So, I sent the trailer kitties out and I told them to find me 6 good grindhouse previews. They came back with these 6 action-filled trailers! Let’s see how they did.
Last night, I watched the Lifetime original film, The Murder Pact! And I’m glad that I did because it turned out to be one of the best Lifetime films of the years so far!
Why Was I Watching It?
Seriously, how could I not watch it? It was a movie about murderous rich kids and it was on Lifetime! There was no way I could resist watching The Murder Pact.
What Was It About?
It’s about murder, lies, greed, fame, guilt, and secrets. It’s also about a beautiful house and a bunch of good-looking narcissists who have impeccable taste in clothing. It’s exactly my type of film.
At an exclusive college, there are four friends. Camille (Alexa PenaVega) wants to be a famous singer but, when she auditions, she is rather cruelly turned down because she’s a “nobody.” Annabel (Renee Olstead) is a neurotic dancer who finds herself having to deal with a catty rival named Poppy (Bailey De Young, giving a wonderfully snarky performance). Rick (Michael J. Willett) is a pill-popping athlete. And then there’s the leader of their little group, Will (Beau Mirchoff). Will is a wealthy model who wears blue contacts and who lives in an amazing mansion.
When these four friends are connected to the accidental death of another student, they try to cover up their involvement. However, a rebellious student and photographer named Lisa (Sara Kapner) witnessed what happened. Under Will’s direction, they plot to keep Lisa from revealing what she knows.
However, soon, everyone is being blackmailed by an unknown person who is demanding $4,000,000 to remain silent. And a mysterious detective (Sean Patrick Thomas) suddenly shows up and starts asking questions…
What Worked?
Oh my God, this movie was soooooo good! It was a stylish melodrama that kept viewers guessing up until the final scene. All of the actors appeared to be having a ball playing their decadent characters. They seemed to truly relish delivering every over-the-top line of dialogue and, as a result, they were all a lot of fun to watch.
I’ve always said that half the fun of a good Lifetime movie is getting to see where everyone lives and how everyone gets dressed in the morning and The Murder Pact certainly delivered on both counts. I especially loved seeing Will’s mansion. On twitter, the film’s screenwriter informed me that the house is currently for sale in Connecticut and I’m hoping it will still be on the market when I make my first million.
Also, I have to take a moment to appreciate the film’s cinematographer, Branden Maxham. The film looked gorgeous. I especially loved the chilly scenes of Will and friends plotting while standing outside in either snow or drizzling rain.
What Did Not Work?
It all worked!
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
Well, of course, I related to Lisa the photographer because we Lisas stick together! However, as a dancer, I also knew what Annabel was going through. I’ve known my shares of Poppys.
“Good people are the first ones to die.” — Daniel Salazar
[some spoilers]
After a two week break we’re finally back to a new episode of Fear the Walking Dead. The show has so far been very consistent in establishing one simple fact about the most of the cast in this companion series. They are, deep down in their hearts, very good people. Travis is very much your typical enlightened man who shows compassion towards his family and others. Madison loves her family no matter the sort of trouble they find themselves in. The show in it’s third episode seem very intent on pushing against their very good-nature to see who will be the first to break.
“The Dog” finds both Travis and Madison separated during what looks like the first major outbreak of the zombie apocalypse. Travis has just found his estranged son and with his ex-wife have had to seek refuge in the boarded up barbershop of one Daniel Salazar and his own family. Madison waits back home in their East L.A. suburban home with her own two children. With such a truncated season the episode doesn’t wait too long to put the families of both Travis and Daniel in danger. The riots which broke out during the last episode have begun to spun out of control and businesses in the neighborhood have begun to get looted and burned. It’s during their attempt to flee the riot zone that we see the extent of the damaged caused by the continuing riots and more signs that rioters won’t be the only danger around these two men’s families.
Back with Madison we see her attempting to shield her daughter from the truth of what she has seen during the day (it’s been less than two days in series timeline since the events of the pilot episode). Her son Nick seems to understand more of what’s truly going on around them and is more than willing to be the one to voice the ugly truth to his mother. If they’re to survive the storm that’s coming then she needs to tell Alicia what she has seen. As with the events around Travis, Madison and her kids must soon flee their own home when an infected and turned neighbor has decided to follow the barking of a dog Nick had let into their home.
