Reviews

It seemed like a rush job - get a few people to cobble together a script and capitalize on the popularity of KISS. And yet it had a lot of potential - KISS on stage, KISS going around an amusement park, etc, and the phantom of the park. I think a better script would have helped tremendously. It could still be campy fun but without the total lack of logic and horrible dialogue.

1. When you have amateur actors, let them improvise. Just give them general direction and let them react. It could've made the guys in KISS look less wooden.

2. The stunt doubles didn't look anything like the guys in the band. That's okay, but don't do closeups of the stunt men!

3. Rip and Destroy was supposed to upset fans or get them riled up to destroy the park? I think the story was that the phantom was trying to destroy the park - so why are the fans booing KISS at first? Robot Paul should've been telling them to rip down the park. Then when the real KISS comes in, they get people back to normal.

4. There should have been a million sexual double entendres - yes it's supposed to be a kids movie, but much like what George Lucas did with Star Wars, don't try to reach kids with stupidity, give them something slightly over their heads so the older teens will like it, then the kids will follow.

It's stupid to analyze this movie, but it's hard not to if you were Kiss conscious in 1978. The movie probably shouldn't have been made at all but it was and everyone watching it knew it could've been much better.

You can have your overwritten super science or you can have a fun movie, escapism. Rarely can you have both. This is certainly the latter. But seriously - it's Star Trek, where everything is a class M planet, rank without pay, humanoid aliens who speak English, and almost no automation whatsoever. But it's fun - it's entertaining.

Star Trek 4, the whale story, is the same. The prime directive is practically disregarded, but the biggest plot hole - a message to earth that is killing the planet, real whales are needed to answer the mystery message, go get the whales and bring them back, they answer the message, problem solved.

What happens if the messengers want to keep the conversation going? What are they actually saying? Wouldn't that jack up the earth every time they call?

Don't worry about that. Just enjoy the Star Trek crew as fish (arkkk) out of water, like they did several times in the original series. Weee!

I really liked Saltburn.

1) I love the similarities to Talented Mr Ripley - which was also a great movie. It wasn't a ripoff either, just different enough.

2) I'm not sure why Carey Mulligan is getting so much attention - she was barely in it. I love her, but it was little more than a cameo.

3) The pacing was really good - editing 101

4) The only real problem was the lighting, as if the director loved The Batman and wanted to copy the nearly incomprehensibly dark scenes.

5) The ending was rushed, but necessary. It didn't need another 30 minutes.

6) A nitpick about the story - too much of the end depended on a lot of things happening that may not have happened. I think instead of the whole thing being a planned coup from day one, certain things should have been made an accident. Still, suspend your disbelief about this and it's an enjoyable movie.

There's a lot more to like than dislike, so Poor Things is absolutely worth watching.

The good: 1) Emma Stone, Willem Defoe, and Mark Ruffalo - they are all in top notch form. Their acting is flawless and that alone is reason to watch this movie.

2) The set design is really interesting - it's not too Tim Burton-y, but it's definitely surreal.

3) The story is great - Frankenhooker, Island of Dr Moreau, and Re-Animator, but more to it and I was always curious about what would happen next.

The unnecessary: 1) 30 minutes could have been trimmed off pretty easily. The interracial lesbian lover scenes, for example, were 100% pointless and a lot of the boat scenes were useless.

2) The ending kind of put me off. I was fine with her becoming a doctor, but turning her body's ex-husband into a goat was a little "man bad, woman good".

3) The beginning fish eye lens view was physically hard to watch at times. I get what they were going for, but sometimes too much art can get in the way.

Overall I really liked it and I'm glad I watched it. It's not perfect, but really good.

The guy from Wings plays Jack and goes to an AA meeting. Oooooooooh scary! Stephen King tells a great story, but his criticisms of Stanley Kubrick's far better movie was misguided. It should have been clear to King after writing the screenplay to Maximum Overdrive that he doesn't understand the difference between what works in a novel and what works in a movie.

Bottom line with the Shining remake - it isn't the slightest bit scary, it goes on way too long, and thinks way more of the source material than it deserves. Sorry Stephen, the novel of The Shining isn't better than Kubrick's movie.

The only saving grace in the 1997 version is Tony being adult Danny, not a weird finger talking.

I really like this movie - the acting is superb and the depiction of office politics is brilliant. It's incredible that people work that hard to keep jobs that stressful where no one is appreciated. If you bear all that in mind and not get too caught up in the plot holes, it's an enjoyable movie to say the least.

The confusion is plenty, however. Mr Kim killed his family supposedly out of confused stress. Miss Lee picked up the gauntlet, so to speak and kills her co-workers right afterwards. Was she actually turning into Mr Kim? Was it supernatural in a way? I can only thing yes, probably. In the end I guess you make up your own mind.

