Sci-fi-ish action/adventure supposedly starring Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, but actually, it's Die Antwoord steals "Robocop" and does about what you'd expect with him. No, really, it's actually them, playing themselves. It was kind of fun, better than I expected.
Unremarkable but reasonably entertaining younger cousin to "Predator" benefits from that little touch of Canadian production quality, which, as usual, means it's ever-so-slightly better than it should have been.
Mostly a one man show, as a host of a survival show gets dropped off for 5 days in the northern Ontario wilderness to survive on his own, filming it for his show, as it becomes apparent he's not alone.
Not a great movie by any stretch, and slightly predictable, but benefits a little bit from what it's not: it's not an annoying first-person shooter, they didn't show the monster too early or for too long. Both good decisions that too many filmmakers wouldn't have made that keep it a little more watchable than it would have been otherwise.
A better movie than you might think considering the best known thing about it is the genre-defining disco soundtrack. John Travolta as a Brooklyn teenager in the '70s who loves going to the disco. More of a character-driven, slice-of-life movie than it gets credit for being. Most strangely, for example, the dancing, featured heavily in the first two acts, doesn't go on to be the film's emotional center, and, refreshingly for the modern viewer, it doesn't end with him winning a big dance contest.
I'm not saying I'd go out of my way to see it, but a lot of critics liked it, and I get that. It's two hours long, and it passes quickly, it's a pretty tight piece of filmmaking.
It probably helps that it's been long enough that we're all thoroughly calloused to how bad disco sucks.
Faintly-better-than-it-should be comedy about two viciously competitive women who ingest an immortality potion, allowing them to do greater and greater damage to each other. Primarily saved by nice film-noir type production and good casting: Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, all playing against type, please a cameo role from an effectively creepy Isabella Rossellini.
Gritty, pretty watchable cop show. The acting is good. The first seasons are better and then it never gets bad, but isn't quite as good for the last few. Still fairly watchable though.
Decent slightly-better-than-TV-movie-quality dramatization of a 1970 true story about the efforts to teach a girl who'd been imprisoned without human contact until the age of 14 to learn to speak and socialize.
Decent enough action/horror B-movie in which a small-town sheriff is caught between a military takeover and a plague of homicidal locals after a plane carrying a bioweapon goes down and infects everybody with a virus that turns them into psychopaths.
Remake of a 1973 George Romero flick. I'd really like to see the original. I can't imagine his was this much of an action flick. But this one is decently watchable, if you're in the mood for this kind of thing. Stars Timothy Olyphant.
Surprisingly unengaging 1970 Jack Nicholson drama about a rough-hewn, misogynistic classical-pianist-turned-oilfield-worker returning home to his family. Not much of a plot. It seems to be considered a classic but I don't know why you hear about it so often. Maybe this is one of those movies that people who like French New Wave cinema or the like.
Matthew McUumellmahaye stars as a Florida fishing charter captain in a neo-noir crime thriller with a sci-fi twist that plays like a modern episode of The Twilight Zone. A little corny, definitely not great, but not bad, the acting kind of saves it.
Decent documentary on Roger Ebert and "At The Movies", by a friend of his. I've always liked Ebert as a critic, this sheds some light on him as a person. Has interviews with his family members, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, plus you get to see an outtake where Gene Siskel calls him an asshole, which, you always knew must've happened behind the scenes, but never thought you'd see it.
Australian for "OITNB".
Womens' prison drama plays it fairly straight and gritty, doesn't have OITNB's perverse humor. Decent, though, with good acting. Maybe it's Australian for "Oz".
Goofy, mildly amusing Cartoon Network Adult Swim news parody segment repackaged as a series on Tubi. Fairly funny, although more in a "chuckle" kind of way than a "laugh out loud" kind of way, with cameos from virtually everyone you've seen play a supporting role in a comedy show in the last 15 years. Plus a recurring segment with Ray Wise as a clueless, grouchy old-school commentator, so, as Wise's presence usually indicates, there's a certain baseline that it does maintain. I enjoyed it well enough.
