Reviews

I think at this point in time we all have a fairly good notion that those involved in making porn at the high levels, the money levels, are really weird people. It hearkens the question of "what is real" anymore. More and more these days were brought up to that level with everything associated with entertainment. There's no such thing as a carefully scripted situation comedy, thats been shifted to various levels of "reality" shows that mask their illusion with shaky camera work and blurred faces. Millionaire families strut around on yachts and go anywhere they want in the world at the drop of a hat, everyone is altered beautiful. How about sports and all the PED scandals that have sprung up in the past decade, is nothing sacred? Definitely not. Never was, never will be, which is what this tortured little piece of depravity slapped me in the face with. I just watched this on YOUTUBE and couldn't help but think of how just a few weeks ago Kirk Cameron who i'm no real fan of, had a trailer for one of his recent god-flicks pulled from YOUTUBE for some reason, yet this flick and many other's stay? No you can't have a trailer for a film of spiritual depth that encompasses the quest for GOD, no sir. This movie concerns a male porn star who's semi-retired and enjoying a boring predictable life with his hot wife and son. He get's offered a job with a very secretive group of filmmakers that approach him with the possibility of making huge amounts of money to do an "ART" film. The script is invisible and all manners of shooting location as well as other actors are totally non-existent. Instead a car arrives at the main character's home and brings him to the location of the shoot, sometimes blindfolded. This film is shot amazingly, and even with the subject matter i was wondering weather or not this was going to be a "shock" movie cause it looked so beautiful. People draw comparisons to "SALO" but i don't see it, this to me was much more brutal. What bothers me about this movie is that it's pretty realistic. Most of the money used to make porn in the seventies was financed by the mob, probably even today it is. Which means that what makes it out to the theater and video store is just the surface, their is indeed a seedy underground of filmmakers out there making these horrible DEATH/SEX films with young actors and actresses with no regard for the trauma they initiate. You know why they make these movies? For starters it's cause there is a market for it, for the people at the very top level's of entertainment and wealth who want real "art". People with lots of money and lots of sway. The other reason why they make it is the same as the director gives in this film: because it's real. There is a huge parallel drawn between sex and violence that is always right in our face, some people just don't know it. Why are there scantily clad woman running around doing gymnastics at football events? Why is there some bimbo with a nice body strutting around the octagon between every round? What does a beautiful partially naked woman have to do with FIGHTING, or with FOOTBALL or anything their plastered on? Wherever there is high violence there is high heels, it's to condition us to buy into more and more violent behavior towards not just our own sex, but the opposite as well. And these movies will increase more and more till were all dead mutilated mail order bribes. I have come to this conclusion long before seeing this movie, but it just jumped all over me tonight after watching it. I had to lye down after this and just clear my mind. Extremely depressing but nonetheless awesome. Know your limits.

ATM is a silly little flick i would consider calling "horror" only because it's almost entirely filmed at night and there is some violence, otherwise it's pretty much a disaster. It makes me laugh that people come on here time and time again complaining about the "reality?" of the situation. I put the movie on knowing it was cheese, i got cheese, and i was fine with that. It's like with "Walking Dead" the message-boards are out of control with people debating the REALITY of the situation when it's obvious to me that it was a pre-scripted event filmed for our entertainment and not a special on NAT GEO. I actually liked it more then other notable fluff pieces made fast for our consumption. The entire movie takes place in an ATM that is located in a dark parking lot that seems to be far enough away from civilization that it's impossible to escape from. Three losers wait to die while a guy who's prepared for the cold weather stands outside just out of reach of the cameras to really mess things up. The parking lot, booby trapped. The back of the ATM machine is under siege and the onetime fat kid from "drake and josh" is kind of alive. There really are some great ideas put to play here, the killings are set up quite creatively and the solutions to the problems the three face are equally appreciated. And while people bash parts of the movie for being "un-realistic" i would go one step further to point out the most un-real thing to me was where the killer planned out his strategies, i don't think there is a storage unit anywhere that has that kind of extra space behind the room itself. Who is this guy a high school basketball coach? That's all i could think when he was planning out his butchery. The only thing this movie was missing was some gratuitous nudity! It's good to see the DRAKE AND JOSH dude has grown up though. Think about it, it's hella late at night and your in a five-by-five cash machine in the middle of nowhere while a guy outside plays the game of life, AND it's to cold to go anywhere. The claustrophobia was real, the twists were tasty and the end was awesome! This is the JAWS of reality horror films, enjoy!

