Sunday, June 24, 2012

FILLMORE DISCOS 72

Mac & Devin Go To Highschool, 2012 (****) 
hilarious Rudy Ray Moore-inspired comedy vehicle for Snoop which also functions as a paean to the joys of smoking weed, has a top soundtrack, and a sexy cast clearly having a lot of fun making a movie that, like RRM's films, is anomalous to the usual Hollywood industry drivel

A Star Is Born, 1976 (***) 
it's all about the casting: already shuddering at the prospect of Tom Cruise and Beyoncé's remake, it's a shame that Streisand's first choice of Marlon Brando wasn't in this rock version of A Star Is Born because that would have been awesome - instead we're stuck with the beady-eyed puny-voiced Kris Kristoffersen with whom LS clearly has such little chemistry that she constantly feels the need to tilt her head sideways and/or brace to avoid too much intimate KK contact; three stars for her outfits and singing alone

Elevator, 19 (**)
obscure Dutch Stephen King-ish horror that has quite a creepy atmosphere and some reasonably scary moments to enjoy, sadly it soon gets heavily bogged down in that backwards-and-forwards mystery-solving drudgery so popular in European thrillers

... even more shakycam/fake documentaries

Welcome To The Jungle, 2007 (*)
my personal quest for shakycam/fake documentary bottom-of-the-barrel completism finds a dud when all could and should have been so great: essentially a remake of Cannibal Holocaust on location in the beautiful lush forests of New Guinea! the outcome is sabotaged by some hapless hopeless directing and irritating try-hard repertory-quality acting from the protagonists

Poughkeepsie Tapes, 2007 (**)
the promising concept of a serial killer's cache of personal tapes ends up even drearier than one of those real late night cable true crime documentaries, interminable talking detective-heads, endless laborious TV reports, atrocious acting, and the killer's 'shocking' footage is laughably coy

Skew, 2007 (**)
in a genre you can tolerate slow pace and even boredom if there's a sense of a decent pay-off coming, Skew is a severe letdown; for fuck's sake, I even forgave them the supernatural elements

Troll Hunter, 2010 (****) 
enjoyable mockumentary of a group of students following a hunter on the trail of some real trolls within the icy forests of Scandinavia; whilst I suspect the plentiful Norwegian in-jokes aren't quite as funny as the producers like to think, the troll scenes and scenery and overall tension make the movie fun right to the end

Evidence, 2012 (*) 
Blair Witch meets Modern Warfare 3 meets Predator; in fact so insanely ridiculous is this it's almost worth seeing - it's as if the producers wanted to make a big-scale zombie/alien action blockbuster on a budget of $5,000

1 comment:

Odile Lee said...

Star is Born- so thats why Streisand had such weird, angular poses in pictures. On my quest to read every book know to man, as a pre-teen I recall looking at the cover and thinking, is there something wrong with her neck?
Certainly no melting flesh into fiery flames of passion, like bad Romance novel covers.
Looks more like she wanted to sink down , crawl backwards fast into the lav and have a hot date with some serious Detol action.