This blog covers Movies, TV, and other Geeky things...... Movie Reviews (over 3,400 movies rated so far) Countdowns of my top movies by year.... and much more.
The Monster that Challenged the World 1957 2 out of 10
Ughhhh! This bad monster movie was really, really terrible. The Monster that Challenged the World....(More like the Monster that bored the audience). I recorded this based on the cool silly posters and the title. Maybe if I had read about the Giant Prehistoric Sea Snails --I would have skipped it. But I didn't skip it, Instead I suffered through this terrible giant monster movie that featured one of the worst movie monsters ever put on screen. This Giant Sea Snail isn't scaring anyone. The movie basically was a whole bunch of talk about and searching for the monster. The screen time of this ridiculous sea snail creature was minimal at best. The trailer shows a Giant Sea Snail attacking a town Godzilla style. I guess they forgot to add that scene to the actual movie.
I say skip this turd of a monster movie. The best thing about this movie is the old school movie posters. Look at the posters and watch the trailer and just save yourself the time by skipping the film.
Here is a picture from online of the chesseball monster
A couple move to a quiet town after the death of their teenage son to start a new life. Unfortunately for them they picked the wrong house. Apparently the house they moved into awakens about every 30 years and demands blood as revenge for an old town secret.
This movie has 1970's feel to it. It stars a couple of names I recall from the past like Barbara Crampton (who once once a B-Movie actress in horror and Sci-fi films) and Lisa Marie (Tim Burton's Ex). As the film starts I could almost imagine that it might be a secret sequel to Troll 2-- but Nilbog wasn't the name of the town. It was a decent low budget horror film as the dumb white people stay in the house even after being warned by one of the townsfolk to get out (White people never listen) They invite some friends that can communicate with spirits because the mom senses her dead sons presence in the house. Their friends show up and after diner in the strange town where all the townsfolk basically stare at them they spend the night . Her psychic friend tells them that everything about the house is dark yet they hang around anyway. Then her boyfriend ( Who look like a Jack Nicholson impersonator) does a seance when the girls go into town the next day awakening the evil within the house. The true evil appears to be the townsfolk themselves and the dirty little secret they have (which isn't being Goblins with bad makeup).
Well the house wakes up every 30 years for payback and this time around it gets it when the townsfolk descend on the house to make sure the couple is sacrificed --but things don't turn out as they town plans and we actually get some decent gory carnage. It wasn't a great horror film ---but I liked the retro vibe of the film and the gory blood filled conclusion. If you like evil house out for revenge flicks this one may be worth your time
I enjoyed this Western. It starts out slow --but features a great cast and great dialogue. This isn't your average Western. After a man's wife is kidnapped in an old western town 4 men set out to rescue her from a group of cannibalistic indians. The movie slowly ramps up as they make their way across the desert. The ending is just exactly as the ad suggests......."Shockingly Brutal". Check out this film especially if you are a Kurt Russell......and definitely listen to our Podcast
I wasn't expecting much from this movie when the trailer first came out, but still wanted to see it. So many recent comedy movies have let me down, but I actually found myself laughing at some of the stupidity in this comedy.
The film stars Adam Devine (Andy on 3 seasons of Modern Family) and Zac Efron (from some Ab factory that my wife approves of). They play two brothers that are liquor distributors that are all about the partying. Their little sister is getting married and their Dad (played by the always great Stephen Root --the boss from News Radio) lays down the law and tells these two hard partying idiots to get their shit together. So the two brothers must show up to their sister's Hawaiian with actual respectable dates to avoid ruining yet another family gathering.
The setup for the film is good. The two idiot brothers take to social media to find their dates (not a bright idea). The results are predictable. Watching them interview girls that answer their ad for a free trip to Hawaii was entertaining. At this point I realized I was going to enjoy this film more than I originally thought. Then Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick show up posing as respectable girls --when in truth they are even more of a train wreck than the brothers.
The humor is crude and the language is very adult --but I still found the film fun. There are numerous humorous segments and a lot of decent laughs. This isn't an intelligent film.... The main characters basically have the intelligence level of movies like Stepbrothers or A Night at the Roxbury and Dumb and Dumber. I briefly took a look at the reviews on IMDB before writing about the movie and was shocked at how much pretty much 90% of the reviewer absolutely hated it. If you like dumb humor give it a shot if you don't like your main characters to be morons ---you may want to pass on it.
Passengers is about a space flight to a distant planet that will take 120 years. Something goes wrong and Jim Preston wakes up 90 years too early.
It is basically a last man on earth movie abroad a spaceship. Jim Preston (played by Chris Pratt )--can't get his hibernation chamber to work again to go back to sleep. He is basically doomed to live the rest of his life alone and die before the ship reaches it's destination. The first part of the film plays out like a more subtle version of the TV show Last Man on Earth. Jim comes to terms with his dilemma and tries to make the best of it. Swimming in the pool and doing a space walk and at least he has the cool bartender robot to hang out with. But after a year alone Jim is all bearded and has gone a little crazy. He nearly kills himself as a result of his loneliness -and then sits down with the bartender in a scene that reminded me of Jack Nicholson hanging out with the ghost bartender in The Shining.
