Reviews
The Wizard (1989)
Probably my favorite movie ever
This is the movie that epitomized my youth most of all. I was a Nintendo freak. It mattered more to me than most anything else. So this was the perfect movie.
It's really dated now, but it still seems like yesterday that people like Lucas were bragging about their new Nintendo gear. This movie is a modern David and Goliath tale. It shows you that, yes, even the little autistic kid can rise up and defeat the older punk with "all 88 games." Sometimes you have to run away from your family and hitchhike to California to get closer to your family, and to hustle strangers for cash. I can live vicariously through Jimmy and pretend I scored 50,000 points in Double Dragon too. You will come out of this movie with good feelings. There are so many classic scenes in this movie that bring me straight back to that mack year of 1989 I can't count them all.
Go Jimmy.
The Last of the Secret Agents? (1966)
Underrated spy spoof
I really enjoyed this movie. Don't listen to the critics. The few reviews I've seen bash this film. I watched it before seeing any reviews and thought it was great. It's like a cross between Abbot & Costello and a Mel Brooks film with a little Marx Brothers thrown in there. The intro to the film was genius. You couldn't see anyone's face.
The first half hour is awesome, then it slows down a bit. Still, there's tons of slapstick nonsense comedy running through the film. Plus, there's a scene in a restaurant that I don't even want to talk about because I loved it too much. It's worth a look.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Laugh at the Cold War
This is a very strange movie, but I loved it. You can clearly see that Stanley Kubrick had fun making this film. First of all, he knew he had a great idea from the start making a satire about nuclear war. He made a really paranoid film. Then he went ahead and plugged it up with these great absurdities that make you laugh at it all. SPOILERS: Just picture Slim Pickens riding a nuclear bomb like a horse and yelling "Yeeehaw!" There's Strangelove who is a psychotic former Nazi who now works for the US government. He has dillusions of seeing "die fuhrer" and saluting him. Even more absurd is that Peter Sellers plays three parts! Don't ask me why, it's just Kubrick having more fun. There's a classic scene where the President talks to the Premier of Russia on the phone and the main topic of conversation is how it's good to be feeling fine.
There are also sequences (particularly the ending) that can scare the heck out of you. That's what gives the film such an impact. Watching this film now makes one wonder if the world really narrowly escaped global destruction in the Cold War and if it's still possible today.
2010 (1984)
Let's throw dirt in Stanley Kubrick's face!
If this were any other film, that is, not a sequel to 2001, it would've been like any other sci-fi piece of refuse that Hollywood puts out. But it's the fact that THIS is called the sequel to 2001 that makes it so apalling and hard to watch.
First off, Stanley Kubrick did not want a sequel of 2001. It took 5 years to make, and it was so innovative, so creative, that he didn't want anyone else to leech off of his inventions. He burned all the sets and props used in 2001. 10 years later, Hollywood thinks that it can make more money off of the fans of the first movie.
First they said, "Okay, we'll get this terrible actor to play Haywood Floyd this time, but he'll play him like a real angry guy." Stupid. Then they went ahead and made a new computer called the SAL9000, which makes no sense at all. It seems like a joke, really. Now they bring on John Lithgow as an astronaut WHO CAN'T HANDLE SPACE TRAVEL! Why in the world would NASA let someone like that up in space! He nearly faints. It's absurd. Then there's the terrible special effects. Unlike 2001, the space ships zoom around like in Buck Rogers. For some unexplained reason, the middle of their ship has this huge rotating part. It's completely distracting. Even more distracting is the inside of the ship. Remember the clean and simple walls that Kubrick had in 2001? Well, somehow, 9 years later, in 2010, there's not a single inch of wall or ceiling not covered by buttons and and flashing lights.
They also try to explain Kubrick's film in some parts. It's like reading one of those guides to Ulysses or Animal Farm. They make it completely clear to everyone that Dave turned into that old guy and the baby in 2001. Why did they have to do that? Dave's transformation represented mankind's evolution in 2001, and now they're just poking fun at him. Also, Dave and HAL are friends for some reason in 2010. Didn't Dave shut down HAL in 2001 because it killed all the crew?
I could go on, but I'd rather not have to re-experience all of this. It's too painful.
Lord of the Flies (1963)
The best possible outcome
I would suggest reading the book first, and studying it because this is such a complex work. Once you do see the movie, you'll want to see it twice because it's so enjoyable and it must be thought about to be enjoyed.
If you don't know, Lord of The Flies is about a plane carrying kids out of London so they'll be safe from the war. The plane crashed on an island, and and then Golding's pyscho-analysis of the human race begins. Two leaders emerge, one good and one bad. By the end of the movie almost all the kids are on the bad side, two are killed and you can clearly see how the group of kids' behavior is equivalent to mankind's.
Don't even think about renting the 1990 Lord of the Flies. This version is one of the great film versions of any novel that has been made. Peter Brooks takes a masterpiece of a book and not only copies the book but adds onto it to make a masterpiece of a film.
Gummo (1997)
innocence lost
It's a new type of movie! Gummo affected me in a way no other movie has. It made me totally rethink how films are made. If you are not easily offended, this would be something for you to see. There's certain scenes in Gummo that I will never forget, like Soloman eating spaghetti and milk in a bathtub of brown water, like a group of drunks beating up a chair, and like that final shot of Bunny Boy running up to the camera with a dead cat while "Crying" plays in the background. This film presents a problem, many problems, and does nothing to solve them. Why should it? These problems will never be taken care of in real society. It's a film about innocence lost. It presents "normal" people as weirder than the outcast mental and physical deficients in the film. I love it.