Excellent low-budget Welsh gem starring the superb Welsh actor Rhys Ifans.
Excellent performances in this movie based on a tragic true story of horrific child abuse.
Bullet for a Vampire: Ye Gods, was this awful. The mobsters were funny in their way, but overall, the acting was as wooden as the stakes. As for the "home movie" at the beginning, it went on way too long. Don't try to be poignant when you know you're delivering schlock.
The Town that Loved Pizza: Amusing in its own awful way. Looks like a bunch of students got drunk on cheap beer and decided to make a movie.
The Garden Tool Murders: This is the most enjoyable of the lot. The action seemed to flow more smoothly.
Demon's Day: This one played like a video from an understandably forgotten, not particularly talented, and extremely cheesy hair metal band.
To be kind, this was a lower than low budget production. They worked with what they had available.
On the positive side, the people involved obviously enjoyed themselves. There are some potentially excellent character actors. They had heart, you have to give them that.
The soundtrack for the film American Beauty is haunting and lovely. Very nice background music for writing.
My late uncle taught a film in American culture class. He thought that the lead male character in the film was weak and repulsive.
I previously mentioned this film in this post, and featured the trailer. Now I'm gonna give you the whole thing.
This is a movie review of the 2011 film Puncture, with a big side helping of Rant.
Puncture is actually a far better movie than I expected. It was difficult to watch in the beginning. Drug abuse upsets me. I'm not a purist and I don't fancy myself to be a better human being than hardcore users. I used to drink heavily, although I was able to quit on my own when the time came. I've used marijuana recreationally, though not in more than 25 years. I used to use prescription drugs recreationally and combine them with alcohol. As I said, I'm not some sort of unsullied angel.
I've never touched cocaine and certainly never done heroin. I've known people who have, and I've known people whose lives have been damaged by having hardcore users in their lives. Twelve years ago, a friend of mine ended up dead from AIDS. She had been infected by her partner and her daughter's father, an IV drug user. (Thankfully, her daughter is fine. She has been raised by her grandmother.)
Addicts can be very charming and charismatic.
I made the mistake of letting an addict back into my life recently. He may have kicked the substances for now, but he's still a womanizer. Fifty-five years old and still can't manage to act like a real man. Just a damn hound dog in heat is all he'll ever be. I should have seen it coming, but I wanted to believe that he'd really turned things around and we could be together. Dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb.
Don't let anybody tell you that fucking everything that moves is a victimless act. The people that sex addicts lie to get hurt. I don't want to hear about how humans aren't wired for monogamy. Fucking be honest about your intentions from the beginning. There is no excuse for lying to and fucking over another person.
I almost didn't watch this movie because of the involvement of Michael Biehn. I'm not particularly fond of his treatment of women. As a sexual assault survivor, I really did not care for his directorial debut, The Victim, which starred his hand puppet/wife, Jennifer Blanc. I could not finish watching that shit. He seems to have quite the cavalier attitude towards sexual assault, seeing it as a vehicle for tittilation. Not down with that shit, not in any way, shape, or form. No sir, violence and sex do not mix in my book.
I'm also not down with guys who fuck over a good woman to try and recapture their lost youth with some starlet twenty years their junior. Bitch, your youth is fucking gone. You ain't getting it back. Being a man about it and aging gracefully is a lot more respectable than acting like the stereotype desperate middle aged asshat. Great behavior to be modeling for your sons on how to treat women, Buttmunch. Just sayin'.
Fortunately, I didn't have to see much of Biehn's cadaverous, scary-looking self. He really only appeared in the last half hour of the movie. Admissibly, he's an effective actor--always has been. His own drug use probably stopped him from being better recognized in the entertainment world. I've heard rumors that he has been kicked off movie sets for drug use and manhandling his female co-stars. In spite of this, I actually ended up feeling sorry for him after seeing Puncture. He doesn't look well. Years of pumping your body full of the wrong stuff will do that, I guess.
Tragically, Michael Weiss, the lawyer who was so keen on getting safety needles into hospitals and other health care settings, died from a drug overdose. He was so young and had so much ahead. Drugs suck, they suck, they suck, and they destroy lives. What a fucking waste.
In spite of my hatred for hard drugs, I do not believe that jailing drug users is effective or correct. We should decriminalize drugs and work on finding a cure for addiction, which is a disease.
And that's my take.
Puncture is worth the view. I actually ended up giving it five stars on Netflix.