The bones brigade was a slew of skateboarding dudes from America that took the world by storm in the eighties and then transcended into legends based on their radical moves. I kind of wish this movie was put in a different light though, the camera panning during the interviews is cheesy, and all the damn whining nearly drove me to insanity. It's like in the Metallica doc when Dave Mustane get's brought in by a shrink to whine to Lars Ulrich about being kicked out of Metallica twenty years prior. C'mon dave you only went on to form an even more awesome band MEGADETH, quit cryin! But he won't and neither do these guys. Hawk laments being such a "trickster" and playing second fiddle to Hosoi, Rodney Mullen just plain cry's the whole time and the rest of the team spit out sob stories while a roving camera creeps around them like a shark circling it's prey. Vice started a series years back called "Epicly later'ed" which is far and away better then watching this whole flick, people talk about their experiences and maybe sometimes someone cry's, but this flick really sent me packing due to all the waterworks. Enough. Rodney Mullen who's probably one of the most influential street skaters ever just cry's all the damn time, i've seen other little doc's about him and he's very emotional about his years skating and how he got there. This one could have been good i just hated the approach, it would have been better to interview these guys separately at their homes or at a diner, someplace other then a highly lit set with ten cameras. It just didn't feel organic to me. But that's the way a lot of Stacy Peralta's stuff is, it's either way to artsy (pick a bones brigade flick) or it's well crafted (dogtown). It's weird when you think of these guys being so cool and crazy just to see them wash up on the shores of shrugtown.

I don't know how to make sense of the material world we are living in, but every now and then i feel like a fish in a net that just got thrown onto the boat floor, wriggling a last few moments air into my fish lungs, eyes nearly exploding wondering how i got there and if i would live another second. This movie does not assure you of living that extra second, what it does delve into is alternate universes, dreams, hallucinogenic drugs, and a beautiful woman with one hand. I first became a fan of Don Coscarelli in my early teens, possibly even ten years old, when i would rent PHANTASM 2 over and over and over again. So when i saw his name attached to this weird movie title, i knew it was going to be good. This movie is weird, try remembering what happens in the middle the next day, it's not easy! The film basically goes in and out of the memory of one Dave Wong and his friend till the end-and beyond John Cheese. They stumble onto a strange drug disseminating Jamaican and end up traveling through different dimension's only to slay a giant who encompasses an entire cave with one eye and a bunch of tentacles. Along the way all kinds of weird stuff happens, at one point while trying to drive John Cheese to the emergency room after suffering side effects of the drug known as "soy sauce" a strange tall thin man named Roger North appears in the back seat, throws some kind of alien slug down Dave's shirt and goes off on one of the most poignant analysis's of the world i have ever heard in film. He ponders the plight of the honey bee, makes a brilliant statement about words you hear for the first time, then touches on something close to my own dementia, the out of place "single" shoe seen by the side of the road or elsewhere. That conversation had me pinned, i couldn't get that raga out of my head. I submitted myself to repeat viewings and loved it more and more. I'm often fascinated by hallucinations and psychedelic drugs and their possibility to open your mind to other worlds, what position dreams hold in our life, and if it's possible to keep getting recycled into other worlds, or this one, over and over again. Fans of the novel complain there is tons of information left out, which is mostly true with all book to movie flicks, but i would encourage all intrigued to check out the movie anyway, it kept me watching and listening.

All out, non stop, swinging boobs with no bra's to hold them back, welcome everyone- to late night Cinemax! This movie was on ALL the time and it probably caused about a billion erections. It's about two babes (one with huge boobs, one with small boobs) who decide to leave their crappy jobs behind and seek adventure. What happens next is no surprise, their abducted by crazy guys with sunglasses, brought to an upscale brothel and given mind altering substances. This movie had woman of all shapes an sizes, and i'm sure if it was on today people would dismiss it as being G rated, but back in those glorious nineteen nineties this was all we needed! A bunch of woman walking around scantily clad or naked, and eventually engaging in a long winded/overly artistic/overly simulated sex act. It didn't prepare me for what i was up against when i started dating woman for real, but it made you think about sex in a weird and somewhat clean way compared to the stuff you can get absolutely FREE online today. Truly a golden era.

