What are you watching?

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Number One With A Bullet - Robert Carradine and Billy Dee Williams are cops who are trying to take down a drug kingpin with ties to the department. Also Billy Dee Williams keeps making out with Asian chicks and Robert Carradine keeps trying to bang his ex-wife, Valerie Bertinelli, but then just when he's about to take her home his car blows up. Sucks to be him. Robert Carradine dresses up as a woman at one point.

Billy Dee Williams is rad. Robert Carradine not so much. His mom in the movie is played by Ray Romano's mom from Everybody Loves Raymond. Quite an ensemble cast, a fin Cannon Films production.

[Lars Jacobsson Member Find all posts View Profile Close Lars Jacobsson]

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953) - Hardboiled b-noir classic. Direction, acting and story is top notch all the way - this could be Fuller's masterpiece as far as i'm concerned. Widmark is great as the amoral pickpocket Skip McCoy but Thelma Ritter steals the show as the aged snitch Moe. The "red scare" theme is a really thin one (the film could just as easily be about gangsters with a few minor corrections) and without doubt not what interested Fuller in the project - he's clearly in love with the great and, for the time, highly unusual characters, which are about as far away from flagwaving patriots as you can possibly get (Skip even spells it out: "you're waving the flag at *me*?"). This is probably one of the reasons this film is still considered a "B" classic, while most red scare films work solely as unintentional comedy these days. PS! You might wanna leave your feminist-glasses off while watching the this film, which subscribes to the belief "you hit the one you love"... Poor Jean Peters gets knocked around from right to left by her lovers all throughout the film. 5/5

THE ALIEN FACTOR (1978) - Made in the suburbs of Baltimore for pennies and cents this is a highly entertaining DIY sci-fi/monster movie with a big heart and some wonderful low budget monsters. As techically crude as it is, you tend to overlook its faults and focus on the enthusiasm of the crew, the typical american can-do spirit and the homegrown charm on display. This movie is a real straight shooter that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not, a simple, earnest monster movie made by friends and family on a fraction of a normal budget. What you see is what you get. I love movies like this when they work, and this one sure does! Movies like this makes me regain my trust in humanity. Then again i'm the kind of guy who enjoyed the movie-within-the-movie in Super 8 (2011) more than the movie itself. 4/5

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

It's been way too long since I've seen PICKUP. Nice. I sense Criterion's going to pick my pocket soon.

[Lars Jacobsson Member Find all posts View Profile Close Lars Jacobsson]

I watched the Criterion, wonderful release as i'm sure you've gathered.

My first viewing of PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET was a real heascrather. Just a week earlier i watched the spanish film GOLDSNAKE 'ANONIMA KILLERS' (1969) which I thought was an unusually good "B" thriller. A good 15 minutes into PICKUP I couldn't shake the annoyong feeling that all this seemed way too similiar in some obscure way... then it hit me: GOLDSNAKE was actually a scene-for-scene remake of PICKUP! (I would argue "shameless ripp off" since none of the original scriptwriters are credited)
What are the odds of me seeing these two films just a week away from each other?

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Cliniques Des Phantasmes - A doctor runs a practice that seems to involve hot ladies coming in and telling him about dirty things they've done in the past. Often he helps them by diddling them. He bones his nurses too, and often wears bad looking brown sweaters. Brigitte shows up for a scene but crimped hair... yuck. No subs on this but I could follow enough of the French dialogue to more or less understand what was going on and to realize that it was pretty dumb.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

The Sitter - Jonah Hill has to babysit three irritating kids who he brings on a run into NYC to get coke for his girlfriend. Methad Man shows up. Hilarity ensues. Stupid, stupid, stupid movie, way too predictable but it made me laugh in a few spots and hey, boobies and kids peeing.

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

THE STICKUP. Written & directed by Rowdy Herrington, starring James Spader & his gf Leslie Stefanson, who gets all the best lines, and raccoon-eyed David Keith (director of THE CURSE). Opens with the obligatory clown & cop-car chase scene, and then never really disappoints. Fun.

[ZoSo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close ZoSo]

Hemo the Magnificent!

