Fox and His Friends

1975 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular circus performer loses his job when his boss/lover is arrested. He scrounges up some money to play the lottery, wins, and is then manipulated by his titular friends.

Another happy German movie. Well, if your idea of happy is closer to devastatingly bleak. Parents renting this to show their children because they think it might be a sequel to The Fox and the Hound will certainly be unhappy. It also has nothing to do with this children's book:

Unless, of course, that children's book has a lot more penis than you'd think by looking at the camera. It's possible, I guess. That pig looks a little randy. But yes, there's an awful lot of penis in this movie. One wonders if Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this and starred as the titular loser as an excuse to show his penis to a bunch of people. I didn't realize that as Fassbinder as Fox until I looked it up. He's fine as an actor, but I thought he was a portly gentleman. El Hedi ben Salem, one of Fassbinder's boyfriends and the star of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, makes a brief appearance in this one to as a "Moroccan." Speaking of homosexuality, here's a question. Should I have been shocked at a kiss in the first five minutes of this movie between Fox and the circus guy? And if I was shocked, what does that say about me? Keep in mind that it was kind of an odd moment for a kiss anyway. But it's 2013, and I'm not sure if I should be shocked with an onscreen kiss between two men, especially with the amount of gay porn I watch. Fox says "When I have fun, I want to have regrets." He's a tragic character who has a little fun in this movie and, I'm guessing, a whole lot of regrets. Fassbinder tells his story with a fair share of dramatic irony. I don't think there are a lot of people who could watch this not knowing that Fox is being used by people and that his lottery winnings are going to end up being his downfall. It's a lot like those stories you hear about people striking it rich and ending up with ruined lives. This is a movie about how people, regardless of their sexual proclivities, will use other people and about how money corrupts. It might not be interesting all the time and seemed a little long to me, but there is a lot of penis.

The Truman Show

1998 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Truman Burbank begins to realize that he is the star of a reality show that people have been watching since his birth.

I love the great premise here and think it's wonderfully prescient, but it's hard to ignore the movie's flaws. First, there's Jim Carrey. I'd love to see this exact same movie with somebody who isn't Jim Carrey, somebody not nearly as recognizable. Carrey, as you'd probably expect, overdoes things a little bit. Another issue is that this spells everything out for the viewer a little too much. This could have been cleverer if the audience would have figured out the movie's secrets right along with its protagonist. The worst comes at around the halfway point of the movie where Cristof is interviewed, a scene that treats the movie audience like morons. The fact that they take one call which happens to be Truman's true love interest is also a little hard to swallow. And then there's the camera work or perspective of this thing. It seems like nobody could make up their mind whether the camera should be in the reality show or a more traditional third person thing. Still, there's something fun about watching one everyman's existential collapse. Watching the extras in Truman's world and the producers of the show try to hold everything together is also a lot of fun. As waterlogged as this movie seems at times, there are more than a few great moments. The scene where Truman reunites with his father is especially magical, goosepimple-inducing. This completely artificial thing is being manufactured, but Cristof's reaction is so good as he orchestrates and makes art out of somebody's life, like a fist-bumping God. Speaking of God, is this a metaphor for religion? I think it might be, but I've never heard anybody complain about it. Cristof is played by Ed Harris who isn't one of my favorites, but he's really good here. Carrey's fine, too, and would play that everyman perfectly if he was less Jim Carrey. You do really root for his character, especially when he's trying to construct a picture of his lost love from magazine pieces. There's just something so romantic about that. This is a good movie, but it's frustrating knowing that it should have been a great one.

Dead Ringers

1988 twin movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Twin gynecologists have this great system worked out where the more extroverted one finds women and has a sexual relationship with them before growing tired of them and passing them onto the introverted one. It works great until an actress comes along and not only finds out what they're doing but becomes the object of one of the twin's obsession.

In my head, I always think that Cronenberg's movies are too bleak. And then I think, "Wait a second! A lot of my favorite movies are pretty freakin' bleak!" So I don't know if it's the bleakness that turns me off. This one is as bleak as the others, and it's also cold, clinical, but there's still a lot that I like about it. First, you've got a pair of performances by Jeremy Irons that are just stunning. Unless Jeremy Irons actually has a twin brother who plays opposite him in this movie. I'm too lazy to look it up. The differences in Beverly and Elliot are subtle, but I had little trouble telling them apart because of the nuances of Irons' performance. And when he pukes into a shrub? Or when he says, "And some orange pop!" near the end of the movie? It's just the sort of acting perfection that you don't get to see very often. The movie's score by Howard Shore is also great, kind of a throwback to classic movies. And I like a lot of what Cronenberg does with color, especially those striking red surgical outfits that stand out in a movie that otherwise seems tan or blue. But so much of this movie is kind of boring and feels heavy. It feels like you're carrying something bulky and wet around with you for a couple hours, and although the story is shocking, emotionally complex, and eventually tragic, it just doesn't really inspire you to feel much of anything. This is worth watching because of Irons' performance and the mysteriously haunting (and apparently true) story. And those gynecological instruments were pretty sweet, like something you'd see in, well, a Cronenberg movie.

The Muppets Take Manhattan

1984 Muppet movie

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: fell asleep, but drowsily said 18/20 when asked; Dylan: 13/20; Emma: 16/20; Abbey: 18/20; Buster: 20/20)

Plot: Kermit and the gang, after the success of a musical production performed at their college, go to the titular borough to try to get the show on Broadway.