This is one of those movies with a very unassuming title, it sounds as if it could be a lifetime channel film, or an after school special. The story of ricky or as we know it "Ricky oh" is a complex film that asks no quarter, and gives none, just the most extreme splatter violence in the brief history of the year 1991. It's a movie that is both stomach turning, and hysterical. Characteristics of prison life are well choreographed (drug dealing, mob rule, shower beatings) while hopelessly false in others (people being strangled with their own guts, a whole jaw dismembered post uppercut). But we don't go to the movies for love, we go for spastic bloody violence! Which this movie delivers on absolutely all levels, buckets of blood-check, holes being punched clean through stomach-check, heads being slap exploded-check. This movie has a huge cult following, and you have to give it credit for crossing over to the mainstream. If you watched "the daily show" before Jon Stewart hosted it you might remember Craig Kilborn and his vivacious "five questions" which featured a clip of the head explosion during the questionnaire. As arcade sensation Mortal Kombat was on it's rise a series of sequels emerged, the character JAX performed a fatality where he "clap" explodes his opponent's head! It's a hell of a way to go don't you think? One minute your in prison getting raped in the butt and the next thing you know some goon is crushing your head to the point of explosion. Vaya con dios my friends, bring a napkin!

Two things that can really make a movie go foul are Rob van Winkle and Ernie Reyes jr. And while i can enjoy the career of Vanilla ice, i somehow can't accept Ernie. He whines with every line, he has this squeaky voice that seems to penetrate glass. The costumes got weird in this, it's like every time your watching the turtles talking on screen the eyes are rolling and the lips are moving like a zig zag, they look drunk! The action sequences fell a bit short in this one too, didn't look as ripping violent as the first one. Corey Feldman said no to the sequel, then strangely returned for the third. When this came out most video stores would only get a few copy's, which meant you were stuck on a waiting list for a couple weeks just to see it. The store i went to only had TWO COPYS! And the waiting list was already jacked up. Vanilla Ice makes an unforgettable appearance at the end when one of his shows gets and impromptu visit from all kinds of mysterious creatures. This one is interesting, but it really lacked technical aspects of the first and third.

Vilified, a film that ponders the wasteland of sequels. It's often hard to make a good follow up to a series of movies, and making a third or fourth or whatever sequel proves to be even harder (hellraiser, lethal weapon). But Hollywood is a place largely dominated by how much money can be squeezed out of an idea, so here we go. This movie get's way more flak then it deserves, the costumes are an improvement, the time travel was cool, April is still hot and the action is dope. The second installment had weird costumes that looked to be heavy on complex mechanical masks and not enough on body movement/fluidity. The third makes up for that, the costumes look the best in the whole live action franchise which helps for any part of the movie driven by dialog or combat. This film saw the return of Corey Feldman, a departure from the Jim Henson prop department and the introduction to an awesome SNES game. But it failed to catch on with fans and was panned by critics. The sequels never managed to capture the gritty aspect of the first film, or find a happy medium between storytelling and action, but for a trilogy i've seen a lot worse.

There really is nothing like a Vincent Gallo film, their weird depraved little pictures with a few notable stars that end up haunting our memories for years to come. I liked Buffalo 66 and Gallo's appearance in the video for "cosmopolitan blood-loss" i thought was probably his best work ever, but this crap was nothing more then someone jerking off into our faces for ninety minutes. Nothing happens, try telling someone what the movie was about, lot's of Gallo riding his motorcycle while making out with a really busted crack-addled looking Cheryl Tiegs, and the blow-job that got me to wait in line to get in. It's not like i'd never seen a bj up until then, my friends wanted to go and it was the selling point for the movie. Random shots of the dashboard with some Gordon Lightfoot playing, seriously? This guy has gotten way to artistic to be understood and this film really did nothing for me or practically anyone else. I really don't know what happened to this guy, he seemed to "have-it" at one point and mysteriously lost it for this flick. Could you imagine seeing either Winoda Ryder or Kirsten Dunst doing the knob-job at the end! My god it would have been totally different, instead we get the equally hot but in film terms much more damaged goods Chole Sevigny pulling the line. Boring does not begin to asses my issue, it's a movie based around a blow job, and not a real earth shattering one either. Just a simple little fluf in an otherwise random and meaningless film.

Hurricane Streets was a tight little picture about several NYC kids who run around causing trouble then chill in a neat little underground pad. This came out just two years after KIDS and seems to be a pretty standard copy, only with younger actors and less visceral sex, maybe no sex. Brendan Sexton plays his usual down and outer, he runs around the city with his homies, eventually finds a girl, robs a store and leaves town. People i knew liked it, maybe due to the soundtrack (sex and candy anyone?), maybe due to it being a slightly adult themed movie geared towards kids. Personally i think just about anyone can shoot in NY with a bunch of scruffy looking youth's and collect enough footage for a film that people will deem "great". Besides what i mentioned above the movie doesn't really go anywhere, there's no real narrative and the actors involved play things out pretty blasé, it's heavily conquered material to say the least. It was compared to "kids" because it was in NY and dealt with mislead youth, another flick that came out around the same time which was similar and boring in the same way was "all over me". It's important to note that all three films had amazing soundtracks. The director Morgan Freeman (not the science channel) went on to write for MTV reality shows mostly, and it makes sense. There is one scene worth mentioning, at some point the kids end up with a gun and while one dude is hiding in their clubhouse the trigger gets pulled. They must have had no money because it's the fakest gunshot i think i've seen, it's like a cap gun literally. Some of that white smoke even peels out of the barrel. Seriously fake looking gun/scene. Forget this movie, rent the Vagrant instead.