Both sequences were edited with equal amount of tense-filled moments as Travis and Madison must rely on their protective instincts to try and keep their respective families safe. The scenes with Travis and his group fleeing the barbershop have much more of an action tone to them as rioters, looters and police clash all around their group. With the Clark family it’s a sequence that wouldn’t seem out of place from any horror film. We see how resourceful Madison is starting to become since her time during the visit back at her high school in the previous episode. Some of this resourcefulness seem born out of keeping up with her junkie son Nick who has taken the initiative to do the the best thing to keep the family alive.
The writers have so far written up Nick not just as a troubled, loser drug-addict of a son, but as a survivor. His very addiction and time spent out on the streets feeding his habit has given him a sort of advanced survivor instinct that many around him still haven’t developed. It’s very clear from the first half of the season that his sister Alicia is still quite clueless to the events happening around her. She still believes that she must cut loose from her troubled family and be with her boyfriend to start a new life. Even after seeing the results of those infected, one of which happens to be her boyfriend Matt, Alicia still denies what she has seen and heard. Madison, on the other hand, has had some first-hand experience of what’s going on and has begun to fully believe Nick and gradually adapting to the new reality descending on her family and the world.
Travis, on the other hand, continues to cling to his inner goodness. His compassion for his neighbor Peter Dawson, who he finds in Madison’s home eating the remains of the barking dog that attracted him to the house, almost gets him killed if not for the fast thinking of Daniel Salazar. We see contrasting fathers in Travis and Daniel in this sequence. Travis’ good-nature almost gets him killed while Daniel’s more pragmatic approach to the deteriorating situation around them saves everyone. Even the scene where Daniel tries to teach Travis’ son how to handle the shotgun speaks volume on the differences between the two men.
Travis is the enlightened and educated man who abhors guns and violence. Daniel, we learn through some brief exposition, has survived his home country or El Salvador when many of his family didn’t and has carved out a life for his family in a new country. Travis still thinks that those in power will settle things and get everything back to normal. He even comments in the end of the episode that the cavalry has arrived when the National Guard pulls into the neighborhood to search, isolate and destroy the infected. Daniel sees this and knows that whatever has begun with the riots has spun out of control and too late for everyone still hoping for a peaceful resolution.
Fear the Walking Dead has had a tough task of making itself feel both new and familiar to fans. On the one hand, the series does feel new from the fact that this is a world still inhabited mostly by the living. It’s a world still unaware of the storm bearing down on it. Yes, we’ve seen instances of zombies making an appearance, but never in the large numbers audiences have become used to from it’s parent series The Walking Dead. The familiarity comes from the audience seeing the chaos caused by these first moments of the zombie apocalypse. We as an audience has seen the result once civilization finally broke down. We know the rules of this world even if most of the characters in the show are oblivious or slowly learning about them.
It’s that very familiarity that could make or break the series. So far, the series writers have made each character’s reaction to the events these past couple days range from dangerously naive (Alicia) to hard survivor (Tobias) and everyone in-between. While for some viewers the very naivete that some characters exhibit despite what they’ve seen or heard could become frustrating, it does sow the seeds in filling in the blanks of why civilization fell. Mistrust helps in the populace not believing what those in power has been telling them. Yet, it looks like misguided optimism and compassion also might have had a hand in speeding up the zombie apocalypse.
We’re now halfway through the first season of Fear the Walking Dead and things have begun to move along faster than it’s parent series did with it’s first season. We still have slower scenes with people just talking, but the writers never linger too long before ramping up the tension. This companion series has had the advantage of working with a world still learning the rules which makes for some dread-inducing scenes which the parent series rarely had. With the back-end episodes of series set to start it’ll be interesting to see if the writers will continue to mine the theme and focus of this first season.
Will the good people be the first to die and if they don’t then how will these horrific events change them? Will it be for the better or for the worst?
We will just have to tune in the next three Sundays and see what happens.
Notes
Tonight’s episode was written by Jack LoGiudice and directed by Adam Davidson.
