Wow. That’s all I can say right now. Wow. “Lego Star Wars” is good. Really good. In fact it’s quite great. It’s funny. It’s witty. It’s clever. And in many ways it’s brilliant. Sure it’s Lego propaganda meant for the kids, but there’s so much humor that will be accessible to Star Wars geeks, that it’s tough not to enjoy this. This is one of the finest examples of “Star Wars” satire that I’ve seen since “Robot Chicken.” Basically, the premise is as simple as it can get. Yoda is on a field trip with a group of Jedi Padawans and on their last stop of the trip, they visit the Galactic Senate to see how the political system works.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Archetype (2012)
These days in an effort to get movies off the ground, indie filmmakers are prone to creating short films that exposit the concept of their feature film for the audience allowing them a chance to expand upon it should they be offered a chance by studios. That’s the basic reasoning for “Archetype.” Made for a little money, “Archetype” is actually quite excellent for such a short film that works as a prologue for the premise of Aaron Sims’ film. What happens when artificial intelligence becomes so intelligent it’s convinced it led a past life? And what happens when the corporation that created the AI finds little ability to convince them otherwise?
UHF (1989)
If you’re ever wondering what pure untapped “Weird Al” would look like onscreen, you need look no further than “UHF.” As a kid I spent many a years encountering this movie in small doses but never actually sat down to watch it whole. “UHF” is one of the most creative and original outputs of the eighties featuring Weird Al Yankovic who not only becomes an every man hero, but also manages to show off his own brand of off the wall comedy. “UHF” is still a head trip to this day as a film that stands on its own in comic delivery and just outright surreal storytelling.
Ghoul (2012)
I think at the end of the day the reason people will dislike “Ghoul” are for the reasons I really liked it. “Ghoul” isn’t so much a horror movie about an actual ghoul, but about the horrors of growing up in and around dysfunction. For many this film will be especially off putting since the whole notion of an actual ghoul is put in to the basic back burner in exchange for character focus and exposition galore. I for one am a sucker for coming of age tales, and “Ghoul” is an especially powerful one that focuses on three young boys in the middle of the eighties and their attempts to uncover a horrific secret their local forest is hiding.
Frankenhooker (1990) [Blu-Ray]
I liken “Frankenhooker” very much to the classic “Re-Animator.” That is if “Re-Animator” were conceived by a mentally deranged chimpanzee. Even as a dark horror comedy “Frankenhooker” is a film that has to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s so monumentally moronic and ridiculous that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing most of the time. Of course going in to a film named “Frankenhooker” you’re not going to get high art, but Frank Henenlotter takes viewer expectations and drags it in to the mud with a shit eating grin. “Frankenhooker” is yet another take on “Frankenstein” with a bit of a Lovecraft twist that really is never as creative as it thinks it is.
Maniac Cop 2 (1990)
Matt Cordell is back and it was only a matter of time before he continued to seek pure vengeance on those who wronged him in his past life. Going back to the events of the first film, “Maniac Cop 2” traces its steps from the original film to continue off where Cordell started his journey for revenge against the people who framed and jailed him, leaving him to die at the hands of inmates he’d busted years before. “Maniac Cop 2” is a film intent on not only continuing the narrative but finishing off the loose ends of the original film.
Maniac Cop (1988) [Blu-Ray]
William Lustig is no stranger to films that dabble in the anarchic and try to play with our conceptions of paranoia and fear. The director is responsible for one of the most infamous slashers to ever come out in theaters “Maniac,” so delving in to the opposite spectrum of the premise is not surprising. “Maniac Cop” is almost an unofficial spin off of “Maniac” in where the former title was about a maniacal psycho on the loose in the city, the latter is about a maniacal authority figure on the loose in the city. Lustig doesn’t detract from the same tone and atmosphere that “Maniac” succeeded in and injects much of the same chaos and paranoia in this slasher film.