A movie a day

Post Reply New Topic

Alright, I'm done watching movies on YouTube. Done. No matter what I watch, the video plays perfectly but the sound skips, like a CD with scratches on it. I don't know what the hell the problem is, but I have no idea how to fix it. I have the latest version of Flash installed, my connection is loading the video fast enough, and the sound works fine in every other program on my computer, like Windows Media. Movies aren't watchable this way. So I'm going to stick to DVDs from Netflix, and the very humble DVD collection I own. I have one of those stupid movie packs with 50 old public domain horror movies in it, so I'll probably be watching a whole lot of trashy crap soon to keep up with my requirement of at least one movie per day. But I'll probably be posting movies here the day after I watch them instead of the day I watch them, since I usually only watch DVDs late at night.

Why am I even writing this? Nobody reads this damn topic anyway.

MacGruber is a 2010 American action comedy film based on the Saturday Night Live sketch of the same name, itself a parody of action-adventure television series MacGyver.

I love this movie it never fails to make me laugh

In eastern Siberia's Dzhugdzhur Mountains, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) and his men take control of the X-5 missile, which has a nuclear warhead. On the other side of the world Col. Jim Faith (Powers Boothe) and Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) are searching for former Green Beret, Navy SEAL and Army Ranger MacGruber in Ecuador. The two men find MacGruber (Will Forte) meditating in a chapel, and try to convince him to return to the United States in an effort to retrieve the warhead. MacGruber refuses; later that night, MacGruber explodes into a fit of rage after a flashback where Cunth killed his would-be wife, Casey Fitzpatrick (Maya Rudolph), at their wedding; he then accepts the Colonel's offer.

After arriving at The Pentagon and having a heated conversation with Faith and Piper, MacGruber decides he will form his own team to pursue Cunth, declining the offer to build a team around Piper. MacGruber successfully recruits all but his long-time friend Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and Brick Hughes (Paul Wight) - MacGruber initially recruits Hughes, but upon discovering he is gay, crosses his name off his list. MacGruber and his team meet Faith and Piper on a tarmac. Upon being asked where his team is, MacGruber responds that they are in the van along with his homemade C-4 explosives. The van promptly explodes, killing the team. MacGruber is distraught over the loss of the team and is promptly removed from the Cunth case. In a one-on-one conversation with Piper, MacGruber convinces him to form a new team. Vicki also arrives, completing MacGruber's team.

The group travels to Cunth's nightclub in Las Vegas. MacGruber gets on stage and announces who he is, his intentions, and where he will be the next day. The team sets up a sting operation with Vicki portraying MacGruber. Hoss Bender (Andy Mackenzie), one of Cunth's henchmen, attacks the van MacGruber and Piper are in. MacGruber tells Piper to pass him an Incredi-Mop, which he uses to turn the ignition key and hit the gas pedal, running down Bender. With Vicki disguised as Bender and Piper disguised as MacGruber, the team breaks into a warehouse to stop von Cunth from getting the passcodes to operate the rocket. MacGruber distracts the guards by walking around naked with a piece of celery clenched between his buttocks. Piper manages to kill most of the men inside, but is unable to stop the transfer of the pass codes. MacGruber and the team go to a charity event Cunth is holding. After a heated conversation, Cunth's guards throw MacGruber out.

After the fiasco, MacGruber returns to the Pentagon where Faith reprimands him. MacGruber and Piper relax and drink after being taken off the case. Soldiers attack but MacGruber uses Piper as a human shield to survive; Vicki and MacGruber escape. Piper survives due to the fact that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, but leaves, disgusted that MacGruber used him as protection. Vicki and MacGruber return to Vicki's house where the two have sex. Upset, MacGruber goes to his wife's grave in shame, but he sees her ghost, who gives her blessing to allow MacGruber to pursue Vicki. MacGruber then has sex with the ghost of his wife on her tombstone.

Upon returning to Vicki's house, MacGruber discovers that Cunth kidnapped her, and realizes what Cunth's plan is: to bomb the State of the Union address. Cunth calls MacGruber to gloat, but MacGruber traces the call. MacGruber meets up with Piper to save Vicki. The two men make their way into Cunth's compound, in large part due to MacGruber's propensity for ripping throats. Soldiers capture MacGruber and Piper and bring them to Vicki and the missile. The group manages to overpower Cunth and his men and MacGruber handcuffs Cunth to a handrail. MacGruber removes the nuclear component and disables the missile launch before his team escapes as the missile explodes.

