Skyfall (2012)

Director: Sam Mendes

Starring: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Albert Finney, Berenice Marlohe, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear

More info: IMDb


Plot: Bond's loyalty to M is tested when her past comes back to haunt her. Whilst MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? Of course.

My busy work schedule kept me from seeing this in the theater for over a week after its debut.  It's the first time I missed opening night on a Bond film since A VIEW TO A KILL (1985), the year that I was finally old enough to drive a car.  Since I had to wait so long to see it (it would've felt like forever if I hadn't been so involved in work), it seemed like everything I heard about it was orgasmic.  My expectations were starting to get pretty high.  Then I saw it.  I really liked it but I wasn't all ga-ga for it like the rest of the world.  I've now seen it twice and it was better the second time.  Let's just assume I liked almost everything about the picture (and I do).  The things that bugged me were how he survives the fall from the train (I'm not spoiling anything if you've seen the trailer), I wanted more screen time from the villain (and why does he have to have some physical deformity?), a good number of the one liners from Bond felt shoe-horned in for laughs, Q is too young and I'm sure there's something else I'm not thinking about.  What I absolutely LOVED was the final minutes of the film and how the characters of Dench, Fiennes and Harris play out.  I was left STARVING for the next one.  There were parts of the movie where I started to long for the Bonds of old with Connery and Moore, where things weren't so serious and ramped up.  The final few minutes of SKYFALL gave me a sense of comfort that I have with the first two decades of Bond films.  It's been a bumpy 50 year ride with the franchise but it's also been an awful lot of fun seeing the series continue.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Director: Drew Goddard

Starring: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchinson, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Brian White, Amy Acker

More info: IMDb

Tagline: If you hear a strange sound outside... have sex.

Plot: Five teenagers head off for a weekend at a secluded cabin in the woods. They arrive to find they are quite isolated with no means of communicating with the outside world. When the cellar door flings itself open, they of course go down to investigate. They find an odd assortment of relics and curios but when one of the women, Dana, reads from a book she awakens a family of deadly zombie killers. There's far more going on however than meets the eye as the five campers are all under observation.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? YES!

I'm so overdue catching up on the movies I've seen.  I saw this one in the theater, what, a year or two ago?  Loved it and I didn't think I'd even like it.  I knew nothing about it going into it and that turned out to be a good thing.  I LOVE the two guys working the show.  Hilarious.  I need more movies with these cats.  Wheden did a masterful job taking the horror slasher genre and turning it on its ear.  It's funny and at times kind of scary (movies stopped scaring me when I was a kid so I'm not a good person to gauge about such things but I suspect this could scare someone who's reasonable easy to frighten).  And I friggin' LOVE the ending.  This is a great flick.  I can't believe the studio sat on this for two years before releasing it.  Boneheads.

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

Director: Robert Aldrich

Starring: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, Geroge Kennedy, Trini Lopez, Ralph Meeker, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker, Robert Webber

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Train them! Excite them! Arm them!...Then turn them loose on the Nazis!

Plot: In late March 1944 a rebellious US Army Major is "volunteered" to train twelve convicted military criminals for a suicide mission - to parachute to a heavily-guarded Nazi general staff officers' retreat to try and assassinate German officers on leave. To get his unorthodox assignment done the Major must convince Army brass to grant pardons to the men, then try to mold the twelve recidivists into a functioning unit, a task made more daunting by the doubts of a by-the-book General and by the suicidal nature of the mission.

My rating: 10/10

Will I watch it again?  Yup.

#42 on Project: Badass Charles Bronson

BRONSON'S AGE: 46
LEVEL OF BADASSICITY (10 being the highest): 10 (he single-handedly brought WWII to an end...OK, he allowed a few other fellas to tag along.)

I'm willing to bet that if you asked every American adult to comile a list of their top 5 favorite WWII movies are this would be on nearly every single one and the top of the list more than any other movie.  This movie oozes manliness.  Having Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson on screen at the same time is deadly.  Someone's going to get hurt and you can bet it ain't going to be Bronson.  See DEATH HUNT (1981) for more on that.

