10. Pontypool
I’m one of those people who very much looked forward to “Pontypool,” and am not ashamed to admit that I was utterly disappointed with this production. It was dull as day old bread, lacked in sheer suspense and tension and sadly didn’t quite creep me out as much as its double “Dead Air” did. Not quite a zombie movie, people like to brand it as such and there aren’t even many zombies that pop up. What we get in the end is a practice in a cinematic dry humping that promises frights and never actually delivers. Seek out “Dead Air” for a nearly identical premise that works much better.
Tag Archives: Robert Rodriguez
Shorts: The Adventures of the Wishing Rock (2009)
So this is what it’s come to for Rodriguez. Trading all his indie cred for a movie that plays like a messy sloppy concoction of ideas that never even bother to sort out its stories and characters for the audience. Instead, per Robert’s usual bad habit, we’re given a bunch of supporting characters, main characters, and side characters, all of whom are barely emphasized in the wide scope of this ADD enhanced stink pile. Rodriguez’s style of making the cheapest movie with his quick fix CGI has become something of a really bad habit where the man doesn’t even seem to want to try his hand at complicated filmmaking anymore.
42nd Street Blues: Waiting for the Second Revival
The “Grindhouse Review Fest” originally began back in 2007, when, to ring in the arrival of the much anticipated “Grind House,” we spent an entire month reviewing grindhouse flicks of old and new. And we had a blast. And so did our readers apparently, since the hits on Cinema Crazed jumped considerably around this period. So this year, we decided to do it again. With more movies, a small time crunch, and much better planning, we’ve gathered classic Grindhouse and Neo-Grindhouse from independent filmmakers, and brought to you the 2nd Annual Grindhouse Review Fest. And just to show you that we’re not fucking around with this occasion, we posed a survey to ourselves and to our gracious contributors to show that we absolutely adore grindhouse and all of its sub-genres from sexploitaiton, to nazisploitation. And we hope you love what contributors Lillian Patterson, William Garcia, and I, Felix Vasquez, have to say about Grindhouse movies, and why it’s one of our favorite hobbies as movie lovers.
Grindhouse (2007)
Let’s face it fair readers, I was born in the wrong era. While I’m living in the time of cell phones and reality television, I should be living in the time of grind houses, and porno theaters. While I’m in a time of Kelly Clarkson, I should be in a time of Donna Summer. Simply put, I wish I was born during another time. But, you have to admit, Tarantino and Rodriguez got what they wanted. They wanted to create the grind house experience, and that’s exactly what I received. A double feature, scratchy film, and an empty theater. It’s me and my family, and about four other people, and no one got the joke. Continue reading
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (2005)
The words Robert Rodriguez would come to regret saying for years to his son: “This would make a cool movie”. Oy. It’s difficult to just outright cut this movie a new one, especially since the intentions behind it are admirable. Whether or not Rodriguez’ son thought of the story, dreamt of these characters, and or co-wrote this screenplay, it’s hard to completely rip it apart. It sucks, that’s a given, and its Rodriguez’ worst, but I’m still trying to figure out why this was made. I remember kids movies being bad, especially when I was a kid. I had to suffer through “Rock a Doodle”, “Ferngully”, and “Mom and Dad Save the World”, but I believe it’s possible to make a very good kids film.
Sin City (2005)
Cannibal teens, psychotic hookers, talking dead bodies, yellow skinned child rapists, and a disfigured psycho with an affinity for trench coats. The third corner of hell? No, it’s all mundane in Sin City, thus is the oddities presented in the Frank Miller created series of graphic novels. Miller set forth a legacy in 1991 when he created a series of incomparable visionary graphic novels called “Sin City” which had no superheroes, no intergalactic madmen, and no demonic entities, only the horror of mankind and the back alleys of the worst city in the world.
