PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 927

Crabs 2021 Written and directed by Pierce Berolzheimer. It's his first movie.

The small coastal town of Mendocino California gets invaded by some deadly horseshoe crabs. A lot of the locals die. Then the crab's giant big brother arrives. A group of teens put up a fight using some high tech.

There's a fair bit of crab action and gore. The physical crabs were pretty good, the gore drippy. There's a fairly good amount of humor but not all the jokes land well. It's 80 mins but seems longer. The story lurches to a crawl during some of the character development. I enjoyed it well enough but I'm doubting the need to add it to my collection.

The Alphabet Murders 1965 Based on The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, screenplay by David Pursall and Jack Seddon, directed by Frank Tashlin. The name was changed to avoid any connection with the British theater chain ABC Cinemas in case the film flopped while playing at the ABC theaters.

Tony Randall plays Hercule Poirot. Originally Zero Mostel was intended to play the Belgian detective but Agatha Christie objected to the script having a bedroom scene with Hercule. That was several years before the film got made, Seth Holt was to be the director.

Tashlin came aboard and rewrote the Pursall and Seddon script with Robert Morley. They added a lot of slapstick and made Poirot a bit of a bumbler. Christie was said to have loathed the resulting movie. I can't blame her. The story in the film bares little resemblance to her novel.

I've seen a lot of adaptations of the novel and this is the oddest. Poirot bowling? Despite all that there's still some entertainment value in the film. It's unique at least. You can find out if you like it at the link in the title above.

The Lost City 2021

The Lost City 2021 Story by Seth Gordon, screenplay by Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam Nee and Aaron Nee, directed by Adan Nee and Aaron Nee.

Sandra Bullock is a romance writer and Channing Tatum is the cover model for her books. Daniel Radcliff is a rich guy who's insanely searching for a jeweled headdress called the Crown Of Fire. It's on an island in the Atlantic which has an active volcano. Daniel is sure the crown is there, he kidnaps Sandra and takes her there. He thinks she can find the crown but there aren't many clues available.

Channing hires Brad Pitt to help find Sandra. He finds her and they escape but he's shot in the head. Sandra and Channing have to go it alone and they just aren't ready for the jungle. There's lots of action and stunts and gunfire and explosions. Some of the baddies aren't getting their pensions.

Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays Sandra's publisher. She follows Dash to the island just in time to rescue them from the volcano. She was the most entertaining character in the movie for me, I didn't find Sandra or Channing as interesting. Daniel was a close second, he was so effective as a prick I wanted them to throw him in the volcano. I was disappointed.

Generally, I thought the movie was about average. I watched it on Amazon Prime, it's currently free, I was glad I didn't buy the Blu-ray sight unseen. Now I won't bother.

Friday Night Movies 886

The Knight Of Shadows: Between Yin And Yang 2019 Written by Liu Bohan and Jian Wen, directed by Vash.

Every couple of years I go out and look for Jackie Chan DVDs, there's usually something I haven't seen yet. In this action fantasy movie Jackie is a demon hunter who lives in a house on a pinnacle of rock. He shares the place with some fairly friendly demons. Jackie hunts bad demons and that's a good thing, the nearby town has a nasty but beautiful lady demon who's collecting 16 year old girls. They've been imprisoned in a tapestry until lady demon is ready to suck out their souls to prolong her life. The town's magistrate is upset because his daughter is the latest girl to disappear. Jackie soon figures out what's up but he's got a fight on his hands, that lady demon is a nasty piece of work.

There's plenty of action and running about during the movie, much of it augmented by CGI sets and characters. There's plenty of flying through the air, one of Jackie's demon pals can turn into a flying boat with Reed Richard arms. Good thing, what with living on the top of a pinnacle of rock and someone falling off the boat all the time.

I enjoyed the movie, especially the first half, the last half bogs down here and there with all the melodrama concerning the romance of two characters. It's colorful film with beautiful and stunning scenery. I liked the film's sense of humor. Glad to have picked up a copy, I'll want to watch it again sometime.

Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes 2020 Written by Makoto Ueda and directed by Junta Yamaguchi.

A guy discovers his TV is a portal to the future. Trouble is, it's only two minutes ahead. All the action takes place in a small apartment block. The man lives in an apartment above a restaurant, his TV is broadcasting an image from the restaurant below that two minutes in the future. Several people interact with themselves from two mins into the future. Odd complications start happening when they try to extend the time from 2 mins to 4 mins etc. It looks bad when some criminals come by but the time police will help sort that out.