Do you recall that scene in DD where Bronson is attacked and has his ass handed to him by two huge guys in the bathroom at the paratrooper school?  He should have gotten an Oscar for that scene alone because that could never happen in real life.  Bronson is such a badass that he'd never been beaten up by anyone.  In fact, to prepare for that scene, Bronson beat the snot out of some local punks to keep it fresh in his mind what it looked like.  I think he did a remarkable job.  You'll notice who's left standing at the end of the picture.  'Nuff said.  DD is a great flick and a lot of fun.  It made the template for dozens (ahahahaha) of movies to follow trying to recapture they're success.  With a great ensemble cast and great Nazi killin', you'll be hard-pressed to find a more enjoyable WWII flick that delivers the goods like this one.

Black Snake (1973)

Director: Russ Meyer

Starring: Anouska Hempel, David Warbeck, Percy Herbert, Thomas Baptiste, Milton McCollin, Bernard Boston, Vikki Richards, David Prowse, Bloke Modisane, Anthony Sharp

More info: IMDb

Tagline: No man escaped her island -- or her whip!

Plot: The film, shot in Barbados, stars Fulci regular David Warbeck as an English gent trying to discover what had happened to his brother after he married plantation owner Lady Susan Walker. A vicious whip wielding dominatrix who rules her black slaves with a vicious lash of her whip or her tongue, even Snoop Dogg and Tarantino would baulk at her vigorous use of the 'n' word. The sugar cane plantation is run by a drunken Irish bigot and a gay Frenchman, and by the end of the film the brother has made an appearance in the form of a zombie like Dave Prowse. Meanwhile, after many whippings, crucifixions and other bodily abuses the slaves rise up against their tormentors in a bloody orgy of revenge and Walker is left fighting for her life, screaming racist rhetoric until her very last breath.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? YES!

#9 on Drive-In Delirium Volume 1 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

After you've seen your first Russ Meyer picture, you know what you're in for before you watch your second (and hopefully the rest of his catalog).  I've seen a few of his movies but I never expected to see him as restrained as he was in BLACK SNAKE.  For the most part, I wouldn't have known he directed it by watching it.  There's one scene (during the movie proper) where Lady Susan Walker, the plantation owner played by Hempell, is nude (there's next to no nudity in this picture, unusual for Meyer) and it's only when the camera zooms into and focuses only on her bare breasts that I could tell Russ Meyer was behind the camera an I laughed out loud.  Outside of that, this plays like a serious slave drama, hitting all of the beats you would expect in a picture like this.  I reckon you could say it's Slavesploitation but it's less exploitation than you would think considering who created it.  ??? is a mean sumbitch and you just know he's going to get his before it's over.  The same goes for Lady Walker.  The acting is good and so is everything else.

David Prowse shows up in a surprise roll.  I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum but the future Darth Vader has his moment in the sun...

Remember that scene in DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) when Django shoots that broad and she goes flying straight back?  Get a load of this...

So that's where Tarantino found his 'inspiration' for that bit.  Nice. 

I don't get the low score on IMDb.  I thoroughly enjoyd it, even if it does skimp on the 'sploitation.  Ooh.  I almost forgot one hilarious bit of Russ Meyer goodness.  The story ends and Meyer's voice over (done with pretty good posh British accent) talking about how much more developed the human race has become and about racial equality, etc.  While that's going on we see sugar cane fields being harvested by large, modern machinery followed by...

I miss you so much, Russ Meyer.  Please come back from the dead and make big boobed zombie movies.

A Blade in the Dark (1983)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Starring:  Andrea Occhipinti, Anny Papa, Fabiola Toleda, Michele Soavi, Valeria Cavalli, Stanko Molnar, Lara Lamberti, Giovanni Frezza, Marco Vivio

More info: IMDb

Tagline: When the lights go out, the knife goes in.

