August 16, 2021 “Eyes Without A Face” (0 stars out of four) was a blindingly awful horror mess about a young man (Dakota Shapiro) suffering from agoraphobia who lives with an online blogger and struggling actor (Luke Cook) and they both secretly hack into the webcams of young women but soon come to suspect that one of them is a serial killer. Inept timewaster mashes your face in ugliness and amateurish sleaze for nearly two hours. It’s movies like these that make you feel like taking a shower. Allegedly inspired by the Billy Idol song of the same name but other Idol songs “Endless Sleep”, “Scream”, and (especially) “Dead On Arrival” are more apt descriptions of sitting through this. Continue reading →
August 15, 2021 “The Swarm” (** out of four) was a turgid melodrama about a feisty single mother (Suliane Brahim) who is determined to save her family farm from bankruptcy and begins a business of breeding and cultivating edible grasshoppers but she begins to grow an increasingly compulsive and self-destructive obsession with them while ignoring the plights and problems of her children (Marie Narbonne and Raphael Romand). Holds you in its grip thanks to Brahim’s strong performance but story is bizarre to say the least and never very compelling or moving. At least it’s better than the Godawful 1978 Michael Caine thriller of the same name. Continue reading →
August 14, 2021 “Crime Story” (** out of four) was an unfocused crime melodrama about a dying old man (Richard Dreyfuss) who discovers he has terminal cancer and attempts to seek retribution on the thieves who have destroyed his life while simultaneously trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Mira Sorvino) who has become a cop. Heavy-handed mixture of the slick and the sentimental never fully connects and catches fire. Dreyfuss is miscast as a hard-boiled gangster bent on revenge; Sorvino is good as usual but has played similar role too many times by now. Continue reading →
August 14, 2021 “Six Hot Chicks In A Warehouse” (* out four) was an excruciatingly stupid and trashy pulp melodrama about six women (Jessica Messenger, Sabine Crossen, Jade Wallis, and others) who are lured to a warehouse by an insecure photographer (Oliver Malam) and tortured and abused but they all conspire to turn the tables on him so they can survive and stay alive. You know better than to expect Oscar fare with a title like that but film doesn’t even provide much low-rent thrills or even S & M leaving you wonder who the hell this was actually made for. Filmed in 2017 and released now but should have been left to rot in a “warehouse” instead. Continue reading →
August 11, 2021 “Out Of Time” (**1/2 out of four) was a reasonably diverting sci/fi thriller about a gruff Army intelligence officer (Blake Boyd) and a world-weary female detective (Nadege August) who have to team up to stop three mysterious figures who have escaped from the Mojave Desert and start to wreak havoc around L.A. and threaten world domination. Mixture of fantasy, sci/fi, action thriler, and cop melodrama elements doesn’t fully gel but is overall fast-paced and the writing is sharper than you would expect. Highly derivative of many previous genre classics but overall worth making “time” for. Continue reading →
August 7, 2021 “The Suicide Squad” (** out of four) was a half-hearted sequel to the 2016 original about the crime-fighting squad (Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, John Cena, and others) who join the mysterious Task Force X and are plunged into the remote island of Corto Maltese in a battle against the vicious military and the villainous Thinker (Peter Capaldi) who are attempting world domination. Lots of action and visual effects but film lacks the spice and style of the underrated original and comes up empty; even Robbie who was dynamic in the original is more annoying than entertaining. Spectacular final half-hour compensates a little but film is numbing and overlong at over two hours. Continue reading →
August 7, 2021 “Playing God” (**1/2 out of four) was an engagingly frothy screwball comedy about two con artists (Hannah Kasulka and Luke Benward) who recruit their mentor (Alan Tudyk) to play God in order to scheme and scam a dying billionaire (Michael McKean) but things do not go as planned. Directed with bounce and flair by Scott Brignac and enhanced by an enthusiastic cast although it starts to run out of tricks after a while and starts to run out of steam. Still overall entertaining and worth checking out. No relation to the 1997 David Duchovny thriller of the same name. Continue reading →
August 7, 2021 “The Pit” (* out of four) was a pitiful timewaster about two retard rednecks (Les Stroud and Stacy Brown, Jr.) who fall into a hole and are trapped for 85 days in which they gradually go from lifelong friends to bloodthirsty predators willing to do anything and everything to survive. If you make it to the end of this dreck, you’ll likely know exactly how they feel. Poorly directed and made with unlikeable characters being the icing on the moldy cake. Similar story told much more skillfully and effectively in Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours.” “The Pits” would have been a more apt title for this one. Continue reading →
August 7, 2021 “Zone Drifter” (*1/2 out of four) was a slipshod futuristic thriller about a former soldier (Charles Conkin) who has to travel through a ravaged post-war wasteland full of trained killers while searching for his brother and begins to wonder whether he is still alive or not. Writer/director/star Conkin shows some good ideas and keeps the pace relatively brisk but he’s hindered by a very low budget and a derivative and overly familiar storyline. By this point, the future simply isn’t what it used to be. Viewers would best “drift” to watching “28 Days Later” again instead. Continue reading →
August 5, 2021 “Righteous Blood” (* out of four) was an unrighteous mess about a world-weary Western gunslinger (Michael Pare) who is on the run from the law when he saves a damsel in distress (Alexandra Amarell) from a vicious thug (Hoyt Baker) and they soon fall in love but find that walking off into the sunset together is a troubled road. Inept and inert; further sunk by weak production values and unfocused filmmaking. You keep constantly thinking back about what Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah may have done with this material. Even the usually dynamic Pare looks as bored as everybody else. Continue reading →
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