Six months later, MacGruber and Vicki are getting married. Also present at the wedding as ghosts are his dead team members Vernon Freedom (Alvin Burke, Jr.), Tug Phelps (Dalip Singh), Tut Beemer (Mark Henry(, and Tanker Lutz (Glen Jacobs). Out of the corner of his eye, MacGruber spots a disfigured Cunth, thought dead, with an RPG. MacGruber saves Vicki, and battles Cunth before throwing him off a cliff behind the altar, shooting him with a machine gun and launching a grenade as he falls, incinerating the corpse, and finally urinating on it at the foot of the cliff.

The end credits show MacGruber and Vicki's wedding party, where they eventually have sex on the dance floor. After the credits, MacGruber sits in a tree, playing a saxophone.

Dead Snow 2009 Norwegian horror film.

A woman, Sara, (Ane Dahl Torp) is being chased through the snows of Norway. She is ultimately cornered and eaten by zombies in World War II Schutzstaffel (SS) uniforms.

Seven students on Easter vacation arrive at a small cabin near Øksfjord. The cabin is owned by Sara, Vegard's (Lasse Valdal) girlfriend. The group begins to drink and party until a mysterious hiker (Bjørn Sundquist) arrives. He tells them the dark history of the region; during World War II, a force of Einsatzgruppe, led by Standartenführer Herzog (Ørjan Gamst), occupied the area. For three years the Nazis abused and tortured the local people. Near the end of the war, with Germany's defeat looming, the soldiers looted all the town's valuables. However, the citizens stage an uprising and ambushed the Nazis, killing many. The survivors, including Herzog, were chased into the mountains, and it was assumed that they all froze to death. The hiker then continues on his way.

The next morning Vegard takes the group's snowmobile out to look for Sara. He stumbles on a tent in which he discovers the disemboweled body of the hiker from the previous night. He continues his search when he falls through the snow into a cave. Meanwhile, after it gets dark, the other students find an old wooden box filled with valuables hidden under the floor. They celebrate by haphazardly throwing the treasure above their heads, and one pockets a gold coin. They eventually decide to stow it back where it came from. Erlend (Jeppe Laursen) goes to the outhouse where Chris (Jenny Skavlan) meets him and the two have sex. On her way to the outhouse, Chris inadvertently drops a gold coin, which awakens a Nazi zombie. After the liaison, Erlend returns to the group. Chris stays to use the outhouse but is attacked and murdered. The others go outside to look for her, finding Sara's rucksack buried in the snow.

The zombies arrive at the cabin. Erlend is killed before the remaining students manage to seal the windows and door and survive the night. Vegard comes around in the cave, discovering WWII German firearms and helmets, as well as Sara's severed head. Vegard is attacked by zombies and is badly bitten in the neck by one. He manages to kill them and escape on the snowmobile, which he equips with an MG42 machine gun.

Meanwhile, the remaining four students in the cabin decide to split up. The two men, Martin (Vegar Hoel) and Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen), attempt to distract the zombies, while the two women, Hanna (Charlotte Frogner) and Liv (Evy Kasseth Røsten), run for the cars and go for help. En route to the cars, the girls are ambushed and Liv is killed. While she is being disemboweled, she manages to destroy several of the zombies by activating one of their hand grenades. After killing two zombies Hanna is chased to the edge of a cliff by a zombie. She turns and faces the zombie and stomps on the ground, causing the ice to crack, and both of them fall. Both survive, and are submerged in snow; Hanna digs her way out and kills the zombie.

Martin and Roy, holed up in the cabin, accidentally set fire to it with Molotov cocktails. As they escape, they discover that the shed next to the cabin contains numerous power tools, with which they equip themselves. More zombies attack, but Martin and Roy manage to fend them off with the aid of Vegard, who returns with the snowmobile. However, Vegard is killed during the fight. Martin, enraged by Vegard's death, accidentally kills Hanna, who has returned to the cabin, during the ensuing combat. Herzog arrives with another group of zombies, including SS men, but Martin and Roy manage to kill them all. Martin is bitten on the arm and cuts it off with a chainsaw to avoid turning into a zombie, but a zombie bites him on the genitals. Herzog then raises many other zombies from all around and the two students run. While on the run, Roy, disorientedly hit in the head by Herzog, runs into a tree and is disemboweled.