It's all filmed in one long take with everyone moving about from place to place in the building. They do quite well on that. Not that I was trying to catch them out on the action, I was having enough to do to keep up with the story. I enjoyed it, it's more entertaining and clever than many of the recent Indy time travel films that I've seen. Many of those were tragically dull with story's that end tragically because the scientists were stupid. This film has a fun premise and a good sense of humor. The acting was alright and the characters believable. I doubt I'll get the DVD, I might never get around to it again.

Super Hot 2021

Super Hot 2021 Written and directed by Taylor King. A young Indy director who has a small production company in Charlotte NC with his father. I've not seen any of his previous work.

The lady with the super soaker is Kandace Kale, this is her only credit on the IMDb. Kandace doesn't seem to have much emotional range, she rides that deadpan face through the whole movie, and she speaks in a dull monotone. Kandace hangs out with her 2 nerdy friends. I liked those two better, they had more ability in their acting. The movie spends a good bit of the first act proving their genre credits. We find out Kandace has a bit of crush on Carmen, the girl across the street from her house, and that leads Kandace and her friends into the clutches of some vampire models who want to stay young and beautiful forever.

The head vampire lady has a book that has a spell to resurrect Dracula into a host body. They need a virgin to sacrifice. Kandace believes that Carmen is going to be the sacrifice. Kandace and her pals attempt a rescue mission but that fails and one of the vampires goes after them.

The guy on the lower right side of the poster is Warren Van Helsing. He turns up just in time to blast the vampire lady attacking Kandace and her pals. They team up to fight the vampires. Despite being terrible at the job they have some positive results. I enjoyed Warren, he turns up at the right time, sadly, he wasn't much better at killing vampires as the nerds were. Still, he might have a chance to shine, the movie claims that he'll return, with Dracula, in a sequel.

I though the movie was fun enough but lacking in memorable gags. I watched it on Amazon Prime, it doesn't seem to be on DVD. No matter, I wouldn't be buying it anyway, I don't need to see it again.

Hawk & Rev: Vampire Slayers 2020

Hawk & Rev: Vampire Slayers 2020 Written and directed by Ryan Barton-Grimley, who also plays Hawk. Watched on Amazon Prime.

A silly comedy that slowly grew on me. Hawk's annoying and has a problem fitting in world. He's a security guard who believes there are vampires and it turns out there are. The vampires aren't the ones he thought they were, but he'll soon find out who the bitey guys are. The cast is fairly good and their characters are all rather quirky. There's a bit of gore, some it quite amusing, but it's not overly violent. Some of the CGI blood is weak. I got a few laughs out of it and enjoyed the film for the most part. I might buy a DVD, if it was cheap enough, but it just seems to be available on streaming platforms. I'd recommend it to the horror comedy fan. You might get a laugh out of it too.

The Intergalactic Adventures Of Max Cloud 2020

The Intergalactic Adventures Of Max Cloud 2020 Written by Sally Collett and Martin Owen, directed by Martin Owen. A British movie that's a bit of a love letter to the the side scrolling video games of 30 years ago.

The young woman in the poster is Sarah, she's played by Isabelle Allen, she's a gamer who gets transported into the Max Cloud video game. She becomes Jake, the chef on Max's ship, he's the guy on the left side of the picture above, he's played by Elliot James Langridge. Max is the guy next to him, he's played by Scott Adkins, I just watched him in a movie last night. The cowboy looking guy is Brock Donnelly, he's a baddie played by Tommy Flanagan. The lady on the right is Sally Collett, she plays Rexy, like Sarah, she's been brought into the video game. John Hannah plays Revengor, he plays the boss that's got to be beat at the end of the game.

Sarah hopes that by winning she can get released from the game, the problem is she's only got one life, the game won't pause, and her pal Cowboy is playing for her. He's not a very good gamer and that nearly puts an end to poor Sarah. Don't worry she'll be fine. She gets some help from an unexpected source.

It's a pretty silly movie, while still being fairly clever. I liked the characters and the mix of live action and video game. A good bit of the action is depicted in game format but mostly it's live action on a set. The production values were fairly good and the sets entertaining, their cheapness fits the style of the period game. There are good number of gags, some were funny to me, some were less funny. I might not have gotten the joke, or they just weren't that good. They poke fun at heroes, sidekicks and gender roles in games. Those jokes were easy to get but some might have a dim view of them. The rating spread on the IMDb is kind of interesting. Just over a third of the votes are in the 5-7 range but it's overall score is only a 4.8, I think it should be higher than that. No matter, I still enjoyed it, I'd recommend it to the person who might like a video game parody. I'd even watch it again but doubt I'll buy the video. Maybe if it gets cheap enough, it's just fairly new.