I was fourteen when this movie came out and spent pretty much all my free time skateboarding, so when i first caught the preview it intrigued me based on the skating alone. I knew who Harold Hunter was and thought it was going to be a movie about skating, only hitch is that it's NC-17. When this came out i wanted to see it so badly i didn't care what lengths that meant going to. So i asked my mom if she would take me! What a colossal mistake, i couldn't think of a more uncomfortable movie to see with a parent or authority figure. The first ten minute make-out to sex scene was gutt wrenching. My mom wanted to leave right away, she leaned over and said "let's go" but i was unable to move, this was around the time in my life when i was so defiant i would sit in a crowded movie theater with my mom while basically a cheap porno was playing, and still refuse to leave. So the entire movie revolves around one kid with AIDS who has a fetish for young virgins, and his miscellaneous crew including a young Rosario Dawson as they navigate mid-nineties New York. Partying, pool hopping, robbery, rape, drugs, beat-downs, it's just another day in the big apple! The movie plays out in almost documentary fashion while the audience is subjected to the unfortunate saga of a young man with a raging disease who basically rapes one girl after another. It's magnified reality to my poor mother who i dragged to the movie then refused to leave. It was way to much, she accosted me in the parking lot "why did you take me to that movie" i told her "i thought it was about skateboarding!?" she replies "the only skateboarding i saw was when they beat that man to death!". Shocked, i didn't see another movie with my mom until Spiderman 3 which was another exercise in horrible movie making. Only on a different level of course.

Another mid eighties flick concerning strippers and the quacks who want to disfigure them. This was on IFC last night real late, and right from the word GO, boobs come bouncing, and they just don't stop! This is one i either altogether missed when it was re-run on cable, or had actually never seen. All sizes and shapes and big time stars letting their joy juggs flaunt the air. This movie could have been called "DIRTY PILLOWS" or "the Booby affair" and the plot would have still made sense. Billy Dee Williams, fresh off his role in "The empire strikes back" hits hard in this one, trying to forever rub out his squeakier role as the fun loving space invader. I thought this was a great movie for fans of female objectification and heaping doses of the F word. Enjoy!

The early nineties was a massive cross-over period for the hip-hop artist looking to solidify a lengthy career outside of the music biz. Ice-T plays a bum on the street until he crosses paths with Rutger Hauer who invites him to earn some cash out in the woods with a couple of his rich buddies. For his ignorance he's rewarded with being the pawn in a game of human hunting. But he's not nearly as easy to kill as he seems (dreadlocks) and he ends up collecting some scalps of his own en-route to a crisp finish(Toasty). The movie was a cable classic, an adventure with the likes of Gary Busey and Charles Dutton brandishing hi-caliber firearms and fast motor bikes. And guess what? You just might learn sumthin from this here, inner-city meets outer-limits tale of deception and greed. For one, never, EVER, shoot a gun you just found on the street. Clean it first. The end.

Tito Ortiz came out of nowhere to capture the first light-heavyweight championship in the UFC, a title he would secure for at least four years until running into an aging Randy Couture. Ken Shamrock was a submission fighter all the way from UFC 1, he made a name for himself winning several "superfights" in the company before returning to professional wrestling at a possible moment in his career when he was most deadly. During his departure Tito had effectively dispatched nearly every pro from Kens "lions den" team that was in his weight class. One of the famed matches was against Guy Mezger, they had fought before and Mezger had pulled out a late victory, not before taking some elbows. Now in this fight Ortiz was looking to put a stamp on his victory, by making a t-shirt with the slogan "gay mezger is my bitch" which he used to taunt pretty much the whole lions den team after the fight. This did not fit well with Shamrock who got so angry he stopped wrasslin and got back into the octagon, which turned out to be a horrible idea. The first of their three encounters came at UFC 40, a card that still stands out as one of the best of all time, from undercard to main event it was loaded like a machine gun with compelling finishes. The hype was real, the hate was palpable, it was like Woodstock 99! Minus the rapes, that is if you don't count how (figuratively speaking) raped Shamrock got. Ortiz never looked so deadly, it was like watching a refrigerator get dropped on an ant. Shamrock was too old, to damaged from earlier years of fighting, and probably coming down from some serious steroids. Shamrock got one punch off, and it was awesome, but not nearly enough as he played human punching bag while Ortiz ripped through him with hard kicks, knees and elbows, everything was landing with authority. Ortiz walked away with a victory, and his last title defense as the next ten years would prove a new generation was brooding and his "ground and pound" style slightly busted. Shamrock didn't recover too well either, he spent the next decade mostly on the losing end of one-sided fights with virtual nobody's. Their both legends and they did a lot to propel the sport and gain new fans. Their PPV's were some of the biggest the company had seen at the time, and tonight, Ortiz is still fighting.