Martin comes to realize that the zombies are after the box in the cabin. He runs to the burnt-out remains of the cabin, and gives the box to Herzog. He manages to get away, and, upon reaching the car, a coin from the box falls out of Martin's pocket. Swearing, he looks around to see Herzog smashing the car window.

Transformers (2007)

Just kidding. I'm not watching that horses**t.

Murder By Decree (1979)

This is the most well-made boring movie I've ever seen. The production is fantastic, it looks great, the actors are all terrific, and the subject is fascinating: Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper. So why did it nearly put me to sleep? Why did my mind wander so much that, at this moment, it's still floating somewhere between the orbits of Neptune and Pluto? I know I have concentration issues and that it's difficult for me to even finish a two-hour movie, but I don't think the fault is entirely my own. Despite everything it has going for it, the movie just sort of sits there on the screen, doing nothing.

Holmes vs. the Ripper is an extremely popular topic in literature, but it's only happened on film twice: this movie and 1965's A Study in Terror. Or three times, if you count 2001's From Hell, in which Johnny Depp's character is Sherlock Holmes in all but name. Even more surprising, there's never been a Holmes vs. Dracula movie. Anyway. I haven't seen A Study in Terror, but From Hell was much better than Murder By Decree. The two movies have practically the same plot (they both involve a Freemason conspiracy) but From Hell didn't make me feel like I was at the DMV.

Tomorrow: A movie that doesn't involve Sherlock Holmes at all! Shocking, I know.

The Cry of the Owl (2009)

Tell me if this character sounds like an Aspie to you:

* makes awkward jokes that nobody finds funny
* starts to say something then stops
* never looks comfortable in social situations
* makes excuses to leave when he's expected to make small talk
* doesn't seem to know how to end conversations
* takes a cookie when offered one and sticks it in his pocket
* keeps an extremely detailed list of the items he has in a storage facility, down to individual pencils and erasers
* his ex-wife describes his quirks by saying, "this is a bit special needs, don't you think?"

Oh, and he's played by Paddy Considine, a real-life Aspie.

Anyway, the plot: a young man spies on a young woman through her windows, but after being discovered, the tables turn and he finds himself being stalked by her, and things get far too out of hand from there.

I doubt that I'll ever see another adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel that's as good as The American Friend, but The Cry of the Owl is easily the second best. Strangers on a Train and Purple Noon are good movies but they significantly watered down Highsmith's novels, Ripley's Game is decent at best, and The Talented Mr. Ripley is a boring and pretentious mess that didn't understand the book at all.

The Cry of the Owl does what a good Highsmith adaptation should do: it portrays the characters as shades of grey instead of blacks and whites, it's not afraid to show the viewer what they might not want to see, and it has an ambiguous ending that doesn't let you know if everything worked out or not, because to show you that would be missing the point. Ripley's Game did all this as well, but the acting was mediocre and Tom Ripley was turned into Hannibal Lecter. The Cry of the Owl, on the other hand, has terrific acting and it preserves the integrity of the book. This is the best movie I've seen in a long time.

Edit: 13% on Rotten Tomatoes?! Jesus Christ.

White Zombie (1932)

Let me see if I followed the plot correctly here. Some Dude wants Some Guy's girl, so he visits Creepy-Ass Bastard (Béla Lugosi) to ask for help. Creepy-Ass Bastard has a way of turning people into hypnotized zombies (this was back before zombies were reanimated corpses), and his plan is for Some Dude to make it look like the girl is dead, then they sneak her body out of the cemetery and revive her. But then Some Dude doesn't like the fact that she's now a mindless zombie and he tells Creepy-Ass Bastard that he wants her to go back to the way she was, even if it means that he'll lose her and she'll go back to Some Guy. Creepy-Ass Bastard doesn't like that very much, and decides to make both the girl and Some Dude his zombie slaves. Or something. I don't know. Some Dude starts turning into a zombie and can't fight Creepy-Ass Bastard, so Some Guy gets help from the priest who knows a thing or two about zombies.