Friday Night Movies 839

VFW 2019 Screenplay by Max Braillier and Matthew McArdle, directed by Joe Begos.

Stephen Lang is the bartender at the VFW post, William Sadler, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, David Patrick Kelly and George Wendt are his old Army pals. They come to the bar to drink and hang out. It's nothing special but it's a place for them. That all gets interrupted by the arrival of a young girl, she's stolen a big bag of drugs from a psychopath drug dealer. He sees her run off with the stash and sends his younger brother and a few henchmen to get her back.

The thugs rush the bar and David Patrick Kelly goes down with an axe in the shoulder, nearly all the thugs are killed including the psychopath's little brother. The psychopath sends an small horde of fucked up drug addicts to kill them. There's plenty of action, oodles of body parts hacked and sent flying. It's a battle to the end and hardly anyone comes out alive at the end.

I enjoyed it, a good solid action film with a great cast. It had a nice, dark sense of humor, good gore, and a great score. My only complaint is the action was in the fast jump cutting style and I'm not as big a fan of that. I'd still watch it again. Worth a look for the fans of that sort of thing.

Psycho Goreman 2020 I watched it a month or so ago and posted about it on FNM. It's still funny and Mimi is still an asshole.

Friday Night Movies 837

Pixels 2015 Story by Tim Herlihy, screenplay by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, directed by Chris Columbus. I have a box of DVDs waiting to be watched for the first time. Tonight I stuck my had in the box of discs and pulled out one at random. I couldn't find a good sized copy of the cover to the DVD via Google so grabbed the one on Amazon. The IMDb has posters of movies but they've changed their web page to only allow screen captures of the images posted to their page. Annoying, it now takes longer to grab an image. I noticed that the DVD was only $3.74 on Amazon and the Blu-ray a tenner. You can pick up a used copy for $1.96, costs more than double for shipping.

The movie opens in the 80s and the early arcade games were all the range among the kids. A trio of kids are competing in an arcade championship, they grow up to be the adults in the film Adam Sandler is a home-theater installer and Kevin James is the President of the United States. The arcade action was recorded and put in a capsule that was launched into space. It seems aliens have found the capsule and interpreted the recording as a call for war. Now it's on. The attackers come in the form of 80s arcade game images.

It's that connection to the arcade that pulls Adam into Kevin's world after a military base on Guam is attacked by the video game Galaga. They soon find a message from the Aliens telling them that this is the first challenge for the rights to the Earth. Adam gets a hand from Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage.

There's a bit of romance between Michelle Monaghan and Adam, Josh meets the love of his life, a character from a video game. There's plenty of giant arcade play as the attacks start happening. A giant Pac-Man roams the streets of New York. Eventually the Earth is saved and all is well enough.

It made me laugh occasionally and I was happy to have seen it. I'd want to watch it again someday. I keep meaning to watch all my favorite Adam Sandler movies in a marathon but there's so much I still haven't watched.

Tremors: Shrieker Island 2020 Written by Brian Brightly and Don Michael Paul, directed by John Michael Paul. This is the 7th Tremors film, JMP is the director of Tremors 5: Bloodlines and the 6th film Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell. I've not seen any of his other films except for Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy. The rest don't seem to interest me much.

A billionaire hunting enthusiast has had four graboids grown and placed on his island. He's set up a hunting party for other rich assholes. Of course, those guys are in over their head and one by one his paying customers get chomped on by one of my favorite tunneling monsters. Also on the island are some seismic researchers, Caroline Langrishe is in charge and Jon Heder is the comic relief. Caroline is also the mother of Bert Gummer's son, Bert is of course played by Michael Gross, his son Travis is played by Jamie Kennedy in the 5th and 6th films.  Travis is in jail so Caroline sends Jon to round up his father. Bert's gone native and living in the wilderness. Still, he comes and takes on his old enemy.

The hunters do manage to mortally wound the graboid they encountered but it gets tougher and tougher to survive against the graboids and shriekers. The later have developed a new shriek that incapacitates the humans. Things look better once Bert arrives but soon enough the rich douche bag in charge has locked him up in an old bunker. Some people are so arrogant they deserve to get eaten by graboids. There's plenty of running and screaming. Just what you don't need with graboids around.