Why is more disturbing for me to imagine Kermit (a frog) engaging in coitus with a human female than with a porcine one? Or is it just disturbing that I'm thinking about that at all? Or is it just really disturbing that I have been kept awake at night thinking about it and can't stop myself? This isn't my favorite Muppet movie, but the voice work (50 Muppet characters voiced by 6 guys if my counting is correct) and puppet manipulation is always enough in any Muppet movie to make it worth the time. There's just something exhilarating about seeing these characters on the screen. Usually, it's a more-the-merrier situation, and the climactic big show/wedding scene at the end, with hundreds of Muppets including some recognizable faces from Sesame Street that got Buster excited brought out the giggles. Jen was just excited to see Muppet Babies, so excited that she fell asleep immediately after and started drooling all over the couch while sleep-singing the theme song from that cartoon. As expected, the movie's really funny although not all the gags are going to work. You get the feeling with some of the material that the writers half-expected some of the jokes to be flops though, and that adds to the fun. I also liked the songs in this one.

Here's a list of my favorite Muppets:

1) Dr. Teeth
2) Gonzo
3) Lew Zealand
4) Swedish Chef
5) Animal
6) Floyd, bass guitar
7) Waldorf
8) Statler
9) Zoot, sax player from the Electric Mayhem
10) Kermit
11) Crazy Harry
12) Beaker
13) Sam the Eagle
14) Bunsen
15) Fozzie
16) Janice, the Mayhem guitarist
17) Mahna Mahna
18) Rowlf
19) Rizzo the Rat
20) Beauregard
21) Camilla, Gonzo's chicken girlfriend
22) Scooter
23) Miss Piggy

Am I missing any notable Muppets?

Save the Green Planet!

2003 Korean movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Some guy with some emotional problems kidnaps business executives because he believes they are aliens planning a takeover of the titular green planet. A private investigator and a young cop try to find the latest kidnapped rich guy and the culprit. Meanwhile, aliens might be preparing an invasion.

This movie took a little while to grab me. Once it did, I enjoyed its inventive style, quirkiness, and twists. It's the type of movie where you sort of think you know what's going on, and then you realize that you're not sure what's going on. Fun ride. It's got some blood and torture, but it's also got its fair share of black comedy. And there's a message in the mess about our violent culture, a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a couple covers of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I liked the guy who played the disgraced detective, a guy with enough cool he made me want to get my own brown leather jacket and lose some of my hair. The movie's plot might frustrate some because it's a little all over the place, and this shifts from one genre to the next in ways that may give you a wryneck. You've got a little romance, a tale of childhood trauma, the torture porn stuff, the comedy, a crime/mystery thing, a revenge story, and some science fiction shenanigans. At times, it's even fairly emotional. And there's a great scene where a guy shoots bees. Expect the unexpected when you dive into this unique movie.

Aliens

1986 sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Ripley's convinced to travel with some soldiers to the planet from the first movie to check on some colonists. They have to square off against a bunch of Xenomorphs.

This replaces the chilling atmospherics and almost raw poetic and almost elegant creepiness from the first movie with non-stop action. And as far as non-stop action Hollywood blockbustin' action goes, James Cameron nails it. This pretty much takes the ideas from the first movie and increases the quantity while sacrificing the quality. This is bigger, bloodier, and louder, but if the first movie is a knockout, this is like a violent and exciting uppercut that looks great on the television before replays show that it didn't connect with anything. And Ripley's underwear fits a little better. The minimalist music that worked so effectively in the first movie is replaced with dull, predictable stuff. The space scenes look terrible compared to the first, odd since this comes about seven years after its predecessor. The characters run around like living and breathing stereotypes. There's a black guy chewing on a cigar, a bunch of asshole marines, an ultra-tough Latina, Paul Reiser's villain. They're Hollywood clichés except for my favorite character in this--Lance Henriksen's android Bishop. Bill Paxton is awful as one of the space marines and was apparently told that he needed to screech all of his lines. As much as I hate cats, I wasn't happy with the kid Newt who replaced the cat from the first movie. With this collection of characters, it's not hard to see why I was rooting for the titular aliens pretty early in the proceedings. Sigourney Weaver's character turns into Bruce Willis--taping space guns and flamethrowers together and discovering her inner-badass. Actually, I guess she retains her hair in this movie, so maybe she doesn't quite turn into Bruce yet. I was surprised to learn that she was nominated as Best Actress for this. She's at her best as Ripley here, but is it a Best Actress worthy performance? Maybe she was nominated for the scene in the elevator where she screams, "Come on, God damn it!" I've decided that I'm going to do that every time I use an elevator from now on. Don't get me wrong. This is a mostly entertaining movie even when it feels a little too ludicrous. Cameron knows how to put together an action sequence, and the last half of this movie is relentless action--just action piled on top of action, an orgy of action! It's a great action movie, but that's a little disappointing since its predecessor approached something a little closer to great art.

Supposedly, there's a subtext here, and this is a Vietnam allegory. I don't know anything about that. I didn't learn about Vietnam in school.

The Chaser

1928 silent black comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Harry's wife, possibly persuaded by her mother, decides to divorce the good-for-nothing. The judge decides to teach him a lesson instead and orders the husband and wife to reverse roles. This doesn't work out well for Harry who decides to end his life, and when that doesn't work, he goes golfing. It's almost funny!

