They Live

1988 science fiction movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An unemployed former wrestler exchanges his kilt for jeans and looks for a construction job. While crashing at an urban campground for the homeless, he stumbles onto a sort of rebellion centered in a small church. The government comes with powerful bulldozers, and the former wrestler finds a nifty pair of sunglasses that enable him to see the truth. He runs out of bubblegum.

The famous "I'm all out of bubblegum," "You know, you look like your head fell on the cheese dip back in 1957" (I rewound to hear this one three times to make sure I caught it correctly), "Mama don't like tattletales," and "And who are you, little fellow" are all lines that show what happens when you let Roddy Roddy Piper write his own dialogue. And no, I do not mean that as a criticism! It's taking the whole 1980's action movie one-liner thing, something I've always blamed on Arnold Schwarzennegar, to its logical crux. I just love what John Carpenter does with a limited budget here. The glasses effects are eerily fantastic, the switch to black and white and those expressionless alien faces combined with the subliminal messages make for some classic sci-fi horror with, more than likely, some heavy-handed satire. Personally, I don't mind heavy-handed satire. What does annoy me are action movie cliches, and this has more than a few of them as well as what is probably the longest and most absurd scene of extended fisticuffs in science fiction movie history. I think the fight between Piper and the black guy was probably longer than most of Roddy Roddy's wrestling matches though not, if I'm remembering correctly from back when I watched WWF wrestling (its golden age, in my opinion), nearly as long as some of his speeches. Piper, to be honest, makes the transition from ring to movie role much more smoothly than I expected. He plays Average Joe just fine and his action hero chops are as good as any other 80's superstar they would have thrown in there. Pretty cool sci-fi flick with several great scenes and a few that need to be reconsidered or completely removed before they do a remake of this in a few years, probably with Vin Diesel.

Enter the Void

2009 trip

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A drug dealer is shot and enters the titular void, an act which apparently involves a lot of floating and watching his sister have sex. Flashbacks reveal childhood tragedy and flashforwards reveal other things. Apparently, it's a Tibetan Book of the Dead thang.

Gaspar Noe makes incredibly happy films. In this one, he shows the viewer things they probably never thought they'd see and likely wouldn't want to. Queasy cinematography and hallucinatory hijinks, a true assault on the senses, make this unlike anything you've ever seen before unless you happened to see the only other Noe move on my blog, Irreversible. Noe attacks your eyes and ears and intentionally, I suspect, working to make the viewer a little nauseous, all while showing you things that you appreciate because you haven't seen anything like it on the screen before. I watched a great deal of this bloated guided tour through the world's most dismal kaleidoscope with mouth agape. And yes, I'm aware that there's a misplaced modifier in that sentence, but this movie took away my ability to fix things like that. Even the opening credits floored me, electric and shocking, especially when compared to the syrupy, more reflective pace of the movie. The mostly first-person perspective is unique, and Noe takes the viewer over the city, through light bulbs, deep into the past, despairingly into the future, into human beings, and pretty much anywhere else he feels like taking us. And looking at this from a purely technical standpoint, I don't see how he does it exactly and would label this a masterpiece, though not always an easy-to-watch masterpiece. The problem is that the movie is way too long, and the acting, especially from the kid who plays the lead, is bad in distracting ways. Both of those issues really take away some of the power this movie could have had. It's still an experience though, one that I'm not likely to ever forget, and I would recommend it to my more adventurous readers. Warning, however: It's not really very happy.

Visioneers

2008 dystopian comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: George Washington Winsterhammerman is a lowly employee at the Jeffers Corporation in the not-terribly-distant future. People begin exploding from stress, and when impotent and disenchanted George begins experiencing some of the warning signs, he looks for a way to prevent it from happening.

This feels way too much like something that I've already seen a few times. It also doesn't feel like a very complete movie. I like Zach Galifianakis fine as a bumbling everyman, but his story is a sketchy one, and I never really feel like I have a grasp on the world in which he lives. Or sort of lives. There are some nice enough ideas here, and I like what the movie has to say even though it's been said so many times already in other movies.

But I am glad I stuck around to see Aubrey Morris, that guy from A Clockwork Orange and The Wicker Man (the good one, not the comedy with Nicolas Cage), make an appearance. He's great!

