Reviews by shawn tomorrow

very good if somewhat challenging film.

the first thing thats readily apparent with the film is is overt use of odd and distorted views. wide angle lenses, soft lenses, mirrors, glass, every trick in the book creates a wildly surreal visual experience. it trumps much of the content otherwise. the story is about the relationship between a truly unique if somewhat demented painter (francis bacon) and a male lover. it flagrant homosexuality and often intense explicit content are going to turn off many viewers. what will turn off even more is that the dialog seems to be overly real at points...in so much as its often nearly unnecessary or overly poetic to the point of being the kind of trite late night mind-wandering after drinking or doing drugs. its a washy experience of a film....but boldly tells the story of excess and traumatic/dysfunctional relationships. its not pretty. its not nice. its not something i would recommend to most people. but its damn distinct as a work of art film.

(9/10)

to be completed as watched

bucket of blood: i have to admit i watched this on "elvira's movie macabre" which made it a bit more tolerable. its beat culture horror. i'll admit the beat culture escapes me; everything is about looking/sounding/acting "cool", pseudo intellectual babble, escapism drugs and drinking, and faking it. faking it. thats a truth. when i encounter anything 'beat' it seems fraudulent to me because its so obsessed with vanity. and its not even a decent vanity. i rant though... if they scraped the poetry from this it would've been better. their attempts at portraying art is...fairly commonly...absurd. and theres not a person in this film you'd want to spend 5 minutes with. that being said the tale of the story is actually good. a somewhat low IQ man wants to fit in with the beats that he meets in the cafe he buses for. he starts making sculptures by turning a cat he kills on accident into a clay sculpture (forgo any understanding of how sculpture is made for this to happen) and then is "talked into" or persuaded to make more. to do this he must kill again...except this time his subject is a human. at some point his "dealer" discovers his secret but is persuaded to over look it when a generous offer is made to buy the works.
this movie is ripe for a remake (is there anything like that?). fairly watchable if annoyingly 'beat'.
(6/10)

this movie just pissed me off.
starts ok, if you can stomach bad acting and a bad script...and bad directing. then it gets worse. yeah.

all the kids all over the world fall into a coma. all new births are in instant comas. theres some points at which the political ramifications of this are hinted at...and dropped immediately when in the next act after 10 years they all wake up as zombies hell bent on killing. we learn they have a collective conscious and learn and adapt quickly. all this seems to be going pretty well. then there some sort've religious overtones to why they kill?? but then it ends leaving you with a half-assed explanation of what it was all about which frankly didn't make any sense whatsoever.

along the way we're punished with poor acting which i can only feel sorry for these fresh actors because they're saddled with absolutely mundane dialog. the directing of this disaster is also mediocre...as if they didn't really care about it at all as long as the bills were getting paid.

i can't for the life of me figure out why these people refuse to find a reasonable way of defending themselves despite what is obviously a major and immediate need. for instance they go back to the police station for guns at one point, 2 of the 4 get killed trying to get them...along with all the zombies in the immediate area...and they do what? leave without the guns of course!...not one gun...not a stick in fact....they leave f**kin' empty handed. why? is this an anti-gun movie? no because they use them a ton of other times rather brutally.

theres some cryptic message that a priest left in his "diary" that says something 'profound' that doesn't really make sense about how "if someone offers their soul to these kids..." blah blah blah.....i give up.

watch this if you...no just don't.
there were some good ideas in it. in better hands it could've been a decent movie.
(2/10)

wow.
my minds going to be spinning for a while on this. that, to me, is a good thing.
this isn't pop fluff by any means. its a total mindf*&K.

