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Wow Signal

A documentary about the"wow signal", a strong and unexplained radio signal picked up by SETI in 1977. I like this kind of stuff, so, worth watching. Pretty canny, features mostly actual scientists, and does offer natural explanations for the signal, plus goes a little bit into the infrastructure and personalities behind our big radio telescopes.
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Escape From New York

Somehow I'd never seen this all the way through until now. I see why it left an impression on kids of my generation. For anyone who slept through the 70s and 80s, Kurt Russell is airdropped into Manhattan, which has been converted into a walled prison island, to rescue the President, whose plane has crashed there, and must fight The Warriors to get out.
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The 4th Floor

Surprisingly ok Hitchcockian thriller about Juliette Lewis inheriting an apartment and being menaced by a neighbor who leaves threatening notes. William Hurt, Tobin Bell, Shelley Duvall, and Austin Pendleton, who is this nebbishy guy you've seen in a zillion things but never got his name.
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Treehouse

slow-starting horror/suspense that is actually sort of decent by the end, if kind of grisly. Two teens setting off fireworks in the woods stumble upon a missing girl trapped in a treehouse by unknown creatures. One leaves for help, the other becomes trapped with her. Movie takes a sharp turn in the middle as they escape, becomes a"pursued by the psycho locals"flick, but as those things go, not too terrible.
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TwoTwo

thoroughly amateurish, stiffly-acted sci fi film that desperately wants to be interesting and quirky but succeeds only in making no sense. I watched the whole thing and have no idea what it was about. Something about a schlubby guy running across people who are getting tested and given some sort of"charge"that other people want to take away from them.
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Hansel And Gretel Get Baked

Stoner splatstick, which I guess is at least sort of original. The animated plastic remains of Lara Flynn-Boyle play a witch who lures stoners into her house with weed and eats them. Meh. Entertaining, I guess, sort of, a little, maybe.
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Entity

Decades ago, in the Russian woods near an abandoned asylum, four bodies were found. Now, a documentary crew goes in to explore. Blue-toned video, night vision, and people screaming during video glitch effects ensue. You know the drill by now.
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Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

The Final Project

These people take the"no cameraman"ethic of"found footage"films even further, to"no editor". This appears to be a group of banal college students with no acting experience at all who went to an empty house and improvised a horror movie (albeit one without any horror), then taped all the footage they shot together and called it done. There are interminable, pointless passages of them talking to their professors in class, sitting in the car playing"Never Have I Ever", uneventfully exploring the house and grounds, all shot with a total lack of any kind of cinematic or even sound recording quality that makes the previous recordholder for"worst first-person shooter"I'd ever seen look like Citizen Kane in comparison. No plot, no attempt to build tension, until finally, over an hour into the movie, people's cameras suddenly do the deaddrop one by one for no explained reason and everybody starts running through the house and woods yelling each other's names. Basically, it's like a bunch of students saw"The Blair Witch Project"and said,"Hey, we could do that!", but they couldn't.
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The Companion

Low-rated, but I liked it. Postapocalyptic supernatural western with tough-as-nails survivors facing off against strange spectral apparations instead of zombies. Not great but I kind enjoyed it.
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Stir Of Echoes

Reminiscent of The Sixth Sense, although it was in production simultaneously and based on a Richard Matheson novel from 1958. Kevin Bacon is hypnotized into being able to see ghosts, does his best Jack Torrance as he tears up his house and backyard at the behest of the ghost of a murdered neighborhood child without explaining to his wife why.
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Backwoods

The capsule description for this"psycho yokels"movie starts,"A group of friends embark on a camping trip for a ten-year high school reunion."That's all you need to know. Whatever you're imagining comes next is as imaginative as what actually does.
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Humanoids From The Deep

Hilariously bad, phenomenally dated 1980 exploitation monster movie, from right before everything became either a slasher picture or"Hellraiser". Basically Jaws but with many sharks instead of just one, and the Creature From The Black Lagoon instead of sharks, and a whole lot more jiggling boobs. Lots of cool pyrotechnics, too.
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The Fearway

A gorgeous couple is chased by a menacing black car being driven by Prince down a desert highway, forcing them to take refuge in an odd roadside diner where the locals seem to be hiding a secret. A more entertaining failure than many. Plays something like an episode of one of the less successful horror anthology TV shows, indulges in a lot of familiar plot devices, and telegraphs its punches very badly, but succeeds in being somewhat watchable, on those terms, mostly because of a likable cast. Don't go in expecting more than that and you might find it a passable way to kill 80 minutes.
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Burning Bright

Seems a little like a TV movie, but kind of a good one. Irresponsible stepdad accidentally leaves daughter and autistic son locked in the house with a savage tiger during a hurricane. Panicky running, hiding, and lots of growling ensue. No, really, I kinda liked it. Don't expect much.
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The Secret Village

Another execrable movie that seems like someone's hobby project. A woman investigates a village where there have been numerous waves of ergot poisoning, only to discover a cult apparently killing people. As amateurish and poorly-made as it gets.
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A Texas Funeral

a stellar cast (Martin Sheen, Robert Patrick) talking in regrettable fake southern accents nearly sank this off-kilter magical realist southern family drama for me. It was ok, though. Family that fought on camels in the Civil War gets together for grandpa's funeral.
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Hunted

Very english criminals get caught burgling a country manor home, made to be prey in The Most Dangerous Game. I wouldn't go out of my way to see it, but, eh, for a captivity/pursuit pic, not too terrible.
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A Dream House

Gorgeous couple buys a beautiful house under very sketchy terms at auction. Typical haunted-house hijinx ensue, except with lower-budget effects. Amateur hour. Freevee seems to have a lot of these.
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Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

C.A.M. (Contagious Aggressive Mutations)

Supposedly a first-person shooter about the spread of a new pandemic that turns people into zombies (I know, where do they come up with such original ideas?) but I think it might actually just be a 90 minute recording of a video game.
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Movie Reviews » Favorite

Tales From The Loop [tv series]

Holy cow. Up there with the best of"Black Mirror"-quality writing, but less like the Twilight Zone and more like finding a trove of lost Ray Bradbury stories... Small-town life above a mysterious underground research facility. Old folks gather in barns and play fiddle beneath strange technological ruins. Kids wander through the autumn woods and find derelict robots and mysterious artifacts. The stories are humanist and character-driven, not technology-driven, and as well-written as any sci-fi I've seen.
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Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

JeruZalem

Google Glass™️ commercial disguised as a first-person shooter, as two students on vacation in Jerusalem run from the beginning of the apocalypse, which apparently consists entirely of zombies attacking, and living people turning into winged demons. I guess the filmmakers were concerned that people are so addicted to pop-up notifications, they wouldn't sit through a whole movie unless it contained them. Maybe this appeals to the sort of people who think that if you're running from zombies and your Google Glass™️ starts unexpectedly blasting music into your ears, the thing to do is spend the next five minutes yelling"Glass™️, music off! Glass™️, music off!"over and over, instead of just /taking the damn glasses off/.
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