Funny enough, if you like Sacha Baron-Cohen's type of humor. It's not nonstop hilarity but definitely has some laugh-out-loud moments. A big plus is that they added the character of his daughter, played by an eastern European actress who is every bit as funny as he is, which helps a lot. I don't know where they found this woman.
An assassin uses mind-transfer technology to carry out assassinations with other people's bodies. Decent enough outing from Brandon Cronenberg, who's still got his dad's high-concept pretensions (in a good way) but seems to be getting better at his own execution. A bit slow moving, but fans of his contrived-seeming but reasonably interesting other feature "Antiviral" will be familiar with the pacing. Might not be for everybody, but I found it watchable enough.
Elijah Wood, whom I always seem to like, goes to visit the father he's never known (Canadian character actor Stephen McHattie from Pontypool and a whole lot more) at his remote coastal Oregon cabin, and after somewhat of a slow start, what seems like it's going to be a horror movie turns into a low-grade but somewhat fun, twisted neo-noir in the post-Tarantino tradition. I liked it fine, no regrets about watching it. I believe neither Wood nor McHattie have yet let me down at this point.
Not-as-bad-as-it-should be little indie horror with a fairly original premise: with no explanation, just a statement that it is so, a shapeshifting serial killer must repeatedly kill people and assuming their forms and memories, leaving their desiccated bodies hidden at a remote farm. He falls in love with a young woman and repeatedly tries to insinuate himself into her life, dealing the whole time with the rate at which the bodies he assumes decay.
Not terrible, for what it is. Not that good, but I'll call it "watchable" because it really should have been so much worse.
It's a Marvel superhero movie.That generally says it all, in my experience.
Somehow these big Marvel superhero movies remind me of Michael Jackson's adult career: get a bunch of big-name luminaries together with a big budget to expertly craft something that screams "blockbuster", and yet still, somehow, manages to be less than the sum of its parts—the writing just isn't exceptional, it's formula dressed up with big names and glitzy production. . And everybody for some reason thinks it's great, except me.
Basically watchable, for a special-effects superhero action blockbuster. But for as much talent was involved in making this movie, that's a crime.
This is not a very good movie, but, I will say, it's about ten times better than I expected it to be. I never like Kevin James nor the track record of Adam Sandler's production company, that made this, but rather than being the truly stupid pile of garbage I expected, it's actually—once it gets going, which takes quite a while—a moderately watchable B-grade action comedy, if you don't go into it expecting more than that.
I'm really surprised. Never imagined I'd think anywhere nearly that highly of it.
Decent drama about the politics behind a morning news show and the network that puts it on. It's not top-flight entertainment like "The Larry Sanders Show", nor is it a classic behind-the-scenes drama series with memorable characters like "Mad Men" or "The Sopranos"—and it sure isn't even anywhere near in the same league as "Network"—but the acting is good, and the writing is fairly gripping, every time a season ended I wanted it to go on.
Alright sci-fi action thriller about a spectacularly gorgeous model (Grace Van Dien, great-granddaughter of Robert Mitchum) who ingests an experimental drug, intended to protect humanity from the increasingly toxic atmosphere, that causes her to undergo strange mutations. Soon the scientists are after her. There's guys with guns, lots of running and jumping.
Surprisingly not bad. Visually well-done, high production values without going too far over the top, and adequate acting to pull it off. Deserves better than the 4.7 stars it has on IMDB, at any rate.