The movie looks great, during the day there are lush tropical forests and plenty of explosions, at night the scenes are lit with flames and explosions. Who ever was doing the flame effects was really good at their job. One by one the monsters are defeated, finally the last beast is left and it's a bitter sweet moment as Bert disappears into the flying dirt. Michael Gross has said he'd like to do another movie but he's 73 and it could be a couple more years before it happens and he might be too old to do the action stuff.  I enjoyed the movie and thought it was a nice addition to the series. Kind of wraps it up but still leaves a door open.

Friday Night Movies 822

The Night Before 2015 Director Jonathan Levine wrote the story that he adapted into a screenplay with Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, and Evan Goldberg. A couple years before TNB Jonathan wrote and directed Warm Bodies. I saw that and liked it well enough. I haven't seen any of the other 5 movies he's directed.

Fifteen years after they started to look for the legendary Christmas Party, the Nutcracker Ball, three friends decide to quit the hunt after this one last try. Lucky for them Joseph Gordon-Levitt works in a hotel and he finds and steals three tickets to the secret event. Seth Rogan and Anthony Mackie are his pals, all three guys have their own issues, all of which are mostly resolved by the end of the movie.

It's kind of funny, not all the gags were to my liking, and kind of like a bunch of movies. It's still a bit better than average and I would watch it again sometime. I believe the DVD came from Dollar Tree. When they used to have DVDs for a buck. Haven't seen that for the last year or so, I rarely ever go there anymore.

Plan 9 2016 Written and directed by John Johnson. John adapted Ed Wood's  Plan 9 From Outer Space but made it as a modern zombie film. These zombies run fast and bite hard. There's plenty of gore and loose body parts. It's sadly sexed up with some nudity and sex scenes. It's better made than Ed's film, John had more money and a bit more talent. Brian Krause is the big name in the film, at least from the modern day, Wood fans will recognize Conrad Brooks from the original film. He's got a small part, mostly he sits in a chair. It's watchable, though my mind did wander at times, some scenes are not as good as others. On the whole below average, I'm leaning more to a 4 than a 5 on the IMDb. I was kind of wishing that John had made his own story, instead of fiddlin' with Ed's story.

Interestingly the votes on the IMDb look like this.

Friday Night Movies 796

Army Of The Dead is a 2008 zombie film of little originality. Joseph Conti directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Ciccolini and Tom Woosley. A professor and some students take an archeology trip to the Baja Peninsula.

According to the movie, four centuries ago Coronado sent 1000 men to find El Dorado, they disappeared. Well, the professor thinks he knows where the city is and he's secretly made a deal with some scumbags to steal the gold. His students are clueless about his plan. The prof finds the city and of course releases the curse. It animates the 1000 lost skeletal conquistadors. They are totally bent on slaughtering the professor and his minions. 

Sadly the CGI is only fair, it's about the same for the rest of the movie. The actors are adequate but the script isn't that interesting. You've certainly heard it all before in any number of the other 'trapped by some evil force that's killing everyone' movie. There's nothing much exciting about the location, I've seen the desert before, and better photographed too. I wouldn't need to see it again, that's for sure.

Subferatu is a 2020 everything but the kitchen sink comedy that blends time travel, Nazis, vampires, submarines and Gilligan's Island. It's written and directed by Patrick Penta. I found it over at Amazon Prime, same as the previous movie.

A small pleasure craft is out for a 3 hour tour when a big storm comes up. Their ship is floundering when they are rescued by a submarine commander in the Nazi navy. There's only a small crew on board the sub and they don't realize the survivors came from the future. The ship was in the Bermuda Triangle and the skipper's name is Captain Gavin McCloud. That's him in the red shirt.

The Commander tells the Captain that it's the day after Hitler killed himself. The Commander wants to surrender his sub but only if he can sail it into New York harbor. The Captain doesn't know if he traveled back in time, or the sub came forward, but he knows it's going to be somewhat of an issue to show up in the harbor. On top of that possible trouble, there's a vampire on the sub.

It's definitely goofy, it made me laugh out loud 3 or 4 times and I snickered once in a while. It's pretty self aware, the Captain talks to the audience from the start, and while the jokes are not all top raters there are a lot of them. It's a cornucopia of genre movie references, so keep an eye, and and ear, open. The actors, the film was made in Seattle, are mostly OK, the characters are pretty broad so they have a lot of wiggle room in their roles. I wasn't sold from the start but the general goofiness won me over and I had a good laugh. Sadly it's not out on DVD, I might buy a copy if it was cheap enough.