Pandorum - 2009

 The year is 2009.  My ex-girlfriend and future ex-wife is really into Ben Foster.  We rent this movie because of him and watch it and everyone instantly forgets it ever existed the very next day.

There is an epidemic of movies that completely vanish from memory, and this is one of them.  It's some gritty super stylized space horror movie co-produced by Paul WS Anderson.  The guy who made Event Horizon goes for take 2 in this Sunshine/Event Horizon/Sphere/every other movie like this redux.  Also, the ship is called Elysium in a world where the movie Elysium came out 4 years later.

The aforementioned Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid star in the movie, where they wake up on a spaceship that seems to be empty at first until they discover there's crazy creatures living aboard and some renegade humans that are surviving ala Aliens.  Space madness took hold aboard the ship of course, and also some Firefly shit happened, cuz it gave birth to the same creatures.

The movie telegraphs everything that will happen for a lot of it, and the rest is middling, emphasized by very of-the-time style, effects, and grittiness.  Everything is covered in an oily gross liquid, and everyone is sweaty and ugly.  The characters do not have much depth, the ship apparently has endless rusty basements where someone can live, or pools of unknown liquids can coagulate.

Shot in confuso-vision, where you cannot tell what is happening half the time, and spoken almost entirely in spat out whispers, this movie is ridiculously of the time.  Also, this movie makes the weird common mistake of having characters name things...?  These guys get space madness, which they call Pandorum.  Why would they call it Pandorum, exactly?  Its insanity.  They wouldn't randomly decide to name insanity after Pandora's Box.  Why would they do that?

In the end, its exactly what you might expect, and it certainly didn't require a rewatch.  If you want this type of thing, go watch Sunshine instead.

Shattered - 1991

 Nailed the year.

I don't know why this is the second time I've seen this movie, and I don't remember when I saw it either.  But I definitely have seen this before.  Yet, I still rented it on Amazon just now for $4.

Tom Berenger and Bob Hoskins star in this erotic thriller type flick, an odd and interesting mystery.  In the beginning a car goes off a cliff and Tom Berenger is badly wounded in the crash, his wife luckily not so much.  As he regains his face and his capabilities, his life and his memories return, only there are some mysterious missing things and other memories that point to an odd mystery.  

Shot and set in San Francisco, this movie is a delight  It moves quickly and the weirdness of it is just enough to keep you going.  Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, it has a flair and a style that is unique enough to differentiate it, and it can be genuinely fun sometimes with its flairs.  

The whole movie also features a hilarious turn that the company our main character works for is going to take this giant barge out into the ocean and sink it - but the barge is rusted out and leaking chemicals and toxic waste.  It's hilarious and the set is great, and to think they are going to dump it would be super funny if it did not reflect real life.

I liked it both times, and it holds up on a rewatch.  I will give it 3.5 stars.

The Fantasist - 1986

 Where to start with this one, yikes.

The Fantastist is an oddly named movie that somehow fits to this odd Irish-British horror movie that is not a horror movie, not a drama, not a thriller, but sorta just a watch and barely pay attention what-have-you.

The essential plot, I guess, is someone is calling women and sexually coming on to them and then mudering them.  You wouldn't really know that's happening because it doesn't, really, after the first opening scene.  Instead you follow some random denizens of this small town and you eventually zero in on this one woman and follow her as she is generally affected by the crimes and starts to date odd and problematic Danny.

Even though this is from the director of the classic The Wicker Man, and even though it apparently had Level 42 in it, this movie is nearly incomprehensible in feel.  I could not really tell you what happened in this movie.  It was absolutely ridiculous.

There's some nudity and all, but overall this is a dud with two capital Ds.  I give it zero stars.

The Last House on the Left - 1972

 Wes Craven, I always say, defined horror in three different decades.  You would count either this or The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984 , and Scream in 1996.