Gritty fantasy show based on a Nail Gaiman about ancient gods fighting it out in modern-day American with the "new gods" of commercialism and technology. A very strong start to this Bryan Fuller adaptation, including a smattering of topnotch actors and some really well-cast cameos, disappointingly doesn't pan out as the season wears on. Never worse than good, the show nonetheless loses the first few episodes' tight plotting and gritty tone, gets talkier and more meandering, as what I hoped would be a tight miniseries turns out to be an ongoing series and kind of loses momentum. Tubi's run frustratingly only includes season 1 for now, ending on a cliffhanger, and worse, I understand Bryan Fuller left after that season and subsequent seasons aren't as positively reviewed. Color me all around kind of disappointed. It started really strong. If this had been a solid 6 or maybe 8 episodes of…
Gritty (for Hollywood) tale of a day in the life of speed freaks. I suppose this movie is alright. Despite being cast full of actors I don't like much (Jason Schwartzman, John Leguizamo, Brittany Murphy, Mickey Rourke) it pretty much catches them all at their relative best, doing a pretty good job at bringing full lives to the kind of sketchy characters we've all seen out of the corner of our eyes once in a while, and mostly avoided interacting with. The Hollywood attempt at "gritty" is better than most such. Also, short cameos from the always disturbing Peter Stormare and Debby Harry as a tough-as-nails lesbian liven things up.
I watched this once before, long ago, and recalled liking it, and though it's up and down I came out of it once again thinking I kinda liked it.
Another in a long line of "first contact" films that owe a debt to "2001: A Space Odyssey", but a decent entry in the arena. A lone astronaut on a 10-year-mission to find what's been broadcasting mysterious signals from Neptune. Not bad, it was an alright watch even if conceptually a touch derivative.
Amusingly, "Neptune" appears to have been filmed at Pyramid Lake.
Odd, fun little sci-fi/light comedy about an alien landing in an old man's flower garden in Pennsyvania. Ben Kingsley, Jane Curtin, and Harriet Sansom Harris, still a heavy hitter in sci-fi over 30 years after she freaked us out on the X-Files episode "Eve", play a bunch of old coots who nobody listens to, caring for a space visitor who doesn't talk but manages to express some strange things he needs to get his craft off the ground again. Pretty well done, pleasantly quirky, and a fun watch. I liked it.
This unnecessary but not-completely-dreadful sequel keeps a lot of the visual style of "30 Days Of Night"—a movie I'm pretty fond of—so it scores points by me for that. This moves the action first to a gritty, dark Los Angeles, and then onto a gritty, dark vampire-filled ship bound for another hapless small town in Alaska, as the vampires have spread nationwide and a small band of gorgeous, tough-as-nails humans fights a losing battle to kill as many of them as they can.
Whereas the original leaned horror, this is more of an action movie, although with heavy duty supernatural elements. This is basically a "horror movie" in the same way "Predator" is a "science fiction" movie. IE, it's not, it's just dressed up like one, although the costume is pretty good.
But, you know, it's fairly well directed, even if there's not a whole lot to the story…
Reasonably agreeable redemptive comedy about a progressive woman who gets a job turning around a porn magazine. Lots of charismatic actors. I've spent worse 90 minute stretches in front of Tubi.
Fairly watchable Canadian early 2000s Twilight Zone-type anthology. Lots of recognizable faces & reasonably respectable actors involved (David Paymer, Miguel Ferrera, Mare Winningham, a million more. That sort of caliber.) Quality is uneven but some of the stories are pretty watchable and they occasionally pull off a good ending.
Strangely, hosted in the Rod Serling-type narrator role by Henry Rollins. No effort is made to have him seem anything like Henry Rollins, suggesting what the Twilight Zone intros might have been like if Rod Serling seemed less like he was looking forward to a martini and more like he was thinking about beating the shit out of you.
Decent enough sci-fi, well-made, despite the too-obvious influences of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Solaris". A lone worker on a moon base prepares to wrap up his 3-year stint there when he discovers unexpected company. Sam Rockwell does a decent job carrying 99% of the dialog, and all the action, in several different roles.
Low-key but kind of charming indie sci-fi (barely), about a humanoid cyborg trying quietly to fit in in human society. Quirky without being annoyingly so. Has a wonderful avant-garde-leaning soundtrack with tropicalia music and Meredith Monk-type whoops.
British near-future dystopian sci-fi romance. A couple in a society where relationships are tightly regulated by electronic bracelets that control whether they can touch each other or not is informed that their relationship has expired and they must move on, and they're not happy about it. Could have been worse, sometimes the British have a way of making movies not be absolute crap. On the less interesting end of watchable, but, basically watchable, for an indie flick.
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