Dead Skill

Oh, I didn't expect this to be good, and just the first five minutes are enough to put anyone off, but I stuck it out... for some reason.

A kid's father dies, and he grows up to be a photographer. Randomly, his grandfather dies and leaves him a house and an old camera, which he loves and immediately uses, causing people to die a day or so later is horrible (amusing from an effects view) way. Turns out the grandfather was a psycho, and the camera trapped people alive inside a negative world, and he killed the father and trapped the man and his own son inside the negative world, and...

This is a great example of how to take an interesting premise 'camera captures people's souls', and utterly ruin it. I had a hard time getting through this movie, because it was so terrible and dull that I just couldn't keep my attention on it.

For some reason Ben Browder is in this, as is Ray Wise, but even their performances are not good. Still better than the others, but that bar isn't high.

Another crappy movie for the pile.

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Apocalips Now

Yeah, it's another of those big movies that everyone talks about, and now it's on my seen list.

Willard goes up river to find someone who went really up the river, and in doing so ends up up the river himself. While Kurtz is insane, every aspect of the army we see is just as crazy, which is partly the point, and seeing that and what trying to be sane does to you, drives you doolally as well.

Damn, but this is a well done movie. Although it could be taken as army propaganda, that view doesn't stay long. Coppola right deserves credit for this, the scenes are well shot and the performances are fitting. This was a movie I wanted to keep watching because of how well told the story was.

And the names, Marlon Brando (who's hardly in it, to be honest), Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, Lawrence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall...

I saw the Redux (so far longer) version. Well worth the watch.

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Yacob's Ladder

I've heard of this as a great horror movie. I love horror movies, so I definitely wanted to check this out.

Something happens to Jacob in Vietnam, and after returning to his normal life, he slowly sees strange things, weird events happen to him, and demons are around. And other members of his platoon are also suffering this, but investigation into what happen draws a little too much attention. Reality collapses around him, and images of his dead son haunt him. Will he ever find out what is going on?

Which I guessed early on. Because I've seen the same idea used elsewhere, so I could see it coming. And I think it works well enough, not too overplayed, and if you haven't got it yet, it does seem outre... but horror? I'm not feeling it. Not in the normal horror sense anyway. Mental trauma horror, maybe, but it's not like people are attacked. Or there's a slow build of anything threatening. Drama and mystery, yeah, suspense, definitely, but horror? It's not.

There's good acting, and there's nice camera work. The big effects are basically people moving their heads fast, which was overused when it was invented and just feels dated now.

...so, I'm probably missing something?

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The Beg Libowski

All right, all right. Everyone goes on and on about this, so fine, I've now seen it... And?

I doubt I need to talk about the plot, considering that everyone else has already seen this movie, most likely many times, and could tell me what happens. A wee tale of a dude that gets caught up in events that quickly spiral out of control before a final resolution that is typical for this sort of movie.

And by 'this sort of movie', I mean Coen brothers. This is a good Coen brothers movie, don't get me wrong. But what I'm not getting is why is this a huge smash hit over, say, Burn After Reading, which I was reminded of at many times in terms of 'little people caught up in big events'. As it is, I'm now putting this in my 'watched' pile, with no big intention to ever dig it back out for a rewatch.

The Dude Abides. Good for him. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got other stuff to do.

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Flunkinstin vs the Moomy

Well, I had Franky. And the Mummy. So why not this, the one vs the other?

In one movie, Victor F is a doctor of medicine and is slowly building a corpse in a basement and is intent on reanimating it. In another plot, his girlfriend brought back a mummy that mentally infects a professor to kill people to feed it life. After two hours, these plots finally combine for the last ten minutes and we have the title 'vs' we've been waiting for.

At least this isn't shaky cam or any other gimmicky video shooting style. This is straight forward camera set up, and I appreciate that. It's still a ridiculous movie that's far too long and stars nobody anyone will have heard of, but at least it doesn't make me want to throw up visually. The effects are all right, but mummy and franky are practical suits, but there's still nothing really here to recommend it.

Right, perhaps I should watch a good film now?

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May of the Dummy

How do you make a movie with two main guest stars (at least, I'm guessing one of them is a main star, he doesn't seem to have been in stuff I've seen), but not actually have them out of location so you can shoot the movie with a bunch of c-cast stars? Answer, a shaky cam movie!

Jack Wells is the most amazing man in the world evah. He gets the womens without trying (and surprisingly, the person acting him did not write the script or direct this). He is brought on to find out what happened to a previous expedition, so he joins a group of five people to wander into the desert, find a cave, and promptly fail to do anything competent. And, after 60 minutes of this 75 minute movie, find a monster mummy thing. Which looks decent enough, but clearly just someone in a mummy outfit. Then have a copout ending that doesn't mean anything.

So the stars in this movie are Danny Glover, who only appears in an insert shot, so all his scenes were probably shot in a day in his own room. And William McNamara, the guy with the camera in his glasses so we see a shot with an overlay and see occasional body parts, but only see his face in like three scenes, but otherwise is just ADR. Which was clearly done in a different time and place to the rest of the audio which sounds like it was shot with a can around the microphone.

The rest of the cast is expendable men, except for the one woman who of course ends up having sex with Jack Wells because of how world amazing he is.

Yeah. No. But I knew that going in, and just wanted to see something rubbish.

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Taimashin

It's manga time! This was something I picked up a while ago and only now got around to reading. Taimashin The Red Spider Exorcist.

This is weird supernatural horror... from Japan, so it's actually good. The first story arc has a young woman wandering around a city, getting attacked, trying to be with her boyfriend, and getting attack more. Fortunately, she now has Akamushi to protect her... who is a priest type character that is actually a spider. And he controls spiders. Hey, I said weird supernatural horror. In the other arc, a young girl (and I mean she's 13!) spots Akamushi and wants to be his bride, but although he's not up for that, he is drawn to her and finds out about her families history with the Laughing Face. Yeah, it gets weird.

One thing that's a shame about this is that it's in black and white. So many good Japanese horror manga... so many limited by a lack of colour. Greyscale can only convey so much.

I've gotten three volumes so far, and there are six to date (this being a regular monthly thing, I have no idea how many there will be). I will get the others, and recommend them to you.

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