PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Skyscrapper 2018

Skyscraper 2018 Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. Rawson's first film was Dodgeball in 2004, I thought it was entertaining enough, as I did We're The Millers. He directed another film with Dwayne Johnson, Central Intelligence, which I've not seen yet. This is more a straight up action film. He's directing Dwayne and Ryan Reynolds in an art related crime film, Red Notice, coming in 2021. Could be good.

Skyscraper is heavy on the visual and it's awash with CGI from top to bottom. There's plenty of gun blasts, explosions and fire. Everyone is in danger much of the time. Dwayne is a security expert, he used to be a cop until a suspect blew Dwayne's foot off. His old co-worker, also involved in the ten year old incident, brings Dwayne into a big project in Hong Kong. A Chinese businessman has built the world's tallest skyscraper. Little does Dwayne know he's just been dropped into the middle of an action film.

He does OK, saves his family and blows the bad guy up real good. I usually enjoy Dwayne in a film, especially when he's all dirty, you know he's been working hard. Poor Dwayne has to work pretty hard to save his family and by the end of the movie he's nearly covered head to toe with soot and other filth. It's a bit above average and worth a look for the action fan. I've got the DVD and I'll watch it again someday.

Vehicle 19 2012

Vehicle 19 2012 Written and directed by Mukunda Michael Dewil.

Pretty much average action film with Paul Walker as a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. He gets the wrong rental car from the airport and soon finds he's in the middle of a kidnapping. A prosecutor had been kidnapped by a crooked police detective and his gang of scumbos. She's tied up in the trunk because she's got evidence of their criminal activities and she was doomed until Paul came along.

The cops give chase, there's plenty of car racing and gun shooting activity. The movie is shot from inside the car so some of more interesting action bits are made less interesting by that choice. Great to see Paul's stubble though. Sadly the prosecutor gets killed and Paul has to fight his way to the courthouse for the inevitable stand off with the police.

It's no great shakes, I enjoyed it while it was on but it's still barely average. I think the DVD was a dollar at Dollar Tree and that seems like a fair price. I wouldn't need to see it again but I'm going to keep it anyway.

Uncle Peckerhead 2020

Uncle Peckerhead 2020 Written and directed by Matthew John Lawrence. It's Matthew's first feature, he had written, produced and directed 5 shorts between 2007 and 2015.

That's David Bluvband as Scott, Chet Siegel as Judy, and Ruth Lolla as Doris, they're DUH, a New Jersey punk band with 22 minutes of their own material. Judy is the main force behind the band, she's peppy and naive, somewhat at odds with her noisy musical choice. Scott plays guitar, he's kind of a goof, Doris is the drummer, she's kind of dour. I didn't care that much for what they played but some of the people in the movie liked it. As the movie opens Judy quits her job, she's lined up 6 gigs around the area with a possible 7th when they return. First barrier to their leaving, their vehicle gets repossessed. The day is saved when they stumble onto this guy.

David Littleton plays Peckerhead. He's homeless but he has a van. He offers to drive them for gas and a little cash. The band is unprepared, they have no money so they have no other options for transportation, Uncle Peckerhead seems a nice enough guy. When the band gets stiffed by the promoter in their first gig, the band find out what sort of guy Peck is, a murderous, flesh eating demon. He's only affected by his problem at midnight and for only 13 mins. He keeps it under control with a shot of something that puts him to sleep.

Though troubled by their murderous friend they decide to continue the trip with him, Peck did raise some cash. The rest of the trip sees a return of the beast and a bit of regret from the band. They aren't thinkers this lot. Never hook up with a demon or hell beast. Untrustworthy, to say the least. Still, it's funny when it happens to some people.

It's a free movie on Amazon Prime. I thought it was a pretty good horror comedy with a nice mix of gags and gore. The script is good, same for the actors, nice effects and good over all production. I'd be interested in see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 619

Robot Riot 2020 Director Ryan Staples Scott co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Mirtes.

