What movie do you think of when I lay it out like this…
Rich dude opens a theme park on an island to showcase cloned dinosaurs to the world. Experts say things will go horribly wrong, rich dude says whatevs, and then things go horribly wrong. Dinosaurs escape their fences and start eating people. Two kids are in the hands of a guy who is saving the entire park from the dinosaurs. In the end there’s an epic battle between Raptors and a Rex and the park is shut down.
Jurassic Park? Sure, and its current sequel, Jurassic World, which has broken worldwide records for money made. The two movies are basically the same damn story which has people calling this a reboot when it is clearly a sequel. Despite that, a lot of people are also calling it a crappy movie, which it was.
Up until a week ago I had no idea this movie existed, but I saw it listed on Netflix, so I gave it a watch today. It stars Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Steve Buscemi?
Both of them make this movie great. I think it would work by itself with other actors, but because it was them, especially with their background and chemistry with one another, they made it that much better.
Supporting them, amongst many others who all did great jobs in the movie, were Method Man, the beautiful Dascha Polanco (Orange Is The New Black), Adam’s nephew Jared Sandler, and legend Dustin Hoffman.
I think Method Man should be commended for his acting in this movie. Not only did he have to play an ultra ghetto street shark who made his money illegitimately, he also had to play the complete opposite. To explain: Continue reading →
Today my wife and I had plans to go see Jurassic World with some others, but those others flaked on us so we decided to go see it by ourselves. So we went to a new theater we’ve never been to before and saw San Andreas.
The theater we went to is an XScape, which turned out to be pretty awesome. Not only can you buy White Castles there (they’re most likely the frozen kind) but you can get as much butter as you want on your popcorn, for free. They even let you dispense it yourself. They have butter stations next to the fountain pop stations, which they also let you get yourself, too.
In the theaters themselves they have reclining seats and tons of leg room. The seats were ultra nice.
Oh, so the movie was good, too. It stars The Rock as he defeats Triple H for yet another title. Then he goes out and saves a bunch of people from dying when the San Andreas fault decides to ruin everybody’s shit.
Venom is a 2005 American voodoo horror-of-the-demonic film with some actors in it. I’d name them, but there’s nobody in the movie that is going to persuade you to see it. Except Method Man. See my point?
I got this movie in a pack called 19 Horror Movies Value Collection. (Not so) Amazingly, there’s almost no pictures of it online, and finding any info about it is tough. I can’t even find it on Walmart’s website, which is unusual considering I bought it at a Walmart.
I think I only paid something like $5 for it. At most, $9.99. You can get it free, apparently, from Listia.com.
The reason I bought it, quite obviously, is because there’s 19 fucking movies on it for whatever small price I paid. Out of 19, there has to be at least one good movie, right? Still worth what I paid. Plus, it comes with a Halloween movie and Wes Craven’s They. So I know I got a deal.
I’ve had the DVD for a few months now, so tonight I finally decided to give something from it a try. I gave the titles a look over and decided on The Legend Of Sorrow Creek. Now, I figured most of these would be low budget, terrible movies, but I swore I’d give them a good chance. When this started I appreciated the low value. It was like your buddies doing a movie, only slightly better. It had SOME production value, but after about ten minutes I couldn’t take the long, drawn out, barely acted, dialogue-fueled scenes. It just seemed like everybody had to talk, at great length, about what they were going to do, instead of just doing it. And everybody spoke with the same monotone, non-inflected speech. I couldn’t take it, so I don’t know how it turned out.
I then switched it up to Venom and saw that it was made by Dimension and The Weinstein’s, so I figured at least it would have a decent budget and might not be too bad to watch.
Venom takes place in Louisiana and is about voodoo. A voodoo priestess has been collecting the souls of bad people in a suitcase. Those souls, turned into snakes, get loose and attack the local tow truck guy, Ray. He dies, but soon comes back as a zombie serial killer guy. Not like a Dawn of the Dead type zombie, but an actual voodoo zombie.
So, he’s pissed off and he starts killing the local teen population, which is great because they need to die. What you get is a basic slasher movie, and quite frankly there aren’t enough good ones coming out anymore. Personally, I fucking loved it. It’s exactly what I want in a slasher movie.
I read some reviews after watching the movie and can only laugh at them. Reviewers tend to over think what they’re watching. I pulled these, and various other info on the movie from Wikipedia.
Kyle Smith from the New York Post wrote, “Even the undemanding high schoolers the film is aimed at will experience déjà voodoo, as Venom recites the A through Z of horror clichés. All hopes for suspense and plot twists are snuffed out about as quickly as the film’s black characters.”
First of all, there are quite a few black characters in the movie. This does take place in Louisiana, after all. Sure they’re killed in the movie, but so is everyfuckingbody else. One guy, the Sheriff, is just taken out of the movie. I thought I’d see more of him later, but no. His role is over pretty quickly, which is a shame, because I liked him.
Then there’s the young voodoo priestess in training. She survives almost to the end of the movie, which is longer than most of the white characters survived. So I don’t understand where Mr. Smith up there gets off saying the black characters are snuffed out quickly.
