Oh My God Becky, Look at Her Butt!

... and look at George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead!

Amazing.

I have to admit, I went into this film a little apprehensive. After all, it is from Dimension EXTREME which brought us such hits as Black Sheep and DOA - and such misses as Automaton Transfusion (yuck!) and ... DOA. This is how Cloverfield should have been done. The sad part is this film was shot in 20-something days on 1/760000th of the budget. And did I mention it was amazing?

You got to hand it to Romero. Think about it. The man is old enough to have created the genre with Night of the Living Dead in 19-and-freaking-68 and 40 years later he has possibly put out the most well made and relevant sequel - nay - movie in decades. Political as always, but fun. And I love the way they actually explained how they got music and various angles into a supposed documentary. That has always bothered me with these types of films. I also love how annoyed they get with the fact that some idiot has a camera attached to his face the whole movie. Keep an ear out for voice cameo's by Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King, Simon Pegg and Quentin Tarantino.

Did I mention this movie is Amazing?

Ok, enough gushing. That's no fun. So onto this...

Warning. Here be spoilers. Maybe.

Wow! So... Yeah... Indiana Jones huh?

Well, let's just say if I didn't know any better I'd think George Lucas had something to do with this flick. Oh wait...

To be fair, it is possible to enjoy this movie. Just remember to suspend all belief before walking in the theater. And that's saying something for a series that features face melting Nazi's, thousand year old knights, and heart-removing crazy dudes. 

I was really worried at the beginning when evil girl busted out with the ESP powers - thank the Lords of Kobol that the writers even thought this was a dumb idea and never mentioned it again. 

I was even more worried when I saw CG monkeys. Imagine how relieved I was when I found out they were only used to advance the plot by showing Shia Labeouf how to swing through the jungle on vines like Tarzan and land perfectly in a car being driven 70 mph.

I was especially worried when, at the end of the movie, it looked like the Mayan temple turned into a giant flying saucer and flew off into the sunset. Imagine my relief when...

No wait. It actually turned into a damn flying saucer and flew away.

Yep. 

This movie gets half a Jar Jar Binks.

Don't Tell Ronnie: Environmentalists Can Be Funny! (But hippies still suck - this means you Oregon!)

"If you fascists have hurt him I'll organize the biggest sit in this farm has ever seen!" 

And so starts Black Sheep. A Dimension EXTREME title that doesn't suck goat testicles. Sorry Botched, but if ever a movie deserved to be compared to Severance or Shaun of the Dead - this one does. The Brits (or Aussie's in this case) or sooo much better at British humor. Imagine that.

"Oh my God!"

"What?!"

"The Feng Shei in this room is terrible."

Oh you zany, bloody brits...

There's not much to say about this movie other than it's solid gold. And about sheep. Picture The Texas Chainsaw Massacre only with chainsaw wielding sheep. Now take away the chainsaws and you have Black Sheep. Or maybe Jaws only with sheep instead of sharks and not in the water. Or Aliens only...

Nevermind. It's about sheep. And it's funny. Not in that, "Hi! I'm Dane Cook, and I suck!" funny, but more like that, "Do you have a flag?" Eddie Izzard funny.

I give this movie Sputnik! Make that 2...WAY UP!

Oh...and I'm pretty sure the bad dude totally gets it on with a sheep. So...BONUS!

The Comedy Musings of Tolstoy!

Who knew Russians were so funny? Wait, they're not. In their defense, I'm pretty sure Russia sucks. I mean, why else are they coming across our borders and stealing all our jobs? But when a movie touts the line, "If you liked movies like Severance and Shaun of the Dead you will definitely get a kick out of this BRILLIANT HORROR COMEDY," you expect a guffaw or two. In retrospect I should have known they were up to something - who the hell puts an entire paragraph blurb on the front of the box? And why is Stephen Dorff in it?

Botched tries to master the art of British "awkward funny." Instead, its just awkward. These people have all the excitement and joy of a Celebrating Stalin Convention - Trust me, that's Russia's equivalent of E3.

It has a stellar cast though. A grumpy fat russian man. A grumpy ex-russian solider. A grumpy hot chick. A grumpy stupid guy. An old grumpy fat Jesus-lady.

Look! Here's Grumpy Hot Chick killing Grumpy Jesus-lady, presumably 'cause she's grumpy!

Why is this funny? Well, because she's killing her ... with a nail file! HILARIOUS! (?!?!?!?)

I give this movie one of these:

Now that's Zany!

Moving on to a good movie.

Gun Crazy: The Woman From Nowhere.

Now that's a movie title. This movie features everything good about Japanese cinema. It also shows how much Japan hates Americans. Sure our Marines rape their children and back over them accidently with our tanks, but forgive and forget right? Not only are the American soldiers in this movie represented as raving lunatic-murdering-idiots, but they actually dub their voices with even dumber English voice actors saying even dumber things. It's awesome to see an English dude dubbed over in English. You can only imagine the director was like, "Stupid American actor. I am directing a new version of Hamlet! It will be Fantabulous! Just read these lines. That's right! Excellent! Of course I'm not going to record over all your dialog in post-production and make you look like the idiots you really are. HAHAHAHAHA!"

