Change Your Image
Mitchl1138
Reviews
Captivity (2007)
Elisha Cuthbert survived House of Wax to star in this?
Elisha Cuthbert gets slipped a Mickey and awakens in an underground dungeon where she's held prisoner by a deranged lunatic who gets his jollies by making Plaster of Paris molds of his victims, replacing their blood with battery acid, then taking a sledgehammer to their faces in this ho-hum Saw carbon copy written by the great Larry (It's Alive) Cohen and directed by Roland (Hey didn't I get an Oscar nomination for The Killing Fields and what am do here directing this crap) Joffe. The hooded killer keeps Elisha locked up except when he wants to drug her so he can tie her to a dentist chair and pretend to torture her. That's right I said PRETEND because he doesn't really torture her, he just plays sick mind games with her. The only really nasty thing he does to her is to stick a bunch of dismembered body parts in a blender, hit the puree button and force feeds it to her through a funnel. Since the comely Cuthbert had already survived getting tied to a dentist's chair and having her fingers cut off and mouth Krazy Glued shut in House of Wax, this is a walk in the park for her. Of course when she meets Daniel (Spider-Man 2) Gillies in the next cell, she realizes that she isn't the only captive being held prisoner and the audience instantly realizes that he's actually in cahoots with the kidnapper. Aside from a handful of nasty moments (like when the killer makes Elisha shotgun her poodle at close range), Captivity really doesn't offer a whole heck of a lot. I usually have a floating star rating in my head the whole time I'm watching a movie and as the film neared it's conclusion when Cuthbert learns that Gillies is her real captor and holds him at gunpoint, this flick was hovering at about the three star mark. I said the only way that this thing could ever earn five stars is if she shoots him in the cajones. Luckily he gets one in the nuts and one in the gut. On a personal note I'd like to chastise the MPAA for a second here. No, it's not because they got mad at Captivity's seamy ad campaign and forced them to yank down all the posters. It's for rating the movie R and warning us of: strong violence, torture, pervasive terror, grizzly images, language and some sexual material. They got it all wrong. They say that the film is filled with these "Grizzly" images, but I didn't see a damn bear in the whole movie. Shame on you MPAA.
Atomic Rulers (1965)
Catch a Falling Starman
Ken Utsui stars in his fourth and final outing as Starman, Japan's favorite fruity spandex clad superhero. This time he's out to stop the evil country of Magolia (no not Mongolia) from getting their hands on atomic weapons deadly enough to destroy the entire world. Unlike it's predecessors which featured lots of funny fighting and goofy effects, this flick plays like a third rate version of the George Reeves' Superman show (Starman's alter ego even dresses up like a mild mannered Oriental in a suit and fedora) and it's pretty dull to boot. There's also a lot of rigmarole with a bunch of snotty Japanese Little Rascals types that slow things down considerably as well. And instead of the goofy aliens in Evil Brain from Outer Space, all the villains in this one are a bunch of cheap thugs who are straight out of the forties. (And why is it that all those hired thugs are always dressed so impeccably in their dapper suits?) Anyway, die hard Starman fans (no not you Jeff Bridges enthusiasts out there) will want to check it out, but this one didn't nearly have enough goofy fight scenes for my liking. Oh yeah, and despite the title, there isn't a radioactive yardstick to be seen in this flick.