What was the last movie you've seen?

[Ack]

Maniac Cop 2

Finally, I finish the trilogy. Maniac Cop 2 is the best of William Lustig's trilogy and is actually what he considers his best film to be. Sure, it's not perfect, but it is everything it needs to be: more violent, more sleazy, more nasty than the first without going overboard the way the third did.

At its heart, Maniac Cop 2 is a combination of zombie and slasher film. Officer Matt Cordell is an undead disgraced cop who has come back to humiliate the police force and local New York City government after he is murdered while wrongfully held in prison due to the machinations of corrupt local officials. To do this, he creates panic by killing the innocent and letting criminals go, all while still wearing his uniform. In the first film, he scared the populace into distrusting the police. In the second, he openly hunts his chosen targets, including the heroes who bested him the first time around.

In fact, not only does he hunt them, he bests them. This is a movie where Cordell's plan works out exactly as he wants. By the end, his revenge is complete, and he can rest in peace...or will he? Maniac Cop 3 says no, but in that one he's purposefully recalled via voodoo. But enough about that movie, what is it that makes Maniac Cop 2 a solid film?

First, Robert Z'Dar, the man playing Matt Cordell, is huge and more scarred up than ever in this movie. He is massively physically imposing over the other actors, and the sound alone of him spinning his baton effortlessly as he stalks the night is intimidating. He makes a great and creepy villain, but also one you root for as you realize he's just a man who was wronged greatly.

Second, everything is bigger in this movie: more violence, more blood, more gratuity, more more more. Cordell attacks a police station in this first film, but it's nothing compared to him getting an automatic weapon and walking calmly through doors and walls as he silently picks targets and unloads. The scene of him opening fire from the darkness of a shooting range is sheer bloody brilliance. He also kills the previous film's heroes almost effortlessly and even takes a chainsaw to the hand in the process without flinching. Later he teams up with a hooker-hunting serial killer to break into Sing Sing, and once he's inside, the stunt work is incredible as a burning Matt Cordell hunts down the inmates who brutally stabbed and slashed him to death years before.

In a way, Maniac Cop 2 is a great payoff, and I'm glad I watched the series out of order and didn't finish with Maniac Cop 3 instead. I am happy to send off this trilogy this way, on a high note that I feel it deserves. This is quality B-movie entertainment.

And it's still way WAY better than Psycho Cop.

[REPO Man]

Probably would have liked this a lot more if I didn't pretty much know everything about this film.

Also went to the library again today (where I checked out Psycho) and they had the sequel.

[TSTR]

I've had so many kung fu flicks pass through my eyeballs over the last week or so that they all blend together and nothing makes any sense. Thank you El Rey.

[Luke]

DINOSAURS GONE WILD

aka Jurassic World

Hands down the most difficult movie review I've ever done. Not that you'll see my actual review, but here are some thoughts.

This is a rehash of Jurassic Park, but it isn't. But it is. It has the same formula, same flow, same moments when you turn to someone you don't know in the audience and say "Did you just see that?!" moments, and has one hell of a third act.

This isn't a polarizing movie. Not one bit. You either like it a lot, or really really love it. Either way, it certainly is what you would want from a Summer blockbuster. And do bring friends along for this ride.

It's not the same verbatim, kind of. You have a relationship on the rocks, a pair of siblings where one is a know it all, running away from dinosaurs, the guy who tells you a dinosaur park is a dangerous idea, etc. But it's pulled off in a way that is self aware and more like an homage than a straight rip off. It's clever to boot.

I'm rarely a fan of 3D, but I'd shell out the extra bucks for this one. It's not SUPER 3D AWESOME!!!!!, but the effects are pretty neat. 3D actually enhances the effects, which is what we want, and it does a great job at that.

You like dino and dino action? Well, you're a pervert. You like dino's fighting dino's? You are in for a festival of dino-fight. Primal Rage ain't got $#!t on this.

Yes it takes a long, long, long time to get to it, but when the dinosaurs clash it is something you won't forget. It's one of those movies that has scenes where you and a buddy can't stop saying "You remember when *that* happened?".

My big takeaway is that it is Jurassic Park, but it isn't. It's like the latest EVIL DEAD was basically the original EVIL DEAD, but it wasn't.

I'll say this...or type it. If you've ever done stand up comedy, you can tell a joke for as long as you'd like to as long as the "payoff" destroys the audience. The payoff from this flick destroys. It's a spectacle of dino-war. Jurassic Park is a must see, Jurassic World is a just see. See it for fun.

[Ack]

Perché uccidi ancora, AKA Stop the Slayings

Anthony Steffen had a big career through the 1960s and 1970s. He was often compared to Clint Eastwood in terms of physical appearance and style, and his work even supposedly influenced Eastwood into creating films such as High Plains Drifter. Steffen mostly appeared in Italian Westerns, starring in 27 of them(often as the replacement for Franco Nero in Django films) and achieving considerable fame in Europe and Brazil. Unfortunately that popularity was never quite matched in the United States, and Steffen remains much more of a cult actor here.