A bunch of soldier's are parachuted into an empty town. They seem to be waking up as they are dropped, we quickly find out they have no memories of who they are or where they are. Turns out they're in a military testing site and they've got to battle some fighting robots. A mad ass general has set all this up, using unsuspecting volunteers, and dumped them out of the plane. Some die in the jump, some die by each other's hands, some band together to fight the bots. Eventually the mad ass general tells them what's going on. They are being experimented on and they must fight his robots. Some of the robots are fairly easy to kill with the few weapons they've been given.

They get a bit of help when the angry MAG tosses one of his own tech guys out into the streets of the town. Tech guy is rescued by the group and he fills them in about what's going on. He also knows where there's a kill switch for the whole project. It's all run and shoot as they try to get to the town's parimeter. Eventually they defeat the BOSS BOT and wipe out the MAG. Plenty of gun shooting and explosions. Some of the CGI is better than other bits but on average it's well enough done for a lower budget movie.

Sadly, there's nothing too original here. I did like some of the characters better than others. The dialog is all over the place, some of it good and some of it poor. I'd love to slap the dialog off the MAG's smirky lips, he's really a clone of most of those knuckle heads you see in other films, but less interesting. I saw this on Amazon Prime and wouldn't bother with it again. Same with my second film.

2307: Winter Dream 2016 Director Joey Curtis co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Sidu. Paul also stars as the main character.

It's well into the future and the world is an ice pack. Some people are still alive, they live underground, sucking up geothermal power to survive. The survivors had a shortage of man power so they genetically engineered some humanoids. They made then barren and bald, that changed as time passed. The humanoids can live in the frozen world and survive it quite well.

A humanoid was involved with an attack on a lab, he escaped into the wasteland, several soldier's have been sent to round him up or kill him. Doesn't seem to matter to the military guy who sent them on the mission. Paul turns out to be the husband of the murdered scientist at the lab. The group fails in their first encounter with the humanoid. They spot him but he gets the drop them them. The humanoid kidnaps one of them and blows up their truck. Now they're stranded and it's really frickin' cold.

Paul spurs them on, he's got his own addenda, his daughter is out in the waste land. Some true stuff comes out and Paul now wants to help the humanoid against his boss. It's all pretty much average but I got through to the end. More than some did, according to the IMDb comment section. I wouldn't need to see it again and there isn't a DVD in my future. Yay, one less thing to possess.

A Big Lego Christmas 2016

I missed A Big LEGO Christmas back in 2016, it just turned up on YouTube. It's a Christmas themed documentary, narrated by Stephan Mangan, about the opening of LEGO store in London. The store is  massive and it's got a huge model of the Elizabeth Tower with it's well known clock. 

That's Paul on the left, he's the manager of the new store they're working feverishly to open before the Christmas season. His staff is all new, so is Paul, he's hiring his new employees three days after starting himself. The other's are various LEGO employees. The guy in the blue shirt is in charge of the photo booth that takes your picture and dispensaries a ready to build mosaic of the person who got photographed.

Another project featured is the giant LEGO model of Tower Bridge by the UK's only LEGO Professional Duncan Titmarsh. It broke the world record with a total of 5,805,846 white bricks. It can hold two large Land Rovers. The Yellow Submarine set is featured in another segment. The hour long documentary ends with a bit on the store's opening day and a nice Christmas display by Duncan.

Friday Night Movies 820

Chamber Of Horrors 1940 Based on the Edgar Wallace novel The Door With The Seven Locks, screenplay by John Argyle, Gilbert Gunn and Norman Lee, directed by Norman Lee.

Before a rich guy died he'd stowed the family jewels in his crypt, it's got 7 locks on the door, the keys go to the person who inherits. After his death the lawyer's find the keys in their trust have been stolen. The baddies have 6 keys, someone has the 7th key, the baddies won't stop at murder to get it. People get murdered and detectives from Scotland Yard are on the case.

It's about average, fairly good cast, bit of humor, some murderin', a bit of gun play, all kept me interested.

A Shriek In The Night 1935 Story by Kurt Kempler, screenplay by M H Hoffman JR, directed by Albert Ray.

Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot are rival reporters who have a bit of a relationship. Lyle keeps asking her to marry him and she turns him down. They're both on the scene of a suicide, Larry tagged along with the police detectives and Ginger is working under cover as the dead man's secretary. The rich guy jumped out of his apartment window and smacked into the pavement 4 stories below. Ginger  thinks the dead guy was somehow connected to racketeer Joe Martini. The crook has an apartment in the building. The suicide starts to look fishy when another body turns up.

It's more of a comedy than the first film, there's a few good laughs and some yelling and running about. Entertaining cast for the most part. About average.

All Over Town 1937 Story by Richard English, screenplay by Jerome Chodorov and Jack Townley, directed by James W Horne.

An Olsen and Johnson comedy with the guys playing vaudevillians who get involved with a doomed production and murder. They are trying to help a young woman who's inherited the theater, she's got a backer but someone behind the scenes is sabotaging the show. 

There's plenty of noise and after a while I got tired of Chic Johnson's giggling. The rest of the film is about average. I did get a big laugh at the shoot out at the end. You never see anyone reload their pistols but the baddie and the cops hurl lead like confetti. Luckily they are such terrible shots and no one gets killed.

Taskmaster New Zealand Series 1

Taskmaster New Zealand Series 1 aired the last couple of months. Someone just posted the whole series on YouTube. Who knows how long it will be there? I hadn't heard of any of these comedians before. The Taskmaster is Jeremy Wells and his assistant is Paul Williams. That's them sitting down in the picture. The contestants, standing left to right, are Madeleine Sami, Brynley Stent, Guy Williams, Leigh Hart and Angella Dravid. I like Jeremy and Paul as the Taskmaster and Assistant. The tasks were fun and there were laughs had by me. 

Taskmaster Series 10

Taskmaster Series 10 just wrapped up in the UK about a week ago. The last episode of the first series of the New Zealand version just aired a couple of days ago. I found both highly entertaining.

The game show was created by Alex Horne for a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival back in 2010. It made it to TV in 2015 and there have been 2 series each year since. It started on Dave but it's moved to Channel 4 for the current series. There's no studio audience this time and that's a bit strange but it works well enough.

Greg Davies is the Taskmaster and the poor saps who are jumping through Greg's hoops are Daisy May Cooper, Johnny Vegas, Richard Herring, Katherine Parkinson and Mawaan Rizwan. You can find out who won by clicking the link to the YouTube channel that's hosting them right now. They could disappear anytime so be warned.

You can watch series 1 through 7 on this YouTube channel. It's just dropped the first EP of series 8 so that's on the way. Perhaps S9 will follow soon. Hopefully you'll get a laugh or two. I know I did.

Have I Got 30 Years For You 2020

Have I Got 30 Years For You is an hour long documentary about the Have I Got News For You and it's 30 years on the BBC. It's a weekly satirical news program with Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Paul's a comedian and Ian's the editor of Private Eye. I don't read PE but I do watch the show. I've seen a lot of the 500 episodes, they turn up on YouTube pretty frequently. I always get a laugh from each episode.

Secret Scotland With Susan Calman

I've only watched the first series and half the second series of Secret Scotland With Susan Calman so far but I've been enjoying it a good bit. I don't have the DVD but I'd be interested in getting a copy. Not going to happen anytime soon. the shipping charges on Amazon UK are sky high and I've stopped buying much of anything from them for now. I watched the series at the YouTube channel in the link above.It's missing a couple of episodes from series 2 but there's still plenty to see. They might turn up, the poster is still adding things to the channel. Who knows how long it will be up? I do seem to see less TV posting sites being taken down the last several months.

Susan's a Scottish comedian and she's pretty enthusiastic about her home town of Glasgow and her whole country. It is a beautiful place and the scenery is well filmed. Susan drives all over to get a look at the interesting scenery and who lives among it. Susan gets to go behind the scenes at a lot of places she visits. We get to see the inside of castles and ruins. I learned a few new things about Scotland and got to see a lot of nice scenery.