Bad Channels (1992)

Director: Ted Nicolaou

Writers: Charles Band, Jackson Barr

Composer: Blue Oyster Cult

Starring: Robert Factor, Martha Quinn, Aaron Lustig, Michael Huddleston, Roumel Reaux, Paul Hipp, Rodney Ueno, Sonny Carl David, Charlie Spradling, Steve Tietsort, Ron Keel, Alex Bookston

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Killer music.  Alien airwaves.

Plot: An alien lands in a small town and promptly takes over the local radio station. The disk jockey, Dan O' Dare, well known for his publicity stunts, becomes a hostage. The alien uses the radio station and Dan's amused audience to target and subsequently shrink women for his collection.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

If this had come out in the mid-80s, I would have eaten this up.  It's not that bad.  With a fun concept and story mixed with some good acting (for what it is) including the scrummy original MTV VJ, Martha Quinn, some gore and creature effects with a score by Blue Oyster Cult, you've got yourself 88 minutes of goofy fun.  Too bad they didn't sleaze it up a bit.  That would have made it the horror/comedy/exploitation picture people are clamoring for.

The A-Team (2010)

Director: Joe Carnahan

Writers: Joe Carnahan, Brian Bloom, Skip Woods

Composer: Alan Silvestri

Starring: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Patrick Wilson, Gerald McRaney, Henry Czerny, Yul Vazquez, Brian Bloom, Maury Sterling, Terry Chen, Omari Hardwick, David Hugghins

More info: IMDb

Tagline: There Is No Plan B

Plot: A group of Iraq War veterans looks to clear their name with the U.S. military, who suspect the four men of committing a crime for which they were framed.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

UGH!  This was so close to being a great, fun movie.  Really.  There's so much to like.  The four leads are a great fit for their characters.  I never watched the TV show (even though I was at the right age for it when it came out) but these guys work well together and I'm going to assume that they stay pretty close to their TV counterparts.  As the characters go, Face (Cooper) was a bit much while in prison but everyone else was a lot of fun.  The moments that work are great like the scene when Lynch is in the car with his hired muscle who is handcuffed and is about to die.  Great stuff. It mixes the right amount of humor to elevate what would typically be a standard ho hum scene.  Then there's the shit, and I mean to use that word harshly, that brings the picture down.  You know what I mean.  The impossible helicopter moves, FLYING a tank (!?!?!?!?!?!?!), the heist job in Iraq and the finale.  Hell, it's just about all of the action set pieces.  They're so over the top and impossible that it's cartoonish.  It's far too much.  They did such a great job with everything else that it's a shame they had to go full retard.  I don't know how well this did at the box office and it's been 3.5 years since it came out and I haven't heard anything about a sequel so I doubt that's going to happen.  I probably wouldn't watch it anyway unless they at least tried to ground the action in reality.  Except for that horseshit, it was a lot of fun.  I hate it when a movie doesn't come together.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Writers: Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George

Composer: Laurie Johnson

Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, Peter Bull, James Earl Jones, Tracy Reed, Jack Creley, Frank Berry, Robert O'Neil, Glenn Beck, Roy Stephens, Shane Rimmer, Hal Galili, Paul Tamarin, Laurence Herder, Gordon Tanner, John McCarthy, Burnell Tucker

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The hot-line suspense comedy

Plot: An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop.

My rating: 10/10

Will I watch it again? YES!

I about lose my shit laughing every time I see this.  George C. Scott gives the funniest performance of his career.  The belly slap is priceless. I'm stunned that he didn't do more comedies.

Peter Sellers does a great job in three roles.  Dr. Strangelove gets some laughs with the physical comedy but I dug his Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake the best as far as his acting goes.  Brilliant performances all around.

Sterling Hayden is a beast of an actor and he's incredibly funny here. He's so serious and slightly over the top.  He's perfect for this character.  Hilarious.

I stand by my notion that Slim Pickens should be in every movie.  Even playing it straight (Kubrick reportedly didn't tell him it was a comedy and only showed him the script for the scenes he was in), he's amazingly funny and he gets the single classic image from the picture.

Keenan Wynn also plays it straight and he gets a lot of laughs.  I love this guy.

The rest of the cast does a wonderful job, too.  Hell, it's got James Earl Jones 14 years before STAR WARS (1977)!  Kubrick was a genius with film.  His casts are spot on, the lighting is incredible, his shot compositions, the sets (Ken Adam of the Bond franchise), editing, music, the works.  This is incredibly funny yet it's a hard-hitting satire of the state of world politics at that time.  50 years later it's still a masterpiece. 

Lusty Neighbors (1970)

Director: ???

Writer: ???

Composer: ???

Starring: Cheryl Powell, Phyllis Stengel, Gerard Broulard, Ron Dyer

More info: IMDb

Plot: A twenty-something brunette confesses her marital problems to her sexy, blonde neighbor. The blonde suggests that the mousy, shy brunette attend her weekend "swinging" parties.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Here's another standard, dull softcore porn from the early 70s.  This is the second of a double feature DVD with the MUCH better THE PIMP PRIMER (1970).

