All Film Reviews

Prepare to go to hell and back again in this full feature series of one of the most iconic horror franchises of all time from horror master Clive Barker!

HELLRAISER: See how it all began in the classic original HELLRAISER where Pinhead is introduced to the world, and the equally brilliant HELLBOUND sequel that proves there are no limits! HELLRAISER (1987, 94 Mins.): From horror master Clive Barker comes this chilling nightmare featuring the first appearance of the hideous, demonic Pinhead. When Kirsty Cotton’s family moves into their ancestral home, they are terrorized by the resurrected corpse of her uncle, who requires the flesh of murdered innocent victims in order to become whole and alive again. A creepy, thrillingly perverse tale straddling heaven and hell, extreme pleasure and unbearable pain, HELLRAISER will haunt your dreams.

After taking a bullet to the head, Salander is under close supervision in a hospital and is set to face trial for attempted murder on her eventual release. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his researchers at Millennium magazine, Salander must prove her innocence. In doing this she plays against powerful enemies and her own past.

"REC" turns on a young TV reporter and her cameraman who cover the night shift at the local fire station. Receiving a call from an old lady trapped in her house, they reach her building to hear horrifying screams -- which begin a long nightmare and a uniquely dramatic TV report.
What it lacks in character development, it more than makes up for in fast paced thrills, shocks and genuine tension. The setting and shaky cam create a claustrophobic atmosphere, held together well by naturalistic performances from the cast.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Japan is in a state of collapse. Unemployment is endemic and school violence is out of control. The beleaguered government retaliates with Battle Royale... Each year, a randomly chosen class is pitted against itself on an abandoned island in a cruel game of survival. The rules of the game are simple: 1) it lasts three days; 2) Each player starts with food, water and a "weapon"; 3) if more than one player survives, everyone dies (by detonating special electronic necklaces; 4) there is no escape. As the game progresses, terror and panic challenge the students' fragile trust in each other. But despite the game's brutality, the adolescent players remain obsessed with their crushes, their petty grudges - and their dreams...

Set in 79 A.D., POMPEII tells the epic story of Milo, a slave turned invincible gladiator who finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.

Here we go again, with the same old Hollywood schlock. And again, I watched the video with the 3 reviewers and they all liked it. Well I'm not surprised, but I definitely don't agree with them, but then again I never really agree with movie critics anyway. Because to me they always miss the point. They fill you up with all of this information which has no bearing whatsoever on if I will like it or not. I just want to be entertained. That is where you look for movies right? in the entertainment section. So I'd like to know what was it about this film that they found so entertaining? Because I thought it was boring. Don't get me wrong, it had it's moments. But that's the same for a lot of these haunted house movies, they have their moments, but that's it. I can't remember the last haunted house movie that I found really entertaining. But anyway, I will recommend The Conjuring, but only to those who like these kind of movies and are satisfied with the same old shit. Because that's exactly what you will get. But oh yah, it does have it's moments.

It's pretty apparent by the end of the film that there were parts of this movie that never actually happened. It's typical Hollywood with trying to make things look scarier or cooler while totally ruining the actual events that occurred. Supposedly all of this is taped yet not once in the film did they show any real video of the incident or did you hear any of the actual audio that was from the event. The story was good but Hollywood trying to make the story look better than it actually was hurts the story more than it helps. 5.5/10

The film revolves around a local street-racer who partners with a rich and arrogant business associate, only to find himself framed by his colleague and sent to prison. After he gets out, he joins a New York-to-Los Angeles race to get revenge. But when the ex-partner learns of the scheme, he puts a massive bounty on the racer's head, forcing him to run a cross-country gauntlet of illegal racers in all manner of supercharged vehicles.

Bad Dreams / Visiting Hours (Scream Factory) (Blu-Ray) In the mid-1970s the members of the love cult Unity Fields sought “the ultimate joining” by dousing themselves with gasoline and committing mass suicide. A young girl blown clear of the fiery explosion was the only survivor. Thirteen years later, Cynthia (Jennifer Rubin, Screamers) awakens from a coma inside a psychiatric hospital with only buried memories of that horrific day — but now her fellow patients are each being driven to their own violent suicides. Has the sect’s leader (Richard Lynch, Deathsport) returned to claim his final child? Bruce Abbott (Re-Animator) co-stars in the intense shocker Bad Dreams from director Andrew Fleming (The Craft) and producer Gale Anne Hurd (Punisher: War Zone, The Incredible Hulk).

Academy Award®–winner Lee Grant (Best Supporting Actress in 1975 for Shampoo) stars as outspoken TV journalist Deborah Ballin, whose crusade against domestic violence enrages a creepy loner (a truly disturbing performance by Michael Ironside, Scanners) in Visiting Hours. He brutally attacks the anchorwoman in her home, but Ballin survives and is hospitalized. Her assailant is enraged; he is haunted by a horrific childhood trauma . . . and now he has hidden himself inside the hospital to finish what he started. Can anybody — including her concerned boss (William Shatner), a frantic nurse (Linda Purl, Happy Days) or Deborah herself — stop the psycho’s killing spree before it reaches sick new extremes?

