Reviews

I LOVED this movie. Based on the summary and Bobcat being the writer/directer, I expected the dark, dark comedy. Honestly, the movie makes you glad to know ahead of time that Kyle is going to die, because he is a complete and total douche, entirely unsympathetic.

What surprised me was the genuine humanity within the movie.When Lance discovers Kyle it will rip your heart out, even though what I wrote in the paragraph above remains true. Then there's the little scenes Like Lance getting to know the neighbor lady. These moments I didn't expect and really added to the movie.

I'm surprised this wasn't a bigger movie. But then what do I know about comedy? I enjoyed The Love Guru.

It follows three biological females who like to appear masculine, though they are not interested in having a sex change operation.

Kim undergoes the most drastic changes as she embraces her masculinity.

Kim becomes more and more masculine, changing her name and taking testosterone, embracing her own idea of perfection. Her partner Michelle is a lesbian who worries about what it means for her to watch her partner become (in many ways) a man.

Kim/Ryan and Michelle's situation was fascinating and thought provoking and should have been a documentary on its own.

The other two stories are nowhere near as interesting: Lauren hates her neighborhood and wants to run away to San Francisco. Then she does. And that's about all there is to that. This one could have been interesting. I blame the documentarians for poor presentation here.

Why did Lauren hate her neighborhood so much? We are never told. What sort of culture shock (if any) did she experience when she arrives in San Fran? I dunno. When we catch up to her, she's already established herself. There's just not much here.

As for Jill... here's a girl that is already out with a very, very supportive family tying herself in knots about explaining something that (while important to her) is barely understood or cared about by her family. Really, she's only asking then to change a word they might refer to her by. I'm sure this was a milestone in her life and I can empathize, but watching her play Hamlet was dull viewing.

As a whole this is a shallow and clumsy doc on what can be a fascinating subject. If they were to take the section on Kim and Michelle's relationship and expand on it, that would be a documentary worth watching.

Awful movie. Wishes it was art, but is really just poorly done crap. the characters are a bunch of self centered a*holes who aren't as interesting as they think they are. After finishing a copy of Dracula (that he borrowed from the hospital!) Gary is so deeply moved he pulls a Dominique Francon and throws the book out a window. Hey, someone else might have wanted to read that copy of Dracula, Gary! Did you really need to throw it out the window when you were done with it? They act bizarrely and randomly spout philosophical dialog like "Things will never be like they used to be!" or "Be dumb enough to fall in love and smart enough to know better." Vincent D'Onofrio is a characterless shell of a loser with really bad looking braided hair that everyone is inexplicably in love with. Thomas Jane camps it up and alternately leaps like a ballerina (check him out after the taxi crash!) or flies into rages. Selma Hayek is a constant irritant that you just wish somebody would punch. Ethan Hawke comes out the best, probably because he has the least amount of screen time. The only one I had any emotion for was the dog.

A complete and total waste of time that is nowhere near as deep as it thinks it is.

Great cast, great idea and stylish.... but it was missing something. It was neat to look at, but I never really connected to it.

There were a whole lot of good ideas, but not enough was done with them. The movie would have been better if it were longer to expand on the ideas or more focused. Most of Arthur's apprenticeship could have been cut for instance.

The horror wasn't particularly scary and the humor snicker worthy at best. Combined with the slow pacing, it's just too many strikes against the movie. It's a shame, because this movie has the cast and ingredients to be a genuine cult classic.

I was so excited to see the 'forgotten' John Carpenter film finally getting a DVD release. He's one of my favorite directors. Unfortunately this is one of his weakest films and probably my least favorite.

It's not all bad and has some genuinely tense moments, but they are few and far between. I'm not sure if John Carpenter just wasn't feeling it with this one or if it was due to the constraints of it being a T.V. movie with the constant breaks required for commercials. Whatever it is, the film is a series of peaks and valleys. The pace is off. You just don't get enough of a feeling of building tension. It's funny, because this film was preceded by Halloween and followed by The Fog and both are excellent, suspenseful films.

In this movie there are a number of good scenes. The bits with the laundry room, the park at night, the penthouse, the search of a house and the last fifteen minutes are great. But in between there are plenty of dull spots.

The music was kind of irritating. I wish John Carpenter had gotten to score this one like he does most of his movies. But he didn't and the music is here seems like a swipe of better music from other suspense movies and at times was just inappropriate for the scene. The best part musically was a scene where Leigh is opening a strange package that was synced to Vivaldi's 'Winter'. That part was very well done, but also pointed out how bad the rest of the music was.

Also, Lauren Hutton just didn't seem right for the part. She's a good actress and the part was written well, but the two didn't seem to connect.

One highlight of the movie is Adrienne Barbeau. She is terrific in her part. It's easy to see why J.C. used her in his future movies (well, aside from their marriage). I wish she were in the movie more.

