The Last Battle

This quirky, B/W post-apocalypse flick from 1983 is director Luc Besson’s (The Fifth Element) first film…and it’s a weird one. It focus’ on the bizarre, mute denizens of a deserted city and their strange ‘comings and goings’. The beautifully composed B/W cinematography certainly adds to the art-house mood while the jazz lounge/80’s porn music score […]

The Killing Room

Very well executed psychological thriller from 2009 about a group of ‘volunteers’ subjected to a sinister mind control experiment. The cast is a ‘who’s who’ of familiar faces and they’re all good. One thing that REALLY stood out was the creepy and minimalist atmosphere and sound design. I haven’t heard radio chatter that effective in […]

Sanctum

For a pretty sweet looking film, this movie sure does suck. The ‘acting’ is wooden all around and the vast majority of the dialogue is awful and cringe-inducing. The center-piece of the film is a horribly cliche’d story of an estranged father and son who must overcome their differences and fight to survive when a […]

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

This MAY be the best in the series (I’m partial to #3 too). This one is really well done in nearly every way. The stunt work is amazing, the gadgets are cool and appropriately far-fetched, it’s quite well edited and the scatterings of humor are nicely placed.The writers came up with some slick and fairly […]

Tomorrow When the War Began

If a remake of ‘Red Dawn’ HAS to be made, this 2010 Aussie action flick is definitely on the right track. Where the American movie of ’84 was the definition of Cold War pessimism and paranoia, this slick ‘retelling’ smells like popcorn, in the best way. The characters, played by a dedicated group of Australian […]

Blow Out

This interesting but simple murder mystery from 1981 stars John Travolta as a movie sound tech who inadvertently records the perceived accidental death of a politician in a car wreck. Using his sound/film knowledge, he pieces together a conspiracy involving a slew of ‘low-lives’, including a cartoonishly creepy John Lithgow. Travolta is decent as the […]

Patriot Games

This Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford action’r from 1992 is a great example of the military/espionage/real worldish thriller genre done well, taking the well-detailed book and whittling it down to something easily digestible. Harrison Ford is very serviceable as the replacement for Alec Baldwin as ‘Jack Ryan’ in this story of his violent interference in the attempted […]

TMNT

This 2007 animated version of the continuing adventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is definitely more hit than miss(pun sorta intended). The turtles look great in the animation style but the human characters are a lil too ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ for my liking. I also wish that the story had been […]

Kill List

This bizarre and unnerving flick from the Uk certainly gets points for its style and manner of story-telling. Two former army buddies-turned-hitmen take on a seemingly straightforward ‘job’ that turns around to bite them in ways they didn’t see coming. The acting and dialogue is very natural-sounding (mostly improv’d) and the style is a balanced […]

Galaxy of Terror

At a glance, this B movie from 1981 seems to have all the trappings of another ‘Alien’ clone but in the end, has its own story to tell. Which isn’t to say that the FAR superior ‘Alien’s influence isn’t felt but at least some effort was put in to try and diminish the obviousness (looking […]