Nice sequence after fleeing the barbershop as Travis and his group slowly drive past a hospital and see the chaos unfolding as zombies (looking like both patients and healthcare workers) were confronted by responding LA police and SWAT. Earlier in this sequence we even see a brief glimpse of a doctor who looks to be a zombie staggering amongst the fleeing civilians and responding police yet remaining unnoticed by both.
The rioting, once we see it in full, doesn’t show whether the chaos is due just to the rioting or to the zombies amongst the rioters and riot police causing their own form of disturbance.
Neighbor Pete Dawnson being put down by Daniel Salazar with both barrels from an over-under Turkish shotgun marks the arrival of the series’ first gory moment. Some very nice work by the effects gurus from KNB EFX.
The point-blank headshot of Pete via shotgun blast was a nice homage to a similar shotgun blast to the head in the original Dawn of the Dead.
Funny how even though people heard the two shotgun blasts and the screams of their neighbors from the night earlier, some of them seem to still have to take the garbage out in the morning. I guess living in the city with it’s constant sounds of gunshots and screams have become routine for these Los Angelinos.
I guess the neighbor who had the party for their girl the day before and who was being attacked by neighbor Pete Dawson didn’t survive the night uninfected if the markings left by the National Guard was to be believed.
Once upon a time — when comics copied movies rather than vice-versa — there was a little bit of a “Vietnam boom” in the funnybook pages. Hot on the heels of the success of flicks like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket at the box office, Marvel and DC looked to America’s (then, at any rate) most divisive military entanglement as the source of inspiration for a handful of well-regarded late ’80s series, and while it’s certainly been a healthy spell since I dug out my old back issues of The ‘Nam or Cinder And Ashe, I remember being as thoroughly impressed with them as anyone and everyone else was back when they were a going concern.
Then, of course, the ’90s hit, and when the Image books of that woe-begotten decade’s early years ushered in the era of the genuinely brain-dead superhero story packaged inside a foil-wrapped holographic cover…
I’ll try and keep this short, unlike the movie, which if you watch the director’s cut as I did, comes out to about five and a half hours. Once you’ve sat through something like Jacques Rivette’s Out 1 (1971), which comes out to a little over twelve hours, this isn’t much. Also, despite what I’m going to say about it, it’s problems don’t come from it’s length. A lot of movies damage themselves by going past two hours, but not this one. The length really wasn’t an issue for me.
I’m also not going to pick out all the little stupid things like you see me do with Hallmark movies. Yes, Stellan Skarsgard says the Christian church split up in 1054 into Roman Catholic and Orthodox, but it actually fractured a long time before that break. Or the onscreen text, which you would expect in a Godard film. Especially when Skarsgard brings up Fibonacci numbers. That probably only ticked me off because I went through about nine years of college level computer science and really don’t want to hear about Fibonacci numbers ever again. Also, there’s a scene where she makes one attempt to have sex with black guys. It kind of reminded me of that “documentary” from the early 1970’s called Black Love. It’s there to mention that men are homophobic, but she is implicitly homophobic since sex with a woman is never brought up in this sex addict film. Von Trier also whips out the Two Kinds Of People In The World cliche, but it only makes sense if everyone is right handed. Well, let’s talk about the movie.
First, if you’re a fan of Lars Von Trier, then it’s a no brainer. This movie is for you. Don’t hesitate to watch it. If you are like me and love Breaking The Waves (1996), then this has similar material, but it’s not even remotely as moving. If you were offended by Dogville (2003) like I was, then don’t worry, this isn’t offensive stuff. It’s just boring.
The movie is about a girl named Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who recounts her life as a self proclaimed nymphomaniac to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgad). The movie cuts back and forth between the actual story and then Seligman’s thoughts on it. Kind of like sitting in on a therapy session if it were being conducted by college students in a debate class. And that’s where this film’s biggest issue is for me. A lot of the analysis feels pedestrian or the kind of thing you would expect in a college paper written by a student who hopes the teacher will be impressed. And at times its almost like argument for arguments sake. Like when you’re in a class and a topic is tossed out for discussion. The topic may actually be rather simple, but people keep trying to throw things in to pad out the conversation to fill the class time. A lot of the dialogue feels like that sort of thing.