When Pat Miletich talks about his years fighting in MMA before it was popular, one fight he probably never brings up is his bout against Mike Burnett. It was a mega event, it was the first time the UFC went to Brazil, and the card was STACKED! Not surprisingly the partisan crowd booed pretty much all Americans slated, except for one Dave "tank" Abbott. The place was packed, cigarette smoke can clearly be seen and veteran referee John McCarthy was the third man in the octagon for every fight. The card is largely unseen dew to it being shown during the "blackout" period in the UFC where it was banned from PPV television in America. Most fans of the sport who got into it after the year 2000 probably can't remember anything about it, or most cards that came before Dana White and associates purchased the fledgling organization in 2001. Which leaves a huge black hole in the conversation about the in-between years of this sport in America. People remember the first maybe five UFC's, then they don't know a single name or event up until Tito Ortiz became champion, so this is a conversation in the dark, it's a plate of food left outside an unmarked grave, it's deep and dark and for the people competing in these "lost cards" their story's are more important than anyone else's. While the entire card is exceptional, my focus in this review is on the main event which would crown a champion in the first ever lightweight division. The organization had for a number of years done bracket style eight to sixteen man tournament bouts that awarded a prize to the last man standing at the end of the night, in this card however the prize for the winner should have been moisturizer for the brutal bending of what little clothing these guys wore. Both men fought in skintight shorts that covered the area below the waist down to the upper thigh, maybe ten inches in length, this fabric of clothing would be the only thing really tested in this match of two of the best at the time. It's one of the weirdest fights (if you wanna call it that) i have ever seen because for most of the 21 minutes they "fight" both guys are basically grabbing each others shorts in a tug of war reminiscent of a sumo match! If it were in Japan the crowd would have loved it, but it was in Brazil, and although Brazilians are no strangers to scantily clad men or woman, this was a particularly booed contest that left many scratching their heads. Maybe ten punches were exchanged and at one point Burnett who's nickname is "the Eastside assassin" despite holding a 5-2 record, really took it to Miletich. Burnett was the aggressor the entire time, he got Miletich in a guillotine choke early in the fight and almost finished him. He threw punches he stalked, while Miletich moved away and forced clinching not by the neck, but by the trousers! The ref should have halted the action and given a stern warning to Pat Miletich for not engaging, but at this point in the UFC all kinds of boring counter attacks were seen as legitimate in a game where if you can't find a defense to it, it doesn't matter. Things couldn't be more different now with people being let go from the company for NOT being exiting enough, most recently Jon Fitch 14-3-1 in the UFC more of an (figurative) assassin then Mike Burnett will ever be, was fudged out of his contract for boring the public to tears with his stifling wrestling game. To me this is one of the great "what if's" in the sport, what if the bout was scored correctly and Burnett won the first lightweight divisional championship? Where would his career have gone? He ended up fighting only once more for the UFC before retiring to a bottle of booze and prescription pill abuse. He would return in 2006 for a stint on "the ultimate fighter" reality show where he was submitted in the first round. He would then gain sub-infamy for unsuccessfully using his body as a battering ram in the ultimate fighter house busting his neck and not being able to compete in the finale, once again snubbing a shot at fighting professionally for the biggest MMA company worldwide. He tried suing the UFC for his neck damages in the house and was unsuccessful at that. His only success has been making a bunch of veteran fighters laugh while his spine broke. I kind of feel bad for him, wherever you are Mikey i hope your doing well, and if your reading this i want you to know that you are, in my mind, the first real lightweight champion.

