Reviews

It's hard to be terrified while watching a horror movie and you have no idea what is going on. There too many (9) main characters in this movie, with an complex web of inter-relationships, never fully explained. So whenever something happens you have to ask why did they do that? Also, is one of the characters supposed to be a ghost? I'm still not sure. I assume that the director had some idea what was supposed to be going on but everything got messed up in editing when key explanatory scenes were cut. There also are many continuity errors which makes the confusion even worse. The result is a total mess and when the "slasher" action occurs, it's very hard to be horrified. What just happened and why? And was that real, imagined, or was the killer a ghost? Like I said. It's a mess. It's also very boring unless you want to try to understand post-adolescent romantic and mean girl behaviors. Also, these are supposed to be graduating college seniors but most of them look like they are closer to 30 in age.

Plot: the blatantly sexist writer/director plays a redneck college professor who tries to prove he's a "regular guy" by threatening to shoot people who mock him in a convenience store. He's supposed to be a PhD anthrpologist searching for an Arkansas version of Bigfoot, so naturally, he brings along a skinny freshmen twit (the director's son) , and two hot young women, whose job it is to run round in skimpy clothing. The movie is sexist and stupid but the MST 3K version is absolutely hilarious and one of their best episodes. As many other commenters have said, the actor to watch for in the film is Jimmy Clem who plays "Old Man Crenshaw, " but he looks like he is about 40. He really jumps into the role of "dirty disgusting backwoods redneck" and rolls around in it like a pig in a mud puddle. I have a friend from Arkansas who is a retired professor and he said that the film was "insulting to all southerners but essentially accurate." I think this film was made with a southern audience in mind; it was made so southerners could laugh at themselves, which they like to do. People from New England (like me) don't do that. The descendants of the Plymouth Rock Puritans have a very high opinion of themselves.

"Among Wolves" is a low budget movie, with no famous stars, but a VERY good script, and VERY good "unknown" actors. The only reason I did not give it 10 stars is that the plot is a bit implausible. But if you accept the unusual situation, and the unusual motivations that the main characters have, it all makes perfect sense. Extremely violent, but not the stupid and completely senseless violence you see in so many movies. The most dangerous killers in this movie act like real killers: they don't talk much, but when they do talk, you should listen carefully. This is a movie about an era and a place (the "old west") when a code of personal honor was more common (and stronger) than it is today. It is a "guy" movie that women can watch without being totally grossed out. It is violent but the situation demands that, and the women characters in this movie are very strong, and in my (male) opinion, I think they are good role models for young women and girls today. We now live in moderately violent times that are going to get much worse in the near future due to the imminent climate change crisis and the social and political upheavals it will cause. This movie will get you talking to your friends and lover(s) about when violence is a necessary evil, and that is very unusual in most of today's movies. "Open Range" was like that, by the way. If you haven't seen it, you should. Finally I do not recommend "Among Wolves" or "Open Range" for young children, or even for older minors or adults, male or female, who are very sensitive to violence.

I think we all know too much about the brutality and sexual abuse that routinely took place in Catholic institutions of all kinds during that era. I had a girl friend who attended a Catholic day school and she hated nuns. She told me stories about the sadistic abuse she and other girls received, and their parents did nothing to stop it. The Catholic Church still had good PR during the 1960s, so people could accept this sanitized film version of what a Catholic girls boarding school must have been like. But in reality, very harsh punishments would have been handed out for any of the hundreds of possible "sins." Like not eating all the food on your plate, or coughing during a prayer. Corporal punishment was just one possibility.

A vampire movie that isn't afraid to make fun of itself. Examples: it has a vampire wannabe who frequently farts, two US Navy sailors who are possibly the dumbest sailors I've ever seen (I spent 4 years in the Navy), a young female vampire who only regrets she can't go out into the sun to get a tan (although she has tanlines when she takes off her top), a vampire leader who quotes Shakespeare, and a duck egg. You might not think a duck egg is funny until you see it what happens to it. I think this was shot in the Phillipines ... Filipinos LOVE vampire movies, by the way. Usually they are serious but this one was done for laughs. A great movie to watch if you are one of those people who loves "bad" movies. How did MST 3000 miss this one?