White Zombie was just barely enough to hold my interest, and it would have lost me entirely if it had been longer than 67 minutes. I think that a full five minutes of footage in this movie is comprised of close-ups on Béla Lugosi's eyes. I guess that was supposed to be terrifying. There was the potential to make some kind of commentary on racism, considering that the story involves people being captured and forced to work in cotton fields, but the filmmakers were more interested in cheap exploitation than saying something. Favorite moment: One of Creepy-Ass Bastard's zombie workers falls into a huge grinding machine and the other zombies don't even seem to notice. This movie needs a remake, because the plot is good but the execution was mediocre, even by 1932 standards. Frankenstein was released the year before. Stuff like this didn't cut it anymore.

I padroni della città (English title: Rulers of the City) (1976)



An enjoyable and fairly light-hearted Italian buddy crime movie starring Jack Palance, Al Cliver and Harry Baer. It's about a young and handsome and debt collector who works for a bookie. Encouraged by his dodgy gambling buddies in a fit of machismo and a desire to get rich quick makes the mistake of ripping off a major Rome crime lord to the tune of 10 million lire who takes his revenge by putting out an order for the murder of the young scammer and his actor accomplice. The lanky chappie spends the rest of the film disposing of the gangster's henchmen. Not a bad film at all and certainly more light-hearted than di Leo's more serious crime movies like The Boss and Manhunt. I'd recommend it, although neither the Italian nor the American DVD releases are very good - both are non-anamorphic and are very average in the picture quality department with quite a lot of noise and grime in the image. Subtitles on the Italian Raro release are alright for a foreign DVD release although they do contain a couple of obvious spelling errors.

The Mad Monster (1942)

Imagine if Dr. Frankenstein wanted to use his monster to get revenge on all the people who called him crazy. Oh, and his monster is a Wolf Man rip-off that he creates by injecting Lenny from Of Mice and Men with some kind of serum. This movie is very cheap and trashy, but it works because of George Zucco, who played a crazy but intelligent villain about as well as anyone did. (He played Professor Moriarty in one of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes films, and he was great in it.) To my surprise, there was a genuinely clever scene when Zucco's mad scientist, after creating his monster, has an imaginary conversation with a room full of his former colleagues, who all appear as ghosts. It's all a bunch of silly BS, but I liked it better than some of the crap I've been watching recently.

Dead Men Walk (1943)

Tell me if you've heard this one before. A vampire comes to town with his crazy servant. People start to get sick and die. Their bodies are found drained of blood and with two small puncture wounds on their necks. Most of the characters don't believe in vampires, but a superstitious woman gives one of them a crucifix to protect against them. A young beauty falls ill, and only her handsome lover and a crazy old scientist who knows a thing or two about vampires can help, so they start breaking into graveyards to search for the coffin, and...

I've seen Dracula rip-offs before, but this is ridiculous. If you redubbed the dialogue so that everyone refers to the vampire as Count Dracula, you would have an adaptation that's actually more faithful to the book than some of the official adaptations that I've seen. This movie even has Dwight Frye playing practically the same character he played in Dracula. Luckily, the movie manages to do some interesting things with the story, like making the vampire and the crazy old scientist twin brothers, so we get a double performance from that glorious crazy old bastard George Zucco. When people witness the vampire in the act, they think it's the scientist and they go after him. Like the last movie, it's cheap and trashy but it managed to keep me watching for 64 minutes. That's high praise from me. "Congratulations, movie! I didn't turn you off in disgust!"

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

A waiter accidentally kills his landlady's cat, and to hide what he's done, he covers the body in clay and passes it off as a statue that he made. He's hailed as a genius sculpture artist by the hipsters at the cafe he works at, and things get out of hand when he has to keep making new sculptures to stay popular. You see where this is going. This is the first movie in a loose trilogy of horror/comedy films directed by Roger Corman and written by Charles B. Griffith. The second is The Little Shop of Horrors and the third is Creature from the Haunted Sea. It's not scary at all and it's not laugh out loud funny, but I have a soft spot for any movie that makes fun of pretentious hipsters who see brilliance and importance in meaningless garbage, and A Bucket of Blood does it well. Little Shop was practically a remake of this movie, on a scene by scene, character by character basis, but they have different enough tones for them not to feel too redundant.