Bunny and the Bull

2009 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Agoraphobic Stephen revisits a trip through Europe with pal Bunny by discovering artifacts from the holiday around his cluttered home. The flashbacks include visits to museums, a visit to a bed and breakfast with a stuffed bear, and the meeting of a Spanish waitress who tags along.

A road movie through a damaged subconscious. If you don't like quirkiness, have an aversion to British neo-Python absurdity, or just despise anything inventive, you can go ahead and stay away from this. Wackiness keeps the viewer from really feeling the characters. They're goofy sketches instead of fully-realized flesh 'n' blood folk, but that's probably my only real complaint. The characters are likable though. Visually, this is wild and a lot of fun, like a Michael Gondry daydream, and although I wonder if it's something that would be funny for very many people, it made me laugh a few times. The stream-of-conscious gags don't come quite as rapid-fire as in the Paul King television show The Mighty Boosh, but fans of that type of humor will have a head start here. It's not all whimsy, however, because there's this melancholic undercurrent throughout this poor guy Stephen's story, and although you don't really know how things will end up, you know there will be tragedy. What you'll remember about this is that set design though, a blend of cheap animation and live action. It never looks expensive, but it does look like a labor of love, and it's just so much fun watching the camera zoom into, around, and through some of these sets, taking the characters in all these unexpected places. I was a little stressed when I started this one, and it melted a lot of that right away. It was definitely hard not to smile while watching this one.

Oprah Movie Club for March: Paprika

2006 anime

Rating: 15/20 (Mark: 12/20)

Plot: Some fiend's stolen a dream machine, and it's up to a scientist and her titular alter-ego to save humanity. Or something like that. Honestly, I wasn't nearly smart enough to figure out what the hell was going on here.

But I liked what I was looking at! This stretches the elastic boundaries of what animation can do, dips deep inside the old noggin, scrambles things around, and leaves you baffled but aesthetically pleased. I thought the story was frustratingly incoherent, but that might not be the movie's fault. Then again, my brother's reasonably intelligent and was also confused, so maybe it was the movie's fault. He's not seen Inception, a film that seems to have borrowed a lot of this one's ideas--Jello floors, elevator rides through the subconscious, frog musicians. I have seen Inception which might have given me an advantage although I did have an extra obstacle in trying to avoid thinking about Leonardo Dicaprio. The guy's just dreamy. On second thought, I'm not sure there were frogs in Inception. I think part of the problem for me (and again, keep in mind that I'm a dumb guy) is that I had trouble understanding the motivations of most of the characters. There's a character we never really get to meet who befuddled me, and the villain's logic never really made much sense to me. But again, I did appreciate the manic creativity and goofy surrealism, and cartoon nudity always is good for a bonus point or two. I don't see how there could have possibly been enough room on a storyboard for all the ideas that show up on screen here. You get walking refrigerators, giant headed guys, butterfly girls, talking dolls, musical animals. The screen's just filled with this stuff, and even though a lot of the imagery was redundant, I looked forward to seeing that parade. As much as I enjoyed the cartoon visually, however, I hated it aurally. The soundtrack, other than the cute and unhinged parade music, was irritating. A lot of times, I watch a movie like this (Synecdoche, New York; anything from Czechoslovakia; You've Got Mail) and think that if I just watched it a second time, I'd understand it all a lot better. I think I could watch Paprika a dozen times and still not figure out what was going on.

OK, what other Oprah Movie Clubbers got a chance to see this one? What did you think?

Hugo

2011 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: An orphan living in a train station tries to repair a robot that his father found in storage at a museum. He befriends the daughter of a crotchety old toy shop owner and tries to avoid being caught by the station inspector while he keeps the train station's clocks running.

Just a stunningly beautiful work of art and a lovely ode to silent cinema, especially the work on a director I won't mention even though it doesn't seem to stop anybody else who writes or talks about the movie. Now the big surprise in this was already spoiled for me because I'd read Brian Selznick's beautiful novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Knowing the story's secrets didn't ruin it for me, and I still teared up, probably because of Ben Kingsley's wonderful performance as that director whom I will not mention. This is a touching movie with plenty of humorous bits, mostly provided by Sacha Baron Cohen's station inspector. The movie's got whimsy and heart, and it's also gorgeous. France is France, but I also loved the way the camera maneuvered around the clock gears or the people packing the train station. I also really enjoyed the recreations of the early films, too. This is a great adaptation of a very cool young adult book and a movie seemingly made for fans of movies.

