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godofthunder2001
Reviews
Battlefield Earth (2000)
fun to hate but really not all that rank!
C'mon everybody! Slow down a bit! If this was a Roger Corman production, made in 1980 by New World or something, it would be a freaking cult classic. The main reason everybody trashes this flick is that it's a way bloated "dream project" for a megalomaniacal scientologist. It's not a great movie at all, but it's a fairly competent one and it's not boring. The effects are pretty damn good and Travolta is amusing. Every theme in this flick has been exploited better in other films but , Hollywood politics aside, this is far from the worst. What about the unwatchable Supernova? Mission to Mars was worse. Target your hatred elsewhere.
Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980)
chilling and surreal...
This film is probably an accidental masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless. Fulci is one of my idols, but I don't think he was a really good filmaker. It was his lack of coherency and almost childlike need to gross you out that made his best films so beloved. Gates of hell is the best of the lot. The film is basically one long wierd, surreal treatise one death and the horror of violent death in particular. Listen to the layered, terrifying soundtrack - wind howls, babies scream, stones grind, skulls break... The much talked about gore is not just gore but completely outlandish, brilliantly excecuted (no pun intended) operatic set pieces that come out of nowhwere and are truly, deeply repulsive. The prog rock score is just as yummy. The non linnear plot creates one of the best pieces of horror/surrealism I've ever seen. The ending is blood chilling because it doesn't make sense. See this movie more than once and realize it's so called faults are part of the reason it's so goddamned great!
Face-Off (1971)
creepily effective doomed romance...
I always find the films of the canadian tax shelter to be sort of surreal: The snowy locations the washed out cinematography, the stilted acting...canadian gothic. This film is one of my personal faves. It is SO 70's that it almost seems from another world or dimension or something. It's really kind of haunting and poetic, with a sense of doom pervading the whole production and the ending makes little sense. Combined with the endearingly awful songs, and truly touching performance by Trudy what's her name, the viewer feels like they dreamed the movie. Very weird and strangely, cheaply beautiful...