The story begins when she is a little girl and takes us up to the events that led Seligman to find her in the alley outside of his place at the beginning of the film. Her father is played by Christian Slater who I think does a good job. His British accent may be a problem for you, but it wasn’t for me. Neither was it a problem for me with Shia LaBeouf’s character who is a male presence in Joe’s life pretty much throughout the film. The accent was a problem for me with Uma Thurman’s character though.
There’s a point where Joe just starts referring to the men in her life by letters. She casually tosses them around. During one of these scenes, Uma Thurman shows up as the wife of one of the guys who’s there with Joe along with their kids in tow. The scene is supposed to start a little funny, then get really uncomfortable as it keeps going. Like when Thurman asks if she can show her kids the “whoring bed”. The problem for me was the accent. If they had just let her speak normally, then it would have worked, but it was a voice that at this point in her career is obviously not her’s and I can’t suspend disbelief. So the scene was just hilarious to me. Especially when she actually screams. That made me think of Julianne Moore in Map To The Stars (2014), which also had me laughing.
This film has been dismissed as porn or on the flip side, played up for showing so much. People especially like to mention that the sex is unsimulated. Well, it really doesn’t count in my book if that isn’t Shia LeBeouf’s penis, which it isn’t. They use CGI to graft porn actors genitalia onto some of the actors. So it’s not anything to brag about. Is it porn? Far from it. Anybody who tells you that has no idea what they are talking about. It probably comes closest to an exploitation movie at best in that department.
I said I wouldn’t pick out little flaws, but there’s a big one I have with the title and her consistently referring to herself as either a nymphomaniac or being addicted to sex. She’s not really addicted to sex. She’s addicted to sex like someone who only smokes Marlboro is addicted to cigarettes, but won’t smoke any other brand. She’s like that. She’ll take penetration by a penis, give a blow job, and poorly dabbles in S&M. That’s really it. She’s rather discriminating about what she’ll do. Another analogy is like when someone says they’re a cinephile, but that means to them that they love watching highly acclaimed foreign films. An addiction to something broad like movies or sex means you’re indiscriminate. However, I get why Von Trier sticks with the term nymphomaniac because the movie does have a reason to make sure the apparent love of sex and guilt about it is explicitly associated with a female character. The ending depends on it.
The only thing that was kind of noteworthy to me was how the way the movie is shot changes in the final part of the film. It’s divided into chapters and in the last one Von Trier either shot it to get film grain and over exposed lights or did it in post processing. I think it was probably a reference to a movement in film he was involved in back in the 1990’s called Dogme 95. You can watch something like Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1998) and it will look similar.
Honestly, it’s not a bad movie, but it’s really for people who like Von Trier stuff. If you like his stuff, see it. If you don’t, definitely skip it. If you’re totally new, then don’t start here. Begin with Breaking The Waves and Europa (1991) before wading into films like The Idiots (1998), Dancer In The Dark (2000), Dogville, and beyond.
Gamers have been clamoring for some of their favorite games to be made into full-length feature films. Whether it be rpgs, adventure or first-person shooters the games that have had a film adaptation were usually not very good. Even the classic first-person shooter Doom got it’s own film with even a gimmicky sequence near the end that put the action in first-person perspective just like the game. In the end, the film didn’t end up being very good.
Last year, there was a crowdfunding for a project that would take that first-person perspective and build a film around it. At first, it sounded like another take on the found footage craze, but this time around it’s not a film using the found footage narrative, but a film that was from the point of view of the protagonist. The film from start to finish will not stop and we’d only see things from the lead’s viewpoint.
This was done to great effect with the remake of the horror from Maniac. Now we shall see how well it works in an action genre that looks to blur the lines what’s film and what’s video game. Just from the released trailer alone this looks quite like some of the first-person shooters gamers have been eating up for the past decade. Having the film also stay in first-person could also make for many audiences to lose their mind or their lunches or both.