No, actually it's not very funny at all. This was the second of a trio of movies that Langdon directed after being a very successful silent film comedian. Unfortunately for Langdon, nobody liked them and his career was ruined. I can't recall seeing Langdon in anything else and decided to give him a go, suspecting--after a little research--that I would enjoy the movies he directed more than the stuff that's supposed to be halfway decent. That third film, Heart Trouble, is sadly a lost one, by the way. Harry Langdon doesn't have the personality of a Chaplin or a Buster or the likability of Harold Lloyd. In fact, I would almost say that he's unlikable. The bits in The Chaser are either poorly timed or just not funny at all. As an actor, he overcooks the comedy while trying desperately to be as stone-faced as Keaton. Check out a scene where he's jumping up and down on a porch, really for no reason at all other than to set up another visual gag with inexplicable cats that will have you scratching your head more than laughing. Or when he shakes his hat "comically" during an almost-funny scene featuring what he believes to be the undead. There's an earlier excruciatingly long scene in which he's trying to get an egg for his wife. You watch and think, "Man, for as long as he's setting this up, the payoff better be something great." And then you're disappointed because it's only almost great. So why did I end up liking this? I like how Langdon took risks, taking the humor to some pretty dark places. Divorce really shouldn't be funny, but marital issues had been used in early comedies before. But an extended series of failed suicide attempts forty years before Harold and Maude? One of those gags had an extended shot of Langdon lying on the floor under a sheet. I mean, for a really long time, you're just staring at a frozen screen. It's risky stuff, and it might have been funny if it had just been lengthier. I also liked this movie because of a sneaky subtext. Langdon is very obviously making a movie about impotence, another daring move for the late-20s. So while this isn't a great 1920's comedy that should hoist Langdon up there with the big three silent comedy stars, it is a fascinating little movie with some neat ideas.

Monsters University

2013 prequel

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 18/20; Emma: 17/20; Abbey: 17/20; Buster: 19/20)

Plot: Awkward and definitely non-scary Mike, since a field trip to Monsters, Inc. as a little fellow, has always dreamed of being a scarer. Sully's the son of a former all-star scarer. They meet in college and with the former working as hard as he can to make up for a lack of natural talent while the latter gets by solely on his, they don't initially get along. In fact, their disagreement escalates to the point where an accident gets them thrown out of the scaring program. They have to join a fraternity of oddballs in order to enter a scaring contest and get back in the program. Then, the whole movie sort of borrows the plot of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise only without Curtis Armstrong.

Look at all those potential toys on the movie poster up there! At least they're almost all new faces. With the exception of the two main monsters and Randall, Pixar fought the urge to force a bunch of characters from the first movie into this thing. A lot of them make appearances, but they're on the periphery or maybe the periphery of the periphery. Waternoose, for example, is only seen briefly in a picture, and the details changed about him were funny. Roz and Ratzenberger's Abominable Snowman might be a little forced, but they not in the thing long enough to be any more than a gag. I went into this experience with low expectations. I wasn't thrilled about a sequel (well, prequel) to Monsters, Inc. anyway, and after the abysmal Cars 2 and the mediocre Brave, I just didn't have high hopes for this one even though the possibilities in this Monsters world really do seem endless, a well that I'm sure the Disney people wouldn't mind dipping into again and again with a television series or a bunch of sequels. This isn't upper-echelon Pixar exactly, but it looks like they're heading in the right direction. For me, a prequel should really deepen your understanding of the characters, allow the characters that you already feel like you know and love to develop and grow. This story does that with Sully and Mike very well, and it makes the friendship we see in the first movie something a little more special. Randall's developed as well, albeit more generically, and Buscemi does a great job taking a little edge off the voice since his character is way less confident and malicious and a lot, well, dorkier. Goodman and Crystal are good, too, and so is Helen Mirren as a new character--the sort-of villainous Dead Hardscrabble. Love how that character moves, and the sound effect added to her walking. The animation is a lot better than what we saw in the first movie, especially with the backgrounds and setting details. The first movie pretty much takes place in one setting, and it looks plastic at times and after a while is a little redundant. The ancient buildings and the foliage on the Monsters University campus allow for a lot more texture variety. There's almost nothing spectacular about the setting details in that first movie. Here, the backgrounds are really lovely, the Pixar people building on the photo-realistic details we're getting in CGI cartoons these days. The story itself won't blow away anybody who has seen any number of underdog stories on film, but there was a nifty unexpected twist at the end and the morals of the story--stuff about friendship and teamwork--are great and, like the best Pixar stuff, filled with heart. The new characters are mostly welcome additions, and some of them are really funny. The movie's a lot of fun, at least when you're watching it for a first time, and there are a couple scenes that are even exciting without being as goofy (or as long) as that door sequence from the first movie. A dramatic scene near the end of the movie is very well done. Oh, and there's one shot of Mike and Sully sitting beside a lake under a full moon that people will want made into a poster. Beautiful.