Total Cinemax classic! The two Corey's were always on premium channels late at night, and this flick although only containing one Corey, is amazing. In the near future America has collapsed, there are shortages of everything and most people are hunting around for recyclables in order to stay afloat. There's a gang of roller-blading thugs on the streets making and selling a drug known as "mist" and collecting like the mafia at any and all local retailers. Corey is a rollerblader, and he probably did some of his own stunts in this movie seeing as he was also an avid hockey player (O' Canada). Due to his rad skills and tubular looks, he's advanced by the gang after dim-wittingly saving one "Bullwinkle" (not the moose) from a mist house gone up in flames. He's reluctant to accept but he's old friends with gang leader Gary Lee and the undercover pig unit wants to bring down the rollerboys, so Haim has got no choice but ante-up. It's a story of drugs and gangs in the future that ROLLERBLADE everywhere and cause general havoc, but what's really in the drug MIST? Things get personal when Corey's little brother gets involved, Patricia Arquette heats things up, and the blading is awesome! This movie came out at the start of the whole in-line revolution (91) and remains one of the strongest roller-blading movies that deals with post-apocalyptic stress. But hey, as long as we can still skate, i don't care what color the sky is. Ten stars R.I.P. C.H.

I was ten years young when this came out, and still too little to see it in theaters. But i remember there was one kid in my school who did see, and he was floored. I believe this was a 3-d nightmare as well, being the final Friday they really wanted to make some statues jump out at cha. I love this one, as i do many in the catalog, and at one time partially owned the entire collection on VHS, which is actually better because the VHS versions were unrated, containing tons of scenes that were scrapped for the DVD reissue (if it was done in the eighties, buy the VHS always). So this one is great, freddy has lots of fun killing people off, the Nintendo sequence is notably fun, the old town the kids get stuck in, the crossover into dreamland and Yaphet Kotto, c'mon! That guys gold! The premise is good, the idea of bringing Freddy into the real world is cool, and the gore-Top notch. How about that part with the ear swab! This was a great addition and the much neglected New Nightmare wasn't bad either. I like the franchise, i like the twisted humor, i like the gratuitous nudity, and the buckets upon buckets of blood. Do not rent this Own it. Ten stars.

Horror movie compilation in the vein of "Blair Witch Project" which contains some of the most uninteresting, non- attractive, badly tatted tarts i have ever seen. These woman are a year or two away from waiting tables at Bickfords. The shoot itself is a joke and the build up to the kills takes longer then you'd expect from a bunch of nitwits that would probably die if someone didn't offer them money in return for close up's of their vagina's. Is this a scene that's out to exploit black hair and black ink on punker bodies? Yes. The problem i have with this brand is that it could be done A LOT better. How about tasteful pin-up style shoots, how about not going on tour where they frolic around in their undies in dirty nightclubs. I hope these "babes" are making their money because i couldn't tell you anyone that finds what they do interesting. The SG franchise is just that, a big black hole, don't waste your time unless your seriously bored, and even then i'd suggest doing something else. Highly suspect skank material suited for the lowest I.Q.

New Jersey has often been touted as the butthole of the east coast, but in recent years it's gained a massive resurgence due mainly to the MTV reality show Jersey Shore, which highlighted several early twenties youths from the garden state whose national pastime consists of pumping iron, doing laundry and getting tanned. And lots of sex, tons of sex. Now this version of Jersey follows a mother and daughter who own a beauty salon (the Gatsby) and their illogical team of hairstylists and nail professionals. Why is it that i cannot look away, it's like watching someone feed applesauce to a beached whale with a huge spoon. Over the top makeup, super tight, super skimpy, high-heeled, fake nailed, fake tanned, fake titties, fake personalities and fake boobs, oh wait i already mentioned that. In one episode sometimes lead make-up artist Olivia contemplates getting her boobs done because shes sick of stuffing chicken cutlets into her bra (Gorden Ramsey would shut her down in two seconds) and in some kind of divine intervention she breaks down, and falls back on the flimsy false truth of her stuffed basket, decides not to get the surgery. You know all these woman are naturally beautiful, they wouldn't have to do much at all to hi-lite their looks, but instead every woman on this show looks like a cross between C C Deville and any member of Faster Pussycat! Really they all look like drag queens and or eighties glam metal rejects. I give the show nine stars due to the head scratching effect of all these catty, superficial hags.