Also, I applaud him for writing in a positive lesbian character. It must have been scandalous for a T.V. movie from 1978. She wasn't stereotypical, never made any 'sinister' passes at our heroine and also wasn't portrayed as the 'magical gay character'. Kudos to John Carpenter.

This movie is worth a rental. But compared to what John Carpenter had done before and would do in the future, this entry was weak.

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. It had a lot going for it, and its low budget didn't seem to be a problem. The story was something different for a horror movie and had a lot of potential. On top of that the production design was good, the monsters were pretty eerie and the actors did a good job.

The problem is that the movie should have been tighter. It really could have used more tension. Even though the movie was atmospheric, there were too many long stretches of not much happening. The direction and editing were sort of lackluster, which is a shame.

Also, the music (while very good) never seemed to fit what was happening on the screen. For the most part, it sounded like 'generic creepy music' that was running in the background.

I was going to rate this one five stars, but really it deserves (a little) better than that. There are some problems here, but there are good points too. Should you rent it? I'd say go for it. There's a lot worse out there.

I'm not much a Tobe Hooper fan. Aside from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salem's Lot I haven't liked any of his movies (unless you want to give him credit for Poltergeist). I therefore wasn't expecting much when I picked up his remake of The Toolbox Murders.

I haven't seen the original, so I can't say how this remake compares, but on its own, this movie is a winner. A young couple moves into a rat trap old building in Hollywood. He's an intern and is gone most of the time leaving Nell Barrows with too much time on her hands. She finds out some strange things about the building's history and unbeknownst to all, somebody is murdering the tenants.

Right from the beginning when the camera is filming through a sheet of plastic in the rain, it manages to give off a downright unsettling atmosphere. A fantastic job was done lighting the creepy old building, making every shadow seem threatening. Everything feels old, grimy and unpleasant. The music is surprisingly good. There is the usual 'string swell' to make you jump, but otherwise it works well to ratchet up your nerves. The whole movie is an exercise in tension.

Really the only bad part about this movie is the whole 'toolbox murders' gimmick. The story really stands on its own and is good enough without the different tool for each murder shtick. If the killer just used a knife or something, that would have worked just as well. It felt like they needed to throw in the unusual murder weapons to keep the name.

Still, this was a pretty good movie. I'd recommend it to fans of old fashioned '70's and '80's horror movies. They don't make many like this any more.

This movie is crap.

Let's get what's 'good' about this movie out of the way first: Tom Savini did the special effects and he did a pretty good job. There's a couple of scenes of full frontal nudity. You get to see some annoying kids get violently dispatched.

The problem is it's nothing new and nothing special. It felt like the Weinstein's wrote the script after reading Slasher Films For Dummies. If the only slasher movie you've seen before this one is the original Friday the 13th, you can still predict everything that will happen. This movie isn't even a copy of Friday the 13th. It's a copy of a copy. It felt like the people making this movie didn't like or understand horror movies. They hit all the right notes for a slasher movie without seeming to understand the genre. It's no surprise that these guys would later head up Dimension films and churn out endless Screams, Final Destinations and I Know What You Did Last Summers.

When you think about it, there's no rhyme or reason for anything that happens in this movie. An angry guy picks a bunch of kids at random and bumps them off. No, never mind. That sounds like the plot to an okay movie at least. There is zero suspense or tension in this flick. For the first forty minutes or so at camp, NOTHING happens. This time isn't used to foreshadow anything or establish the killer's motivation or anything. Just a half hour or so of weird looking kids at summer camp. At the end they sort of try to tie it back to the beginning, but when the big 'revelation' happens, you realize that even though you as a viewer can see a connection, the killer wouldn't have this info.

I don't know. Most of the other reviews I've read for this movie are pretty enthusiastic, so maybe it's me. But aside from the over-the-top violence and copious nudity, this film was a total letdown. And is it just me, or are garden shears just sort of a goofy weapon?

Regardless of what you might have heard, 1998's Godzilla is a pretty decent remake of the original.

I had seen the movie in its' original release and remembered having a negative opinion, but couldn't remember the details. I recently found the DVD on the cheap and decided to give it a second chance.

Watching the giant iguana Godzilla tear through rainy New York was a lot of fun. The CGI didn't bother me and Godzilla's new look wasn't bad. (Not as good as the Japanese one though!) I started to wonder why this movie didn't do better and if maybe I was too critical. Then about 90 minutes in, Dean and Roland lose track of the story (they are listed as contributors to the screen play, so I feel it's fair to blame them).

The movie suddenly stops focusing on Godzilla and switches to Madison Square Garden where a bunch of mini-Zillas hatch and chase the cast around. This drags on for a half an hour. Hank Azaria's part in the movie suddenly becomes too big and you realize that Steven Spielberg has directed a MUCH better version of this same set-up in Jurassic Park. This movie starts to become waterlogged.

Once the main characters escape and Godzilla starts running around again, the movie picks up, but at that point my fiance and I were already yawning.

If you like the idea of big monsters stomping cities, I'd still recommend this one.