Reviews

My favorite comedy of recent years. Filled with funny, quirky characters and situations as you'd expect from a Coen brothers movie, done with style. The hero -or anti-hero rather- "The Dude" Lebowski may not be a genius, but very likeable nonetheless. You got to love his attitude: While stumbling through a crime mystery apparently inspired by Chandler, Hammett and the like, he gets seriously drugged by a porn producer, is beaten up by a sheriff, threatened with losing his "Johnson", used as a sperm donor by a feminist/artist; and this list of mishaps is not even complete. But amidst all this he's able to smoke some reefers, drink a lot of White Russian cocktails -which I tried for the first time myself after seeing the film, I can recommend it- and go bowling with his friends. At the end someone even dies, but it's the character you least expected to...This is one of those rare movies, that get even better with each viewing. Two thumbs up!

This movie is -well- trash. But not like trash with cult potential like the movies of Ed Wood. It's not really a sex film, but not really a horror movie either: It's a soft-core skin flick with a vampire theme as a cover. Maybe it's because I'm European but I don't get overly aroused by stark naked women taking a shower or straddling a washing machine. (You can see this kind of stuff every night on TV here) The horror is not strong enough to catch my interest either; because of lack of a budget for special effects. But at least the director, who also stars in the lead role, has a sense of humor. If I took a bunch of friends from the Gothic scene and made a movie it would be much spicier than this, but I guess by American standards the movie went as far as it could without getting its maker into trouble. The women are quite nice too, even if they are a bit slutty.

I'm really not sure if I like this movie but that depends on one's expectations -and preferences- of course. If you like to see prolonged scenes in which amateurish female actors show their -uh- endowments while dancing around and light male bondage you will probably want to see this movie.

This movie is clearly a spoof of the original Zombie movies by George A. Romero. It happily admits that by referring to the original "Night of the Living Dead" in the first few minutes of dialogue. The movie's emphasis -especially in its first half hour- is on dark humor. It begins in a medicinal warehouse that sells skeletons with perfect teeth (The joke about a skeleton farm in India is simply hilarious, if not for all tastes), halved dogs and even dead humans to universities and the like. Hidden in the cellar are 3 containers with Zombies from a military experiment and the gas in those containers is accidentally released when one of the clerks proudly shows them to his young, punky apprentice (turning them both slowly into Zombies themselves as is learned later on).

I'm not going to recount the entire plot here, except that it's fun -in a campy way- and what can be said against a movie in which two of the main characters are named Ernie and Bert?

Dan O'Bannon, of "Alien" and "Dark Star" fame, delivers a tongue-in-cheek Zombie movie whose effects are on par with more serious entries of the same genre. If you like horror movie spoofs/comedies you'll like this one. I did. But be warned: My girlfriend didn't enjoy the humor as much as I did because she was too scared by the gory effects. Diff'rent strokes...

The first time I saw this movie I was still in my early teens. Already having an interest in the sciences and the movies, "Andromeda Strain" really caught my attention. A recent viewing -this time as an adult in his early thirties- showed that the movie hadn't lost much of its riveting quality. It's not a low-brow action movie, but an intelligent sci-fi thriller about a micro-biological crisis (initiated by an extra-terrestrial(!) virus brought to earth by a space probe), made long before "Outbreak" and the like. Fine acting and the thorough re-creation of the scientific procedures described in Michael Crichton's novel -on which the movie is based- make this a first choice for viewers with an interest in sci-fi with more than a slight touch of reality. Hints at U. S. plans for biological warfare near the end also make this a political thriller of sorts! Only drawback: The colors appear a bit pale nowadays, as is the case with many 70's films, but since most of the scenes are set in a sterile, monotonous laboratory environment, this doesn't spoil one's viewing experience. Watch out for the eerie opening sequence set in a small desert town where everyone was killed by the "Alien" virus, except for an old drunkard and a baby!