Of course the smart thing to do would be to try and find someone on board the ship to wake up that could help him get back to sleep--but instead he has fallen in love with a girl named Aurora Lane (played by Jennifer Lawrence) and decides against his better judgment to wake her up instead. What lonely guy on a spaceship --wouldn't want to be alone with Jennifer Lawrence? She like him at first searches for answers and then of course they eventually start to accept their fate and begin to fall for each other. Then of course his secret about waking her up is revealed and let's just say things between them go a little sour. (Queue the third act)
The ship takes on more damage and Laurence Fishbourne wakes up from a malfunction in his chamber. His character Gus is a part of the crew. They all team up and fight to save the ship as the ship is slowly tearing itself apart from major damage. You will have to watch the movie yourself to see how that turns out.
A movie like this relies on the main two characters to have great chemistry. Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence have just that on screen together and basically make what could be boring scenes to some people interesting. It is a simple sci-fi movie that I believe was well written and decently paced. The story was good. The acting was good and the visuals were excellent. It was an enjoyable movie that I think got more bad reviews than it deserved. I think maybe the expectations of what the film was going to be may have contributed to that. I enjoyed it for what it was and give it a 7+ out of 10.
I really wanted to see this movie when it came out in the theaters. The hype for this film was through the roof. I was hoping the film would be like some amazing Arthur C Clarke book ... I guess I set up some expectations that the film wasn't going to meet. One of my top 10 films of all-time is Close Encounters of the Third Kind --so I like the genre. This film was no Close Encounters.
About an hour into the movie I found myself bored and thinking that this movie better have and interesting and satisfying ending. The film was basically about trying to communicate with this strange aliens that had landed all over Earth and the story moves at a snails pace Amy Adams stars as the main character --with Jeremy Renner basically just standing around in the background not adding much other than giving her character someone to talk to. Her character starts to break through and talk with the Aliens that are basically giant squids that communicate by making symbols with floatings ink inside their spaceship. This is pretty much the entire story. The movie tries to build some tension with the fact that there are eleven other spaceships in eleven other countries that are all racing to decipher the message first. Of course a message is misread at one point as well causing more tension in the story. I was expecting the message to read "To Serve Man", but it didn't.
The end itself was satisfying --but for me it was too little to late. This story would have worked better as a short story or as an episode of Outer Limits instead of a movie.
I recently got out and saw Kong Skull Island this past weekend and enjoyed it. I immediately wanted to re-visit King Kong from 2005 to compare the two films.
Eras:
They were very different Kong films one is basically an updated remake of the original King Kong and takes place in the 1930's and the other is a completely different angle on the Kong story and takes place in the 1970's at the end of Vietnam.
The Differences in King Kong himself
Skull Island Kong in the new film is absolutely gigantic. He seems more like a giant mutated bigfoot and spends much of his time upright. The scene where the helicopters first encounter this Kong is awesome. The military helicopters are no match for this giant Kong. Why is this new Kong so oversized? It is obvious that they are trying to set up a movie universe in which this King Kong can fight Godzilla. The story focuses on Skull Island basically being a doorway to Hollow Earth which is a land of monsters. Skull Islands creatures aren't dinos, but instead some type of Mysterious underworld beasts. The 2005 King Kong was more like a giant Gorilla living in a lost continent of oversized beasts. Peter Jackson's Kong is a more likable and humanized Kong. (Thanks to Andy Serkis mo cap performance). Basically this Kong lives in a land of Dinosaurs.
The Action
Both movies have some great action sequences.
Skull Island: Features a great sequence as Kong takes on all the helicopters. There are some good action sequences as the main characters try to avoid the creatures that live in the Hollow Earth and Kong's battle with this creatures near the end of the film is exactly what you would expect and hope for. Samuel Jackson is in typical bad ass mode and is out for revenge on Kong for all the fellow military members he has lost which leads to some Michael Bay style explosions.
King Kong 2005: Features some great action sequences as well. (Okay so the Dinosaur stampede was a little over the top) but when Kong squares off against three T-Rex's while protecting the main heroine... that sequence was epic. And since this Kong follows the original 1933 story we also get Kong loose in New York and the iconic Empire State Building sequence.
King Kong 2005 9+ out of 10
The Story :
King Kong from 2005 is a loving tribute to the original 1933 film. It has the tone and heart of the original film and the visuals are spectacular. Kong falls in love with his sacrifice in the form of beautiful Noami Watts and it is eventually his undoing. It is a Beauty and the Beast story where Kong is basically the misunderstood hero. My only complaint about the film is the length as it is a long movie. It starts a little slow taking awhile to develop the characters and get to the Island. Once at the island it is an amazing film that stands up there with some of the Jurassic Park films.
Kong Skull Island 2017 is a different Kong. Kong is still basically the misunderstood hero. After all he is just trying to protect his island and the villagers on it from the creatures below. Samuel L Jackson happens to invade Kong's Island and pays the price for that. It is a fun Kong movie and a decent take on the Kong story, but is missing the love story element and the heart that Peter Jackson's Kong was able to recreate. I think they were more concerned with setting up this giant Kong as a bad ass for future possible films (vs Godzilla for example) then telling the best Kong story. Still a fun watch regardless.
The winner in this battle of Kong's for me in the Peter Jackson version. Although if the two Kong's themselves actually battled The much larger(less Gorilla like) Skull Island Kong would surely win.
