Snatch (2000)

Director: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Dennis farina, Vinnie Jones, Brad Pitt, Rade Serbedzija, Jason Statham, Alan Ford, Mike Reid, Robbie Gee, Lennie James, Ewen Bremner, Jason Flemyng, Ade, Stephen Graham

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Stealin' Stones and Breakin' Bones

Plot: Unscrupulous boxing promoters, violent bookmakers, a Russian gangster, incompetent amateur robbers, and supposedly Jewish jewelers fight to track down a priceless stolen diamond.

My rating: 9.5/ 10

Will I watch it again? Oh, yeah.

No need to say much about this one since everyone should have seen this one already. It's fucking fantastic and funny as shit. It put Statham and Jones on the map and Dennis Farina has never been funnier. Pitt was hilarious, the music is perfect, it's stylish without sacrificing anything and the story is solid. By the way, Brick Top needs his own fucking franchise. Alan Ford is an acting god!!!

Puppet Master 2 (1991)

Director: Dave Allen

Starring: Elizabeth Maclellan, Collin Bernsen, Steve Welles, Greg Webb, Charlie Spradling, Jeff Celentano, Nita Talbot, Sage Allen, George 'Buck' Flower

More info: IMDb

Tagline: His unholy creations hold the strings to your life.

Plot: The puppets return, this time they hunt some Paranormal Researchers to take their brain fluid for the dead/living puppet master, Andre Toulon.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yeah.

Back in the 80s, during my teen years I watched so many horror movies that I've forgotten most of them. Me and a buddy of mine would rent several horror movies on VHS and watch them until the wee hours of the morning, munching on junk food and downing Co-colas. This is one (along with the first film) that we watched. I may have watched it a few times back then but I wouldn't be able to remember. All I know is that I had only ever watched the first two flicks in this series and for some reason stopped. I guess I can blame going off to college.


Oh, yeah, the movie. You can always count on Full Moon's movies to be short. Sometimes they're barely over an hour but that's OK because they're often fun with a little something different than the big budget Hollywood fare. I love killer doll movies and these are the coolest dolls out there - so cool that I want all the toys. I guess it's budget restraints that keep the killer doll action to a minimum. The kills are fun and the stop motion puppet stuff gets me giddy every time. I can see watching this again but more boobs and gore would be nice along side some stop motion puppets out for revenge! This franchise seems ripe for a bigger budget re-boot and it'd be super cool if it started in 1930s Nazi Germany. Ooh, the kick ass possibilities are so ripe for it.

Unbreakable (2000)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Eamonn Walker

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Are You Ready For The Truth?

Plot: A suspense thriller with supernatural overtones that revolves around a man who learns something extraordinary about himself after a devastating accident.

My rating: 10/10

Will I watch it again? YES!!!

The less you know about this movie the better it will be when you see it.

I...LOVE...LOVE...LOVE...THIS...MOVIE!!! It's perfect. I wouldn't change a note. The performances are right on target. The relationship between David (Willis) and his son, Joseph (Clark), touch on something that has me choking up every time I watch it. Elijah (Jackson) is such a sympathetic character that it makes the ending even more shocking and powerful. James Newton Howard's score is just all kinds of awesome. I really dig this guy's scores for M. Night's movies. I don't get the hate that people have for this movie and M. Night. Up until THE HAPPENING (2008) I thoroughly enjoyed everything he did. Now, not so much but I haven't written the guy off. He's proven to be one hell of a film maker. For a while he was compared to Alfred Hitchcock and I can get behind that. Not everything Hitchcock made was a home run. He had a really good run for 20 years until the mid-60s when the quality of his output suffered, something from which he never recovered but people generally neglect his final films. UNBREAKABLE is a remarkable genre film that cleverly makes what's essentially a comic book movie seem more real than anything that came before it. M. Night has always talked about his being a trilogy. I'd love to see them but only if he can go back to being the film maker he was a few years ago before his shit hit the fan.

W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975)

Director: John G. Avildsen

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Cony Van Dyke, Jerry Reed, Ned Beatty, James Hampton, Don Williams, Rick Hurst, Mel Tillis, Furry Lewis, Art Carney

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Back in 1957, sweet-talking W.W. lived in a '55 Olds, loved bubble gum, Errol Flynn, country music, fried chicken, robbing filling stations, and a girl named Dixie. Not necessarily in that order.

Plot: W.W. is a happy-go-lucky crook who makes his living robbing gas stations through the drive-up windows. The Dixie Dancekings are a country music band trying to get their first big break. W.W. crosses paths with the Dixie Dancekings when he hijacks their car (and them) to help him rob a bank. At first, the band resists. However, when they discover how much money they make, they begin helping out voluntarily in order to finance their big break. At the same time, W.W. takes a liking to them and uses his natural charm and smooth-talking ways to help them start down the road to stardom.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

Back in the late 70s Burt Reynolds was THE MAN! You can tell he's really close to nailing that Burt charm in this picture. Too bad it's not all that great. I liked it OK but there's something about it that's just not sitting right with me. I can't explain it but it doesn't work for me. The acting is fine. It's neat seeing Burt's future BANDIT co-star, Jerry Reed, in his debut role and there are a few familiar character actor faces in the mix. Art Carney brings a little fun to the picture but not nearly as much as there could have been. WW is a misfire of a Southern crime comedy that should have been better. I'm looking at you, John G. "ROCKY (1976)" Avildsen.

