Enemy of the State stars Gene Hackman and Will Smith.  It is a classic government coverup story where those who know too much are hunted down and silenced.

I didn’t exactly have high expectations when I decided to watch this and man was I let down.  This was really bad.  The complete nonsensical story feels like it was written by a twelve year old.  The government kills a congressman like they do all the time you know, and then Average Joe gets the evidence,  and then someone who knows everything ever will find Average Joe and then the government will kill another person to frame him and then the mob will have a shoot out with the bad guys until the real good guys come and then it is all back to normal and cool.  Every time I thought we had hit rock bottom there was another bizarre story element that assured me we were going lower.  I couldn’t believe how bad this was.

“You do and you don’t know it.” Way to go paranoia.

2/10

Body Snatchers is a B Horror/Thriller movie based on the 1955 novel by Jack Finney.  People are being cloned and then killed by aliens.

What the hell?  I was asking that question the entire time I watched this.  Every scene was out of control beginning in the outhouse.  This movie was so pathetic.  I am thankful it was only eighty minutes long, but even at that length I grew agitated.  It is the rare film that has nothing good whatsoever.  Not even the random nude scenes could drag this one out of the bottom of the barrel.  It was like watching something made for TV and then it is not even acceptable by those standards.  How brilliant was Forest Whitaker?  Why was he doing a crackhead the whole time?  Then an angry, but philosophical and argumentative, mob of aliens take him out as they enter stage left from out of nowhere.  I loved how the escapees returned to the base and blew it up with no resistance.  Oh and did you know where the safest place to go after you blow up a military base in broad daylight?  Atlanta.  Fascinating.  This piece was a mess and I hated it.

“No one like you is left.”

1/10

Reservoir Dogs is a Quentin Tarantino film.  It revolves around a botched diamond heist with plenty of violence and dialogue like all Tarantinos.

This movie was very good.  It had the feel of a play on the screen.  I thought it was very quirky and highly captivating.  The movie had a very real glimpse into the sort of bizarre yet very intriguing situational scenes.  I was constantly asking myself, “Huh, what would I do here?”  Very provoking.   The dialogue between all the crooks was very good and the acting was so solid.  There were several hokey moments like everyone shooting each other at the same time.  Larry’s betrayal was also a bit unbelievable.  It was still a great crime action movie that had me totally stuck to it.

“If you wanna know something and he won’t tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb’s next. After that he’ll tell you if he wears ladies underwear.”

8/10

Righteous Kill stars two legends, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.  It is about aging cops and their case on a serial killer who is killing criminals.

What a lump of a movie.  This movie was downright awful.  The twist at the end just fueled the anger I had for this film.  There was not one ounce of ingenuity in the entire piece.  It was just two great actors selling out with complete trash.  It is hard not to be intrigued by Pacino and De Niro.  They have put up some stinkers in their later years, but I did not think this would be so bad.  Usually the bombs are comedies or love stories done as some sort of weird joke.  This is a thriller cop movie.  Worth a look right?  Boy was I wrong.  Pure garbage.

“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.  To hell, I suppose”  That is where the audience is dragged by this movie.

2/10

The Salton Sea is a thriller type drug movie starring Val Kilmer.  It follows a meth junkie snitch that tries to set up a huge drug deal.

I stumbled onto this movie late one night on HBO.  It left me feeling liked I had watched a pretty solid movie, but it was so late that anything could have probably been good.  Upon rewatching it several times, it has not disappointed.  I like Kilmer’s performance and I don’t always care for him.  I thought it had a lot of good gritty elements and there was emotion to it as well.  The story stuck together and I ultimately enjoyed it.

“So who is this guy? Tell you the truth, I still don’t know. But I like his chances.”

8/10

Blood Simple is the first released film of the Coen brothers.  It is a bout a Texas murder that becomes anything but simple.

Interesting sort of plot, but I didn’t think this was anything special.  The opening remarks caught me as intriguing, but the rest of the movie was pretty flat.  The soundtrack is awesomely bad.  That noise they use for tension is always so funny to me.  I didn’t think it was amazingly clever with the way everything went down.  The villain got incredibly lucky that she left the mansion with the handgun, not to mention that he then just goes through her purse.  That was a little too set up for me, especially when the whole movie hinges on it the way it does.  It still was very entertaining and there were some cool cinematography pieces in there.   There was just not enough depth to make it a good movie for me.

“What I know about is Texas, and down here you’re on your own.”

5/10

36 Hours (1965)

Major Jefferson Pike (James Garner)knows the plans for D-Day, he  is sent to Lisbon to check with a German double agent he has recruited. In Lisbon Pike is drugged and captured by the Germans.  They fly him to a special camp in Germany to question him. The German’s work to convince Pike that it’s years later and the war is over as a way to trick him out of his information. Eva Marie Saint plays his nurse and Rod Taylor the fake doctor working to get the secrets out of Pike.

Really enjoy this one, the story held my attention. Rod Taylor does a great job as the doctor working to get the secrets out of  Pike. The movie does a wonderful job of being believable right up till the last 30 minutes , then the story gets a little weak and predictable.

I’ve used up all my tears!

Interesting story and good acting make this worth seeing—–07/10

Greg Marcks movie about simultaneous events shown from different perspectives.

This was a silly movie and all it had going for it was its gimmick.  And that is the ability to follow a schedule of events, so it isn’t very cool anyway.  I have to admit to my dumbness by not seeing the end coming.  I guess I have to at least give it that.  This movie was very pointless.  Not just plain pointless, but a little beyond that.  The soundtrack was so annoying .  I think the soundtrack was done like that because if this movie were to bomb as a thriller, which it did in my opinion, the people behind it could say, “No. No. It’s a dark comedy thing. Like those Coen fellows.”  Colin Hanks did a horrendous job too by the way.

“The gun and the money.. how about the penis?”

3/10

Director Gregory Hoblit brings us the story of a serial killer broadcasting his murders on the web.  Not just broadcasting the killings, but using the number of people viewing them live as a gauge for how quickly the victim dies.  Welcome to killwithme.com

Did not mind this movie as much as I thought I would.  It had some obviously bad stuff like the complete nonsensical computer jargon and a bunch of bad crime thriller cliches.  But what it did have was a message.  The anonymity of the web allows for some very gruesome things to be viewed.  It allows for such a callous attitude that it is troubling.  I have seen the most gruesome stuff on the web and some people are completely unaffected by it.  People distantly mock the most horrible things imaginable on the web.  It is a sort of subculture that most people don’t know exists.  This film sheds a little bit of light on it and I think this movie sets up an actually plausible scenario in our current society.

“The whole world wants to watch you die and they don’t even know you.”

5/10

10 to Midnight (1983)

Warren Stacy (Gene Davis) likes to kill women that have rejected him, he preforms the killings in the nude and uses a knife. He’s also is a master of covering his tracks and building alibis. Enter police detectives, Leo Kessler (Charles Bronson) and Paul McAnn (Andrew Stevens) who are investigating the murders. Kessler knows the killer is Stacy and the two of them begin a deadly games of cat and mouse.

Charles (Death Wish) Bronson playing a veteran homicide detective who decides to stop at nothing to get his man–think he has done this part before.  Props to Gene Davis as the killer, he sell the part and makes the movie worth watching.

“You know what this is for, Warren? It’s for JACKING OFF!”

Stop crime at any cost movie–It’s not Dirty Harry, but it’s watchable—-04/10