Here's my updated list of my favorite Pixar movies, something that I could more than likely change depending on my mood:

1) Toy Story (bonus for being the first/sentimental reasons)
2) Up
3) Finding Nemo
4) Ratatouille
5) Toy Story 3
6) The Incredibles
7) Wall-E
8) A Bug's Life 
9) Monsters, Inc.
10) Monsters University
11) Cars
12) Toy Story 2
13) Brave
14) Cars 2

I'm not really confident in that ranking. 1-6 could all shuffle a bit. 7-12 could shuffle. I'm really unsure where to put Wall-E. I'm confident that 13 and 14 are in the right place though. Regardless, it's still a remarkable resume from the Pixar people.

Oh, the short, a cutesy love story about umbrellas. It wasn't bad. I watched most of it thinking that it was really lazy. "This is just live action with some animated faces on the umbrellas," I thought. I'm still having trouble believing that it was all animated. They're just showing off. The story for this one was the sort of thing you'd see in a silent comedy, only with inanimate objects.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

2006 horror comedy musical

Rating: 15/20 (Libby: 18/20; Fred: 17/20; Carrie: 19/20; Josh: didn't rate)

Plot: A fast-food chicken franchise builds on a Native American burial ground. Amidst protesters, those Indian souls take possession of the foodstuffs and eventually the workers and customers. Poultrygeist!

What a terrible punny title. The intention with our little bad movie club, obviously, is to watch a bad movie and make fun of it. Troma doesn't make unintentionally bad movies exactly. They understand their capabilities and the filmmakers are proud of what the disgusting and sometimes downright tasteless stuff they put on screen. And sometimes, as is the case here, they sneak in a movie that could actually be described as good. This accomplishes everything Lloyd Kaufman and his writers set out to do. Josh put it best: "Fun for the whole family: racism, sexism, fat people, geeks, lesbians, h[censored], [censored], handicaps [almost censored that one, too], white trash, rape, shit, vomit, and boobs." And, of course, a whole lot of cock. It's trashy, often looks stupid, and could possibly offend hippies, animal rights activists, Native Americans, liberals, black people, people with good diets, Middle Eastern peoples, women, and really anybody else. This pulls no punches, unapologetically and gloriously. And yes, there is the "choke the chicken" that you could have predicted before the movie even started. At the same time, there's some shrewd satire about our appetites as a society, both our literal appetites and our entertainment appetites, as well as some expected and bitter swipes at the (admittedly, fish-in-a-barrel-y) fast-food industry. The jokes are stuffed into this thing, and while a lot of them are terrible--some funny because they are terrible--a lot of this made me laugh the kinds of laughs that you almost hate yourself for. And did I mention that Poultrygeist is a musical? Because it is! With some standard musical choreography! The songs are good enough to sound like something from Rocky Horror and the lyrics are funny enough. The real fun begins when the mayhem does, and there are a few lengthy sequences where Kaufman and company are very obviously just seeing how many different ways they can think of for a zombie chicken to kill a human being. The violence is nearly orgasmic. Unfortunately for a lot of viewers, they'll miss out on the berserk zombie chicken mayhem because they'll turn the movie off during an extended scene where a bulbous man with gastrointestinal issues makes a mess of a bathroom. That's if they got past the creatively juvenile use of a Native American zombie finger in an opening scene featuring a guy with something other than an ax in his other hand. No, you don't want to know. This is a movie that surprises from its beginning to its end, and you might have as much fun watching it as it looks like the people who made it must have had. It's a real blast but definitely not for everybody. I wouldn't recommend it to my mother-in-law, for example.

Motorama

1991 road trip comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Ten-year-old Gus decides to run away from home. He does it in style though, first stealing a Mustang and fashioning some leg extenders so that he can drive the thing. He starts out on an Odyssey across the country, stopping at participating Motorama gas stations to collect cards for a game in which he'll win a buttload of money by spelling out M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. Unfortunately, he can't find the R. He does find a lot of eccentric characters, however.

Drew Barrymore is on a lot of the poster/dvd covers for this movie, and she's in the movie for literally about ten seconds and gets no lines.

This is one of the stranger coming-of-age movies you'll ever see, not surprising since it was penned by screenwriting genius Joseph Minion who wrote both After Hours and Vampire's Kiss. It's a surreal episodic little adventure that you're not sure is a comedy until you start laughing. There's a great cast. Jordan Christopher Michael plays the kid, this really unlikable little runt who steals, curses, and litters. He reminds me a little too much of Macaulay Culkin's character in the Home Alone movies though. John Diehl plays a dopey gas station employee named Phil who's got this interesting way of trying to impress God. The beautiful Jack Nance is hilarious in his small role as a hotel manager. Only Nance can deliver the line "I forgot to tell you. . .if you catch any squirrels, give them to me" like he does. Garrett Morris and Michael J. Pollard are funny, and both Meat Loaf and Flea are in this movie. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Meat Loaf, Flea, and Eraserhead have been in another movie together. Best of all is seeing Sandy Baron--one of my favorite Seinfeld characters, Jack Klompus--who plays a really creepy guy. All kinds of odd little details--currency that is very clearly not American, a road map that is very clearly not accurate, arm wrestling, multiple occurrences of auxiliary characters thinking the protagonist is a grown man or even an elderly man, and a trip through a Purgatory called Essex which features a Klan lynching and a priest being killed. The coolest scene might be where Gus meets another character, a much older character, who has also been playing the game. This movie has a similar rhythm to After Hours and might jerk around a little too much for its own good, but fans of existential coming-of-age road movies might want to check out this little gem. 

