Review Dump - March 2008

I can't remember the last time I was this busy. My schedule is just full and it's been hard to find time for reviews. Without including all the boring details, here's the first ever Movie Slut Review Dump. Perhaps I'll give some or all of these titles a proper treatment someday down the road. Meanwhile, I hope you don't find the temporary change of format too offensive.














The Bank Job - 2008
What It Is: Dramatization of a real-life 1971 bank robbery.
What I Thought: A damn fine hiest film.














Hell Comes To Frogtown - 1987
What It Is: Post-apocalyptic cult film starring Rowdy Roddy.
What I Thought: Terrible enough to be pretty fun.














Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte Des Loups) - 2001
What It Is: Werewolves vs. Native American martial artists, in 18th century France.
What I Thought: Ridiculous...ly awesome!














Night Hawks - 1981
What It Is: Stalone the cop chases Rutger the arsonist.
What I Thought: Good cop movie with a good villain.














Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-Hime)- 1997
What It Is: Anime about nature vs. industry/humanity.
What I Thought: One of the best Anime films ever!














Hard Boiled (Lat Sau San Taam) - 1992
What It Is: John Woo's last film before Hollywood.
What I Thought: Ranking #5 for the highest on-screen body count, what the fuck do you think? One of the greatest action films ever made!














Falling Down - 1993
What It Is: The Warriors with a shirt and tie.
What I Thought: Funny and frightening in the best possible way!














The Quest - 1996
What It Is: Van Damme and Roger Moore in a pulpy adventure flick.
What I Thought: Enjoyable when not taken seriously.














Perfect Creature - 2006
What It Is: The vampire film The Breed should've been.
What I Thought: Weak plot, gorgeous movie.











Planet Earth - 2006
What It Is: Most expensive nature show ever.
What I Thought: Best nature documentary ever!














The Beastmaster - 1982
What It Is: Classic sword and sorcery flick.
What I Thought: A little cheesy, but very very fun.














Targets - 1968
What It Is: Aging Boris Karloff vs. a psycho sniper.
What I Thought: A darkly enjoyable classic.














Doomsday - 2008
What It Is: Another Underworld/Equilibrium/Resident...
What I Thought: Just as good/bad as the movies it rips off.

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. - 1993

What It Is: A comedy/western show on FOX starring Bruce Campbell.

Why I Watched It: Bruce [fucking] Campbell!

What I Thought: How can you go wrong with Bruce Campbell? Well, you can't! Brisco County is a great show with a great cast, lots of fun guest appearances.

The show is light on action, but heavy on the witty dialogue, innuendo, double entendre, cheeky jokes, and just plain fun. A zany professor adds a bit of sci-fi to the western theme in the tradition of the "Wild Wild West". The majority of the show follows Brisco as he searches for the man that killed his father, Billy Drago plays the delightfully unsettling villain John Bly.

Highlights: The show is surprisingly funny and fun. They don't really make fun TV anymore...

Who Should See It: Fans of westerns, comedies, or Bruce Campbell. Anybody that appreciates the chance to shut off your thinking brain and enjoy some good television.

How Soon: It's on DVD so... anytime you like!

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. - The Complete Series

Flight of the Conchords - 2007

What It Is: A hilarious HBO sitcom featuring the very funny New Zealander music duo by the same name.

Why I Watched It: Tara doesn't send me many recommendations, but I certainly pay attention when she does!

What I Thought: I loved it! Bret and Jemaine are funny as hell!

Their comedy is all delivered with perfectly straight faces as if they aren't aware they're actually telling jokes, think "The Office". Each episode has about 2 songs that all relate to the storyline of that particular show. Even days after watching an episode, I'm still singing the songs!

Check out their MySpace page to hear my favorite Conchords song, "Business Time".

Highlights: The songs, the jokes, their "fan base", and HBO just picked them up for another season!!

Who Should See It: Anybody that likes good music and/or good TV.

How Soon: HBO Sundays or you can watch the episodes online at allFOTC.com!

Afro Samurai - 2007

What It Is: A bad ass, adult oriented anime blending blaxploitation, hip-hop, and samurai goodness.

Why I Watched It: Sam Jackson baby!

What I Thought: Afro Samurai, at its heart, is a very decent revenge tale about Afro (Yes, that's his name.) dedicating his life to finding his father's killer. If that's all the 5-episode anime was about, however, it would be simply lost within the torrent of so many other excellent samurai animes. What makes Afro Samurai really shine, is it's inclusion of so much awesome.

"What sort of awesome," you ask. Well, I'll tell you.

Afro Samurai seamlessly blends fantasy, sci-fi, comedy and too many other genres to mention. (Just check out the Genre tags at the bottom!) The show features excellent voice talent by Samuel L. Jackson (Afro), Samuel L. Jackson (Afro's imaginary friend, Ninja Ninja), Kelly Hu (Okiku), and Ron Pearlman (the lisping gunslinger that killed Afro's father). For those of you that weren't paying attention, Jackson lends his voice to both lead characters. In my book, twice the Samuel L. equals 10 times the awesome!

Afro Samurai is very bloody and very funny. What more do you need in an anime?