Based on a true story, this is an excellent, intelligent crime darma which goes deeply into the motivations of the criminals and the detectives pursuing them. Also provides insight into Saudi culture. I love police procedurals and this one is outstanding. The chief villain is a sociopathic killer but you get plenty of insight into why he became that way. The primary detective is just as interesting as the villain. His rich bully of a father hates that his son is a cop, and his boss is an idiot. He has to fight both of them in order to catch the bad guys. Also, for a film about Saudi Arabia, women characters play important roles, which I did not expect. Finally, you learn somehting about a drug called Captagon, which I had never heard of before. Google it.

There are some elements in this series that are unrealistic (such as a young police officer being allowed to serve under the command of his father) but the characters are interesting and the stories are exciting: sometimes tragic, sometimes comic. There are multiple crime events in each episode so the action never stops. There are no bad cops, though, and if you read anything about the British police, you'll know THAT is unrealistic. Multiple credible reports reveal that the British police force force has plenty of racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc. But none them appear in this show. The characters that do appear are all interesting and each has different strengths and different problems which creates fascinating story lines so I gave it a high score.

Comedy is hard to do and most science fiction in the movies is crap...(if you want the best science fiction you have to read books.) But this film is great comedy, and science fiction, and a brilliant satire of "Star Trek." I loved the old "Star Trek" TV show but it had its flaws, such as William Shatner's immense ego. Tim Allen in "Galaxy Quest" captures perfectly why the other cast members in "Star Trek" all disliked Shatner. Hard core Trekkies will probably hate this movie because it makes fun of them, even though they actually save the day in this film. Since Sigourney Weaver was in the cast, the producers should have added some "Alien" references, but I guess that would have upset Tim Allen's immense ego.

How hard is it to get a sailor's uniform right? His hat was too small and no sailor would wear it with the brim straight...you curl it like a breaking wave. The pants should have buttons not a zipper fly, and no belt loops. The rank stripes are sewn too high on the upper arm. LA was full of military members on leave in the 60s. Why couldn't they just ask a sailor to let them look carefully at his uniform? Finally, his hair was too long. But enough picky stuff. The film is very SLOW. Right from the beginning the question arises, is she or is she not a mermaid? Then it takes 90 minutes to answer that question. Lots of scenes where people just talk and talk and talk and nothing else happens. Good location shots, though. LA in those days was not as messed up as it is today. Everything was cheaper and less crowded.

While many scenes in this movie seem sexist today, the dialogue is actually how most people talked (and thought) in the early 1970s, and this includes the women characters. It was a time of dramatic social change and people, young and old, said some pretty dumb things, every day. When I saw this movie available on streaming video, I thought it would be one of those trashy low budget films that was so bad it would be funny, but I actually found it intelligent and entertaining. The relationship of the two male friends is instantly recognizable to people who have served in the military (as I did), and the romantic relationship between one of the men, and the Sissy Spacek character who is half his age, exactly captures the tension between the two clashing cultures - the "counter culture" of the 60s and 70s vs the more conservative culture of people who grew up in the 40s and 50s. Of course he says sexist things, and of course she speaks in slogans and says "far out!" all the time. Yeah, people actually talked like that back then. Worth watching if you want to know what that era was like on an interpersonal level. Also, you have GOT to see Slim Pickens play a county sheriff. A minor role but he steals every scene he is in. I love that guy.

In "Groundhog Day," Bill Murray begins the film as a rude and arrogant creep, but eventually he becomes a good guy and gets the girl. Now imagine this scenario re-written by a 15-year old boy with severe anti-social attitudes and a love of nasty sarcasm. What you get is a main character who, throughout the entire movie, is an obnoxious ass. I feel sorry for Christina Ricci for making the mistake of taking a supporting role in this piece of crap movie.

Like "Romeo and Juliet" this is a tragic love story. It is painful to watch a 16-year old boy make a series of bad decisions because it reminds you of all the bad decisions you have made in your own life. How did you deal with the consequences? This is a movie that will make you think and feel ... a lot.

The first half of this movie is an excellent and seemingly straightforward exploration of the problems of "open relationships" but then it slides into mysterious ambiguity. One begins to wonder whether some of the characters are real or are they the delusions of the main character, Florrie. This film is worth seeing if you like puzzles. It reminds me of the great 1966 film, "Blow up."

Imagine that you planned the perfect dinner party and then things started to go a bit wrong. And then even more wrong. How wrong? The only way to describe it would be to compare this film to a movie where King Kong was tearing the Titanic apart just before it hit the iceberg. The action just keeps getting more and more extreme until it reaches complete madness, and it goes a few steps more. This movie is great fun if you have a taste for the absurd.