Shaye and Kiki: Fun Bubble

2004 compilation

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Shaye Saint John and her charred doll Kiki have a series of mundane and repetitive adventures.

This is a compilation of about thirty short films featuring the titular characters. Here's the character's background: Shaye was a model who was involved in a car accident that disfigured her, so she had to replace a lot of her parts with mannequin parts. Or something like that. Shaye is the creation of performance artist Eric Fournier, now sadly deceased. These shorts definitely fall in the not-for-everybody camp and are alternately hilarious and horrifying. It's a maddening hyperkinetic dada art assault on at least two of your senses. The repetition alone is enough to drive some people batty, but the cheap computer effects, daffy minutia, and often terrifying imagery are what would make things unbearable. In fact, if I ever get the opportunity to prop somebody's eyes open and forcefeed their brain things like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, this is now on the list. I'm not sure if this stuff was created to say anything about society or not. Shaye is shallow enough to match a lot of cultural phenomena in our reality-show culture though, so there might be some lunatic fringe satire going on here. I laughed and probably had a nightmare or two that I don't remember, so I'm considering this thing a success. I mean, there's a scene where Shaye is in a washroom and the creepy doll keeps banging on the window. It's the stuff of nightmares, a scene easily more horrifying than I've seen in any horror movie. And then you get a repetitive scene where Shaye is trying to get a present indoors in the hilarious "Bake, Shake, Explode" which makes me laugh just thinking about it. And Shirley Temple 2000! made me laugh out loud. If you like gams, ever wished that the movie Mannequin was created under the influence of LSD, and like to feel really really uncomfortable when watching movies, this might be for you. Hypnotizing weirdness! One gripe: Grammar problems! Missing apostrophes annoyed me.

Halloween

1978 horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A lunatic escapes from an asylum, returns to the childhood home where he murdered his sister, and starts killing off teenagers who are having sex. Donald Pleasence chases him around.

Carpenter is so skilled at doing a lot with not much at all, and that gift's on display here. This is cheap and doesn't even really have a story that is all that intriguing. It does deliver the scares, mostly the things-jumping-out-at-you kind of scares, but it's more effective at delivering a creepiness, creepiness with a barely-discernible sense of humor below the surface. This definitely has a little style. The long shot at the beginning with the first-person perspective works really well. I'm sure that sort of thing had been done prior to 1978, but I'm not enough of a cinephile to know when. This also has so many wonderfully choreographed sequences, like one where Jamie Lee Curtis and her friend are talking with the latter's cop father and then pulling away while Pleasence walks up and introduces himself before Michael Myers drives past in the background. It's all one shot and so perfectly timed, and it's got this gritty effortlessness. Myers is very creepy when lurking around, but should psychotic killers really drive around in station wagons? And at what point did they decide to make him freakishly strong? I really liked a shot where the camera lingers on Myers while he's standing and admiring his work killing Bob, the guy with giant glasses. Following that, Myers pretends to be a sheeted ghost, and I still can't decide if that's the stupidest thing I've seen recently or one of the coolest. Jamie Lee Curtis? I'm not seeing any acting potential here ("The keeeeeeeeyyyyys. The keeeeeeeeyyyyyyss!"), and she looks like she's about thirty years old. Her character is worse at killing psychotic killers than Curtis is at acting the part. Why does she keep throwing the knife away? The character is good at locking herself into places. Either that, or she doesn't fully understand how doors work. That's one of the many horror moves in this that either were already clichés or that would become cliches. Also, I wouldn't hire Jamie Lee Curtis to babysit any of my children. Donald Pleasence is his usually awesome self here and lends a certain elegance to the whole thing, best exemplified in his delivery of the line "He came home." Pleasence is taking this movie so seriously, even when his character is parking in a handicap space, and if I see the sequels (I never have, by the way), it'll be because of him. The music, as famous as those "Tubular Bells"-sounding piano tinkerings in the theme are, is occasionally grating. I didn't remember a clicking sound in the theme and thought something was wrong with my device. When I found out it was supposed to sound like that, I was annoyed. What I did like were the cheesy sound effects accompanying some of Michael Myers' moves. Loved that kung-fu electronic springy sound when Myers leaps onto a car, and although I can understand the argument that the sound effects were goofy, I was glad there was a sound effect every single time the killer appeared in the movie. Something else I liked was the complete lack of enthusiasm in whoever was the voice of a teacher during one scene. I haven't been able to put a name to that off-screen role unfortunately. This movie works as a cautionary tale, like a lot of slasher pics do, a warning to teenagers that premarital sex can be deadly. This movie predates AIDS by a few years, but when my peers and I first stumbled upon these horror movies where teenagers were having the sex, the disease, in its abstractness, was almost more terrifying than any Michael Myers could possibly be, no matter how many times he seemed to be dead but got back up. For us, it was almost like Michael Myers put a face on the disease. I think that's why nobody I grew up with had sex before marriage.

Silver Linings Playbook

2012 best picture nominee

Rating: 15/20 (Jennifer: 19/20)

Plot: Pat, a substitute teacher who spent a few months in a mental institution after beating up the man his wife was sleeping with, moves into his parents' attic. He tries to figure out a way to reconcile with his wife, a difficult task because of a restraining order. He meets a friend of a friend who happens to be a friend of a friend of his wife. She's got problems of her own, and the two figure out they're in a romantic comedy. Things progress from there.