Hardcore just had it’s premiere on September 12, 2015 over at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The 1960s were turbulent times, and nowhere was that more evident than in the decade’s pop culture. Hair was longer, skirts were shorter, music was louder, and The Silent Majority was pissed! Rock and roll, superspies, and sexual swingers ruled the screen. Here are five short looks at five films from The Swingin’ Sixties:
VIVA LAS VEGAS! (MGM 1964; director George Sidney)
Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret sing and dance their way through this romp set in America’s gambling capital. Elvis is a race car driver, Ann’s an aspiring singer, and Cesare Danova plays Elvis’s rival on the race track and in Ann’s heart. Veteran musical director Sidney helps make this one of Presley’s better vehicles. Lightweight fluff for sure, but damn entertaining! Fun Fact: Danova was MGM’s first choice to play the title role in their 1959 epic BEN-HUR.
WHAT’S NEW, PUSSYCAT? (United Artists 1965; director Clive Donner)
I feel no shame in admitting that I love horror movies. I don’t think that’s any secret to anyone who has ever read my reviews on this site. When I’m feeling so restless that I can’t sit still or focus, all you have to do is give me a horror film (especially if it’s one that I’ve never never seen before) and I’ll be quiet for at least 90 minutes.
That’s why I’m always on the look out for horror movies that I haven’t seen before. If it’s a horror movie, I’ll watch it regardless of obscurity, age, or critical disdain. At its best, this habit has led to me discovering neglected cinematic gems like Sole Survivor.
And it’s worst, it’s led me to me sitting through films like 1980′s The Hearse.
The Hearse is one of those public domain film that turns up in every other Mill Creek Box Set and it tells a very familiar story. A recently divorced woman named Jane (played by Tish Van Devere, who was married to George C. Scott at the time) leaves the big city to seek peace and solace in a creepy small town that’s full of rednecks who stare at her with a combination of lust and total disdain. Jane moves into a house that once belonged to her aunt and, pretty soon, she’s hearing strange sounds and having nightmares. On some nights, she sees a hearse (which, earlier, had attempted to run her off of the road) pull up in front of her house.
Jane attempts to tell the local sheirff about the strange happenings at her house but he responds by suggesting that maybe she should move. The local townspeople respond to her concerns by telling her that her aunt made a pact with Satan. The local priest comes by and tells Jane that the necklace her aunt gave her is a symbol of Satan.
None of this really makes much of an impression on Jane, mostly because she’s busy dating this creepy guy named Tom. Tom rarely ever shows any emotion and, on those rare occasions that he does smile, his face looks like a leering skull.
Again, Jane doesn’t seem to notice any of this…
Obviously, horror requires a certain suspension of disbelief but, seriously, it’s hard not to watch The Hearse and feel as if the scariest thing about the movie is the idea that anyone could be as stupid as Jane.
That said, The Hearse isn’t a total waste of time. The nightmare sequence is genuinely effective and the film itself features a few creepy visuals but, then again, there’s no way the sight of a hearse pulling up in front of a house in the middle of the night couldn’t be creepy. Trish Van Devere does okay as Jane, though she was far better in both The Changeling and One Is A Lonely Number. (The film also features a few too many less-than-credible scenes where the town’s teenage boys talk about how “hot and sexy” they find the aristocratic and rather uptight Jane to be.) If, like me, you’re into film history, you’ll enjoy this film as a relic of the past, an example of what horror movies were like in a less ironic age.
I guess after watching Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life this had to be the next roundup. Also it’s been 21 of these things since I last spotlighted this genre of movies. I know how that kid could have been cured of his addiction. Watching these four movies.
Passionate Intentions (2015) – This one wasn’t even in IMDb when I watched it. They’re still processing my submission as I am writing this. This movie is one of those that has the absolute bare minimum plot, and the rest is just sex. It’s about a couple. The girl is about to inherit some money and it comes between them for awhile. Really, who cares. However, while the acting is bad, the plot doesn’t exist, and the sex is boring, it’s actually rather pretty. Here’s two shots.
The movie may be bad, but at least it was well shot. That’s way more than can be said for some of these. Sadly, they didn’t get someone as good for the sound cause that’s a little off.
Oh, and if somebody knows, then tell me what was with this guy and these dog tags. There are two sex scenes with him where he is wearing them. I don’t remember any explanation given. Is this some fetish I’m not aware of?