When this movie came out it was pretty great for your average 13 year old. We didn't question any of it. People liked it for what it was, a fun movie about a snooty big city 30 year old playing a senior in high school going up against a bunch of snooty country bumpkins who live in arms reach of beautiful mountains of Utah.

We didn't care that a bunch of kids who didn't seem to have ready access to much pop culture, were actually phenomenal dancers once they got the gentle prodding from Kevin Bacon to "let's dance!"

In retrospect it made more sense that the actual story was in Oklahoma. And adult actors are better than teen actors, but Footloose borders on Grease territory with old casting for young people.

The cast is great though. I even liked Lori Singer as the "I'm going blow this town" preacher girl. I think it stands the test of time, just for energy alone. It doesn't try too hard to be clever, it's a product of its day, but still a fun watch.

I love the self-absorption and the hated saxophone - they're both so incredibly 80's. The story arcs are great: Emilio stalking the love of his life while getting shut down at every turn, Rob Lowe doing it with pretty much anybody but ultimately being a consistent irresponsible idiot that can't grow up and the friends who tolerate it, Demi Moore who also can't seem to make it on her own, and Judd Nelson, who wants to make it, but can't keep the best thing in his life, Ally Sheedy. I love the wall size posters too.

Andrew McCarthy is the rotten egg in the whole movie. I always thought so. Why? Because he's a lurker, not dating anyone, secretly pining away for his best friend's girlfriend, waiting for the opportunity. He's a skeevy jerk and breaks so many guy codes he should have been castrated by Judd Nelson. Maybe he's a good character as a bad guy, but McCarthy is sort of the same in Pretty in Pink too. Just a loathsome person.

Then again, what kind of movie would it be without such glorious conflict?

It was a great finale to Guardians story arc. A few observations:

1) The music was sub-par compared to the other 2 movies. Heart was great, Redbone was nice to hear (again), No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn was cool. The rest? Meh.

2) I loved the Rocket backstory. Best backstory of probably any Marvel character, and I'm glad they didn't turn that into another boring mini-series that goes on way too long.

3) Mantis, Groot, Drax, and Nebula were superb, especially Mantis. I thought Gamora was a flaw overall. I'm glad she never got back with Peter, but you can't feel emotion for the death of a character and then bring them back. It's cheap and robs Infinity Wars for any impact a death has.

4) There's way more to love than dislike about this movie and nothing to hate. Solid effort and more of a return to form after some really lazy Marvel efforts in the last few years.

The concept had to be done - faking a space landing. Chasing after anyone who knows or might eventually learn - perfect. But a few observations:

Bosley from Charlie's Angels plays Elliot Gould's boss and he's unnecessarily jerky to him. Elliot Gould gets cocaine planted on him only to be bailed out 30 seconds later by Bosley. They could've just eliminated that part.

OJ Simpson and Sam Waterson's deaths were beautifully done.

The ending at the cemetery with Brolin and Gould slow motion running to crash Brolin's fake funeral was dorky as hell and almost ruined the movie.

Why was Kojak such a jerk to Elliot Gould?

Back to the funeral - what would have made this a better movie overall would be to have Brolin get killed right before he gets to the funeral. Maybe shot and killed immediately after seeing his wife and kids. As it is, corny and dumb.

To summarize - great movie despite the flaws.

I liked it, but didn't love it. I liked the shallowness of the rich people and how out of touch they were, especially the old people. I don't think there was any real point to Woody Harrelson's character, but he didn't detract either. I thought it was preposterous that no one really challenged the old cleaning lady from taking charge - the exchange of power would've been much more difficult to achieve if that's what they were going for.

As for the end, I think nowadays ambiguous endings are lazy writing. We know there's a resort 50 yards away, and we know that at least 3 people know about it. Abigail should have killed Ya Ya at the end, but even then, it's been done before in a Twilight Zone episode. Obviously the message has to do with the banality of the rich and that power corrupts, no matter what.

It was worth watching, but no way is this a Best picture candidate for the Oscars.

This is a horror movie for any father. The idea that his affection or lack of or just doing it wrong can turn his daughter into a porn star, and yet every father out there probably watches porno on the side, not thinking about how many of the models had "daddy issues." Ugh, the dilemma is enormous.

In the 70's the porn industry world entered the mainstream and I imagine this movie shocked a lot of people. I thought it was very well done and the acting top notch. The ending was realistic - you don't get the daughter running into the arms of her father the savior. They might've dragged the ending out with the daughter accepting that her father means well, Season Hubley accepting her fate, the father accepting the fact that he can't change the fate of Season Hubley. "You don't belong here pilgrim" was Hardcore's "it's Chinatown" moment.

