Dead Before Dawn 3D (2012)

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

Watching “Dead Before Dawn” try to be funny is like going in to a third rate haunted house in the sticks on Halloween. It’s nice you’re trying really hard, but you really aren’t doing what you intend to. “Dead Before Dawn” tries to be many things, and one of them is a comedy. While it did elicit genuine laughs from me sporadically it manages to miss more than it hits. In fact by the end, the joke went on almost way too long. I was pretty relieved it ended or else I was afraid I’d begin to hate it.

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The Little Mermaid (1989)

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

Though it’s often thought of as the film that helped revive the animated film boom from Disney in the nineties, predating a string of hit films from the studio, “The Little Mermaid” is much like “Bambi.” It has amazing animation, and a wonderful soundtrack, but in the narrative frame, it’s unspectacular. While the former film garnered a nearly non-existent storyline with a simple resolution stretched in to ninety minutes, “The Little Mermaid” has almost nothing in the way of reasoning or logic for its heroine’s motives toward happiness.

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The Dungeonmaster (1985)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

I knew it! All the time, I knew it! If Satan had to exist, he was Richard Moll the whole time. No one would ever suspect the guy from “Night Court.” Satan–correction: Mestema, is smart enough to build a world and challenge a computer whiz, but isn’t smart enough to understand the “magic machines” known as computers (such foreign tongue!). So in response, he challenges a dorky computer nerd whose over reliance on a female computer borders on creepy, to a series of trials. If the computer nerd wins the matches, I’m assuming he keeps his soul. If he loses just one trial, Satan is allowed to consume him and his aerobics instructor girlfriend Gwen. Paul the computer nerd is given a costume even Reb Brown would laugh at, and with his arm band, is allowed to fight and figures out how to control the computer hell dimension place. Whatever the hell that is.

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National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

Before the millions of utterly atrocious rip-offs, there was the first, there was the only, there was the grand daddy of college campus comedies, there was “Animal House” Set in 1962, John Landis’ comedy masterpiece tells the tale of two new college recruits attempting to pledge to an elite fraternity. They’re basically cast aside from the elitist frat house, so they must now pledge to the worst frat on college, the Delta House to which they’re instantly accepted amidst the dysfunctional and odd array of members. But when they cause a ruckus and fail to live up the school’s academic standards, the dictatorial Dean Wormer decides to close down the house once and for all.

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Bloody Homecoming (2012) (DVD)

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

Yet another iteration of “Slaughter High,” director Brian C. Weed’s revenge horror film attempts to be a sanctimonious message about bullying all the while lulling its audience to sleep with an illogical and goofy film about revenge and the past coming back to haunt some classmates. My only fear is the memory of this movie coming back to haunt my nightmares.

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Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

If you had a problem, and this problem meant the destruction of your life and reputation, and family that you hold so dear, what would you do to get rid of it for good? Though Woody Allen is a brilliant director, he’s an even better writer who knows people and how they work in reality. He knows how to compose human personality, and our own inner-desires. Allen breaks down a crime and studies it with the most human of reactions. If you’d had a lover and she threatened to destroy your life if you didn’t return her love, what would you be willing to do to make sure she didn’t talk? The ultimate question Allen observes is how far we’d go to protect ourselves.

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Prince Of Darkness (1987) (Collector’s Edition) [Blu-ray]

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness,” the second leg in the “Apocalypse Trilogy” is a horrifying film about the apocalypse and one of the many Carpenter films where good fights evil and evil wins. Again. And again. It’s interesting that “Prince of Darkness” is almost a precursor to the found footage film boom of the mid aughts, as director John Carpenter stages a series of dream sequences void of cinematic flare. Through fuzzy hand held cameras, he manages to stage numerous horrific dream sequences signaling the coming of the anti-god, and the anti-Christ, all the while using it as a means of expressing how imminent the apocalypse is. The thirty second dream sequences are much more horrifying than most found footage films I’ve ever seen.

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