CBGB (2013)

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

How do you make a movie about CBGB in the structure of a routine narrative? Where do you start? Why do we have to see the origins of CBGB through a comedy lens? “CBGB” is what Hollywood envisions the origins of CBGB were. It’s clean, it’s sanitary, it’s inoffensive, and it paints some of the most iconic bands in rock music as mere footnotes in the world of the iconic New York club. To make things worse, its star looks really bored with the material, almost as if he’s slogging through a character and a script that he doesn’t quite understand.

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Cannibal Holocaust (1980) [3 Disc Blu-Ray/CD Combo]

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

What is it about Ruggero Deodato’s vicious masterpiece that continues to elude horror fans and film enthusiasts to this day? Surely, it’s a shocking film with immense gore, but “Cannibal Holocaust” is about so much more than splatter and bloodshed. It still holds a volatile resonance in a day and age where the world is obsessed with voyeurism. “Cannibal Holocaust” is still such an enormous master work from Ruggero Deodato whose own film has pretty much guaranteed to outlive its creator. As well, it’s inadvertently posed as the template for all of the found footage films currently storming the box office. It’s a film about the media exploiting and demoralizing a primitive culture for the purposes of entertainment. It’s a film about entitled young Americans intruding on a foreign soil to manipulate their civilization. It’s also movie about how humanity is often a destructive and vicious force of evil consuming one another for nefarious purposes without conscience.

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Captain Z & the Terror of Leviathan (2014)

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

After the very entertaining “Power Rangers” tribute “Super Task Force One,” I like where director Steve Rudzinski’s head is. He seems interested in delivering audiences good old fashioned genre entertainment, and he has the talent to back up the ambition. Even with the obvious rock bottom budgets, he can churn out some amusing and charming indie films. If he’s ever given a huge budget, I think he could blow audiences out of the water.

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Cabin Fever 3: Patient Zero (2014)

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Like the former films in the series, “Cabin Fever 3” doesn’t really offer audiences anything but a ton of gore, and vain attempts at gross out humor. Pile on a helping of misogyny, and you have the recipe for yet another piece of trash in the Eli Roth bred gore series. You can sense the producers really stretching this time around for shocks and splatter that can stun viewers, all the while spending a lot of empty filler on characters we really don’t bother to care about, since they’re there just to rot in a gory bloody pool, anyway. Director Andrews presents a better flair for directing than previous director Eli Roth, so that’s a plus, however minor.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

“They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Ed Brubaker’s acclaimed source material is the basis for “The Winter Soldier,” a remarkable and incredible follow-up to 2011’s “Captain America.” I’m very secure in declaring that “The Winter Soldier” is the “Empire Strikes Back” of the Captain America trilogy thus far, as the sequel manages to not only give Captain America the much needed conflict with his American ideals, and age old views on the concept of freedom and liberty, but turns him in to a hero who is no longer fighting for America, but for the idea of America. “The Winter Soldier” picks up right after “The Avengers” where Captain America has essentially taken to SHIELD headquarters as a home base, and doesn’t really keep in touch with his old teammates.

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Camp Dread (2014) (DVD)

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Director Harrison Smith’s “Camp Dread” is a mixture of “My Little Eye” and “Friday the 13th.” In fact, go watch those movies instead. In all seriousness, “Camp Dread” has a pretty clever premise, it just has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s a straight faced slasher film set in a summer camp and barely uses the opportunity to reference the “Friday the 13th” films, and yet it takes full advantage with Danielle Harris as the local sheriff. Her character’s brother is named Michael, and she hates horror movies. You see, it’s opposite. It’s clever because it’s opposite!

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Captain America (1979)

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Oh Reb Brown, where would cinema be without you? Without Brown, we wouldn’t have had the 1979 Television movie “Captain America,” a movie so inept, it can’t even mimic Evel Knievel well. Brown is Steve Rogers for some reason, who came back from the war, and now drives around in a very kick ass van that also sports his favorite motorcycle. He’s a an ex-Marine/surfer/artist/motorcycle racer who also happens to be involved with a scientist developing a new formula for super strength (with the acronym F.L.A.G.), so while he’s helping develop a potentially groundbreaking formula for humanity, he is constantly moping around about the war and his lack of money. The sad fact is that the serum can only work for the Rogers blood line. Why? Because it’s a Captain America movie.

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