Sandwiched between two of the worst FT13 films imaginable comes the real meat and potatoes of any good slash fest, Mega Splatter! This is a pretty big departure for our wayward, slightly faceless foe, as he tackles the living hell of shape-shifting through body's and eluding a bounty hunter that means business. The previous FT13 had polarized many longtime fans of the series with a weak script, several off-screen kills, and although the title suggests the J-man is ripping people to shreds in NY, the costly high-profile shooting locale proved too expensive steering the script away from the big apple, enter: Jason takes Canada! This is my favorite of the entire franchise, it's the most daring and artistic. In the beginning the homicidal hockey hiker is blown to pieces by a crack group of heavily armed cops, his body parts bagged and tagged sent off to the morgue. Sometime funnyman Richard Grant whose most known for playing the black cop in The Big Lebowski, checks in for coroner duty and quickly falls into a trance state consuming Jason's heart raw, presumably cold. For the rest of the movie Jason jumps in and out of body's in search of death and destruction. Along the way a camping love-couple gets RIPPED in half, faces get smashed, and CHUNKS of human tissue go all over the place in what seems like endless gun battles. John D. LeMay who was on a show in the eighties with the same title (way different premise) plays boyfriend to local waitress with Jason genes, and helps whoever he can survive the body count. The other great part goes to Steven Williams who plays the bounty hunter Creighton Duke (awesome name) out to kill Jason for good with the aid of a ten gallon hat and an intergalactic knife. The whole movie flies by at a spitfire pace with great camera work and shooting locations. Jason was never a careful cut and paste and bury and hide type of killer, he's a stalking unstoppable force that rolls over people like a tank and crushes their skulls till the eyes pop-out. So grab some pop-corn and get a good pillow to squeeze it's time once again to enter the killing fields, Ten stars.

If Metallica seems like just another high dollar metal outfit that does five interviews a year, wins a Grammy, then goes backstage to immediately fornicate with prostitutes and blow piles of cocaine, you'd only be half right. The worlds most voyeuristic headbangers once again invite us (the viewing audience) on a do or die mission of guts and sob stories. Metallica is a heavy metal band that that formed in California in the year nineteen eighty one. Lars Ulrich planted an add seeking out like minded rockers and got a call back from James Hetfield, and with that a legacy of mainstream metal was born. They had shifting bassists for the first year until they saw the diabolical Cliff Burton playing with his band "Trauma" and started to formulate a deal. They would record three amazing albums with Cliff before a tragic buss accident ended his career. After much grieving Metallica acquired the curly ginger Jason Newsted who they would go on to record some of their biggest albums with. In this film Newsted has quit the megalith for various reasons. Some may say this was good timing, and that he avoided being apart of one of the worst metal albums ever. But these are just opinions, even though fan reception to the album was mixed, and critically panned, it still sold a bazillion copies and hit the billboard at number 1. Record execs show up for listening party's bored, Lars's dad who looks like a wizard says the album stinks, Hetfield bolts often and Kirk whines like a little boy. Whenever a band or baseball team starts falling apart the owners usually bring in a headshrinker to make love not war. This little creep comes in and unravels the band to their root, constantly gutting each mans entire life to find some meaning that just isn't there. He decides Lars has to clean house entirely so one time loose nut Dave Mustane is brought over to the couch to do some whining along with the rest of us. This is the part of the movie that gets to me, Dave Mustane who's the founder/frontman of MEGADETH, actually whining about being kicked out of Metallica? I lost what respect i had for him right there. It's such an interesting movie though, these guys who have made and will continue to make so much money are at a crossroads of interest in playing music together, and while people often say "money isn't everything", these guys say money is the only thing. How can we make lots of money, coupled with the God like status they've received for being the biggest mainstream metal band of all time collide. Their just not relevant anymore, some of the stuff their jamming on in the film is so floppy, Lars i might add, has lost a considerable step. Lyrics: stupid, playing: weak, personality: zero, and Mustane wussing it up. It's the metal version of "Let it Be" and were all along for the ride. Please, i beg you Metallica, just bow out, end it, spare the overcrowded metal world another bad album.

Kyle Manard was born quadriplegic, and despite not having arms or legs, he competes in MMA. Yeah i know what i just wrote may have many people shaking their heads but it's true, a guy with no limbs got into a cage with a regular dude, and fought. This movie is about fifty minutes long and it's littered with home movies, training footage, and his fight. Manard grew up an avid wrestling fan and actually competed in high school wrestling. He didn't win at first, but kept trying and finally won. Once he figured out what his best technique was, he started beating guys up and down. He left high school a wrestling champ and continued to pursue a full and fruitful life. Many people in the fight community were torn as to weather this guy should fight or not. People in the doc come off down right rude saying that a quadriplegic could never compete in this sport. Those people must have forgotten that MMA is the home of people from all walks of life, Tra Telligman for example was in a car accident as a kid and had to have one of his pectoral muscles removed, despite that he competed and did rather well. Then there's that guy that use to punt in the NFL, who only had half a foot. I've seen a pitcher in baseball who only had one arm, and so on, the point I'm trying to make is that our limitations as human being's are only in the realm of the mind. It has been said that if you can move an inch, that's a massive accomplishment. Manard also spends his time training with other people missing limbs, coaching them and giving inspirational advice. And although theirs a complete media black out of our wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq/Afghanistan, people like Kyle are out there helping them, giving them support, pushing them to new heights, giving them hope. Watching this, as well as "Murderball" are reminders that people with disability's do more then plenty of average humans. So check this out, it's truly unique and inspiring.