Scarface (1932)

I knew that the Al Pacino version was based on this movie, but I wasn't expecting it to be so similar. It's beer instead of cocaine and Chicago instead of Miami, but the characters, their relationships and personalities, and a lot of the scenes from the remake came straight from this movie. The violence in this version is sometimes even more extreme than the Pacino version, if you can believe that. The remake didn't have Pacino driving down the street, machine gunning people walking down the sidewalk. I'm surprised the movie wasn't banned, but it was produced by Howard Hughes, who probably could have publicly raped a nun and gotten away with it.

A lot of the gangster movie cliches seem to have come from this movie, like guys flipping coins and ending their sentences with "see?" Favorite moment: During a drive-by shooting, everybody in the building ducks except Tony's secretary, who's on the phone with someone. He calmly pulls out a gun and tells the person on the phone to speak louder. After the shooting, he tells Tony, "Boss, there was too much noise, I didn't get the name." This movie must have seemed amazing in 1932, not just because of the violence, but because it's so well-made. American films of this era had a tendency to feel like stuffy stage plays, but there's some real craftsmanship here.

And that does it for Week 4. I've been watching a movie every day for a month now. I'm sick of doing this, but I was sick of it after the first week and the second and the third, and here I am still doing it. Anyway, here's the recap: September 22-28: Murder By Decree (1979), The Cry of the Owl (2009), White Zombie (1932), The Mad Monster (1942), Dead Men Walk (1943), A Bucket of Blood (1959), Scarface (1932)

Please don't give up. Your reviews are so snarky I love it ! ! Please review some Kubrick so I can tell just how big a film fan you are.

I'm not sure my "film fan" credentials would impress anyone. Obviously I enjoy watching just about any dreck, but there are so many beloved films I've never seen. Here are some movies I grabbed from the IMDb Top 250 that my eyes have never laid eyes on: 12 Angry Men, Schindler's List, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Seven Samurai, Casablanca, Once Upon a Time in the West... have I embarrassed myself sufficiently yet?

As for Kubrick, I've seen Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Shining. That's right, I've never seen The Killing or Spartacus or Dr. Strangelove or A Clockwork Orange or Full Metal Jacket. I probably won't be watching any of them soon, and yet I'll probably soon be watching Revolt of the Zombies or some other silly horses**t.

The movies for the next two days will be different versions of a classic movie, but I won't actually be watching the classic version itself.

Yeah, something's wrong with me.

Must I beg you, then? I would truly enjoy reading what you have to say after watching Dr. Strangelove ! ! I see it through the eyes of a man who was a little boy back then and can remember being scared by teachers who taught us how to survive a nuclear attack. You have much different eyes. Cynical perhaps.
You missed the big scene in Frankenstein (1931), when the father walks past the revelers holding the body of his drowned daughter. It's a remarkable shot considering the cameras were the size of pianos ! ! How in the world they designed a track for the camera would be fascinating to know.
Maybe you could re-watch 2001 and write a review. Concentrate on the things they got correct. For instance, all the computer screens that flash by are technically accurate to our eyes today. But there were no computer graphics in 1968. They are all special effects ! ! The artists drew them and then flashed by on the screens. Also note the small computer screens scattered here and there. At one point the astronauts are using a couple of tablets that look remarkably like iPads.

Please keep reviewing ! ! I'm reading them ! !

Clockwork Orange, perhaps ???

I'll get around to Dr. Strangelove, but I have to be in the mood for Kubrick, and at the moment, I'm not. I wouldn't even want to watch 2001 right now, even though I loved it. I didn't grow up in the 60s, but I like to think I'm educated enough to still appreciate good Cold War satire. I'm sure I'll like it when I get around to it, since I've yet to dislike anything of Kubrick's. I had a copy of A Clockwork Orange on my bookshelf at one point, but I gave it away after trying to read the first chapter and giving up. The slang was just impenetrable for me. I hope the movie's better.

I certainly didn't miss that scene in Frankenstein. I just like to keep my thoughts on these movies concise. It's a great scene, and that's probably why I didn't comment on it. The better a movie is, the less I have to say about it. It's easier to complain than it is to describe what's good about something. I hated Bride of Frankenstein, and I could probably write a book about it. It’s so amazingly inept that I honestly suspect James Whale had nothing but contempt for the very idea of making a Frankenstein sequel. My apologies if your screen name indicates that you’re a fan of the film.