TODAY I WATCHED... (Movies. TV) 2022

Prometheus (2012)-after several ancient drawings from around the world has been discovered showing what seems to be aliens, a spaceship with a crew and droid(sound familiar?)travel across the galaxy to a distant planet searching for the "Engineers", an alien race that might have created all humans. Upon arrival, they explorer a mysterious pyramid (never a good idea) and find something slimy and toothy waiting for them. Considered a prequel to Ridley Scott's classic Alien, this movie has so many winks, nods and references to the original movie, it might as well be called a loose remake as well. I was looking forward to this one, but couldn't help feel a little disappointed with the end result, as I feel the story contradicts the mythos established in the earlier movies and that the cast wasn't very interesting. Not to mention a little too much CGI for my taste. Still, it wasn't all bad and was just entertaining enough. 2.5/5

Annabelle:Creation (2017)



Prequel showing the origins of the demonic doll from the Conjuring universe. During the depression, a dollmaker and his wife lose their 7 year old in a roadside accident. 12 years later, they open their large home to a nun and six orphaned children. One of them opens a forbidden room, unleashing the demonic doll, causing pandemonium. I saw the first and last Annabelle movie, but somehow missed this. I found it to be a pretty good addition to the franchise.

The Book Of Bobba Fett

The Book Of Boba Fett

Some episodes of Fridays

Batman : The Long Halloween Part One (2021)



Animated film based on the DC Comics series by Jeph Loeb dealing with Batman, Captain Jim Gordon, and DA Harvey Dent attempting to capture a serial killer dubbed Holiday, who is knocking off members of the Falcone crime family, only on holidays. A seriously good film, and better than most of the DCEU's weak output. I have the 2nd part in my queue and will be watching it soon.

Finally watched Godzilla vs Kong

About what I expected. Monster fights were great as usual and at least this one didn't have the eco-terrorist plotline that I found so annoying in the last installment. But the whole hollow earth thing was really a reach and I thought there was too much time spent on that and not enough time with the mecha. Geez once Kong was revived the mecha was toast in about 3 minutes. I didn't really understand that whole "power axe" thing either because it was part of that nonsensical hollow earth crap. But the fights more than made up for the story and I'm used to overlooking silly plots in Godzilla movies anyway. A worthy ending to the franchise IMO.

"American Psycho" (2000)

It's 1987 and a wealthy, handsome yuppie Wall Street exec by day (Christian Bale) moonlights as a serial killer by night. Over time he finds it harder and harder to keep the two sides of his personality separate, which leads to a bloody breakdown of epic proportions. Bale is a total hoot in this mean-spirited horror comedy/satire, he's clearly having a ball throwing himself into the role. Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis ("Less Than Zero") and followed by a mostly-unrelated direct to video sequel starring Mila Kunis of "That 70s Show" (!) for some reason.

"Judge Dredd" (1995)

Big budget adaptation of the cult British sci-fi comic series, with Sylvester Stallone as the ultra violent future's most legendary law man. It's a great looking movie- the very "Blade Runner"-esque set designs, costumes, and effects are all top notch - but the story is a muddle. Plus, they gave Dredd an annoying comic-relief sidekick played by Rob Schneider of "SNL" for some reason. I was pretty disappointed with this one when I saw it years ago; it's not quite as bad as I remembered, but it's still a pretty hollow exercise. The 2012 version with Karl Urban as Dredd was much more faithful to the source material.

"Firewalker" (1986)

Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett are two down-on-their-luck treasure hunters hired by a foxy blonde (Melody Anderson of "Flash Gordon") to help her find a stash of Aztec gold in the wilds of South America. Lots of chases, fist fights, and wise cracks ensue. This comedic action/adventure in the "Indiana Jones" or "Romancing the Stone" vein was an interesting change of pace for Chuck -- he and Lou make a pretty good team and the movie is fun for a while, but it starts running out of gas around the hour mark and then just spins its wheels till the end.

Eyes Of Fire (1983)



Set in 1750, an adulterous preacher and his followers escape from their village after an aborted hanging attempt and eventually come across a valley that they learn is taboo to the local Shawnee indians. Feeling that they'll be safe from the "savages" they decide to settle in the valley but soon learn there is something far more sinister residing in the valley which keeps the Shawnee from venturing there. Although most of the effects are low grade tv type, this was still a rather effective supernatural thriller.

"We Are Twisted F**king Sister!" (2014)

Dee Snider, Jay Jay French, and the rest of the T.S. gang past and present take you through a lengthy,ridiculously in depth examination of Twisted Sister's ten year struggle to get the hell out of the New York tri-state area club scene and finally sign that ever-elusive major label record deal. Tons of amazing, never before seen videos and photos, classic clips, and hilarious stories. Essential viewing for all SMF's.

Unaware(2010)-a young man takes his girlfriend up to his grandfather's Texas ranch for a little getaway, but find he is gone for the weekend himself when they get there. Before long, he starts snooping around the place and discovers some papers that puts his grandpa decades earlier at Roswell(and we all know what happened there)and his possible involvement with the legendary story. All the while, the couple films the events as they happen. Yet another found footage(Blair Witch Project)style film, this movies starts off very slow and talky and seems to take forever for something to happen. And when it does, it's not all that exciting. Basically, this comes off like a rather dull episode of the X Files for the most part. 2/5

Dark Side Of The Ring.