Yawn.  Housewife is bored sexually.

Hey, let's have a party!  I LOVE your entertainment center.

And play games!

Games that require you to take off your clothes!

Scream (1996)

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: Kevin Williamson

Composer: Marco Beltrami

Starring: Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Courteney Cox, W. Earl Brown, Rose McGowan, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, Liev Schreiber, Linda Blair, Wes Craven, Henry Winkler

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Don't Answer The Phone. Don't Open The Door. Don't Try To Escape.

Plot: A killer known as Ghostface begins killing off teenagers, and as the body count begins rising, one girl and her friends find themselves contemplating the "Rules" of horror films as they find themselves living in a real-life one.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

So I'm just now getting around to watching this flick.  I haven't been all that interested in seeing it.  When it came out it looked like another dumb teen horror movie.  OK, so I was wrong.  It's actually pretty good.  I was pleasantly surprised.  One thing I loved was that Craven and writer Williamson did a great job at setting up everyone as the potential killer. It had me guessing all the way to the end and boy was I surprised.  Another great thing was the Ghostface mask and simple outfit.  Cool shit.  What wasn't cool was the lack of nudity.  Sigh.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)

Director: Georges Franju

Writers: Jean Redon, Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac, Jean Redon, Claude Sautet, Pierre Gascar

Composer: Maurice Jarre

Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob, Francois Guerin, Alexandre Rignault, Beatrice Altariba, Charles Blavette

More info: IMDb

Plot: A brilliant surgeon, Dr. Génessier, helped by his assistant Louise, kidnaps nice young women. He removes their faces and tries to graft them onto the head on his beloved daughter Christiane, whose face has been entirely spoiled in a car crash. All the experiments fail, and the victims die, but Génessier keeps trying.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

In 1960 we had PSYCHO and the French had this.

It's a great, leisurely paced horror/thriller that brings together an interesting story of love and murder with fine performances and loads of atmosphere.  EYES is very stylish but not so much that it overtakes anything else.  It's just the right amount it seems.  Everything from the dialogue to the set design and camera movements feel like it's just the right amount. It's a pretty lean picture.  The mask Christiane wears is eerie and compassionate all at the same time.  Even though it's 1960, they managed to insert some gross-out effects that I'm sure shocked audiences more than 50 years ago.

It's still pretty damn effective today.  You could draw a HOSTEL (2005) parallel I suppose.  Maurice Jarre's often quirky score doesn't bother me like a lot of his music.  He's done some great work but he often annoys the piss out of me with his style but not here.  The ending is shocking for its time but if there's one thing that bothers me about the picture it's how the police bait the doctor in an effort to trap him.  It's that they don't provide any backup.  They just let her go into the lion's den without any support if things should turn ugly for her.  If you lose that bit of nonsense then you're still left with a fantastic French horror picture that continues to hold its own.

Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (2001)

Director: Scott J. Gill

Writer: Scott J. Gill

Composer: Carvin Knowles

Starring: Ron Jeremy, William Margold, Al Goldstein, Al Lewis, Seymore Butts, Sharon Mitchell, Larry Flynt, Try Duffy, Adam Rifkin, Lexington Steele, Rodney Dangerfield, Chris Cannon, Tabitha Stevens, Veronica Hart, Anita Cannibal, Phoebe Dollar, Susan Yannetti, Samantha Stylles, Kenny Dollar, Shanna McCullough

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The Story of America's Most Unlikely Sex Star

Plot: Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy offers audiences a penetrating look inside the world of Ron Jeremy, America's most unlikely sex star and hero to millions. With nearly 25 years in the adult film industry and over 1,600 films to his credit, Ron Jeremy is huge. In his world, Ron reigns supreme-he's made millions of dollars and slept with thousands of beautiful women, and is indisputably the industry's biggest star. And everyone who's anyone knows Ron-a pop icon to millions, he is a beacon of hope for many American male, since he stands as living proof that pretty much anyone can get some. So how did such a classically unhandsome, big and hairy guy ever get to be such a super stud? In one of the most fascinating and entertaining comedies of the last year, audiences finally get a chance to get inside the life and times of Ron Jeremy, and find out what's really behind the hardest working man in show business.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

To me, Ron Jeremy comes across as a really funny and fun-loving guy who is eager and professional.  This documentary confirms that.  To look at him, you'd never know he's probably the most famous male porn star second only to John Holmes.  He's not the physical model of what you'd expect from a porn actor. He's got lots of personality but that alone won't get you very far into the industry.  Personality and a 10 inch dick that can cum on cue is what will get you a lasting career in the porn industry.  This film covers the major beats from his childhood and early adult career as a special ed teacher (!) to his getting into porn and how he has built a career out of it to be the most known and recognizable porn star today.  He's lived long enough to become a living legend.  It's a fun film loaded with nudity and laughs.  It's a shame that there's such a stigma in the film industry that prevents porn actors to become legitimate actors.  Ron Jeremy is an exception but as of 2001 he was still struggling to gain mainstream acceptance.