Breeders (1986)

fcdb0648-35f7-4486-87d6-8d0Detective Dale Andriotti: Maybe when this is over, we can go out for dinner.
Dr. Gamble Pace: Okay, but I warn you right now… I have a tortured history with men.

Six minutes in, Dr. Gamble Pace as played by Teresa Farley escorts a police officer in to a young victim’s room in a hospital. The hospital room has only one small IV, no medical equipment, and the IV doesn’t seem to be hooked in to anything in particular. Obviously not holding to the discretion rules, Dr. Pace, dressed in average clothing and an awkward medical robe explains in a stilted and painfully performed monologue what the young girl experienced when attacked by a mysterious monster. While the girl is half awake an inch away. That’s about the time I thought: “Oh crap, this is going to be painful.”

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Frankenweenie (2012)

image00As far as animated efforts from Tim Burton goes, “Frankenweenie” isn’t such a bad bit of fan service. Director Tim Burton has always expressed interest in remaking his short film “Frankenweenie,” and it’s a shame since the original short isn’t a bad movie. All things considered, it’s short, sweet, and to the point. Not to mention it’s cute, sad, and has that Burton American Gothic whimsy we’d later see in “Edward Scissorhands.” With 2012’s remake of “Frankenweenie,” director Tim Burton is able to do pretty much whatever he wants, while expanding on an already interesting twist on Mary Shelly’s story.

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Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

The first mistake “Retribution” makes is that it assumes people actually care about the story. Not to make an assumption so early, but “Retribution” has a story that’s very paper thin and used as a guideline for stunts and featuring Jovovich naked. What story there is makes no sense and is convoluted as hell. Assuming the audience cares, “Retribution” plays catch up for the audience in the first five minutes with a look back at the first four movies almost as if this is a some exciting epic we just have to catch up with. If you are watching the fifth part of a movie without having seen the first four, why are you wasting your time? And if you’ve seen the first four and are intent on watching this new entry, when did you decide good movies were no longer worth your time?

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Robo Formers: Star of Fear (VHS)

Back in the nineties, I spent many a day trying to build up my own movie collection, and for poor folk, that’s tough. Imagine my surprise when after receiving my allowance I retreated to the local dollar store and saw some VHS movies for me to purchase with my own money. Granted, they weren’t blockbuster films, but they were public domain cartoons, and some pretty interesting gems that only bargain hunters discovered.

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Dredd (2012)

judge-dredd-2012What’s sad about director Peter Travis and writer Alex Garland’s “Dredd” is that it’s the comic book movie of the character Judge Dredd, that fans probably deserve. And they may not get a sequel at all, since its release in 2012 did little to stir the franchise potential of it all. The ingredients are all here for “Dredd” to kick off a wonderful series. There are a people behind the movie who take the material seriously, there’s zero camp, star Karl Urban plays Judge Dredd as an anti-hero and not like a clown, there’s no comic relief, and Judge Dredd never once takes his helmet off during the movie. To compensate for his lack of face time, Urban scowls and emotes more zealously than his prior roles for Dredd, and it pays off without an inch of over the top dialogue delivery to be found.

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Arena (1989)

Charles Band’s “Arena” is a blast. And for a movie with such a small budget that is dated beyond belief, that’s quite an endorsement. There’s something about the imagination and creativity behind “Arena” that makes it such a treat to sit through. It’s such a simple and straight forward science fiction action film that it doesn’t even try for anything complicated or adult. If there’s ever a film that could use the remake treatment and become a fantastic action genre picture it’s this 1989 film from director Charles Band that sets down on an intergalactic wasteland where aliens do battle in a ring for sport and money amidst crowds of onlookers and fanatics.

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Our Top Ten Spielberg Films Of All Time

It’s not a secret to many who visit Cinema Crazed, or to many who know us that Steven Spielberg is our favorite film director of all time. The man has managed to re-think the way we look at film and filmmaking, and is one of the few film directors living today who can deliver a good old fashioned story that can inspire and amaze without rotting our teeth with over simplistic and sugary storytelling. Sure, he’s faltered a few times, but even his weakest films are much better than anything most young directors can deliver in cinemas today. Steven Spielberg has managed to stay relevant in an ever growing populace of movie goers with incredibly short attention spans who want flash and explosions over genuine storytelling, and for any director that’s a feat and a half.

He helped invent the blockbuster, helped define franchising, helped engineer the special edition (for better or worse), and he’s carved an amazing career from films that have touched, awed, and invoked conversation about movie goers and film buffs alike. Fanatics, supporters, and often apologists, we’ve followed Spielberg for years as he’s been one of our earliest memories of film going ever. There aren’t many guarantees in life. But the one thing we think life can guarantee is that there will always be a movie to grant me the same awe and wonderment every single time we pop in a film from Steven Spielberg.

Whether it’s a tale about a lone tourist in an airport, or the plight of the Jews in World War II, Spielberg can and always has guaranteed that awe and sheer enthusiasm for film will come with a film from his. And they guarantee to outlive Steven Spielberg even at the age of 66. Spielberg may just be a man biding his time in delivering masterpiece after masterpiece, but his films will have a shelf life of many many decades and introduce young audiences to the awe and charm of filmmaking as Spielberg did for us. We celebrate Steven Spielberg’s 66th birthday with our top ten Spielberg Films of All Time. So far.

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