Such an influencer, and while I had heard of this movie and I've seen almost every single Craven movie, this one I actually had not seen!  So, well, here we go.  Also, this is of course continuing my watching marathon of the Video Nasty flicks from the 70s and 80s.  

Here's a thought:  there was a time in film wherein original films, sci fi, drama, horror, what-be-it, were originated as porn and for some reason they became something more.  This is the type of thing that is lost to the ages.  People set out with a budget and a bunch of producers, and either way porn doesn't sell these days so that avenue is limited.  Last House began as a porn film and Craven et al decided to make it not, basically and the rest as they say is history, hence, my conclusion being, in the modern day this film does not happen?

Porn influences include a scene of lesbian rape which still has dialogue about it in the movie but it is not seen, multiple rape scenes, and an obviously tinged idea for including more.  The plot of the beast is your basic rape revenge, a group meets some psychopaths, they torture and eventually kill them.  Then the psychos stay with the parents of the main girl they killed, parents catch on, and now its revenge.

I mean, it's odd to look back on this moment of film.  This whole series is all but forgotten; I ask you, what is the best known rape revenge movie?  Kill Bill attempted to resurrect the idea but it omitted the rape, so I ask you, what is it?  It might be this, and this is mostly known because like I said Craven redefined horror many times.  

This is above standard for this fare, and I'll give it 4 stars.  Nasty Scale: 4/10

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - 2001

 If memory serves me right, I went to see this movie in theaters in 2001.  I may have dragged my mom or brother with me.  What can I say, I was curious and it looked weird!

This famously unsuccessful CGI story was weird then and its weird now.  Directed by the creator of the video game, Hironobu Sakaguchi, it took over 2 years to animate at an estimated 200 years of effort by a large team of animators working around the clock.  It went overbudget, it was riding a wave of unspecified anxiety about what it was, and then it came out and lost an estimated 95 million dollars and folded Square as a film production company.

Rewatching this today, as perhaps the third time I've seen it, I remember a lot about the film when it came out and my perception.  Basically, I think there were multiple reasons for this as a failure but one of the major reasons comes down to that it is not that interesting of a story, that doesn't have clear resolution or clarity at all really.  I could not tell you what really happens in this movie.

Bare bones of the plot are that there is this invading ghostly race of aliens called Phantoms which are deadly and dangerous and now on Earth post a meteoric strike.  A team of Aki Ross, a bunch of soldiers, and an old scientist are on the case, especially once it's revealed that Aki is actually infected with the alien presence somehow, and it is contained within her; her being the first to survive such an encounter.  Now they have to collect spirits or something from all over in order to stop the aliens...I guess.

The CGI characters are well rendered, and the entire affair is a fun little romp, it just gets buried in the plot of it all, which I really couldn't tell ya about.  I like this movie more than most, but I will admit it is definitely not like, good, or anything.  I'll give it 2.5.

Something Evil - 1972

A while ago I watched The Sugarland Express, digging into the early filmography of Steven Spielberg, we'll call them the "pre-Jaws years".  I am not into plugging many other things on this blog, but I will plug Film Encounters of the Spielberg Kind, a podcast going through the films of the original "cute little guy" Stevy Spiels.  I watched this because of them.

Something Evil is about...wait for it...something evil.  Yeah.  In this case, a house, and specifically, one which a man kills himself at in the early opening of this movie.  Cue a couple who are on a drive and see the for sale sign and decide on a whim to purchase the home.  The house is evil, as said because houses are a verb and thus "things" as in "somethings".

Spielberg had directed Duel at this point which was a bigger success than it had set out to be, but I guess it was determined that he wasn't quite ready for the real thing yet, and so the studio made him direct this made-for-TV movie of the week for CBS.  

I'm no stranger to the realm of made-for-TV and specifically made-for-TV horror, which this is.  This is basically your average sorta demon infestation haunted house movie, with a slow plot movement and a few more character moments than expected, as well as some well executed flourishes from a young go-getter like Spielberg who was showing off and trying to get noticed.  