Highlights: Ninja Ninja's shit-talking, Ron Pearlman's lisping villain, and Sam Jackson baby! Bloody, action-packed, funny, sexy, anime goodness!

Who Should See It: To borrow a line from a review on Amazon.com, "Bottom line: if you like afros, if you like samurai, if you like animation, if you like violence, if you don't freakin' suck, then this show is for you."

How Soon: Whenever you think you're ready to turn of your brain and let your Id enjoy some quality TV.

Afro Samurai (Director's Cut)

The Simpsons Movie - 2007

What It Is: Um... a Simpsons movie.

Why I Watched It: See above...

What I Thought: It was funnier than I expected it to be. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the Simpsons as much as the next guy, but I'd still choose Family Guy any day.

The movie was really funny. A huge portion of the jokes were self-deprecating and I think that was the film's best quality. The Simpsons Movie even started with a joke about people spending money to see something that's on the TV every night. The jokes stayed consistent the whole way through.

The Simpsons Movie was also BIG. It was movie big. Bigger issues for the family to deal with and bigger issues for Springfield itself to deal with. It reminded me of the South Park movie being so much grander in scope than the usual episodes. I think that's important in a movie based on a TV show.

The last cool thing was how many Simpsons' firsts were put into the film. I would ruin the surprise to describe too many of them, but I assure you they were pretty cool. Stay through the credits! I think all the firsts really helped to make the film feel a new level of special over the regular show.

Highlights: Firsts, naked Bart, Maggie the hero, and so much more!

Who Should See It: Anybody that ever laughed while watching the Simpsons. Yes, I know that's everybody.

How Soon: It is the only Simpsons movie they've ever made, I'd say it deserves a trip to the theater. Nine bucks isn't much when you've been watching the show for free all this time!

Fat Pizza - 2003

What It Is: Insane Aussie comedy based on the Aussie TV show, Pizza.

Why I Watched It: Tara Tainton told me to.

What I Thought: It's goofy, it's weird, it's off-the-wall, and it's fucked up. I like it!

Fat Pizza is sort of like Half-Baked and Harold & Kumar smashed up with a National Lampoon movie. All the jokes are throw-away one liners, but most are good enough to be worth a laugh. You'll spend half your time and laughing, half your time shaking your head in pity for some of the truly awful jokes, and half your time trying decipher the Australian accents. Yes, that is a lot of halves. Logic doesn't really apply to a movie like this.

I think Fat Pizza's most endearing quality is the narration and frequent asides by it's main character. Paul Fenech wrote and starred in the movie and Fenech seems to be a truly funny man. His commentary and mannerisms are part of what makes Fat Pizza so special. Or specially fucked, if you'd rather.

Highlights: Cop jokes, bad puns, good fun with stereotypes, and a bunch of WTF?! and OMG!! moments.

Who Should See It: Comedy fans, especially fans of low brow humor and drug comedies like Half-Baked or The Chapelle Show.

How Soon: Take your time, save it for a rainy day or just stick it in your Netflix queue.

Fat Pizza (Uncut) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ]

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Transformers - 2007

What It Is: A live action (plus a heaping helping of CGI, of course) sci-fi action extravaganza.

Why I Watched It: Cause the only thing better than Transformers during the first 8 or so years of my life was GI Joe.

What I Thought: Fan-fucking-tastic!

The plot was expectantly thin, but it certainly held up well enough. The special effects were phenomenal. The action was really good. Even Michael Bay's pretty weak attempts at drama managed to succeed once enough humor had been used to form attachments to the characters.

This movie was Transformers in all of its retro glory. They were still aliens from the planet Cybertron. They retained all of their old personalities from the show. Even the fan favorite Bumble Bee still held on to his 80's flavor, despite his modern incarnation as a Camaro.

*grumble, grumble*

The actors were all satisfactory with the vast majority of the movie falling to Shia LaBeouf, John Voight, and Josh Duhamel.

I think the star of the show, however, was Optimus Prime. Prime had less screen time than Bumble Bee and much less than any of the human characters, yet he was still the cherry on top of the entire production. Prime was voiced by Peter Cullen, a renowned voice talent that's lent his abilities to several cartoons and video games. Peter Cullen's most famous role was actually on the original Transformers cartoon, as Optimus Prime. It only took about 3 lines of dialogue for me to recognize the voice heard so often when I was a kid. The familiarity of Prime's voice tied the bow on the entire package. Transformers isn't a re-interpretation of a beloved kid's show, it's an almost literal transfer to the big screen. And it rocked!

Lastly, I should mention the movie was really fun, and funny! I was surprised how much humor they used and how much of it actually worked! Kudos Micheal Bay, I won't doubt you until your next Pearl Harbor.

Highlights: The original voice of Optimus Prime!! Hugo Weaving as Megatron, another hilarious performance by John Turturro, bad ass effects, genuinely funny bits, and awesome CGI depictions of Transformers relieving themselves!

Who Should See It: Sci-fi or action fans. Car guys. Fans of the show. Anyone that has EVER owned a Transformer toy!

How Soon: See it on the big screen. See Transformers, or maybe Die Hard, or maybe both. They're definitely the biggest and best action movies this year!