Reviews

Click on the Tee-Vee set right here and you will go to my television review page.

Due to popular demand, DVD reviews have been moved as well! Be mesmerized by the spinning DVD to the left and click on it to go to that page!

The Grudge (2004)

By now, everyone probably knows that this is a re-make, by the same director, of Ju-On, the Japanese horror movie sensation. I think The Grudge is definitely worth checking out. Lot's of great, tense moments. I won't join in on the arguments that Ju-On didn't need to be re-made with Western actors. I certainly think that Japanese horror films are going to be great for Hollywood as a form of competition. The influence of Japanese horror films might get Hollywood out of it's "sexually active teens are killed by maniac" paradigm that it has been stuck in for about 20 years now.

Despite the hype, I think The Grudge delivers in terms of choke-on-your-popcorn scares. The ghosts in this film are really surreal. They make this eerie, throaty noise. When the audience hears this unpleasant noise, they know that something really bad is going to happen.

What The (Bleep) Do We Know (2004)

Far and away one of the dumbest titles ever made for a movie. It's intentions are quite ambitious. It attempts to reconcile metaphysical religious questions with science. The film is narrated by several quantum physicists as well as a few theologians. Very interesting. The movie is quite New Agey-White-Light, but it raises some very interesting questions.

It stars Marlene Matlin, yeah, the hot deaf one, and she is a involved in this running morality play where she is a stressed out photographer. As the day progresses she decides to not take so many anti-depressants and become a whole person.

One of the many epiphanies she has is she misses her train and the actor who plays "Quark" on Star Trek Deep Space 9 as well as Buffy's first principle starts chatting her up. He shows her these art exhibits of photographs of water crystals and ...and...her world is turned upside down for the better. Water was placed in various containers and labeled and thought over with words like LOVE and HATE..things like that. The actual structure of the crystal changed. This is kind of a big deal, not only in the implications of magic & prayer or if you like magick but that human beings are composed of mostly water. We might be really good at holding thoughts like that. To me this is the coolest part of the movie.

To check out this subject go here.

http://www.hado.net/

That's one of many tripped-out subjects of this crazy little film. It kind of reminded me a bit of the theories of Robert Anton Wilson of whom I spent a better part of my high school reading.

The official What The Bleep website is right here...

Ok, I do have to mention that one of the experts that they were talking to is none other than RAMTHA. You know, the channeled spirit of Linda Evan's spiritual guru, J. Z. Knight. Her books were quite popular and generally sneered at during the 80's by the mainstream press. However, I would like to say that, "Ramtha" or Knight's alter ego if you are more comfortable with that, actually spoke clearly and succinctly and didn't have a lot of that gobbledy-gook crap that most channeled entities have.

The Children of Cthulhu
Edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams
I’ll admit it. H.P. Lovecraft’s contemporaries don’t hold a candle to him. There are a few in his day that wrote some amusing tales, such as Robert E. Howard, as well as Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch. The Gawd-honest truth is that most of the past and current Pulp tales I’ve read are pretty hackneyed.

So how delighted I was to read The Children of Cthulhu. Unlike a lot of Lovecraft’s imitators, these tales are not written in an affected 19th century “purple prose” that Lovecraft wrote in. These yarns are written by current authors and with one exception in a modern voice.

In my opinion, the best of the bunch in this anthology is a story called The Invisible Empire. It applies “Lovecraftian” themes in a story set after the Civil War. A horrible man abuses his ex-slave workers while digging in a mine. This boss is interested in diabolism and unleashes, a horrible shambling thing in the mine. A feeling of palpable evil runs through this story.

Another great tale, is A Victorian Pot Dresser. A very odd and disturbing story about a piece of furniture that is cursed. More of a good grisly horror story than “Lovecraftian”, but definitely worth a read.

A fantastic story is Long Meg and Her Daughters. One of the more obscure god-monsters of the Cthulhu Mythos called Shub Niggurath (The Black Goat of the Woods With a 1000 Young) makes a horrible appearance. Throw in a serial killer and some weird Village of the Damned genetic problems and you have a hell of a good story. First rate.

Hellboy (2004)

I went to this with a bit of trepidation. I'm a fan of the original comic by Mike Mignola from the very beginning. Mignola is a master cartoonist, and Hellboy is such a wonderful character. I didn't want Hollywood to give something I really love, a fresh coat of "mainstream" paint. I was pleasantly surprised that the original spirit of the comic was left pretty much intact. Guillermo del Toro has been a vocal supporter of the comic and his film-making shows evidence of his love for the character and for Mignola's moody artwork. Ron Perlman is probably the best possible actor on the planet to play the demon-born occult detective. The characterization of Abe Sapien was different than what I always imagined, but I still liked it. Great monster makeup all around, but I wanted Hellboy to look a wee bit more rocky-textured.

Hellboy is an example where Hollywood doesn't something right, without any focus group inspired "improvements." I'm not going to use this website as a forum to slag on all the movies inspired by comics that failed. You know what they are.

It might be worth your while to buy Hellboy if you haven't read it before at the link below:


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