When you put a combination like Renny Harlin and Shane Black together, you get the kind of action flick that's not only pulse-pounding, fully automatic machine gun funk, but also highly intriguing. This movie came out in 1996, a few years after the OKC bombing and the first WTC attack. The C.I.A had close involvement with both tragic events, the movie chronicles at least one if not both of those points, which are fact. Then the plot roles like this, Geena Davis is an assassin working for the C.I.A, she's almost caught and killed, but escapes. Has amnesia from a fall/gunshot wound, only to emerge and take on the life of a small town mommy, with no recollection of the thrill kill past she's lead. Samuel L. Jackson plays an ex-cop turned private eye with a hot tip on the past lives of G.D. It must be noted the Sam L. performance in this movie is nothing short of amazing, just about every line he has is absolutely awesome, "That's a duck not a dick", and his banter with Cox and Davis is great stuff. Budget cuts in the white house force the company to hire mercenaries to pull off a huge killing that will see the pockets of the elitists enlarged. Explosives are packed into a sixteen wheeler, with the intention of setting it off, on Christmas, in midtown America, AND it will be blamed on the Muslims, they've got a middle eastern guy on ice ready to plant near the scene. The F.B.I, A.T.F all of them got huge bonuses after both attacks on the WTC as well as the OKC bombing. Seriously, why does the C.I.A exist? Grab a book about the company and you'll find massive organization done in Latin America, the Middle East, everywhere, to topple governments and expand control. Their budgets swelled allowing covert operations to continue and expand. Destabilization politics, create the enemy, manufacture the lie, provide the solution. Top notch Harlin action with a great cast, crisp writing and much comedy, truly a great among greats, ten stars, doubleplusgood.

So i was up last night at some ungodly hour and this flick comes on straight out of 1980 about a big, huge guy who strangles the life out of sexy woman in L.A. It's called "Don't answer the Phone" and it stands out at being violent, sexy, and scary. This film caught my eye for two reasons, first off the killer is wearing an Airborne/paratrooper jacket in the movie, which seems to fit extremely well with a "Ed Parker" Kempo Karate patch on the right shoulder. Second, the flesh. Every five minutes some Extreme hottie gets squeezed to dirt, its a ninety minute flesh parade of death and desire dealt out in a lethal, one-sided manner. There's almost no blood to be seen, just lots of strangulation and domination. It's slightly reminiscent of "Maniac" the classic that catapulted Joe Spinell to fame for his role as the bloodthirsty woman butcher. There both excellent pieces of cinema that pushed the genre into cold, tension filled depths, AND they both came out the same year. I'm starting to love Hollywood b-genre, bit actors. Nicholas Worth, Brion Johnson, Joe Spinell and Robert Z'dar round out some of my favorites in this weird, forgotten genre. Ten stars.

With no acting credentials Edward Furlong was plucked off the street to star in one of the best action sequels of all time Terminator 2. He then went on to play roles in some other fantastic flicks right before the Millennium, the kid works fast. Brainscan is a mail order computer game where players do their best to commit brutal crimes while at the same time leaving no trace of their actions. This was made during those awesome Grunge years in the early nineties so expect plenty of flannel and mid-tempo metal going on in the background. Furlong lives in a posh overly conceptualized attic room, complete with cutting edge electronics, full-size fridge, waterbed and scooter. Dad's got some high profile job and must leave the credit card home so Furlong can buy food and monitors and milk. This movie is directed by the guy who did the cult classic Rolling Thunder, Brainscan was actually one of his last movies. You really don't know until the end if crazy eddie is really killin or just thrilln. Frank Langella co-stars as the dead-pan detective whose role in the movie plays out like a mere formality. I miss the genre "Techno Thriller" which apparently means any movie that involves computers and killing in some way. This kid really did plenty of exiting work before Y2K and continues to burn up the screen, so check-it-out peeps, nine stars.