I basically gave the plot earlier, but to close the loop on it, the wife starts hearing weird noises, the son seems aloof and distant, and hubby is now constantly gone because the commute to his job is much longer.  Woman is going crazy and that's the plot.  Also worthy of being noted is the odd choice of having the hubby's job be a television commercial filmer and the stupid Apple Bar product commercial he's making is legit hilarious stuff.  Seems like it is unintentionally making fun of itself.

The movie is good, it moves fine and the ending is weird.  I doubt anyone is going to look this one up anytime really soon, but it is on youtube, and I would still give it a standard 2.5.

Batman and Robin - 1997

 On rewatch, Batman from 1989 is great and somehow still underrated, Batman Returns from 1992 is fun and crazy maybe a bit overly long, Batman Forever from 1995 is worse than you remember and similar to Batman and Robin in 1997.  And Batman and Robin is...  yeah, awful.

I'm watching these cause I am showing my girlfriend the films of Christopher Nolan, and it is interesting to view Batman Begins through the lens of "this is in reaction to where Batman had gone" as well as its cool to watch Forever and Robin cause its like "this is why the franchise sat there in squalor for almost 10 years after very quick sequels."

Batman and Robin brings in George Clooney to star as Batman, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, and Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl.  The movie is gracefully 30 minutes less that Batman Forever, but it really camps it up, it does add nipples to the Bat-Suits, and it lets everyone chew the scenery as much as they should desire, which lets be honest here, lots of them wanted to.

I always wonder when these came out how many people were comparing it to the 60s TV show.  At this point off the air for almost 30 years, is it safe to say that it wasn't in the public consciousness, especially considering the movies had always at least a little bit been aimed at children?  That said I don't give this movie as much of a hard time as others, leaning into the kids stuff seems obvious at this point, being a good ten years before Iron Man and the MCU.  We forget just how sneered upon these ideas and genres were at this point.

My point is not, though, that this is good, it is that this is understandable, but do I like it. no.  It is too much and it's too bad to be so bad its good.  I'll give it a 1.5.

America 3000 - 1986

 Also known as Thunder Warriors.

Actual dialogue from America 3000: Vena: "That effin Plugot tricked me..."  Lakella: "Plugotz got neggy smarts for tricking nobody Vena."  Ooof.  Yes, in the year 3000 we're gonna have stupid lingo that overruns our language and we're going to sound like preschoolers.

We are in the future in this one again, which means the apocalypse has happened and thus the remaining humans are greasy oily guys wearing animal furs and firing crossbows, but it also means there's remnants of the advanced society that led to the end of everything.  We have a sprawling story set in the Israel desert where 80s women with majorly blown out hair hang out and say dumb dialogue like that above to each other all day long.

Then we have our main character, who is really a side character but provides us with obviously tacked on narration they added when told, "this story is so hard to track, you gotta clarify what the heck is happening here."  

This does join the long list of post Mad Max rip offs that jumped on the post-apocalype bandwagon, and you know its kinda a bummer tha Max Max Fury Road didn't reignite the genre, or even make too much of an impact seemingly...  I dunno, I miss genre films.  Genre films, regular movies that were cheap and actually got released, they were't premiering on Netflix to no fanfare.

Plotwise we have a society where women rule and men are used for breeding or castrated at worst.  The lead male wants to rebel and our main character and others follow, and it helps a lot when they find an ancient technology stash where they can get access to better shit.  From there, they fight and dialogue happens and if you don't think a large part of the plot revolves around a boombox and a desert yeti, you are dead wrong.

Pictured:  the actual scientifically verifiable year of 3000.

3000 is a good movie, its kinda dumb and low budget but I liked it and I'll give it 3 stars.

Beeper - 2002

 I was thinking of a funny trilogy or even more you could throw together with this movie.  "Movies based on passing technologies".  Obviously Feardotcom, Phone Booth, Trapped by Television, and then Beeper.  What would the sequel be?  Dial Up Internet:  The Movie?