the basic story as best as i can make it out at the moment. a play writer hits a high with his newest play; reviews are great. but his wife doesn't seem to care (maybe she's been left out of his world too long, maybe she's stuck in her own, maybes she's a bit crazy). and then a pipe on the sink sends a piece rocketing onto his head, and hes all bloody...a hospital visit turns up more problems and more and more. meanwhile the bump on the head may be more than just a bump. he might be dying...but in fact he seems to be living in the moment now...but obsessing over a new script. writing/planning that new play is the bulk of this movie. and it starts simple enough; he, on his wife's critique as she's leaving him, tells him that its meaningless to do a production of someone else's play that he must do something truthful. so he begins to work on a play about his true life... then things start to get weird. obsessive at first, then outlandish. at the point were someone shows up to play a person within the play...you're beginning to see how this world he's creating is beginning to loop on itself. and with a grant to work on this project he expands it...more stories about more people...more places needed...more people needed...people to play the people who are playing people...a warehouse for space...a warehouse inside a warehouse.... and then it becomes clearer that this is spanning time...larger chunks of time....its becoming a microcosm...yet in turn is becoming less attached to any reality (the one point that i feel this movie missed on a bit..they should have let it get really wacky and fall into chaos...i guess the choose to stay with the 'real' vignette).

a must watch. there are errors in here but it doesn't matter so much as the story grasps at so much and delivers pretty damn well. its a gem in an otherwise bland industry (movies).

i do feel the end get bogged down...almost like the took the whole thing a bit too far. and the very end gets a bit preachy...which was unnecessary.

this is definitely not for everyone. and expect to be lost here and there...and confused on who is who or who they are playing now.

frankly i don't have all the answers (was eric ever real or not?)...and i don't feel like i need them either. i enjoyed the chaos of this creation.

(9/10)

this movie is grand but also slow.

a boy who lost his dad to a mine is now a man who lost his job and home to a bullet. this is his tale of revenge, against those weapons makers, with the help of his new homeless friends.

it takes a really really long time to get to the plot here. long scenes of silence. the occasional physical humor is wry and simple. and much of the film has one guessing what the hell is going on. the people are strange. they often speak in pure gibberish. they do nonsensical things. parts even seem to be dreams rather than reality. i'd wager a guess most people would give up before they make it to the point where it begins to come together. and then? well its actually a damn good payoff at the end.

this isn't going to suit popular acceptance. i can imagine many people hating this movie. its too slow, too weird, too little (probably) of a payoff, and perhaps too much of a message at the end as well. for me; i liked it.

(8/10)

kinsey is a strong movie, and while i cannot comment on the accuracy of any of it, it a least brings to life the basic story. its quite interesting and watchable.

its not shocking, nor overtly erotic. i'm sure there will be plenty of people who find much of the movie objectionable. plain and simple: if you don't want to hear about people's sex lives, don't watch the movie nor read the book. go to church or whatever flips you lid. all i'm saying is you know what the movie is about; choose whether or not you'll see it. fine. the frequent enough sex talk didn't bother me much at all (of course there is mention of people who go well beyond the normal, and even into territory which i find objectionable for those people to have done...assuming these come from real or reasonably real accounts...but i don't object to it being said only that some acts are done.). the one scene that i actually hated the most was kinsey's 'sex interview' of his father which seemed unnecessary, misguided, and frankly didn't strike me as believable.

kinsey's portrayal as single minded in his pursuits seemed over done to me. while i don't doubt his thoroughness, here the film makes it appear as if he does absolutely nothing else but 1) collect millions of a single wasp type for one study, 2) when finished with that he seemingly spends the rest of the time of his life interviewing for his sex study and 3)finds a few moments to teach about the two things...mostly the later. i suspect he was a much more compelling figure than these few things.


well filmed, well acted, well written, all around good film.