The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)

Director: Arthur Hiller

Starring: Maximilian Schell, Lois Nettleton, Lawrence Pressman, Luther Adler, Lloyd Bochner, Robert H. Harris

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The kidnapping . . . . The masquerade . . . The murder trial . . . . Perhaps the most suspenseful shocker of our time.

Plot: Arthur Goldman is a rich Jewish industrialist, living in luxury in a Manhattan high-rise. He banters with his assistant Charlie, often shocking Charlie with his outrageousness and irreverence about aspects of Jewish life. Nonetheless, Charlie is astonished when, one day, Israeli secret agents burst in and arrest Goldman for being not a Jewish businessman but a Nazi war criminal. Whisked to Israel for trial, Goldman forces his accusers to face not only his presumed guilt--but their own.

DO NOT WATCH THIS TRAILER IF YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE THE MAXIMUM EFFECT OF THIS FILM!

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? It's worth it but probably not.

I'm a HUGE fan of Schell's. What a fantastic actor! This is essentially his show. He's in every scene (nearly two full hours of them) and he's as eccentric as can be. For the first hour his strange behavior kept me wondering where they were going with it until "it" happens and then the film takes a tonal shift that makes all the sense in the world. That's when Schell's "Arthur Goldman" really kicks into high gear and he becomes VERY interesting...and fun. Then the final few minutes reveal something else that gives this picture the weight it's been building up to and it's a great, albeit tragic, payoff. Schell is brilliant. This might not be the picture you slap in just for the hell of it but you'll be glad you saw it. I am, at least. I knew absolutely nothing about this picture going in and I'm glad as hell I didn't so much as see the trailer. It was more effective that way.

Top of the Heap (1972)

Director: Christopher St. John

Starring: Christopher St. John, Paula Kelly, Florence St. Peter, Leonard Kuras, John Alderson, Patrick McVey, Allen Garfield

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Justice shall be swift and deadly!

Plot: Officer George Lattimer (St. John) is caught between racist white cops and low-life black scum. White cops who see him on the street hassle him and don’t believe he’s a cop, while the criminals he busts don’t take him seriously. His home life is a shambles, and his mistress is whacked-out on god knows what. George fills his hellish life with ridiculous fantasies/flashbacks/flash forwards of life as an astronaut, a jungles dweller, and more.

My rating? 7/10

Will I watch it again? It's not necessary but I'm really glad I saw it.

This is the most surreal Blaxploitation picture I've ever seen...and it makes sense. St. John pulls off a doosey as writer/director/producer/star of this picture but the standout performance (for my money) is Florence St. Peter as George's (St. John) mistress. She's terrific. The scenes are all over the place but they go a long way into getting you inside George's head as he struggles with the world immediately around him from his work as a street cop to a husband, father and lover. Everything is coming together for a perfect storm ready to take down his mind and his ability to control anything. I'm really impressed. You're best bet in finding this is looking in the corners of the web. The best you'll find is a fullscreen VHS rip but it's worth seeking out and try out one of the most (if not the most) cerebral Blaxploitation pictures ever made.

Project Grizzly (1996)

Director: Peter Lynch

Starring: Troy Hurtubise

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Whenever I have that dream... something bad happens.

Plot: A documentary follows a Canadian fellow working on his dream: building a suit of armor so he can observe grizzly bears from a close distance.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

While I give this only a 6.5 (still a good score), PROJECT GRIZZLY falls short in the final twenty minutes for what it doesn't do. If not, it could have easily been an 8. I love watching passionate people regardless of their intellect or where their passions lie (there are exceptions) - like Mark Borchardt in AMERICAN MOVIE (1999). Troy Hurtubise in PROJECT GRIZZLY is a lot like Mark, well, more like an accomplished Mark. Troy has an admirable goal but his reason for pursuing that dream isn't conventional. He also spent nearly $100,000 making the suit that will protect him from a grizzly attack. The build-up is well done and very humorous. Mark is a likable guy and his enthusiasm causes him to say some ridiculous things but it's forgivable. He means well. My disappointment is with him never getting to use the suit for its intended purpose after spending a week in the wilderness searching for "The Old Man", the name he respectfully calls the bear who confronted him many years before. Talk about taking the wind out of the sails. Everything leads to seeing the suit in action (we get to see plenty of hilarious trials and tests early on) in the field and then it just fizzles. Oh well, them's the breaks. Troy is a well-meaning man with a dream and I'm not going to piss on it.