In a typical epic poem derived from legends the hero is on a quest and is beset by all sorts of bizarre obstacles placed in their path. In this film a young Icelandic woman who aspires to be a poet decides to travel to California because she hates the dark and loves the sun. Her family and friends don't want her to go but assist her nonetheless. But before she can get on a plane she encounters two obnoxious American men, a poet and a film-maker, who block her progress. This not a film for the uneducated. This a not a film for morons who only like car chases and gunfights. This a film for people who like the Iliad and Beowulf, and would love to see a female hero on a poetic quest. Keep an eye out for the squishy elephant.

Unbelievably good dance scenes mixed with a bucketful of teenaged passion over competition, friendship, love, and death. If you don't get totally wrapped up in the personal dramas of these dance students you have no heart. A 3-year series with 26 episodes per year and NEVER a dull moment.

This is a clever spoof of the typical slasher/horror movie and it mocks every cliche they contain. There is even a reference to "Deliverance" right at the beginning. There are many scenes that had me roaring with laughter, and not many films can make me do that. And who doesn't like to like to see fraternity boys get chopped to bits?

This is a film about what happens when three couples, with one extra guy in the mix, explore having open relationships for one night. It's a good film for young people to watch because it will challenge any romantic notions they might have about "loving one person forever." Five of the seven people (in their late 20s) have known each other since high school (or longer) and their relationships are complex. It's not an easy film to watch but it is interesting as you never know what's going to happen next. No cliches here. This film will make you think about what love really is, and what it is not.

Like many things the Catholic Church has lied about, the medieval convents were probably not anything like the "sanitized" versions we have seen in previous films. Isolated form the world, imprisoned there by middle and upper class families who had no use for them, these forgotten women suffered horribly from loneliness and despair. I suspect that the extreme behaviors exhibited by the nuns in this film are closer to the reality than anything we have seen before. The excellent cast improvised their dialog which makes everything more real to contemporary audiences. No, medieval nuns would not have spoken like this, but their actual speech patterns and vocabulary would make no sense to us. I thoroughly enjoyed this film but it certainly won't appeal to many viewers. You have to be able to take the dark along with the light.

A pretty good 90s low-budget horror movie with (young) Jennifer Anniston when she was a nobody, a year before "Friends" made her an A-list star. It helps if you know nothing about the old Irish stories about Leprechauns because the one in this film is not exactly true to legend. This film is a good thing to watch the night before Saint Patrick's Day, especially if you have had a pint or two. It's got lots of sequels, so you could binge watch them all night long. (I think that's required by law if you live in Boston.)

This "survival" movie is unusual in that the lead character is a teenaged girl who shows amazing strength and resilience in the face of a horrible situation. Not only does she save herself but she saves other people. It's an original story, not filled with the typical cliches of the disaster/survival genre so it is full of surprises. It is a bit grim at times but overall it was a satisfying tale. Teenaged girls will like it - they don't get to be heroes to often in this type of film.

This is very entertaining story with a lot of humor but with substance also. It's about a 16 year old girl whose father recently died and she feels a bit lost when her mother leaves her with her (hilariously wacky) grandparents for a while. The she meets the goth boy next door and the fun really begins.

This film is a standard murder mystery but many of the elements are ridiculous like an Army veteran sheriff who takes a lot of stupid risks because he's "tough." No police officer would do what this guy does. The two odious murder victims seemed to be oblivious to the fact that many people wanted to kill them although it's made obvious to the audience many times. The characters also utter some really stupid lines, as if the script was written by a teenager. This could have been a good movie if the plot didn't have so many holes and the script was written by someone who had a better understanding of police work and rural culture. Good actors, nicely shot on location, but the weak script undermines it all.

This is a very funny comedy loosely based on an actual event. Critics may nitpick at the details but that misses the point. The film captures the complex feelings of the British people at the end of WWII. I think it succeeds. It's not really about the princesses, it's about the ordinary people they meet. What is hilarious is that they are so unprepared to deal with ordinary people, having lived a sheltered life. My favorite scene is where the royalty-loving owner of a house of ill repute welcomes Princess Margaret into his office, after rescuing her from a cad, and then quickly closes his desk drawer which has a gun in it. He then offers her a cup of tea. Priceless. Who cares if it's not a true event?

This is a collection of the individual stories of a small group of people from different walks of life, who were directly involved in the events of 9/11. There is tragedy, and there is heroism, but this film it is really about the emotional impact of this event because we get to see the people who were in the towers but also their friends and loved ones who had to watch the horror unfold from a distance.