Boy, was I wrong about this one. One, I assumed that I wouldn't like it, an odd prediction since it has Bradley Cooper in it. Two, I thought for sure it was setting up for a Shamalammadingdong-esque twist where protagonist Pat was just imagining all of these people. I'm still not entirely sure I want to believe that everything that happened in this movie actually occurred in the movie's reality. I want there to be something a little deeper with this story, I guess. The main character is bipolar, so I guess hallucinations or delusions wouldn't really have fit. Still, that cop who keeps popping up at just the right moments, Chris Tucker's character--the lone black man in Philadelphia, it seems--showing up inexplicably in all these places, all the pieces falling together so unnaturally. It's hard to take at face-value, isn't it? As pure rom-com cotton candy though, this is really pretty good. I really liked the performances. Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence play characters who really should be unlikable, but their performances here are a testament to how good looking they both are. I'm not sure I'd call what Lawrence did best-actress-award-worthy, but she's good and really easy to like and root for. And there are all these gratuitous shots of her posterior which the Academy Awards people must have enjoyed. Bradley Cooper might have been a little too wide-eyed at times, but he wears a trash bag better than anybody I know. De Niro and Jacki Weaver plays his parents, the latter more in the background but very funny when talking about her crabby snacks and homemades. De Niro's character is sneakily nuanced, his performance barely under control. He's good though. It's a great ensemble cast that really helps this thing swim, and the thing just was refreshingly entertaining despite the pain that some of the characters were suffering. It does kind of hit a point--the "parlay bet" scene--where things get a little too unbelievable, and after that, it all feels a little too much like a movie. Again, those pieces fall into place a little too neatly. You really almost expect that you're being set up for a devastating ending to this thing, at least for a handful of the characters. But they're all so likeable that the Hollywood endings slapped on this ends up being satisfying.

Or maybe the complete lack of a twist is the twist? That this so comfortably embraces its Hollywoodness should maybe be applauded.

Here's a twist--I'm giving movies Bradley Cooper bonus points from now on. In fact, I might do it retroactively. I'll have to find my A-Team write-up.

The Brainiac

1962 Mexican horror/sci-fi hybrid

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular baron del terror, if you go with the Spanish title, is burned in 1661 for being witchy and generally foul. He finds himself in 1961 via comet where he gets his revenge by killing off the descendants of those who executed him. Some astronomers try to stop him.

This gets a 15/20 from me because it's the most ridiculous monster that I've seen in a very long time. See that thing on the poster? That's not the drawing of a child who stumbled upon this movie on cable and then drew a picture of the thing. That's actually what the guy looks like! Those rubbery finger things move a little like lobster claws, spongy lobster claws. And his face, very obviously a mask, inflates and deflates, almost as if somebody is pumping air into it to make it look more alive or something. And that forked tongue ludicrously extends in a way that I assume is supposed to be menacing. This picture doesn't quite do the thing justice:

So the special effects aren't very good. Just check that burning baron in an opening scene and, after way more astronomy than you're likely to need, a comet. Or when the comet lowers a giant rock to the ground with a visible string. Or the use of what seems to be a flashlight turned on and off while pointed at the baron's face--when he is in his human form--to make him seem hypnotic since he's supposed to be, you know, hypnotizing people. But there's just something special going on here. There's a great atmosphere created, mostly with the lighting. Early on, there are people in black hoods against a backdrop of almost nothing, just a few fake trees. It reminded me of the setting for a Universal monster movie. There's also a great scene with the monster's shadow on a wall as he approaches a victim in a sheer nightgown. And despite the goofy look of the monster, you've got to appreciate his modus operandi. There are so many awkward silences during which the baron in his human form and a character who is about to die just stare at each other. And when he doesn't have a living human handy, he's got a goblet full of brains to snack on. There's also an actress I really enjoyed watching in this--Rosa Maria Gallardo. Boy, oh, boy. In a lot of ways, The Brainiac is just your typical B-movie; however, it's one of those type of movies I won't forget about which makes it stand above the others. Director Chano Urueta might have been going for cheap thrills here, but he accidentally stumbled upon something nearly magical.

Warm Springs

2005 polio movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The guy from this movie has his political career and family life put on hold when he is diagnosed with polio and becomes a paraplegic. He retreats to the titular spa to rehabilitate. The movie sort of leaves things hanging, but I'm pretty sure he became president.