Buster and Chaplin footage is in this, and Django Reinhardt also makes an appearance. Well, an actor playing Django Reinhardt.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising

1989 dark comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Dennis is an advertising executive, and he's very good at it. Unfortunately, he's got a bit of writer's block and can't find the correct words to sell a pimple cream. He has a nervous breakdown, gets a pimple, watches in horror as that pimple becomes a second head, and is transformed into something more sinister.

This was pretty brilliant, subversive and provocative, and really funny. Richard E. Grant is so good in a role that would have been played by Nicolas Cage if Hollywood decided to make a remake of this. He's unhinged and delirious and spits out these terrific lines faster than you can grab at them. Like really good women's wrestling videos, you want to slow this down to make sure you catch everything. Grant had me at "I am an expert on tits--tits and peanut butter," but his later story about a grandfather molesting a wallaby sealed the deal. And the way he eats fish sticks during one scene? It's legendary, and that's not a word I use lightly. Of course, pretty much any movie featuring a talking boil is going to be right up my alley, but one made by the director of Withnail and I? I'm going to be all over that! The special effects for that were impressive, too. I loved this movie although it's probably not for everybody. Its message is timeless, just as scary now as it would have been over twenty years ago.

The Terminator

1984 Schwarzenegger movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: In the distant future (I think, 2007), machines have taken over the world. The titular robotic assassin is sent back in time to terminate a women who will later give birth to a guy who will mess up the robots' picnic. Some other guy also travels back in time to try to stop him and maybe to convince him to put on a pair of pants.

I don't know how old I was, but I have a fond memory of watching this movie at some relative or step-relative's house following a game at Busch Stadium, the second one, that ended with a diving catch by Willie McGee. I slept in this person's basement and found this on the television when I was probably flipping through the stations in search of nudity. The next day, I got to try out a pogo stick. The step-relatives had a cute girl who lived next door, and I'll bet she still thinks about how impressive I looked on that pogo stick. Or in those yellow shorts that were a little too short.

But I digress. That has nothing to do with what this movie's all about which is actually Arnold Schwarzenegger's penis. It's probably the second most exciting Arnold Schwarzeneggar movie moment right next to that scene where he fights a guy in a bear suit in Hercules in New York. Soon after naked Arnold arrives in 1980-something, he punches through a guy and steals a guy's clothes. Now Arnold, if you haven't noticed, is a fairly large man. I'd think it was pretty lucky that he found a random guy whose clothes fit him so well. Speaking of random guys, that's really what James Cameron is good at here--allowing random guys to shine. There's the "Hey, man, you got a dead cat in there?" guy, the "That son of a bitch took my pants!" guy, and the guy on the telephone who says, "Hey, man, you have a serious attitude problem," all which makes it seem like Cameron has never actually met real people. Arnold never acts like a real person, but he surprisingly plays an emotionless robot really well and has a screen presence that makes almost every moment of screen time he has exciting. The plot's a little on the goofy side, and the flashback sequence special effects and the general story line, almost thirty years later, are very dated. I kept expecting Doc Brown to run out and yell at Arnold and Michael Biehn for messing up the space-time continuum or something. I did like the stop-motion terminator action at the end though. Solid sci-fi entertainment. I have not, by the way, seen any of the sequels. I think I did eat a Terminator cereal at one point though, but that could all be in my imagination. Phallus-shaped marshmallows?

Meatball Machine

2005 science fiction movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Aliens infect humans and transform them into beastly robotic fightin' machines. They meet, they fight, and then the victor gets to eat the loser. One nondescript guy tries to either save the woman he loves by destroying her or prevent his own destruction.

This might be the first movie on this blog that has a scene where a woman is violated by tentacles. I've been looking for a movie with a good tentacle rape scene so that those with that particular fetist (apparently, there are loads of them) will stumble upon my little blog. I've now got Hunger Games fans, women's prison exploitation aficionados, and tentacle rape fetishists covered, and I'm feeling pretty good about the future of shane-movies.