I believe I saw a trailer for Beeper on a VHS circa 2001-2002.  Even then, Beepers were a thing of the past.  My mom had a beeper when I was in elementary school, so we're talking about the 90s there.  I understand that the tech is still around, and is sorta a joke cause its primarily used in drug trades, but hey that does not mean I can't make fun of it.

Beeper is a low budget thriller thing, decidedly low scale, in which a doctor visiting India with his son has his kid go missing when he's doing a conference and finds a ransom note.  This leads him to the cops who almost blow the deal and now its up to the doc solo to investigate this thing, with the help of a girl cop he finds and then later Harvey Keitel as a mob boss who is mostly out for himself.

Beeper, well, I wanted the beeper to be involved more first of all.  In my head this was a hilarious romp in which he's getting beeped a lot and having to call people to get directions on where to go next.  Whatever the story was I needed that tech front and center.  And it wasn't really, it gets stolen pretty early on and a lot of the movie is actually trying to track down the beeper.

Its not as funny as it could have been, and instead it waffles around as a middle of the road thriller that you'll instantly forget.  2 stars.

Thunder - 1983

 Also known as Thunder Warrior, Drug Traffickers, and The Fury of the Warrior.  Well, I was off in guessing filming locations.  I guessed New Mexico and it was in fact Arizona.  

There's a throwaway line in First Blood which I just rewatched where they are describing Rambo for some reason and they mention he is part Native American.  This is part of the whole theme of the movie really, who else would have this intrinsic instilled knowledge of the land, of the rights and wrongs, of the truth behind society and why evil exists and...  Yeah, its cause there was an unspoken truth at this point in time, Native meant mystic and we could write off bad writing with just that.

Thunder is an Italian production shot in Arizona with a few local stars like Bo Svenson, the plot concerns a near total rip off of Frist Blood as a partially Native American is dissed and beaten by the occupants of a local town, including the police therein, and then he basically goes postal to use the oft used phrase.  A quarter or less of the dialogue from the film First Blood is employed, as we watch our main character fight the law, will the law win?

This movie is pretty boring, despite my seeming enthusiasm for it.  It too often goes to overlong scenes of dubbed actors saying stupid dialogue.  Our main character is gone for massive lengths of time with little to no explanation.  There's very little progression of the story despite the seeming addition of tension with the idea of now he had a gun or now he has a car or now he has a tractor or whatever it is.  

Thunder has the guy from the MST3K classic Escape the Bronx, and it is a fine movie to watch, its also gracefully under 90 minutes, but it is still too long and not very good.  1.5 stars.

Rubin & Ed - 1989

 My aunt Lucy recently recommended this to me, then the next time I saw her she had written the director of this on Facebook or something, and had obtained a signed DVD copy which I am now watching.  Weird huh?

Crispin Glover stars in this little known indie buddy comedy flick.  Made on a small budget and definitely leaning into the "weird" side of things, the movie is a road trip/buddy comedy/who knows unclassifiable niche experimental one off.  Sounds like just the sort of thing Glover would be in, right?

The strangest thing about this is the tone.  Neither character is likable, and the fights between the characters feel actually real, not in an entirely good way.  That said, the comedy also feels real and the jokes are actually funny.  The movie is a weird one, thats the bottom line, and I'm not surprised someone in my family would own a signed copy, thats for real.

Plotwise, weird loner Rubin is told by his mom he has to make a friend or he won't get his boombox back.  Realty schlup Ed is a misfit who wants to redefine his life with success after his wife left him.  They team up after Ed finds Rubin's cat dead and Rubin swipes his vehicle to go bury the cat in the desert.  Wacky shenanigans ensue from there, and some of the stuff is insane and some of it straight forward.  

Overall the script is better than it sounds and it moves quickly.  I thought this would be a super low budget mess but it's actually cohesive and I liked it more than I thought.  I'd give it a solid 3.5, and I'll tell my aunt I enjoyed it.