University.<br />
Parts of it were funny and overall it was a very good movie but I can't exactly say I liked it.<br />
I didn't hate it. I didn't even dislike it. I just didn't like it. It made my heart hurt.<br />
The pre-credits opening made my heart hurt for Little Mike Wazowski who all the other kids in his class picked on. The introduction of Randall Boggs as a cheerful, likeable lizard creature made my heart hurt knowing he's the villain in Monsters Incorporated. College-Aged Mike Wazowski's undying desire to be a scarer made my heart hurt knowing he never moves on to that career. The old "jocks picking on the nerds" trope throughout the movie made my heart hurt because it always makes my heart hurt.<br />
I saw the Carrie homage coming a mile away and the scene after it, with one fraternity humiliating another, was the first of many scenes to make me cry.<br />
People never seem to understand why I don't like Pixar and it's really hard to verbalize, but I'll do my best:<br />
Pixar revels in cruelty. Pixar loves to see its characters suffer. The reason I love Brave is because it's the only Pixar movie that doesn't rip your heart out and show it to you. (Except Cars. Or maybe Cars did do that and I was just too stupifyingly bored to notice.)<br />
What Monsters University truly is at its core is a Root For The Underdog Sports Movie. Which is not a genre I seek out but in this case its done very well. The main characters are all one hundred percent lovable and the bad guys are classic, cartoonishly assholey jocks who (in my experience, anyway) don't exist in real life. Admittedly I never went to college but in high school I never saw any "jocks versus nerds" conflict. It was all more "everybody hangs out with their own groups of friends and doesn't bug anybody else."<br />
The point is, it's a plot device I never liked to begin with. It's manipulative and painful to have to watch. Too much sadness there. I can't completely enjoy a movie that focuses on it.<br />
There is a lot of good in Monsters University, mostly from the Oozma Kappa fraternity members, John Goodman's performance as Sully (they gave him almost all the really strong emotional moments in the movie and he gives a damn good performance. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I genuinely don't trust anyone who claims to not like John Goodman) and the impressive animation on the grumpy, dragony dean. There were a lot of parts that made me smile and I think there were one or two parts that even made me laugh.<br />
But overall I walked out feeling sad.<br />
I almost always walk out of Pixar movies feeling sad, even when they end on a happy note.<br />
<br />
End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-12127391545495622013-07-10T23:02:00.001-07:002013-07-10T23:02:09.323-07:00AliceGood gravy, how many different movies called Alice can I possibly watch??? This is the third I've reviewed on this blog.<br />
This particular Alice is a Sci Fi Channel miniseries that uses Alice In Wonderland as a jumping off point to tell its tale. A woman named Alice chases some men who have kidnapped her boyfriend, falls into a looking glass and ends up in a futuristic Wonderland where the Queen Of Hearts has been kidnapping people from Alice's world to harvest for emtions, which are sold to Wonderland residents as drugs. In her attempts to save her boyfriend, Alice gets mixed up with the resistance that wants to overthrow the queen.<br />
I wasn't sure at first whether I was enjoying the miniseries or not. Once again they annoyed me by throwing in a Jabberwock (annoying because they're always dragon-type monsters and because Jabberwocky is just a poem Alice reads and is not something that actually happens) and ... I don't remember, I think something else bugged me. But when I started explaining the movie to my mom I realized how invested I was in the story.<br />
A lot of it was predictable. I couldn't help but roll my eyes when they threw in a love triangle and could pretty much tell how it would all end. But it was still a whole heck of a lot of fun to watch. It kind of reminded me of The Tenth Kingdom in a lot of ways (although this time the absent parent was a dad instead of a mom) and I really quite liked The Tenth Kingdom. And this was even one-up on that by being a couple hours shorter, less convoluted and stuck to reimagining one classic story instead of <em>every</em> classic story.<br />
And special notice must be paid to Matt Frewer, who played Charlie, the White Knight. I like Matt Frewer. I haven't seen him in a lot of things but every time I see his name in the opening credits of something, I smile. It kind of bums me out that he seems to always get the part of "token crazy guy" because while watching Alice I was repeatedly drawn in and impressed by his performance. Every Token Crazy Guy he plays is a different kind of crazy and it really sort of hit me all at once midway through this miniseries just how talented he is. How is he not more famous?<br />