Meatball Machine won't be mistaken for a good movie, but it does have its visually interesting moments, all done very cheaply--spaghetti wire shaking, junkyard costuming, phallic jello. The monstroids (have I coined a word?) are cool, and the violence is splattery if you're into that sort of thing. I couldn't care less about the plot or characters, and the filthy atmosphere, though intially kind of cool, grew tiresome. So did the climactic battle scene which I'm pretty sure is still going on. A tacked-on end scene that attempted to explain everything that happened was really dumb. It's almost like the makers of this wanted to make a movie only so that he could call it Meatball Machine, neglected to tell the audience anywhere in the movie why it was called Meatball Machine, and added an ending just to throw those words in there sometime.

Somewhat reminiscent, by the way, of Tetsuo, the Iron Man.

Women in Cages

1971 women's prison movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Pretty much the same as all the other women's prison movies.

So here's the deal: The most popular blog post of all time here at shane-movies is my write-up for The Little Mermaid. And it's not even close. So I tried to figure out why that's the case in order to figure out ways to generate more blog traffic.

At first I thought it was just an angry reader who just couldn't stay away and kept reading the The Little Mermaid post because he is worried his blood pressure might be too low. Then, I investigated further.

The words "horny teenage mermaid" appear right near the beginning of the post. And I could picture bloated sweathogs drooling in front of their computer monitors as they Googled "horny teenage mermaid" with their pants half-unzipped. It was easy for me to picture because I'm one of those guys. The words "sexual awakening of a young girl," "hot sea witch," and "Buddy Hackett" probably brought people to that post, too. And any combination of the words mermaid, vagina, sex, and saucy. Or, for the ladies, "nondescript prince."

Naturally, I started thinking about how I could, like a Pied Piper of movie bloggers, lead unsuspecting perverts to my little blog since it's been a dream of mine to hit the 10 1/2 reader mark. I don't discriminate, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a lot like the Christian church or the Statue of Liberty and will take anybody I can get with open arms. Maybe some bloggers out there don't want poor, tired, or huddled masses dirtying up their comments, but I'll gladly take 'em! And I don't want to limit that just to perverts either though I suspect three of my readers probably could safely be labeled "perverts" or at the very least derelicts.

So here it is. Here's the flute this Pied Piper is using to trick the masses into finding my blog. It's been 4 1/2 years, people, and I just can't be happy with 4 1/2 readers anymore. The Hunger Games + women's prison movies + nudity + "horny teenage mermaid" + Buddy Hackett? I don't see how this plan can fail. I thought about throwing in words like "naughty nurse action," "juicy sorority party," "throbbing," "waxy nips," spandex jumping jacks," "Duchess of Spain sunbathing," "MILF drinking a milkshake," "polka-dotted panties," "hot pudding wrestlers," "x-rated aquarium," "Kim Kardashian," "studly fireman," "naked shuffleboard," "salami treat," or "elderly spanking," but I figured that would be considered cheap.

And new readers? You can bet that all of the entries are just as good as this one!

Oh, Women in Cages. It's not very good, a lesser entry in the women's prison genre. Pam Grier plays a sadistic guard this time, and she doesn't wear the uniform as well as the prisoner garb she did in The Big Bird Cage. We get into blaxploitation motifs when she starts mentioning her life in Harlem. Smack at age 10 and working the streets at 12. It explains why she enjoys strapping half-naked women to large wheels or employing crotch burning though. "Crotch burning" is probably a word combination that will draw a certain crowd here, right? The story's not all that engaging, but you do get your obligatory shower scene, your obligatory catfights, and your obligatory torture sequences. Andres Centenara makes a very brief appearance but isn't on the screen enough to matter. This is a hastily-put-together production that is way too serious to be much fun. Corman produced. And here's the real poster which, as much as it might surprise you, isn't really a very honest depiction:

Viva Knievel!

1977 movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: After breaking into an orphanage, healing one of them, and flirting with a nun, Evel Knievel nearly dies in a motorcycle stunt while attempting to jump over cages full of circus animals. Well, he breaks his arm anyway. He impulsively retires. He's lured to Mexico and back into the jumpin'-over-things game because. . .well, I think it has to do with money. Leslie Nielson, however, wants him dead so that he can use his trucks to transport drugs into the United States. Meanwhile, Knievel tries to bag a newspaper reporter.

