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Reviews
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
My Big Fat Creepy World
Look at the box cover. Seems like a nice cute quirky indie comedy, right? And all those awards. It must be good! Well, you'd be wrong, my friend. Dead Wrong.
In the first fifteen minutes or so, a man sets his hand on fire in front of his two young sons, two people in a car try to rescue a goldfish in a bag on top of an SUV in traffic, and a middle-aged man sexually propositions two teenage girls. It gets worse from there. It's as if Nia Vardalos had tried to adapt a really bad John Waters screenplay and effed it up. I am mostly a liberal person, but this movie sent the needle on my Wrong-O-Meter straight into the red zone. Afterwards, I had to scrub myself down like Meryl Streep in SILKWOOD after being exposed to radiation. Avoid this movie like a dead rat on the sidewalk.
The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966)
The Terror of Slow-Moving Vegetation
I can accept the eight-foot-tall killer trees from the Antarctic that have acid for blood and can rip peoples' arms off, but when Mamie Van Doren lives on a Navy base and no-one makes any sexual comments toward her, then credibility goes right out the window.
Seriously, though, I thought this was an awesome movie when I saw it at the drive-in when I was a kid. More than four decades later, though, I am less enamored with the leisurely screenplay, dim-witted characters, and dollar store special effects. Still, there is a certain pleasure in watching these giant plants shuffle around, snagging people who wander into the jungle one by one against all common sense.
There Was a Little Girl (1981)
WARNING- The DVD case will clog your toilet
Didja ever watch a movie and afterward get the uncontrollable urge to track down the people who made it and, when they answered their door, to just punch 'em right in the head?
Just asking.
ME: Your Honor, I present the following evidence in my defense.
Exhibit A: Exploiting a genetic condition and equating it with mental illness.
Exhibit B: Characters who do stupid time-wasting things while waiting to get killed.
Exhibit C: Characters who talk to each other as if they were talking to 2-year-olds.
Exhibit D: Killers who sing nursery rhymes while killing.
Exhibit E:
JUDGE: (Bangs his gavel) That's enough. Sentenced to time served. You are free to go.
Secretos compartidos (1998)
A serial killer film worth fishing for
Movies like this are one reason I like to take a chance on foreign films I've never heard of-- this Argentinian serial killer film ranks right up there with the best of them. Victor is a respectable married man who, every Wednesday, brutally assaults and kills a woman for dressing too provocatively. His "calling card", though not graphically shown, is not for the squeamish viewer. After one such killing, he meets a second man in a coffee shop, and they begin to trade stories of sexual conquests. This second man, who earns his living as a clown entertaining children, soon invites him to his house for sex with a female friend. Meanwhile, Victor's wife and secretary discover what they think is evidence of his infidelities. A sub-plot involving a newspaper reporter comes to a horrifying end. And this is about all I can say without spoiling some of the several surprises at the end of the film, though I will say the final line is satisfyingly chilling. All in all, an intricately-plotted film with well-drawn characters, whose grainy look only adds to the realism of its horrific details.