The Book Of Boba Fett

"Rats" (aka "Killer Rats," 2003)

A reporter goes undercover in a run-down drug rehab facility, expecting to find patient abuse, neglect, or a similar scandal. However, she gets more than she bargained for because the old building's basement is home to hordes of super-intelligent rats who've developed a taste for human flesh. Yeah, real high concept stuff here.
I actually found this one while searching for a different rat movie (1982's "Deadly Eyes," which is also known as "Rats"). It's pretty typical early 2000s SyFy creature nonsense -- the CGI'd rats are hilariously fake but there's some decent gross out bits and even a couple of solid acting performances. It may not have been the rat movie I wanted, but it was an entertaining little hunk o' junk in its own right.

P.S. my search also turned up yet another movie called "The Rats" from 2005, which is set in New York City and looks like a hoot, too. On the watch list it goes!

Rat movies just don't do anything for me probably because I don't find rats disgusting or gross or remotely scary. I think they're cute actually. To me rat movies are like watching Night Of The Lepus. But put any kind of spider movie in front of me and I'm all kinds of grossed out.

Batman: The Long Halloween Part 2 (2021)



Batman continues his search for the Holiday killer, while dealing with an array of villains, including Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter and more. A really interesting animated film with a great voice cast.

tohostudios wrote:

Rat movies just don't do anything for me probably because I don't find rats disgusting or gross or remotely scary.  I think they're cute actually.  To me rat movies are like watching Night Of The Lepus.  But put any kind of spider movie in front of me and I'm all kinds of grossed out.

I'm with you, rats = not scary. Spiders/bugs = scary.

I will never forget going to see Arachnophobia during its theatrical run. That movie creeped the hell out of me, even tho it was only PG-13. My Mom swore my hair was still standing on end when I got home

Pelts

This is Dario Argento's entry in season 2 of Masters Of Horror. It stars Meat Loaf (who is billed as "Meat Loaf Aday" here) and while it's quite gory and contains quite a bit of nudity it's stupid as hell and makes no sense. Basically supernatural raccoons exact bloody revenge on anyone dumb enough to trap and kill them for their fur. That's it.

I wanted to revisit this one ever since Meat Loaf passed away because I remembered him being in it and I remembered thinking what a waste of his talent this was. My opinion hasn't changed.

"The Rats" (2002)

A "rogue colony" of aggressive, hungry rats spreads out across Manhattan from their home base in the catacombs beneath a high-end department store, with only a lone exterminator (Vincent Spano) and a single Mom (Madchen Amick) standing in the way of total rodent domination.
This fun, cheesy made-for-TV urban horror flick originally aired on the Fox Network. The production values are decent - the rats are actual critters (instead of cheesy CGI, like in the other rat movie I watched last night) which is a nice touch, and leading lady Madchen Amick is nice to look at. Fun fact: director John Lafia co-wrote the original "Child's Play."
If you're looking for a rat movie, you can do worse than this one.

"The Death and Resurrection Show" (2013)

Insanely in-depth (two and a half hours!) documentary about the long, strange career of British rockers Killing Joke, who've been making loud, obnoxious, socially aware post-punk/darkwave/industrial/metal music (depending on the album and era) on and off since 1980. This flick is loaded with vintage film clips and interviews with band members, friends, and associates past and present but unfortunately it gets bogged down too often by letting vocalist/main man Jaz Coleman (who is, to put it mildly, nuttier than squirrel shit) ramble on about his kabbalic/occultic practices and his beliefs in UFO's, Aleister Crowley, the imminent apocalypse, karmic "energy sites" around the planet, alternate dimensions, etc., etc.- the movie would have been at least half an hour shorter if someone would've told him to shut up and just talk about the music. If you can put up with Coleman's near-constant stream of metaphysical gibberish, this is a decent crash course in all things Killing Joke for newcomers (like me) and a treasure trove of info for longtime fans.

I never paid attention to Killing Joke until the Pandemonium album and that one blew me away. It was after that that I learned how bizarre and widely varied their music is. I never did find another KJ album I liked but I still really like Pandemonium; I can play the title track over and over (which is why I bought a single of it with half a dozen different remixes).

tohostudios wrote:

I never paid attention to Killing Joke until the Pandemonium album and that one blew me away.  It was after that that I learned how bizarre and widely varied their music is.  I never did find another KJ album I liked but I still really like Pandemonium; I can play the title track over and over (which is why I bought a single of it with half a dozen different remixes).

Until recently, all I knew about KJ was the old song "Eighties" (which got some MTV play back in the day) and "The Wait" (due to it being covered by Metallica). Thanks to YouTube, I randomly heard the track "I Am The Virus" from the album Pylon (2015) a while ago and I liked it a lot, so I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole on'em. I've heard some of that Pandemonium album, which sounds pretty good too.

I finally got around to acquiring the Pylon CD this week and I'm digging it so I will definitely investigate them further. As the documentary showed, musically they've been all over the damn place but Pylon falls into the industrial/metal pocket that I like.

"Jasper Mall" (2020)

This bittersweet documentary details a year in the life of the once-bustling Jasper Mall, a dying small town shopping center in Alabama. Back in the '80s the Mall used to be the center of local activity, but now in the age of Amazon it's barely hanging on, opening its doors every day for an ever dwindling number of tenants and even fewer customers. An intriguing, but also depressing, study of a retail trend that's being repeated in malls all across the United States.