Cyberpunk at its 1995 best. spoilers We open up with a blood and gore splattering murder, a naked woman, and a lot of tall buildings and a lot of men wearing black sunglasses. The opening credits are clearly the inspiration for the opening credits of The Matrix, and several shots of things like falling rain and the fight scenes look like The Matrix as well. But stylistic ticks aside, the anime masterpiece is nothing like The Matrix. They may have the same skin, but they don’t have the same bones-their plots are substantially different. I’m not really a fan of…
Category: movie review
A Walk in the Woods
Old guys go for a hike. A Walk in The Woods sees Robert Redford playing famed author Bill Bryson, who seems to be having a late onset midlife crisis. After attending a funeral he didn’t want to attend, he decides to hike the [easyazon_link identifier=”188938691X” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Appalachian Trail[/easyazon_link]. This trail runs a bit over 2,000 miles. Bill would pipe in at this point to correct me by saying The Trail is 2,180 miles. That’s the kind of guy Bill is. A know-it-all’s know-it-all who likes to rattle off random facts and statistics. But that’s fine, it’s the knowing detail that…
Showgirls
Before there was Fant4stick, there was Showgirls. And [easyazon_link identifier=”1479881066″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Heaven’s Gate[/easyazon_link] and [easyazon_link identifier=”B000ICZCQW” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Waterworld[/easyazon_link] and [easyazon_link identifier=”B0037QGRVK” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Ishtar[/easyazon_link] and my own personal choice for Worst Movie of All Time: Peter Jackson’s King Kong. What sets these movies apart from, oh say, Battlefield Earth and The Phantom Menace and Matrix Revolutions? These were supposed to be serious films. They have real directors and real actors and real screenwriters, and yet, they are really bad. I found a cool little book called It Doesn’t Suck, which tells the tale of Showgirls. So I decided to give to…
Star Trek Renegades
Fan Fiction and Kickstarter, a wicked combination. Star Trek Renegades is a collection of older actors and very bad special effects. The big name stars here are Walter Koenig and Tim Russ, both familiar to fans of Star Trek. Sean Young and several other blasts from the past have roles as well. Time has not been kind to these people. There is an odd production error early in the film when we see a monument to Admiral Nimoy that should have been to Admiral Spock. Or maybe it should have been to Leonard Nimoy, without any military titles. Star Trek…
Limitless
It’s a popular myth that people only use ten percent of their brain’s potential. This would make evolution look pretty bad. A big brain that never reaches its full capacity. Of course, the brain does more than remember the random crap we read online, it keeps the heart beating, reminds us when to eat, when to sleep, tells us who to flirt with, and also remembers rather a lot of random crap that we read online. Limitless takes the idea that we only use 20% of our brain power and offers up a pill that allows us to use all of…
Extinction
Ice Ice Zombies Ice [easyazon_link identifier=”B011M5B1Y0″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Extinction[/easyazon_link]. In classic, post apocalypse style we open up with a group of people crowded together. Random people on buses heading for parts unknown. Then something happens. All but a tiny handful are eaten by zombies. We flash forward about ten years and find three survivors living next door to each other. Two men and one little girl. The world is a frozen wasteland covered in white. The survivors are kind of nuts. Even though they live side by side, they appear to hate each other, or at least, one of them hates…
Fantastic Four
If you loved Lost in Space…. Spoilers, if anybody cares. Yeah, Fantastic 4 is right up there with 1998’s Lost in Space. A story that makes no sense, special effects that look like a school project, and a group of actors that all looked like they wanted to be somewhere else. The music was pretty generic soundtrack fare, but it’s not like Philip Glass and Marco Beltrami could have saved this pointless turkey with a great score anyway. The bulk of the film is an origin story. I hate Origin Stories. We are treated to precocious kids who build a transdimensional portal…
Maggie
An Arthouse Zombie flick. [easyazon_link identifier=”B00XBTG85S” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Maggie[/easyazon_link] sees Arnold Schwarzenegger play the father of a girl who was recently bitten by a zombie. In a role that would have been better played by Dwight Yoakam or Billy Bob Thornton, Aronald plays a middle American redneck farmer doing his best to deal with a world that is falling apart around him. People are burning their crops in an effort to stop the spread of something. People bitten by zombie take a while to Turn and when they do, they are taken to concentration camps. But before they are rounded up,…
Self/Less
When once isn’t enough. [easyazon_link identifier=”B01169SSOI” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Self/Less[/easyazon_link] tells the tale of a rich man who is dying. Someone slips him a business card with a note that says they can help you. He decides to take a chance and call them. He finds out that for a mere 250 million, he can get a new body. For a rich real estate developer, he doesn’t seem to be bothered that this high tech lab that’s going to give me a brain transplant looks a lot like BioSphere 2. But hey, they have those plastic strip curtain things on all the…
The One I Love
Stop reading. Go watch The One I Love Best seen without any clues. [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MB7KXPM” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]The One I Love[/easyazon_link] is directed by Charlie McDowell and stars Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss with a small part played by Ted Danson. And that’s it for the cast. The bulk of the film is about a couple taking a weekend away to try and work on their problems. We open up with Ted Danson going through the motions of being a couple’s therapist. It isn’t going well. So he gives them a card and tells them to take the weekend. They drive…