It all started with the Beatles. From there it was a slew of really interesting British Invasion groups, and singers, many of whom ranged from absolutely abysmal, to quite unique. It’s a shame many of these bands never quite garnered the legacy that the Beatles did, but “Go Go Mania!” has value, if anything, in showing how many bands climbed out of the woodwork to claim their own fame once the Beatles stormed America.
You know your cast has done a great job with their respective roles when they’ve successfully turned three dumb, ignorant, gun loving red necks in to charming heroes you root for until the bitter end. Surely enough, director Barry Battles’ grindhouse redneck chic romp isn’t an easy sell as, after the first ten minutes, I was ready to toss this aside and look for something better on my plate. But surely enough after spending time with it, “The Baytown Outlaws” eventually won me over, completely. In fact, I kind of fucking loved it, all things considered.
How do you take one of the more unique race car films from the seventies and destroy it? Remake it with a bland story, add a very adult cast of Nic Cage, Angelina Jolie, and Vinnie Jones, and slap a PG-13 rating on it. Also, turn it in to a lame ass action comedy, for extra insult to injury. “Gone in Sixty Seconds” from 2000 is an uneven and fairly tedious action comedy that has all the edge of a crime thriller, except it’s suitable for teenagers, a crowd that will appreciate director Dominic Sena’s insistence on imitating Michael Bay.
I sat watching Alex Cox’s “Repo Man” with a gaping mouth and sheer bewilderment from beginning to end. Director Cox assembles a slew of various sub-genres and sub-sub-genres, along with a seasoned cast of brilliant actors to concoct a surreal mind fuck that I was never bored by. In fact, I loved it right through to the very end. It’s existentialism, it’s social commentary, it’s punk rock, it’s action, it’s dark comedy, it’s comedy, it’s musical, it’s aliens, it’s crime, it’s a road trip movie, it’s a one of a kind anomaly with Emilio Estevez at his best.
Wolverine is the key to it all! Whodathunkit? Director Bryan Singer seemed so reluctant to use him in the “X-Men” movies. Now that the sarcasm is out of my system, “Days of Future Past” is a very respectable adaptation of the iconic Marvel comics’ storyline, and a very good excuse to press the reset button on the entire “X-Men” series, led by Bryan Singer. The franchised rolled out by FOX has had this coming for quite some time with such a convoluted, inconsistent mess of a timeline. It’s reassuring that the third go around for Bryan Singer in the Marvel property is better than his previous two films.
Our favorite transphobic slasher is back with a follow-up to the original shocker, and as suspected, “Unhappy Campers” fails to live up to the gasps that followed the original film’s surprise ending. There really are no other surprises we can derive from this premise anymore, so “Unhappy Campers” is a slasher comedy with such flimsy production quality, it’s actually very charming. How can you not enjoy Angela’s gallery of maimed corpses, most of whom can be seen breathing or struggling to keep still on close up shots? It’s a gas.
Plot holes, plot holes, and more plot holes! It’s just another title from the ever growing library of horror groaners from Chiller Films. Colin Theys’ “Deep in the Darkness” is an amalgam of “The Wicker Man,” “The Descent,” and a bit of “Rosemary’s Baby” for good measure. “Deep in the Darkness” is yet another horror movie that promises it’s building up to something, and then sputters out like a deflated balloon, forcing the audience to realize they’ve spent ninety minutes watching nothing. Nothing at all. What in the name of all that is sane did that final scene even mean?