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

42nd Street. Even if you can't dig the backstage production histrionics, even if "go out there and come back a star" hits you like limp shtick, even if its precode naughtiness just seems like so much ankle-peepage and winking, even if the leggy camera-choreography doesn't fluff your busby, that finale title piece is so good it's of Grindhouse/Times Square marquee thread calibre. Good thing they brought down the asbestos fire-curtain, it's that hot. Great movie, and the DVD looks fine: I picked up the Volume 2 Busby Berkley box set cheaply a while ago, and double-dipped without blinking to pick up the 9-film set.

[Clive Smith noodle doodle Find all posts View Profile Close Clive Smith]

Come on, Barry... Jack's Back next, please.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Being Bruce Lee - okay documentary about the man and the influence of his philosophy featuring input from the likes of Kobe Bryant and Ed O'Neill for some reason. Ed O'Neill is starting to look old and I had no idea what Kobe was talking about. Bruce's widow and daughter show up, they seem like cool people. Didn't teach me anything I didn't already know but it was entertaining enough at 11pm at night when I was full of beer and Todd was sitting on our couch.

HG Lewis: The Godfather Of Gore - Really well done, thank you Mr. Hennenlotter. Makes me wanna hang out with Herschel and play ping pong with him. Lots of input from the late David Friedman here too. Really an invaluable piece of work, nice to see Lewis get his due. Waters' input is fun too. Great stuff. Buy it.

Catman In Lethal Track/Catman In Boxer's Blow - Catman double feature! Fast forward through all the parts that don't have Catman in them for maximum impact and quote lines like 'Hey fuck face, take this!' and say 'Alley Oop' a lot. Catman. Yeah.

[paul h. woly boly Find all posts View Profile Close paul h.]

Ray Liotta double feature on Netflix Streaming, UNFORGETTABLE, a murder mystery with a sci-fi twist of a drug which enables the user to see the memories of another person. Very specific memories, actually. Script could have been tightened up a bit, but I liked John Dahl's (Red Rock West) direction. Next up was PHOENIX, a "heavily influenced by Tarantino" cop buddy/corruption/heist movie. Not too bad really. Nice appearances by Anjelica Huston, Tom Noonan, and Brittany Murphy.

[Andrew Monroe Pallid Hands Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew Monroe]

SERVO SUO - Very offbeat crime film from Romano Scavolini (of NIGHTMARE and SPIRITS OF DEATH fame). Spaghetti western regular Chris Avram is a down-on-his-luck english tutor who's kidnapped, trained, and generally fucked with by a mysterious group. He's to assassinate someone, but doesn't know who...There's a kernel of a good film here but the execution really falls flat. The film is too elliptical for its own good and nothing much happens for the first hour. There are a couple positive things though: Paola Senatore does a topless sort of belly dance and the organ-driven Piccioniesque score is pretty groovy. Scavolini, who wrote and directed this, is probably trying to say something about isolated loners in society (Avram and Senatore are both such, and puppets for the group), but he forgot to keep the film interesting.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Fix - This was a pretty interesting look behind the scenes of Ministry with a big focus on Al and his bizarre traits, heroin being the biggie here. Input from a few interesting people like David Yow and Jello Biafra provide some context. Paul Barker comes across as a lot more sane than Al, who might be pretty far gone and out at this point - or maybe not. Some good live footage mixed with some interesting interview bits and backstage bits.

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

JACK'S BACK. Written & directed by Rowdy Herrington, who has yet to fail me. James Spader is a Hawkeye doctor who dresses like a Kolchak, and everybody (it seems) is Jack the Rippers, and there's a girl doctor who looks like Bailey Quarters, and a doctor who looks like James Cameron as Freddy Krueger and Robert Picardo as a doctor and another other doctor who looks like a slab of wallboard (previous credits include "Rough Looking Guy #1" and "Man Near Phone Booth") and another another other other doctor who asks Spader if he even has a penis. (SPOILER: he does, or at least his ex-gang-member twin does, judging by his BVD puptent. His name's even Richard.) No boobs, but Spader does drop by The Cave adult theatre on Hollywood Blvd at one point (he leaves Dr. Bailey waiting in the car). Synthy themesong "Red Harvest" is sung by a guy who sounds like he was a drooler but got botoxed in the saliva glands. The R2 dvd is fullframe but cropped down looks about right. Pretty great.