Or something.

And since I couldn't find a totally awesome picture of the main character killing the bad guys with her rocket launcher leg (you heard that right) I'm leaving you with this picture of the actress on the latest issue of J-POP Monthly. 

Oh, by the way, this movie will rock your face off! And if you have ADD, its only like 70 something minutes long. 70 minutes of PURE AWESOME!

Which brings us to:

Coffin Sitter 2: I Hate Underwear!

Wait, no, that's Death Trance. 

First of all, the title alone screams RADICAL! But the movie is superb. You'd be forgiven if you had no idea what the movie was about based on the picture so allow me to clarify. It's about a perpetually hungry ninja that stole a coffin and drags it around behind him with a little girl. Now the locals thinks he eats little girls but that's just not true - he drinks milk. So rival ninja's and spider vampire ninja's and zombie ninja's and hot ninja's and gay ninja's go after him because (of course) the coffin grant's your wishes. But the coffin dude is actually a fallen angel with amnesia and has to go to heaven to fight in a huge final "war in heaven" battle. Makes perfect since. 

Oh, and it's historically accurate. See... 

This movie gets 11 Gay Ninja's! The Happy Kind!

... Happily Homosexual.

Dane Cook Is Not Funny!

He’s not.

So get him off my Battlestar Galactica. Seriously, Anders – you got to go.

Sorry, I’ll leave the TV talk to my wife.

Ok, at the risk of sounding gay, Stardust was a good movie. And the Coca-Cola Polar Bears are a cute advertising campaign. So putting them together and calling it The Golden Compass sounds like an obvious idea to create a shear awesome quota of 1 bazillion. Instead, it turned into one of my long-time reoccurring nightmares. 

Those cute ‘lil bears from the previews look so cuddlely don’t they? Well, in this scene they’re discussing ways to eat her face off!

I have never seen  movie so intent on making me pee my bed when thinking about monkeys, polar bears, Catholics or Nicole Kidman.

I had a friend say she would watch this movie just for Daniel Craig. Unfortunately, Mr. Bond was only in the film for a total of 2.2 seconds. Unless you count the part where it shows him somewhere else doing something that has no bearing on the movie, at which point we can up the count to 2.4 seconds.

I give this film 1 New Coke.

That’s actually a bit harsh. Upon further reflection, if a movie is scary enough to give me face eating nightmares it deserves a re-review.

As a Harry Potter replacement the 1 New Coke stands.

As a psychological horror film it gets 6 C2: Coke 2 (Same great taste, ½ the Sugar!)

Yum-OH!

So I watched The Ruins the other day.

It was the most horrifying plant horror movie since The Day of the Triffids. So, yes – it was about as scary as jam. But it did have talking flowers. SCARY!

I give it a I Hope You Die On Deadly Nightshade.

Anyhow, on to Shutter.

I liked this movie the first time I saw it when it was called…er…Shutter. Really, the Asian Ghost Girl remakes have to stop. This one might have been scary – I’m not sure, I’m pretty desensitized – but it was mostly just “eh.” I must give it props for a great ending/twist. Who would have thought that all of Pacey’s back problems were due to the fact that the ghost was haunting him … while riding him piggyback THE WHOLE MOVIE! A piggyback riding ghost…EEEEEK! So basically this movie redeems itself in the last 5 HILARIOUS minutes. Best comedy remake ever.

Abnormal Beauty blew my mind in that I’m going to sneak up and get you way Audition did. I was about ready to pass this movie off as another dullsville crazy Asian girl Horror film when suddenly that crappy story arc resolved itself and we went all Slasher/Saw. Wh-Wh-What? I haven’t been this surprised since crazy girl in Audition piano-wired ol’boys hands and feet off. Or maybe since Doomsday. Mmmm…Doomsday.

HotDog Magazine calls Abnormal Beauty, “blisteringly weird and genuinely disturbing.” I tend to agree with them even though I have my reservations as to why a magazine about tasty, tasty meat products is reviewing a movie. Of course, they couldn’t be any worse than bloodydisgusting.com. Bastards. You know what I’m talking about.

So I give Abnormal Beauty 6 Keanu Reeves’ Whoas.

And I want to leave you with this:

I like to check the local second-run theater’s web site out every day to see what’s showing that evening. Today I was treated to an extra special treat. Observe this quote taken straight form the theater’s description of Superhero Movie:

“With unimaginable strength, unbelievable speed and deeply uncomfortable tights, will the Dragonfly be able to stop the sands of The Hourglass and save the world? More importantly, will we stop laughing long enough to notice?” 

I don't know? Will we? 

That’s FANFRAKINTABULOUS!