I had an Evel Knievel lunchbox as a kid. Actually, I don't know if I had one or not, but I'm going to go ahead and say that I did for the blog. The stuntman intrigued me, and this is without even getting a chance to see him in this movie or knowing that he had healing powers. That's right. It only takes about five minutes of movie before you get one of the most heartwarming and beautiful scenes in motorcycle stunt movie history when an orphan tosses away his crutches and says (I shit you not), "You're the reason I'm walkin', Evel. You're the reason I'm walkin'!" Brought a tear to my eye anyway. Evel Knievel isn't all heroic in this. In fact, a lot of the movie makes him look greedy and surly. He's mean to Gene Kelly. Poor Gene Kelly, by the way. What did he do to deserve this? He does deliver a powerful anti-drug speech while standing next to a nodding Frank Gifford in which he references Indianapolis and says, "Narcotics will make you blow all to hell!" I was convinced. Leslie Nielson plays the bad guy, cardboardily, and Lauren Hutton is the love interest/newspaper reporter. Also, Marjoe Gortner and his curly hair are in this. Marjoe plays a rival stuntman, and he's about the most interesting character in this thing, probably because not much of what he does makes sense. Of course, I was probably just distracted by that hair and his creepy eyes. Frank Gifford plays himself a lot more naturally than Evel Knievel who at times looked like he knew he was making a terrible mistake but that it would be worth it because a hell of a lot of lunchboxes were about to be sold. For those of you into motorcycle/car chases, the one that makes up the finale of this stunt-and-drama-filled extravaganza seems like it's at least forty-five minutes long. The most thrilling stunt, to me at least, was a spill from a wheelchair though. That might have been the only stunt that Evel Knievel, really not in his prime here, actually had anything to do with. I also laughed outloud when a child fell off a motorcycle. Note: I'm still trying to figure out if this is a real movie.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go not take narcotics.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II

2011 franchise finale (until somebody figures out a way to squeeze more money out of this character)

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Heroic Harry and his helpers hunt for Horcruxes while warring wizards wrangle. A guy with nose envy prowls around in search of Potter. It's like an elaborate and magical (read: Satanic) game of hide and seek. Meanwhile, barely pubescent boys' magic wands wiggle as they discover Hermione's cleavage, and combined with all the spells and supernatural silliness, there's enough to piss off the Christian church for years and years. A choir director is heard saying, "What? They're kissing each now? I thought they just performed magic!"

I don't remember what I gave the last boring entry in the Harry Potter series, but I'd like the series to be around a 14 or 15. It's solidly entertaining, and the actors do such a good job of bringing these characters to life. It's a shame Richard Harris couldn't stick around for the duration, but I really am glad they were able to get these things spat out while everybody else was young enough. This last movie is packed with action, and the special effects are really good. I love that opening shot with the black ghostly things hovering over and around Hogwarts, and the destruction of the school, so whimsically magical in those first few movies, is shocking. I don't like watching wizard duels nearly as much as I enjoy a good lightsaber battle, but at least there aren't any of those jerky-camera fight scenes like in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. I still think, despite this last book being split up into two lengthy-movie chunks, that things move a little too quickly at times. A lot of important characters die in these things, but the next big plot development has to be hurried along which takes away some of the emotional jolt. Snape's exit should have been a big emotional moment, and it's the one thing I really looked forward to after reading that last book. In fact, I might have given up on the movies if it wasn't for the anticipation of that scene. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I thought it was just another example of the makers taking movie shortcuts and taking away some of the power of that scene. Rickman's so good as that character though, and I thought it was cool that Rowling filled him in on his character's whole story after making him promise that he wouldn't reveal the secrets. Voldemort--is it just me or does his character become more comic the more we see him? He goes from the mysterious Villain with a Name You Can't Say to a bit of a doofus, doesn't he?

One of these weekends, I think I'll throw a Harry Potter movie marathon party, invite all of my friends over, and watch all eight of these movies in a row. I'd like to look at my ratings again. At the same time, it's nice to be done with all these movies. Maybe I should just move on with my life instead.

The Big Bird Cage

1972 women's prison movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Horny Terry is arrested for a crime she did not commit and sent to a prison labor camp for women. Meanwhile, some people who want to raise money to start a revolution get the idea to bust out a bunch of the women at the camp for their cause. The result? Mud wrestling!

How about that tagline--"Women so hot with desire they melt the chains that enslave them!"