Blu-Ray

I've always thought of myself as a Hitchcock fan, as he had the ability to tell a story through the medium of film so very well, understanding perfectly the necessary elements needed within a story to keep an audience enthralled and engaged. Sure, many may understand these necessities, but it seems few are able to develop them to the level Hitchcock did, and that's what makes much of his work so enduring, even relevant, so many years later. That said, being a self-proclaimed fan and all, I have to admit I'm a bit ashamed that it took me so long to get around to watching Foreign Correspondent (1940), as it's not only a wonderful Hitchcock feature, but a really great film in general (heck, it was nominated for like six Academy Awards, so there must be others out there who share my sentiments). The film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (some just call him Hitch, but I think it's a little disrespectful unless you knew the man personally and were friends with him...I didn't know him, so I'll always use his full name, but y'all can do whatever you like), stars Joel McCrea (The Virginian), Laraine Day (Calling Dr. Kildare), and Herbert Marshall (Duel in the Sun). Also appearing is George Sanders (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir), Albert Bassermann (nominated for one of the six Academy Awards this film received), journalist and popular humorist Robert Benchley, and Edmund Gwenn, who would later appear as Kris Kringle in the holiday staple Miracle on 34th Street (1947).

Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips is the story of a 2009 incident that most people probably still remember, when a group of Somali pirates boarded an American cargo freighter, the Maersk Alabama, and after failing to gain control of the ship, took its captain, Richard Phillips, hostage, resulting in the US Navy mounting an intense rescue operation to recover Captain Phillips. Directed by Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) from a script by Billy Ray (Breach, The Hunger Games) based on a book written by Phillips and Stephan Talty about the incident, Captain Phillips is a well-crafted, tense docu-drama that captures the intensity of the events as they played out, from the moment the Maersk Alabama first sees the approaching pirate crafts to the moment when Navy Seals make their assault, ending the situation with deadly finality and the successful rescue.

More than anything else, the core of Captain Phillips is the contest of wills that takes place between Phillips (a finely nuanced performance by veteran Tom Hanks) and the pirate leader Muse (an amazingly intense performance by first-time actor Barkhad Abdi). Phillips is determined to do everything he can to keep the pirates from gaining control of the ship and to keep his crew from being captured and held hostage, while

After begging for money for months and finally (somehow) ending up with a bloated budget of $30,000,000 to remake a film that originally cost $3,000,000, Spike Lee just swindled a whole lot of people to produce a lazy remake that ended up being a total flop at the box office. There really isn't much more to say about Spike Lee's remake of the classic Korean film "Oldboy," other than the fact that it is a pathetic attempt at a cash grab and the completely unnecessary "Americanization" of a modern foreign classic. This film makes light of the dark and haunting story of Oldboy and even makes some parts that should have been dark and gut-wrenching unintentionally funny. The whole film feels like a goofball attempt to remake Oldboy in terms that a western audience would enjoy, seeing as how the original Oldboy was probably too smart for most western audiences in the first place with its subtlety and a visceral, unflinching script.
As much as I enjoy watching Josh Brolin as an actor, he is barely passable in this film. Brolin barely captures Min-Sik Choi's dark performance in the original. The supporting cast, even with phenomenal actors like Sharlto Copley and Sam Jackson, this film felt lifeless, boring, and an insult to Chan-Wook Park.

In my opinion, this Anchor Bay box set is by far one of the major DVD releases of the year 2002. These DVDs let us rediscover four italian movies directed in the seventies and unfortunately half forgotten nowadays. They belong to a peculiar genre the "giallo", a genre whose prominent figures are or were, until this release came out, Mario Bava and Dario Argento.
Two of these movies are masterpieces, SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS and WHO SAW HER DIE ?, both directed by Aldo Lado. The first one is more a mystery thriller than a pure giallo with his hero Jean Sorel, left for dead in the pragian morgue and trying to remember what has happened to him while the doctors prepare his autopsy. Really frightening, a movie that creates the same terror in you than another masterpiece of the genre : George Sluizer's THE VANISHING.
WHO SAW HER DIE ? is a movie shot entirely in Venice, Italy with a haunting musical score by Ennio Morricone. The uneasiness you feel during the movie is greatly increased by the fact that the killer's main victim is a child who's the main character of WHO SAW HER DIE ? during the first 20 minutes of the film. Terrifying.

A woman called ‘The Bride’ kills another woman called Vernita Green in her house and ticks her off a list. The Bride was once a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, elite assassins under the employ of Bill. Flashing back, she lies badly wounded at her wedding, telling Bill that she is carrying his baby as Bill shoots her in the head. She miraculously survives the headshot, but is left comatose for four years. When she wakes up, she not only finds she is no longer pregnant but has been repeatedly raped by hospital worker Buck and others from whom Buck has been excepting cash. She kills both her latest rapist-to-be and Buck, then steals his truck and sets off for revenge against the other Deadly Vipers…..
Still, the opening bits are amongst his best. After a really harrowing scene of the heroine horribly bruised and battered and then being shot by an unseen Bill, we launch into a great sequence of The Bride trying to kill her next target, who happens to have a young daughter coming home from school. An insanely brutal but still athletic fight where the combatants really look like they are getting hurt is