Cory recommended this about six years ago, and I kept putting it off because I thought it looked boring. There's a disturbing lack of kung-fu, and it doesn't have the FDR on Eleanor action that I hoped it might; however, I did enjoy the thing. It's certainly well acted. Branagh abandons Shakespeare (unless Shakespeare somehow wrote this) to play the future president, and he's just really really good. It's hard to explain why he's good. I mean, he nails the emotional ups and downs of FDR, but a lot of actors could have done that. What I like about Branagh's work is that he does these little things that humanize the character, taking FDR from some guy you've read about in history books to a guy you get to know as a human being and see grow in the context of the story. Cynthia Nixon plays Eleanor, that hot little number. Now, I'm sure she nails Mrs. Roosevelt's mannerisms and vocal inflection and all that, but she kind of annoyed me. Don't get me wrong--Nixon's good. She also does a good job with the human side, like in a scene where she discovers that her husband is boinking some other broad.  David Paymer and Tim Blake Nelson are also good although the latter plays a character who I am convinced is just Tim Blake Nelson. I didn't know while watching the movie, but I learned that they used authentic locations and stuff  along with actual disabled people to tell this story, lending the whole thing more of an authenticity. Branagh was actually swimming in the same pool FDR swam, staying in the same cabin, and driving the same car equipped with hand controls so that he could drive feet-free. I haven't verified it, but I think Branagh was also wearing FDR's underpants. I was also impressed with the effects used to make Branagh's atrophied legs. At least I assume that he wasn't using FDR's actual legs. And I'm also assuming that he didn't do something to himself to make his legs actually look like that. Daniel Day-Lewis might have done something like that. With simple direction and the great performances, there were a few scenes that managed to move me. I liked a lot with the Roosevelts' marital relationship, and a scene with a little girl walking nearly brought a tear to my eye. Good movie even though it has less Nazi werewolves than the other version I saw.

The Frighteners

1996 horror-comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Frank Bannister uses his ability to communicate with ghosts to con people. One cloaked ghost is flying around making numbers on people's heads and killing them, however, and Frank has to find a way to stop him before he's put away for the crimes.

I was trying to describe this movie to somebody I work with. I couldn't really articulate what was good about it, and I couldn't really articulate what was bad about it. It's enormously entertaining though. It's that manic sort of entertainment, the kind that can only be created by a charged and creative and loopily unpredictable mind like Peter Jackson's. The Peter Jackson who directed this--as opposed to the one who created the boring King Kong remake or all those really long movies about little people walking around New Zealand--is the same Peter Jackson who directed Dead Alive, Bad Taste, and Meet the Feebles. Here, he gets a little star power in Michael J. Fox who is every bit as likable as he is in every single other thing he's done, even when he's not surfing on top of a van. It's a little hard to buy Fox as any kind of a bad guy. He's sort of an anti-hero here, a guy who is playfully conning but nevertheless conning a community out of money by taking advantage of a gift he received in an accident that took his wife's life. Right off the bat, Jackson's asking you to root for a rather unscrupulous guy. But that guy gets to run around on those little feet of his and make big eyes and say, "Whoa!" a lot, so you end up rooting for him. That, by the way, is what Michael J. Fox does best. He'll be remembered as the guy who could run around and say, "Whoa!" I wonder if Jackson would have made Fox a hobbit? I guess we'll never know. Also really fun to watch is an unhinged performance by Jeffrey Combs of Re-Animator fame. The character doesn't make a lick of sense, but he's hilariously portrayed and as eccentric as any character you're likely to see. I was really impressed with the special effects team behind this. The ghosts were cartoonishly goofy, almost like something you'd see sitting next to you at the end of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, but it was fun watching them splash through walls, manipulate the settings, and suffer disfigurements. The Reaper-esque bad ghoul is effectively sinister and visually cool whether he's rubberizing the carpet or wallpaper (not sure how he makes the setting elastic like that) or floating around as a Cape Monster. There are a lot of fun periphery characters including John Astin's ghostly The Judge and a character played by the son of last year's Torgo Award winner, Jake Busey, a guy who almost won his own Torgo in 2011. A lot of the movie really shouldn't work. Or maybe I should say that a lot more of it shouldn't work because there is quite a bit that seems a little too messy. Peter Jackson spills his soup quite a bit with this thing. Still, it entertains from beginning to end with a strange energy and creative story and was really hard not to like.

Barry recommended this just about two years ago.

Shaun of the Dead

2004 zombie comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Zombies! The titular slacker hero has to survive and save his girlfriend and best friend.

The whole zombies-in-a-world-where-everybody's-kind-of-already-a-zombie thing, with characters living life obliviously, has been done before in other zombie movies, and this loses its rhythm a little in the second half of the film. And with what seems to be a bottomless supply of zombie comedies out there these days, this might seem like just another in a superfluous pile. And the title of the movie is a pun which just doesn't seem like a good idea. Still, this one manages to stand out. First, it balances its slapstick and more sophisticated gags really well as well as its comedy and drama. There's a love story that both works and doesn't get in the way of what the audience really wants to see--people being chased around and sometimes eaten by zombies. And the characters act precisely how slackers would act during a zombie epidemic. For me, the visual humor works a lot better than the humor in the dialogue. I actually sided with the girlfriend about Nick Frost's character. I did like the line--repeated, like so many in this movie--about how it was the poor guy's "second album [he] ever bought." But the real genius in this is the visual humor. There are always things going on in the background of shots, a ton of dramatic irony, and some really fun foreshadowy moments, my favorite being the parallel episodes in a pair of tracking shots as Shaun takes a trip through his neighborhood on the way to a store. Some rhythmic zombie beating and remote control t.v. surfing are other bits of genius. The zombies looks great, and you've got to appreciate the little magic trick they pull off with impaled Mary in Shaun's backyard. You could say this is a little formulaic, but it still manages to feel so fresh, a real credit to the writing and brand of humor. And it's a rare zombie movie that might benefit from repeated viewings.

You could probably talk me into bumping this up to a 16/20 if you wanted.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Duel to the Death

1983 kung-fu flick

Rating: 15/20 (Fred: 17/20; Libby: 16/20; Bryan: dnf)

Plot: A Chinese guy and a Japanese guy travel to Holy Sword House to see who is the greatest swordsman. Ninjas attempt to stop them.