I never saw it as a mystery, just an action film. There's no twist ending and I'm not sure why that always upsets people. It's not too realistic, but so what?

My only question was, at the end when Jolie is walking around fake pregnant with a baby room and all that, what if Ethan Hawks never showed back up? How long would she have gone about her life pretending to be pregnant? Or are they suggesting she knew Hawke was stalking her?

Oh well, I thought Ethan Hawke was good, Angelina Jolie is distractingly beautiful, and it's a decent pass the time movie. Just don't break your brain trying to fill the plot holes.

So many series in this franchise:

1) 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 2) 3 3) 1, 2, H20, 8 4) 9, 10 (RZ) 5) 1, 11, 12, 13

I've pretty much liked them all except 8. As for this recent trilogy following the original, I thought there were elements of greatness, sometimes useless nostalgia, but ultimately I wanted to see it end with Jamie Lee Curtis, which is why I liked H20 and refused to accept #8. But back to this one, I liked what they did in Halloween Ends, even with the copycat/possessed new killer. I was kind of thinking it would be like Michael Myers who knows how to work on cars and use tools more efficiently to kill people.

It wasn't perfect. Halfway through I was getting a little bored, but I really enjoyed the ending. I wish it could be the end of the franchise, but like Godzilla, Frankenstein, and Dracula, there's too much money to be made.

Definitely worth watching if you're a Halloween nerd.

I thought House of 1000 Corpses was okay, definitely a fanboy with money movie, Devil's Rejects was much better because of the superior cinematography, while 3 From Hell had a decent vision, it suffers from lack of direction. Rob Zombie steals from everybody, and this is no exception. It's one part Devil's Rejects, one part Natural Born Killers, one part Robert Rodriguez (fill in the blanks.) I don't mind that so much because at heart, Rob Zombie is a fan playing with toys. What usually suffers is story, and that's the case here too.

They bust out of prison, Sid Haig is replaced, people die, they quickly get to Mexico, more people die, brother and sister argue, giant stand off but the bad guys win in the end, life goes on, Terry Reid sings us off into the sunrise over mountains and highways.

In other words, it's pretty much what you expect.

So many boxes checked it takes you out of the story right off the bat. Interracial couple, check. Black guy with a hot blonde? Check. Austin? Check. Gun phallic observation? Check. Add a truck that belches filth, bonus check. School shooting survivor? Check. Gun nut is proud Texan. Check. Confederate flag? Check. The only thing missing was a trans character.

So much committee thinking, oh yeah, there's a madman with a chainsaw and a mommy fixation, plus an original survivor shows up to save the day to give a link to the original.

Somewhere in there is a completely unrealistic murder spree with no suspense or horror whatsoever. The killings played second fiddle to the obvious construction of the entire first half.

Paul and Gene were correct when they say that without them Kiss would have died 15 years prior. But if Ace had said forget it, pay me the same as you or I'm not doing the reunion, they would have no choice. Without Ace and Peter, there is no reunion, which totally saved the band.

Also, they blame Ace and Peter for the demise of 1970's Kiss. Forget about how terrible Paul's songs were on Dynasty, Unmasked and The Elder. That's what killed the band. Peter's behavior was bad though - they should've kicked him out of the band after the on stage BS.

The footage is great, of course. I think the Eric Carr death was handled well too. The first part was really cool - the second part was revisionist history.

You have to figure that it was made in 1967, but a few things would have made this a much better movie.

First, two souls are trapped in the same body, so why would "Christina" need a severed head to talk to the other half of her soul? If Hans is in there with her, wouldn't there be some kind of struggle or conflict? I think they ran out of time in that one, so maybe the beginning took too long.

Second, there was neither graphic violence nor nudity. There should have been one or the other, if not both. Off screen murders? And every Hammer film starting about 1965 should've had at least some nudity. But like I said before, maybe 1967 was still a bit too early for the rated R hammer films. Still, it would've been better.

The story was interesting, the colors are perfect, Denberg is a total beauty, and Cushing was perfect as usual. I recommend.

I thought it was a very comfortable movie, easy to watch. Everything feels natural and the acting is great. There's no big reveal, nothing massively important except an irresponsible brother deals with life or rather doesn't. Viggo doesn't do so great but he's okay, the weakest actor of the 4 mains. I wouldn't call him miscast, but just not great at acting crazy. He didn't scare me and I think he should have.

Still, I really like Penn as a director in this movie. It's good, maybe even great. Maybe if the brother (either one) died at the end, or if the baby had died, something a little more impactful at the end would've given it more of a punch. Even beating up (killing? I really don't know) Hopper at the end was just kind of there. I didn't care about him and it just seemed random. I guess Viggo needed a reason to leave town, but I don't know. I think the script needed a few tweaks.

Worth watching though for sure.