Movie Rentals & Reviews

Urban Legends 3: Bloody Mary © 2005
Synopsis: On a prom-night dare, a trio of high school friends chant an incantation, unleashing an evil spirit from the past with deadly consequences.

Comments: Okay, I knew going in not to expect much from this movie, but I rented it anyway because it was the closest thing to a new slasher on the new release wall. I reaaaally loved the first one, and the second one had some MAJOR eyecandy (Marco Hofschneider, Hart Bochner, Joey Lawrence) in it and had it's moments...but this one...oy vey. Whatta cineturd. Once I saw the CGI spiders (How fuckin' lazy do you have to be to not have real goddamn spiders?!! A perfect example of why I detest most CGI.), I knew I was in for a shitbomb. Plus the fact that the cast was completely unknown, which as we all know, generally translates into the Anna Nicole Smith School of Acting. The ONE highlight: a 3-4 second scene with some random hot guy (not even a main character) in a towel. Overall, bloody awful.

Cube Zero © 2004
Synopsis: A young man whose job is to watch over the Cube endeavours to rescue an innocent woman trapped in one of its rooms.

Comments: I loved the original Cube (I own the DVD). It was so suspenseful and original. I never bothered seeing it's first sequel, Cube 2: Hypercube. Cube Zero was visually cool and the modes of death were cool and original, BUT overall, the introduction of the "tough chick with kid" made my interest plummet.

It was just too much like an episode of TJ Hooker meets Not Without My Daughter. No thanks. Not an awful movie, but nothing special either. Some creative kills, though.

Rikers High ©
Synopsis: A harrowing portrait exploring the lives of three teens educated at the Island Academy, a high school program for incarcerated youth at Rikers Island prison. These former drug runners and armed robbers attend poetry classes and more, all hoping to graduate into a new life.

Comments: Rikers Island in New York houses 14,000 inmates. Two-thousand are 18 years or younger.

The fact that I stayed awake all the way through this lackluster documentary is a testament to my willpower. Boring. I usually like documentaries, but this one went nowhere...for an hour and a half. It focused on 3 or 4 prisoners, but you never really got to know them, so you didn't really get to care about where they ended up. There was one guy in particular, "Andre," who seemed to have a lot of potential, and it was sad to see him wasting his talents behind bars.

One guy, "Santiago" was obviously going through the motions and saying what he knew his teachers wanted to hear. Talking out his ass until he's finished serving his time (for robbery). Then, soon after his release, he announces to the cameras that his girlfriend is pregnant "again," then proceeds to bust a rhyme about how hard life is. Wonderful. We see him apply for a job, then check in with his parole officer, only to fail his drug test (he tested positive for marijuana). We eventually find out that 8 months after his release he still hasn't got his GED or a job. Wow, he really turned his life around. But according to him it's not his fault, he's being oppressed by "the man" and prisons are nothing more than modern day slavery. Wow. Shocking. I've never heard that before. Fuuuuck off. If he spent half as much time trying to get his GED/job as he did on his tight rhymes ('cause he wants to leave something behind, here on "earf" after he's gone) and fucking his girlfriend without a condom, maybe he'd be more than just another statistic.

I think the thing that pissed me off the most, was one of the inmates who's talking to his bunkmate about how his mother is on welfare and how he has other siblings, and how one check just "ain't enough," in an effort to justify what he does (the viewer is left to assume it's robbery). Um yeah, you know what else you can do? GET A JOB, MOTHERFUCKER!. You know, I hope to God I never have to know what it's like to go without, but if I did, I'd like to think I'd make some kind of effort to find a job, any job. Why people continue to bring children into this world when they can't even afford to support the ones they already have, is beyond my realm of understanding. I know for a fact that Planned Parenthood offers FREE contraceptives, for both men and women, regardless of race, age, disability, sexual orientation, or income.

There are 130,000 teenagers behind bars in the US. Eight out of 10 will be re-arrested within 1 year of their release.

Audrey Rose © 1977
Synopsis: A stranger attempts to convince a happily married couple that their daughter is actually his daughter reincarnated.

Comments: It's been a lonnnng time since I saw this movie (70's). I remember at the time thinking it was boring. After seeing it again, I found it really interesting. Weird how time changes your perspective on things.

I'm not really sure why this movie is always in the "Horror" section of video stores, 'cause, in my opinion, it's not really horror. Supernatural, perhaps. Drama, definitely. And though John Beck's character is a prick, he's a hottie! Good movie, though it is a bit too slow-paced for my taste, but it has some effective moments.

Northfork © 2003
Synopsis: Circa 1955, in a near-empty Northfork orphanage, Father Harlan gently tends to Irwin, a eight-year-old who lies between a dreamstate and death. As orphanage caretaker Harlan reads aloud about Northfork's years-ago forced evacuation to make way for a hydro-electric dam, Irwin's imagination takes flight. While a team of six men evacuate the last remaining citizens of the town, Irwin, too, invents a cast of characters to prepare himself for his own evacuation.

Comments: This was such a beautiful, strange, dark film. I'd never even heard of it until I stumbled across it on cable recently. The characters are great. Definitely falls under the surreal category. Me likee.

Meteor © 1979
Synopsis: After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid is heading towards Earth.

Comments: I'm a sucker for the disaster movies of the 70's, so it's no wonder that I like this movie. It's slow as molasses in some areas, but the disaster scenes are a lot of fun.