Petra
The Pusher
You know I've smoked a lot of grass
O' Lord, I've popped a lot of pills
But I never touched nothin'
That my spirit could kill
You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round
With tombstones in their eyes
But the pusher don't care
Ah, if you live or if you die
God damn, The Pusher
God damn, I say The Pusher
I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man
You know the dealer, the dealer is a man
With the love grass in his hand
Oh but the pusher is a monster
Good God, he's not a natural man
The dealer for a nickel
Lord, will sell you lots of sweet dreams
Ah, but the pusher ruin your body
Lord, he'll leave your, he'll leave your mind to scream
God damn, The Pusher
God damn, God damn the Pusher
I said God damn, God, God damn The Pusher man
Well, now if I were the president of this land
You know, I'd declare total war on The Pusher man
I'd cut him if he stands, and I'd shoot him if he'd run
Yes I'd kill him with my Bible and my razor and my gun
God damn The Pusher
Gad damn The Pusher
I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man.
Maybe it's because I was a teenager/young adult during this area, but a lot of the horror movies, even the bad ones, have a certain charm that many of today's movies, in spite of the improved special effects, lack.
Imprint is that rare thriller which manages to have a powerful impact without being overly gory. There is no gratuitous violence, no nudity, and even the harsh language is minimal. The protagonist is a strong yet flawed young Lakota lawyer who becomes a pariah when she prosecutes and gets a conviction against a boy from her own tribe. When she returns home to visit her sick father for his birthday, she begins experiencing frightening visions.
It is wonderful to find a story where the strength lies in the tale itself: not in the special effects, not in the shock value, and, thankfully, not in exploiting the female characters. The filmmakers had integrity and a vision, and it shows.
I watched the 2011 film "Cyberbully" this morning. The movie had a happy ending, which often real life bullying situations do not.
I had a hard time getting through this one. I don't know if I would have survived if there had been this additional avenue of bullying when I was a teen. As it was, I was bullied. One guy from another school, whom I had gone on a date with once, spread a rumor that he got me pregnant and I had an abortion. I was only 15. I was still a virgin. I remember him trying to grope me and me saying no. He didn't even get in my pants, let alone get me pregnant. But the rumors that I was a "slut" persisted.
I was a big girl (who turned into a big woman.) At five foot seven, I weighed 180 pounds in a world where any female who weighs over 120 is considered "fat." I had broad shoulders, moderately large breasts, a big butt, and chunky thighs. I didn't have the kind of big breasts that push straight out in front, I had the kind that spread to the side. If I wore a pushup bra, I'd have had cleavage up to my chin. I was modest, however, and tended to wear baggy shirts to hide my breasts. It didn't help much.
I had friends among the stoner crowd. The popular kids picked on me for my less than fashionable attire. My family wasn't rich. I couldn't believe how shallow these morons were, but it hurt anyway.
When I tried to kill myself, I did not get support from my mother. As I lay there in the E.R. with my wrists bandaged, she railed at me about how stupid I was for doing something like that and told me to stop looking for attention. The counselor at school gave me no help when I told her what was going on with me. She basically told me I needed to toughen up.
I guess I was a lot smarter than I thought I was at the time, because I got through high school with mostly B's even though I was constantly ditching school.
While watching Cyberbully, there were times that I started breathing hard and my chest started to feel tight. I thought I was going to have a panic attack and felt like I might have to stop watching. I'm 45 years old, and all those feelings from those awful years came flooding back to me. In a way it felt like being raped (another thing that I have experienced) only on a psychological level. I remember feeling like trash, like I was worthless, like I deserved what happened to me.
To this day, I still have a lot of trouble believing in myself or my abilities. I still see myself as unattractive. I don't know if any of this will ever change.
I know that the filmmakers were trying to impart the message that violence does not solve anything, but the part of the movie where Lindsay the Bitch Queen and her Chief Bitch Crew are in the bathroom and Taylor (the bullying victim) comes in and they berate her for crying? I would have started swinging my shoulder bag at those cunts. None would have gotten away unscathed. I would have been suspended for school and I would suddenly have been the villain. But that is the way it would have gone down.
Bullying kills. Bullying also hurts many years after the fact. Bullying destroys lives. Isn't it time to put an end to this social evil?
Sure wish I could dance like this. It's a miracle when I don't step on my husband's feet! Miss you, Patrick Swayze. Such a lovely person taken too soon.
2011PG-13102 minutes
Believing their home is haunted, a suburban schoolteacher and his wife uproot their family and move to a new place hoping to leave the evil spirits behind -- only to discover that the house wasn't haunted ... but their eldest son is.
Most terrifying film since the Exorcist? Hardly. Things jumping out at me from the dark are going to make me jump, but it takes a lot more than cheesy CGI spooks to scare this old horror hack.
Excellent atmospheric creepiness and good acting make this one reasonably enjoyable to watch, although the movie is filled with tropes. The disjointed script and far too many instances of characters Acting Appropriately Stupid become annoying at times. It was a fun diversion, but I was glad I didn't pay to watch it in a theatre.
Per the Netflix rating system, I gave this one three stars. I liked it more than I disliked it, but there was nothing about it that made me really like it.