Sexual Wishlist (2014) – Just like Passionate Intentions, this movie has the as little plot as possible and as much sex as possible thing going on. This time it’s a divorce and an argument over who gets a couple of things that keeps them having sex with other people. But this movie has two things Passionate Intentions didn’t have.
Frankie Cullen
Christie Stevens
I’ve seen Frankie Cullen in several of these movies now and he is almost too good for them. I know he has done a few, but he really should be doing B-Movies rather than these. He has enough acting talent for it. His presence usually lifts the movie up.
Unfortunately, Christie Stevens does the opposite. She gives the worst performances I have seen in any of these movies. Her line readings make Ryan O’Neal in Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987) seem amazing.
At least her lines in Intergalactic Swingers (2013) were so cheesy that it really didn’t matter, but here she is wretched.
Also, some how this movie and Passionate Intentions were shot by the same person, Lex Lynne Smith, but the difference in quality is almost night and day.
Pleasure Or Pain (2013) – Now that director Zalman King is no longer with us, they seem to be slapping his name onto anything he did. He’s the one who brought us the Red Shoe Diaries. You know, the TV show and movie series that David Duchovny narrated. I always found it funny that you could watch him on network television in the evening, then tune into late night cable and watch him there too. But to the movie.
This is Fifty Shades of Grey if that movie could have actually shown anything. Seriously, that almost tells you exactly what to expect here. Cut out the pointless relationship BS, horrible attempts at characters, and the stupid negotiation scenes and replace it all with arty eroticism. That’s Pleasure Or Pain in a nutshell.
As you can see, clearly what was missing from Fifty Shades of Grey was a miniature boat. That’s our Christian Grey.
That’s our Anastasia Steele narrating the story from what appears to be a radio broadcast booth. I’m not sure if they ever explain exactly where she was and it really doesn’t make any difference.
The two meet, get married, and then it’s just erotic scenes from then on. However, while the settings and exact situations may change, it goes to a certain point and never further. Just like Fifty Shades of Grey did. Both go only so far, then dance around there, but don’t actually do anything. King really tried to get arty with this. There’s one scene that both made me think of Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain (1973) and what must have been going on at One Eyed Jacks when Lynch wasn’t there filming Twin Peaks.
It’s the best of the four films here, but you will get sick of the erotic stuff. There’s really just so so much of it. I was already hurting by the mid point of the movie wanting the thing over with.
Monster of the Nudist Colony (2013) – Now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Take a whiff of those fingernails because that smell is Monster of the Nudist Colony. Not even Frankie Cullen could save this one.
There’s an ape loose at a nudist colony where all people do is have sex. For some reason Cullen, a detective, is sent to investigate. And investigate he doesn’t. The movie is just some of the worst shot on video sex I have seen since Sexually Bugged! (2014). In fact, I’m quite sure that it’s the same crew. I even recognize some of the music, which by the way, is the worst music ever. And it has lyrics. One of them keeps repeating that he’s “Johnny Wet Pants”.
While everyone is having sex, the ape kidnaps and ties up a couple of the girls like Fay Wray or something. Just like the kid in Cyber Seduction is cured by jumping in a pool, two girls dancing naked while tied to poles turns the ape back into a man. Cause of course it does!
This really is the worst kind of these late night cable movies. It’s one of those where the girls look into the camera looking for approval like they’re a cat that’s just brought a dead rat to their owner.
Marilyn Monroe’s status as America’s #1 Sex Symbol saw her cast in lots of light, fluffy roles during the course of her career. But when given the chance, she proved she was more than just another pretty face. Marilyn’s acting chops shine like a crazy diamond in the 1952 film noir DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK.
Marilyn plays Nell Forbes, a young woman new to New York. She’s obtained a babysitting job through her uncle, an elevator operator at a ritzy hotel. Nell’s an attractive woman, but right from the start we can tell there’s something slightly off about her. She seems haunted, her voice and mannerisms have a wounded quality. After putting her little charge Bunny to bed, Nell begins trying on the mother’s jewelry and kimono. She goes to the window when she hears a plane fly by, strangely attracted to the sound.
Through the Shattered Lens 