Unless he’s saying the suspense and plot twists AREN’T snuffed out quickly, because the black characters aren’t snuffed out quickly. I don’t know. Because honestly, you have a textbook horror flick here. I like horror flicks, and if they’re textbook, then they’re doing it right enough to be enjoyable. And this one is enjoyable. I cheered for Dead-Ray, as he killed all of worthless bastards. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a bad guy to cheer on.
And plot twists? No, I don’t want many of those in a horror movie. They can be nice, but overall I just want to see a bunch of people get murdered, and a decent amount of gore. Mr. Smith, I can only suggest if you want plot twists, go watch some shitty Suspense Thriller I’m sure you get hard over.
Instead of plot twists, I want to see something I didn’t see coming. Not necessarily a twist, just something that kept me glued to the movie. Venom had enough of that. In one scene, two of the kids are running from Dead-Ray through the bayou. Dead-Ray stops running and then sinks down into the water. Suddenly they can’t see him, and all we get to see of Dead-Ray moving through the water is a little wave action. And then suddenly, and quietly, he pops up out of the water.
I wasn’t expecting that, and it was towards the end of the movie. It got an “oh shit!” out of me, and I appreciate that. Dead-Ray had a trick up his sleeve that I wasn’t expecting. Well done.
That Dead-Ray dude was pretty terrifying, and a great bad guy psycho killer. He was definitely intimidating.
There was some shoddy CGI, but otherwise, the whole movie was cool. I think if you’re a fan of horror movies, slashers in particular, you’ll really enjoy this. And if you don’t, go turn on a Suspense Thriller with Kyle Smith and hold each others junk while you watch it.
Hell, I wouldn’t even be opposed to seeing a lower budget, direct to DVD sequel to this. Why the hell not?
Recently I found out one of my favorite Stephen King novels, “Cell,” is going to be made into a movie starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. They once starred together in another Stephen King adaptation of “1408.” I also saw a young actress playing the part of “Alice” and wondered who she was. The actress is Isabelle Fuhrman, and I had not seen her in anything, except for “The Hunger Games” as “Clove” although I fell asleep right after it started. But I noticed on her profile on IMDB that she was in a movie called (SURPRISE) “Orphan” and it looked good enough that I thought I’d give it a watch.
Cute.
You should know by now I’m all about spoilers, so expect them.
First of all, this movie reminded me quickly of “The Good Son” with Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood. Except “Orphan” was good.
Seriously, I was 13 when I went to the theater to see “The Good Son” and when Macaulay said to Elijah, “Don’t fuck with me.” I wanted to walk out. The only way Macaulay could have ever been scary is if he promised to straighten himself out and continue his career by first revitalizing the “Home Alone” franchise. No fucking thanks. There’s a reason Elijah still has a great career and Macaulay doesn’t, and drugs ain’t it. Well okay, drugs is one of the bigger reasons.
BAAAAHAHAHAHAHA! Seriously, you little shit? Elijah should have climbed back up that rope and beat the fuck out of him. On to something better.
She’s a pretty good little psychopath.
“Orphan” is about a rich married couple who has two children. They would have had three, but the last one died before it was born. So now they want to adopt. They go to the orphanage to pick out a new child and CCH Pounder helps them to find one. CCH, for those of you who don’t know, is an amazing actress who was in one of my all time favorite movies, “Demon Knight.”
At one point while the main characters were walking around their very nice, most likely very expensive house, my wife asked me why it is these movies always show people living in the posh estates and not in a trailer or something. I told her I appreciated seeing rich people having bad shit happen to them. It makes me feel like we’re not that different, they and I.
The parents discover little Esther painting some really good stuff. They talk to her, decide they like her and take her home. And then, naturally, shit hits the fan. She starts destroying the family from the inside. Slowly, methodical, devious. And then she starts killing people, like CCH Pounder, whom she bludgeons to death with a hammer. It’s actually a pretty nasty scene, too. She doesn’t just hit her a couple of times, she really goes to town on her. It was so bad my wife said she couldn’t watch any more. Then again, my wife sort of is a pussy.
With that said, here’s the scene.
Then she does more bad stuff but the mom had caught on to her, only the family wasn’t believing her. The son knew and the daughter knew, but both were too scared of Esther to say anything, even though the mom made it clear she knew something was wrong. The dad, on the other hand, was a fucking douche and it’s a good damn thing he was murdered violently. It looked like he suffered through a lot of pain as well, which is good.
With that said, here’s the scene.
Some bad moves on the parts of the characters in the movie, which one should expect when watching a horror movie. Those moments when you’re all “What the fuck are you doing, dumbass?! Don’t go in there! GOD YOU’RE SUCH AN IDIOT! Fuck I hope you die.” And then you applaud when they die. Yeah, quite a few moments in there. Otherwise, pretty good movie. Not nearly enough deaths, but that’s something I’ll just never really be happy with, so I’m used to it. But at least the deaths we get out of this movie are pretty awesome.
I give this movie 4 of 5 stars. Or 8 of 10, if you need that kind of rating.
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