Category Archives: You Have to See This!

You Have to See This! No Contest (1995)

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Now Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel

The nineties were an interesting time for action movies. You had your A tier action flicks hitting the box office, and then you had your C and D tier on home video filling shelves. Among them there was “No Contest.” If you were a premium cable subscriber in the nineties, you probably know what “No Contest” is. This movie fulfilled two big purposes in that it gave the studio their very own “Die Hard” wannabe, and it pushed their star Shannon Tweed to the forefront in her long effort to become a mainstream movie star.

Shannon Tweed was a gorgeous and sexy woman and former Playboy model in the eighties who got in to feature films in the nineties and worked hard to become a big screen actress.

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You Have to See This! Tommy Boy (1995)

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Currently Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, AMC Plus, Philo, Fandango at Home

Chris Farley would have been sixty this year had he not sadly passed away at the young age of thirty three. One of the best cast members of the iconic late night comedy show “Saturday Night Live,” Farley was looking up at a promising second chapter in feature films. Farley was very much loyal to SNL and only made small cameos in movies featuring his “SNL” co-workers. And although they were small, Farley had the tendency to make the best out of his small roles. Whether it’s the maniacal bus driver in “Billy Madison,” the lovable Ronnie in “Coneheads,” or Milton in “Wayne’s World 2,” Farley was skilled enough to know that there were no small roles, just small actors.

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You Have to See This! The War of the Gargantuas (1966)

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Currently Streaming on: MAX, Pluto TV, and Amazon Prime Video

Something of a pseudo-sequel to the Kaiju monster movie “Frankenstein Conquers the World,” Ishirō Honda’s follow up is a movie that’s begging to be remade. It’s a great film all on its own, but there are so many scenes here that would look incredible on a modern screen, including one moment when a fisherman looks in to the deep water only to look down at the massive monster Gaira who is lurking at the very bottom. That said, “The War of the Gargantuas” is a movie that thankfully doesn’t require too much foot work from the original film to understand what’s happening. Even though the monsters Gaira and Sonda are referred to as “Frankensteins,” they’re two sides of the same coin.

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You Have to See This! Staying Alive (1983)

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Streaming on Amazon Prime, Paramount Plus, and Hulu. 

“Staying Alive” has always been a notorious movie that always came with the legacy of being one of the worst movies ever made, and one of the worst sequels, barnone. It’s hard to achieve a feat as high as “Saturday Night Fever” which wasn’t just a movie about disco music, but was also a wonderful coming of age drama. With star John Travolta taking any role he could in the seventies and eighties, “Staying Alive” is that classic case of both being incapable of catching lightning in a bottle twice, and a studio not knowing what made their first film so great, in the first place.

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You Have to See This! Shredder Orpheus (1989)

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Now Available at Vinegar Syndrome.

The best way to summarize “Shredder Orpheus” is if “Gleaming the Cube” and “Videodrome” had a torrid violent, sexual love affair while high on shrooms that projected new wave music videos in to their brains, all the while the pair ended their rendezvous with a round of skateboarding. Courtesy of Boom! Cult and AGFA, Robert McGinley’s VHS SOV genre film is simultaneously oddly entertaining but also incredibly mind numbing. It’s a dystopian tale that seems to be working toward some kind of coherency at times, but occasionally gives up in exchange of using the budget to showcase skateboarding. In lieu of story there are just aimless scenes of people skateboarding.

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You Have to See This! Selena (1997)

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Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Redbox

If you’re a tik tok addict as yours truly is, then you’ll have noticed the more entertaining memes of adult Latina women introducing their daughters (or younger female friends or family) to “Selena.” It’s a bittersweet series of memes that inspire big laughs and big frowns all around. Like everyone in the nineties, the young women quickly fall head over heels in love with Selena Quintanilla. And like every person in the nineties, the rug is pulled right under them when shockingly she dies a pointless, tragic death. The series is interesting as it serves only to illustrate how much of a spell Selena put on people around the world.

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You Have to See This! Shiva Baby (2020)

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Streaming on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max

It’s unreal that Emma Seligman is a newcomer director when watching “Shiva Baby.” She manages to build and introduce us to what is easily one of the most chaotic and absolutely uncomfortable movies I’ve ever seen. “Shiva Baby” is a master class in making its viewer absolutely uneasy and anxious as Seligman just revels in amping up the anxiety to every single bit of her narrative every minute. Seligman, despite making “Shiva Baby” her work of absolute love, is not one who ever lets her characters off the hook. Despite focusing the entirety of “Shiva Baby” on her central protagonist Danielle, Seligman has a great time making her squirm, panic, and just about heave in sheer horror as she twists the screws on her throughout “Shiva Baby.”

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