[Spoiler Alert!] In one of seven climactic scenes, the main bad guy has his head chopped off. It sails through the air and gets impaled on a tree limb. Then, it speaks: "You will die!" Then, it explodes!

That's right. We messed up and watched a movie that wasn't bad at all on Bad Movie Club night. Not only was it not bad--it's a borderline kung-fu classic! First, it's got ninjas galore. They're ninjas that pop out of the ground, throw bombs, fly into scenes via kites, spin webs, turn into women, and in one jism-inducing sequence, morph together a la Power Rangers into one menacing giant ninja. These are ninjas who fight dirty. There are some incredible, physics-defying fight sequences in this, and luckily for dumb kung-fu movie fans like me who get a little bored with verbosity and too much plot, this is almost wall-to-wall action funkiness. The two swordsmen are so quick, and with all those ninjas, a handful of monks, a pair of chicks, and a bunch of other underdeveloped characters, there's often a bunch of action stuffed into the screen at the same time. If you do require things like character development and plots that make sense, this might frustrate a little. The battle for swordplay supremacy is easy enough, but there are so many twists and turns in this and the confusing character motivations make things really confusing. Gender confusion, a dubbed bird, a legless guy, and puppet show foreshadowing gum up the works. But none of it matters because you don't watch kung-fu movies for things like plot and character development. You watch because you want to see people kill other people in poetic and beautiful ways, and Duel to the Death delivers the goods there. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.

The Awful Dr. Orlof

1962 Jesus Franco movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular awful doctor and his deformed henchman Morpho abduct women in order to use their skin to repair his daughter's scarred face.

This was the first of a trio of films I decided to watch after the passing of the normally-pervy Jesus Franco. Here, he's Jess Frank and in this, one of his first movies, there are only signs of the future perversity. That would come later when he uses any of these pseudonyms:

Joan Almirall, Rosa M. Almirall, Clifford Brawn, Clifford Brown, Clifford Brown Jr., Juan G. Cabral, Betty Carter, Candy Coster, Terry De Corsia, Rick Deconinck, Raymond Dubois, Chuck Evans, Toni Falt, Dennis Farnon, Jess Franck, Adolf M. Frank, Anton Martin Frank, Jeff Frank, Wolfgang Frank, Manfred Gregor, Jack Griffin, Lennie Hayden, Frank Hollman(n), Frarik Hollmann, B.F. Johnson, J.P. Johnson, James Lee Johnson, David Khune, David Khune II, Lulu Laverne, A.L. Malraux, Jesus Franco Manera, J.F. Manner, Roland, Marceignac, A.L. Mariaux, Preston Quaid, P. Querut, Lowel Richmond, Dan L. Simon, Dave Tough, Pablo Villa, Joan Vincent, Robert Zinnerman, C. Plaut, and James Gardner.

This is fairly straight-forward 60's horror with some weird editing, askew camera angles, and cool cheapo black 'n' white photography. It's got plenty of atmosphere, and it's got Morpho who would have ended up an iconic horror film character if this was the only horror movie ever to have been made. And it's got Howard Vernon as the awful doctor, and the more Howard Vernon you've got in a movie, the better your movie probably is. There's also a great soundtrack with some psychedelic percussion music and other bits of creepiness that add to the atmosphere. The storytelling isn't great, the main plot borrowing heavily from Franju's Eyes without a Face or Teshigahara's The Face of Another. There's awkward backstory, and there's some of the worst dubbing I've ever seen. The awesome falling dummy near the end makes up for that though. This isn't typical Franco or a terrific horror movie, one that is about as scary as the Universal monster movies that came around 30 years earlier. But it does have a nice feel and is interesting viewing just to see how much potential this director had.

O.C. and Stiggs

1985 teen comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular high school friends terrorize the Schwab family and the suburban middle class in general.

I know, I know. Giving this much-maligned Robert Altman inexplicable teen comedy that may or may not be a parody of other teen comedies a 15/20 is going to get me called an Altman fanboy or something, but I really dig this movie. Like a lot of Altman movies, this is light on plot. It's breezy, a series of non sequiturs and oddball moments and half-heard lines, a hodgepodge of the bizarre. It's ornery Altman, one that might laugh at the same fart joke he's already heard three times. But you know what? This movie is downright entertaining and very funny. There's an absurdist slant to the whole thing that makes it, although still very much an Altman bastard of a movie, very different from other movies. You almost have to appreciate a movie that isn't going to appeal to anybody who might be the intended audience--not the people who like raunchy teen comedies like Porky's or the people who liked Altman's movies in the 70s. The rapport of the leads--Daniel Jenkins and Neill Barry, neither who went on to do all that much--is great. There's a natural connection that helps hold this whole mess together. Ray Walston gets a great part as gramps, and Dennis Hopper is in there playing a crazed Vietnam vet like only Dennis Hopper can. It's also got one of the coolest movie cars you'll ever see, a car the characters buy specifically because it will be really loud and disrupt the lives of ordinary people. And that's kind of how this movie is--it's disruptive jab in the eye. In a good way! Nearly brilliant and undeniably stupid, this baffling little film would be almost impossible for me to recommend to anybody but myself and fans of King Sunny Ade.