Plot: A film composer hires a country house to write the soundtrack for a horror B-movie. There he discovers something about a mysterious girl called Linda and suddenly people around him begin to be killed. Maybe the solution is in the final scene of the movie he's working on.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.

I'll give them this much, there are barely any movies that deal with film composers and this is one of them.  This is Lamberto "son of Mario" Bava's second picture, his first being MACABRE (1980) which is the other film on the DVD I have (soon to be 'had').  That one was worse than this but better in that it was 18 minutes shorter.  Either way you lose.  The story on this one is inventive and it's got a neat little ending (love the brick to the head shot) but it soon loses it when one guy has to explain everything to another ala the ending in PSYCHO (1960).  The score by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis helps but not enough.  There isn't a composer out there that could salvage a near two hour leisurely paced thriller.  I guess I have something else positive to say after all...Bava did get a little better on this second outing.  Maybe I should skip the rest of his pictures and watch the 34th and most recent one.  At this rate it should be a damn fine film.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Director: Arthur Penn

Starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor, Evans Evans, Gene Wilder

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They're young... they're in love... and they kill people.

Plot: Bonnie Parker is bored with life and wants a change. She gets her chance when she meets a charming young drifter by the name of Clyde Barrow. Clyde has dreams of a life of crime that will free him from the hardships of the Depression. The two fall in love and begin a crime spree that extends from Oklahoma to Texas. They rob small banks with skill and panache, soon becoming minor celebrities known across the country. People are proud to have been held up by Bonnie and Clyde; to their victims, the duo is doing what nobody else has the guts to do. To the law, the two are evil bank robbers who deserve to be gunned down where they stand.

My rating: 9/10

Will I watch it again? duh.

Great flick.  Don't watch it for a large amount of accuracy because from what I heard, they stray from the facts and often.  I'll know soon enough.  I just ordered Jeff Guinn's book, GO DOWN TOGETHER: THE TRUE, UNTOLD STORY OF BONNIE AND CLYDE, which I hear is pretty definitive.  Anyway, I'm not going to get into what's right and what's not.  This movie kicks ass.  I really dig the look of the film, not to mention the wonderful performances, style, cinematography, script, violence, etc.  One small contention I have is when the gang picks up Gene Wilder.  I LOVE Wilder but let's face it, he's over the top here.  While I like seeing him, I could do without the comedy. It felt out of place.  The shootout at the end is off the charts awesome!  And that half minute of silence that follows is golden.  The only other Depression-era gangster like this that comes close is the fantastic DILLINGER (1973) with Warren Oates, written & directed by John Millius.  I'd pay a pretty penny to see these two as a double bill on the big screen.  And can you imagine how amazing it would be to see them back to back at a drive-in?  I'm going to go masturbate now.

Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)

Director: Matthaias Hoene

Starring: Rasmus Harkdiker, Harry Treadaway, Michelle Ryan, Jack Doolan, Georgia King, Ashley Thomas, Tony Gardner, Alan Ford, Honor Blackman

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The undead are brown dead

Plot: A group of inept criminals decide to rob a bank so they can save their grandfather's retirement home from being demolished by developers. Meanwhile on another building site some workers dig up an old graveyard and they get bitten by the "undead" which sets off a chain reaction. Then the bank robbers are cornered by the police while in the process of the robbery, but when they exit they find that they are all dead as a result of the horde of zombies. They have to get to the retirement home before the zombies do!

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? YES!

Watch the trailer and tell me this doesn't look like fun.  Alan Ford is THE number one reason to watch this.  Just like he stole the show in SNATCH (2000), he steals it here.  He's kind of playing the same character but a little less brutal but equally hilarious.  I love this guy.  My childhood sweatheart is in it too, Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore from GOLDFINGER (1964).  Mmmmmmmmmmm.  Don't let the IMDb rating of 5.9 deter you.  CvS is a very funny British zombie flick with some great gags and gore.  It doesn't drag and it's over before you know it.  SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004) still reigns as the UK zombie comedy champ but this one is nipping at its heals and is a strong second place.  It'a great one to see with crowd.