So, yes, despite its predictability Alice has an interesting enough story and a damn good cast enough to be worth the three hours it takes to watch it. I might even watch it again sometime.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-72293327920859091422013-07-09T00:27:00.000-07:002013-07-09T00:27:17.762-07:00Galaxy Of TerrorSome amount of years ago, a crew went on a mission to a planet and only one of them returned. Now she's a grizzled, grumpy captain who has been sent on a mission to see if there were any survivors from the first mission. With her is her expert team: Elderly Commander, Blonde Lady, Robert Englund, Lando Calrissian Lookalike Contest Winner, Surly Violent Guy, Quiet Big Guy, Psychic Lady, Scaredyman and Ray Walston.<br />
Any plot beyond that was filled with space mission mumbo jumbo but basically boiled down to "let's find excuses to isolate someone so they can get killed."<br />
Therefore, Galaxy Of Terror, while not a perfect movie, is quite entertaining.<br />
Death setpieces range from Attacked By Own Weapon to Zuul Monster to Giant Rape Bug, and the filmmakers prove they know what a girl likes by including a scene with two Robert Englunds, a good one and an evil one.<br />
There was a lot of talk in the movie about a The Master, who apparently ordered the space missions in the first place and I think if I had understood that, I would have understood the ending which, as it stands now in my slow, sleepy brain, didn't make a lick of sense.<br />
It was still fun to watch, though.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8096207093567326890.post-73419254907444338772013-07-04T01:26:00.001-07:002013-07-04T01:26:57.446-07:00Shock TreatmentDenton is a city (I think) that is a television station and the lives of the people who live there are intertwined with all of Denton's shows, which are all connected to each other. For instance, Brad and Janet Majors are chosen to take part in a marriage counseling program, which leads in to Brad being committed in the mental hospital on a soap opera while Janet is seduced by both stardom and Denton's new sponsor, Farley Flavors.<br />
I've had a theory for years that, since I hate The Rocky Horror Picture Show I would probably love its hated-by-lots-of-people sequel Shock Treatment and it turns out I was mostly right. Much like Rocky Horror its plot mainly revolves around Janet being drawn away from her husband and it hits a point near the middle where the movie turns quite boring.<br />
But it also has things in common with its prequel that I actually like: Richard O'Brien's songs (and singing voice) for instance, and the stunning Patricia Quinn who I think I may be in love with at this point. Much like Lords Of Salem, she drew my attention even if she was in the background doing essentially nothing.<br />
Shock Treatment also had something in common with Repo! The Genetic Opera (a movie which is often unjustly compared to Rocky Horror): nurses in shorty short skirts. So there that is.<br />
But enough comparing it to other movies, how was Shock Treatment on its own two legs?<br />
Well, it was colorful and campy. The music was catchy, the singing was top notch and there was no terrible, overplayed dancealong song to make me want to gouge my eyes out.<br />
Yes, it did get a bit boring near the middle but not unbearably so. My mind just started to wander. And eventually the movie did throw in another good song or two to try to win me back, which kind of worked.<br />
It wasn't the best movie I've seen, certainly, but I'm standing on the edge of wanting to say that I loved it. Colorful and campy is probably the easiest way to win me over and most of the acting was better than it probably needed to be considering the fact that Shock Treatment is essentially a "B movie." (Although B movies are usually the best movies. Maybe the acting was as good as it needed to be.)<br />
Cliff De Young, for example, plays both the straight and narrow Brad Majors and the swaggering business jerk Farley Flavors and I don't know that I'd have known that if the end credits hadn't told me so. And Jessica Harper has been great in all two movies I've seen her in; I really ought to watch more of her work.<br />
So as far as I'm concerned Shock Treatment is much, much preferrable over the movie that it sequels. That being said, much as I enjoyed the music in this movie, not one of its songs can hold a candle to Science Fiction Double Feature.<br />
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End of line.<br />
-SallyStapleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13103972932047927259noreply@blogger.com0