In Stop the Slayings, Steffen plays a man named Steve McDougall, an amoral anti-hero who has gone AWOL from the Army to get revenge on the rival Lopez clan for the murder of his father. The Lopez and McDougall families have been feuding for a while, but the Lopez are rich and can hire hitmen and mercenaries. So in what he thought was a stroke of genius, the Lopez tied Steve's father to a post and had all of their men ride up and take a single shot at him...all 20 of them. Steve comes back for revenge despite the protests of his sister and uncle, all while a troop of soldiers are searching for him to bring him back. And then there is the beautiful Pilar, Lopez's daughter who loves Steve and wants the feud to end.

The villains in this movie make one crucial mistake and never attack en masse early on, giving Steve time to whittle down their numbers, three here, then two, then an ambush that kills four, etc. He's often amoral about his killing, surprising his enemy and catching them off guard with a bullet...which suits things just fine, as they're not much nicer. Eventually the Lopez clan gets killed off, but in the process Steve murders the brother of a man called the Gringo, and he proves to be much worse than Lopez.

This is a Western for folks who have already seen a bunch of Westerns and just want another one to seek out just because, as it doesn't really do anything new with the genre and there doesn't seem to be much special about it. There's comic relief in the Undertaker, some awkward cuts, and some really terrible timing with the sound effects and dubbing at times. The plot is thankfully coherent but never really does anything to stand out beyond the cruelty of how Steve's father is murdered.

[Exhuminator]

I've watched a few movies in the past week.


Lake Mungo (2008)
A girl drowns in a lake but her family aren't sure she's actually dead. I don't usually watch horror films because they bore me and I've only seen two or three legitimately good ones. However my daughter loves them so I watched this with her. This is an Australian ghost story presented as an actual event through news documentary clips. The idea was GREAT but the execution is lacking. My number one problem with this movie is the audio engineer had no idea what they were doing, amateur hour mixing the likes of which I haven't heard since my days taking mass media classes back in the 90s. Also overlaying "spooky music" on top of what's supposed to be real news footage is totally disingenuous. The acting in this film is above average though, and the story being told is actually interesting. If you enjoy ghost stories you may enjoy this.


Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
English secret agents have to save the world from a cellular network hacking billionaire. I have a lot of mixed feelings here. Overall it's an entertaining movie with plenty of laughs and high action scenes. However, this film is full of subversive political undertones that I found to be obtrusive and out of place. (Watching one of the protagonists brutally slaughter an entire church full of right wing conservatives was a bit much.) This is basically 007 dumbed down for the lowest common denominator without any class whatsoever but plenty of crass to keep your attention. However it did introduce my eyes to Sofia Boutella, who is utterly gorgeous (10/10 in my book) and her fight scenes were always awesome. If you can turn your brain off and enjoy brutal fight scenes you might like this movie.


Mama (2013)
Another horror film I only watched for my daughter's sake. A couple of kids get lost in the woods and are adopted by a vengeful crazy ghost woman. The plot is FULL of holes and unanswered questions, and the character development is so piss poor you will never care about anyone in this film. However you get to see a crazy ghost lady kill the shit out of lots of people and I guess that's what people care about these days. I don't recommend this film at all.


The Pledge (2011)
A retired detective takes one last case he simply can't solve, despite promising his soul that he'd do so. This is a dark, dark film. I mean dark folks. (Hope you enjoy seeing lots of gruesome photos of 8 year old girls with their throats slit.) A dude blows his brains out on camera in the first 30 minutes of this movie. Everything you hope will happen in this film does not happen. This movie is a bummer to watch, but I'm sure that was the point. I admire Sean Penn's big brass balls to make a film like this, but to be honest he's not a refined director. His sense of pacing needs a ton of work for starters. That said, I really enjoy the gusto of this movie in that it takes a big steaming dump on the typical Hollywood Happy Ending Machine™, and instead goes the way real life would probably actually go. If you want to watch a gut wrenching noir detective film, this will do ya. But it's a downer and will make your evening suck.

[Luke]

To quote a dear friend and peer:

"THE PLEDGE is utter shite"

[Exhuminator]

I can understand why someone would think The Pledge is a bad movie. Depending on what one hopes to gain from it, it's either terrible or rewarding.

[ExedExes]

I've had so many kung fu flicks pass through my eyeballs over the last week or so that they all blend together and nothing makes any sense. Thank you El Rey.

Thursday night is the place to be, and it looks like other times throughout the week too. Looking forward to tonight!

[Luke]

It is unfair and unjust to judge a movie by a trailer, or pics of a movie that has yet to be edited.

But $uicide $quad $eriously (was that too obvious?)needs to keep a lid on it for many many reasons. Don't leak reveals on purpose. It turns more people off than on and doesn't generate the same buzz as a trailer...as you are ruining a great trailer by showing us stills of the trailer.