Big Ass Spider! is giant monster movie comedy directed by Mike Mendez and written by Gregory Gieras. It stars Greg Grunberg, Lombardo Boyar, Lin Shaye, Ray Wise, Patrick Bauchau and Clare Kramer. Greg is a bug exterminator who gets bit by a spider. At the hospital, for a shot, he fails to chat up the nurse. While waiting in line to pay his bill there's some excitement. The morgue man got bit by a big spider which came out of a body bag. Broke ass Greg thinks he can trade his bill for some exterminator work and offers his assastance. The director of the hospital send Lombardo, playing the security guard Jose, to show Greg to the morgue. While the two of them are hunting the spider Major Ray and Lieutenant Clare show up with their military pals. They're chasing the corpse which got shipped out accidentally and wound up at the hospital. Turns out the spider is tainted with alien dna and it's got 5 stages to go through before it turns into a building topper. Bullets won't stop it but Greg has a plan. With the help of the delightful Jose they kill the beast and save the pretty Clare from being it's snack. I laughed a lot and had a fun time watching the monster spider gobble up the locals. The characters are pretty stereotypical but there's not anything wrong with that. The story is fun and some of the dialog is entertaining, especially the back and forth with exterminator Greg and Lombardo's Jose. That Jose was my favorite character in the movie. He was really funny. Well worth seeing, especially for Jose and that big ass spider.
Young Dee Detective: Rise Of The Sea Dragon is Tsui Hark's 2013 prequel to his 2010 film Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. In the prequel Dee comes to the Imperial City, assigned to the Da Lisi, and immediately has a run in with Detective Yuchi, who doesn't know Dee's been sent there under a special commission. There's a couple of odd things going on. A sea monster is attacking ships and a green man-sized creature is attacking people. Because Yuchi doesn't know Dee's real mission he has Dee tossed into jail after Dee saves the famous courtesan Yin from the green man-sized monster. He's a monster with a secret. Dee makes friends with visiting police doctor Shatuo who helps him escape. Empress Wu has assigned Yuchi the task of getting the sea monster. He's got 10 days to crack the case or it's off with his head. She's a real hard bitch that Empress Wu. She was the only female Emperor in China's history. Chinese history is often entertaining in a people killing people kind of way. You wouldn't want to cross the Empress, she nearly had Dee's head off at the end of the film. luckily for him he's got some smarts and he gets out of that predicament. He figures out who's back of the monsters and puts a stop to that with the help of Yuchi and Shatuo. There's a good story with lots of stuff happening all the time. It gets a bit melodramatic when we learn the green man-sized monster's secret but that passes. The effects are mostly pretty darn good, there are a few spots that could have been rendered better but it's not much to complain about. The sea monster is pretty darn dangerous, crushing and smashing ships like you'd eat a potato chip. There's plenty of stunts and some are wonderfully exaggerated. The scene with the underwater swimming horse was one of Joe's favorites but I liked it better when the horse ran over the broken ships floating in the sea. Then it ran across the back of the giant sea monster and down the sail of the ship. That's one talented horse. It's that kind of silly stuff that made me laugh. There's plenty of laughs. I'd recommend it to anyone thinking it sounds interesting. I'd want to watch it again. Reminds me to go re-watch some of Tsue Hark's movies again. I'll go look on YouTube for his work and let you know what I find.
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