So what are you really looking for in a women's prison movie? Sexy women? This has a few of those--Pam Grier at her toughest and the stunning Anitra Ford, a future Price Is Right gal. Nudity? It's got that, too, and not just with the aforementioned blaxploitation superstar or a woman Bob Barker would probably later sleep with. You get a shower scene or two, a genre favorite. You also get a really tall woman covering herself in lard and attacking another woman in a river with floating coconuts. Gritty and brutal prison life depictions? The titular bird cage is a giant rickety mill that gives the producers of this (yes, Corman's involved) an excuse to show sweaty and scantily-clad women climbing stairs and engaging in hard work. Perverse torture scenes? Check, including a great scene where Ford is chained and hung from her hair. How about action? Hell, yes! One only needs to point to the handful of scenes featuring mud wrestling, but there's also a terrific scene where Pam Grier and her boyfriend Django have a chicken vs. knife fight. And does this have the great acting you would expect from a feature like this? Why, yes it does. Sid Haig shows comic versatility as a revolutionary although it's not one of the most politically correct performances you're likely to see. Grier's just a presence. My favorite performance of them all is Andres Centenara as the cruel Warden Zappa. Love how he screams all of his lines with a chunky accent and kicks small animals. The best thing about this movie, other than all the nudity, is its tone. This isn't a movie that the actors or director Jack Hill is taking too seriously. I think it's hilarious how the amateur revoluntaries talk:

Guy: Me and the boys have been talking about the revolution.
Other guy: Yeah, like how to get it started and stuff.

The comic tone, the cool setting, and the gals-in-chains thrills make this a near masterpiece of the genre.

Battletruck (aka Warlords of the Twenty-First Century)

1982 Mad Max rip-off

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Some dudes got the titular vehicle and wants to use it to push everybody else around. A guy with a motorcycle and John Ratzenberger are not about to let that happen!

If this was the movie advertised on the colorful sci-fi-rific poster up there, it would really be something. Unfortunately, this one is just boring, both as a legitimate post-apocalyptic road warrior movie or as a B-movie/unintentional comedy. With the latter, you know it's obviously produced very cheaply and quite possibly sans script, but it's not quite inept enough to be worth the time of a bad movie aficionado. As the former? The colorful moments are few and far between, and the characters are some of the least engaging you're likely to meet. This is definitely a case where the bland title Battletruck fits a lot better than the bitchin' mayhem that could have been Warlords or the Twenty-First Century. The hero's humdrum, so boring that it's impossible to believe he can ever do anything heroic. The leading lady is homely, and the bad guy is more dull than he is evil. The battletruck itself is a monstrosity that is nearly as intimidating as Spielberg's 18-wheel antagonist in Duel. I did like this little creation of John Ratzenberger's, something that looks like it could have come straight from The Cars That Ate Paris:

That little slug bug turned out to be nearly invincible! Roger Corman, of course, produced this movie. It's not one I would recommend. My favorite thing about it is that everytime a character dies, they sound like they're trying to create the new Wilhelm Scream or something.

Hellevator: The Bottled Fools

2004 elevator movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: In a futuristic society where people get around via elevators, a Japanese school girl (I have to occasionally throw words like "Japanese school girl" together so that more people will find my blog when searching) gets in trouble not only for smoking but for accidentally blowing up a bunch of people. She enters an elevator which turns out to be the titular hellevator when a criminally-insane rapist and a criminally-insane terrorist who, for whatever reason, talks backward enter.

I was very intrigued during the first twenty minutes before stuff started happening. That first chunk of movie was a series of surreal vignettes, stylishly dopey with some cool sound effects and cheap effects that reminded me a little of Brazil or Tetsuo. There were zip-zipping businessmen and a robot dog brain, and instead of the weird horror movie I figured I was going to see when I popped this in, I was starting to wonder if this was a weird half-assed parody instead. The one-setting thing works while things remained odd and random. Once the criminals enter the story, things are still interesting, probably because one is just great at playing a violent twitching, screaming, and licking lunatic and the other talks backwards. Once a real story develops, it loses steam, and although it was still consistently entertaining, the never-changing setting began to feel a little claustrophobic. Several twists and grainy flashbacks later, I was more confused than interested in what was going on. I'm going to give director Hiroki Yamaguchi bonus points for doing an awful lot with not very much at all and for displaying some filthy creative spirit, but I wish the story and its characters were a little more interesting.

If I have a worst title pun of the year award, I don't see anything beating this. Hellevator? I'm not even sure why anybody would want to admit they saw a movie called Hellevator.