(8/10)

this film has a bad rep but its not bad.

i bought it on a whim at a store closing. i expected it to be another story based on the same idea; bunch o' vamps come to a town and eat everyone. that'd be typical. instead this picks up where the first one left off.

the main character here is stella, the cops wife in the first movie. she's been trying, unsuccessfully, to get people to believe her 'survivor tale'. but people laugh at her instead. now in LA, a vigilantly group of 3 other survivors get her to join them and the fight is on. their mission is to kill lilith; the puppet master vamp.

thats the story in a nutshell. there are numerous problems in the film which will annoy some watchers. for instance, they all carelessly roam around at night despite knowing what could happen. call it resignation or suicidal...i'll buy it. but take another for instance; nearly every time they go to fight there is at best a very weak plan for doing so, and things always go wrong. these 4 with guns are far more likely to shot themselves than accomplish anything. by the end they've all died....yes i've given away the ending but honestly its one of the dumbest moments of the film...and betrays the first film in doing so. you'll watch it, you'll see, and you'll agree.

despite its faults its a entertaining film. there are too many moments, especially in the first half that are spent panning the camera around with long languishing ambiance. so much so in fact that it begins to show that its filler and nothing more. the acting isn't grand but its not bad...and is far better once they get into some actual story.

while its not great, and lacks the depth and punch of the original. its a good addition. a post script of sorts.

(6/10)

ps; the more i think about this movie the more i hate it. best not to think about it relating to the original at all.

a good story in this overlooked film.

lets be honest: the acting in this is bad. frankly i don't think any of these actors pull off a convincing role in this film. freddy prince jr's brooklyn accent is f**kin' as laughable as his tough guy act. please! there are a lot of cliches here as well. yet theres enough of a story to hold it all into something that is well worth watching. its an enigma of sorts.

3 kids grow up in brooklyn, each follows a different path; one goes ivy league, one a blue collar momma's boy, but its the one who decides to get involved with the mafia that sets the story. and you can figure out more or less whats going to happen from there. still the characters themselves are interesting, the stories around them interesting, and the 'tweaks' to the well trodden story are sufficient to make it worth while.

give it a shot, its better than most films despite, as i said, mediocre acting.

(7/10)

i actually expected this to be bad but was surprised by it.

i don't think i'd call it a great documentary yet it tells basquiat's story well. there are clearly many things that have been left out or left unsaid. it does seem to cover most of the bases though.

strange that its not until the 'downfall' last quarter of the film that drugs are mentioned. they were clearly there before yet it does tell somewhat how this became an issue for him.

and the praise in this film is overdone. typical of documentaries trying to prove their subjects worthy.

i've a strange feeling after this film that even after 20+ years we still don't really know if his work will continue to be revered. i suspect it will but i know better than to suggest it will absolutely.

if your interested in basquiat this is certainly a worthy watch. theres much to learn in it. if you expect it to be 100% thorough you're barking up the wrong tree. its a good overview of an interesting subject who's art began to sell, who became a hot artist, a celebrity, an addict, and then a legend. his art...still seems fresh to my eyes!

(8/10)

wow.

i had no idea what to expect from this and as an animated film i was somewhat perplexed because its not like anything typical to animated films. this ain't disney fluff.

i've not read the story its based on so i can't comment on it. roald dahl is probably best known for his 'charlie and the chocolate factory' but also 'james and the giant peach' both made into films. 'f. fox' is a worthy addition this time in stop motion animation. and wonderful animation it is almost too good if i do say so myself.

the story in short: a sly fox can't change who he is and this gets him into trouble, and then his wife into trouble with him...then they settle down...but a fox is a fox and he's back to his tricks. this time he gets his whole family into trouble and most of the other animals as well. all this is over his bid to steal from 3 mean farmers. in the end he'll need help from all his animal friends to come out on top.

theres only 2 complaints that i have of the movie. the aforementioned 'too good' animation takes some of the quirkiness out of the process. as well the story gets lost a bit and drags somewhat. its also, at least here, not that profound of a story. but to be fair these are minor things; the film is entertaining and something i'd watch again. and although its not disney-clean it is still family friendly. ('cuss' replaces any use of bad language)

i will definitely watch this again, and although i wish it was better its still very watchable.

(8/10)