Steve’s Selections #16 – Stake Land (2010)

This is the fourth for this year and 16^th overall review of a film that Steve Honeywell at 1001plus gave me to see.  He is doing the same with films from me.  This month’s selection is Stake Land, one of the two horror movies Steve gave me this year.  I didn’t know if my health situation was going to allow me to get this done on time.  I was in pain while watching it and I freely admit this may have negatively impacted my impression of it.  Overall, I can see why Steve picked it for me – being a “not your usual” vampire movie – and while there are some good points to it, the film ultimately comes in at an “it was okay” level with me.

My Health and March Movie Status

This posting is days late.  My life has been in some turmoil.  I had another gallbladder attack a few weeks ago and I’ve been fighting with people ever since to have it taken out.  It finally was removed last Friday, but when they got inside it was in much worse shape than they were expecting.  Thankfully, they were still able to do the surgery laproscopically, but they did keep me overnight in the hospital, which is not normal.  Now I’m recovering, hoping the pain gets a little less each day.  I’m only now getting around to this post.  And I never did do a post on what I feel are the Top 10 films of 2015.  I honestly don’t know if or even when I might do it now.

Anyway, on to the March status.  In the month of March I saw 18 new films, re-watched 4 more, and watched a season of a TV show.

I chipped away at the IMDB movies I need to see.  I also knocked off a couple more 101 Genre movies, too.  In both cases there were DVDs I received from Netflix that I watched.  I didn’t get to any of the new TSPDT entries.

Here are the 18 films I saw in March.  Ones I would recommend (give at least a three star rating to) are highlighted. 

101 Genre (2): Manhattan Melodrama (1934), Underworld U.S.A. (1961)

IMDB (5): Little Women (1994), Transformers: The Movie (1986), Strange Brew (1983), Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1995), Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980)

Other (11): The Lunchbox (2013), The Flower of My Secret (1996), Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), The Love Punch (2013), Clip (2012), This Island Earth (1955), The Mistress of Spices (2005), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016), Reel Injun (2009), The Rebound (2009), Deadpool (2016)

Re-watches (4): Spotlight (2015), Kingsmen: The Secret Service (2015), Friends with Benefits (2011), The Peanuts Movie (2015)

TV: Daredevil Season 2 (2016)

The Lunchbox (2013) – This is a well-acted, and for the most part, well-written film. Unfortunately, it's a relatively inexperienced writer/director and he either couldn't figure out how to end it, or he was too cowardly to commit to one of the two paths that the film had set up (because either path would have disappointed part of the audience). As a result, the crap ending undoes a lot of good that was built up during the course of the film.   2.5 stars

Manhattan Melodrama (1934) – “Melodrama” certainly is fitting as we have Gable and Powell as lifelong friends - one a criminal, the other a lawman - and Loy who starts with one and leaves him for the other. Gable plays maybe the most happy-go-lucky criminal ever put on screen, and Powell plays maybe the most black and white decision maker ever put on screen. Had this been made a couple of years earlier (pre Code) we might have had a completely different ending.   3 stars

Little Women (1994) – After not caring for the 1930s version of this movie I have to admit I wasn't looking forward to watching this movie. As it turns out, Ryder is far less annoying than Hepburn was, and overall the cast's acting is much better than the 30s one, especially Dunst and Bale.   3 stars

The Transformers: The Movie (1986) – I’m not the target market for this. I stopped watching Saturday morning cartoons a little before Transformers hit the air. The only thing I know about them is from the first three live action films. I watched this because it's on an early IMDB Top 250 year end list. As it started it quickly became apparent that this is about the most clichéd 80s movie I've seen in some time. Music video style sequences? Check. Generic "rock" score? Check. 80's slang? Check. 80's "cool" factors? Check. One thing that did surprise me was that there were some sequences that appeared to be influenced by ones from Heavy Metal (1981), which is pretty much the polar opposite of Transformers.   2.5 stars

The Flower of My Secret (1996) – This is lesser Almodovar, but it's still worth seeing if you like his films (which I do).   3 stars

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) – You can read my review of this here.   3.5 stars

Underworld U.S.A. (1961) – There’s some good acting and cinematography is this otherwise standard tale of revenge. I was hoping that 1961 was modern enough to allow for something other than the standard ending, but unfortunately it wasn't.   3 stars

Strange Brew (1983) - Max von Sydow has had one of those careers where every once in a great while you catch yourself asking "what the hell is he doing in this movie?" Strange Brew is the latest example for me. Maybe he never read the script. Maybe someone sold it to him as "Hamlet in Canada". Who knows? In this case he plays an evil man who plans to flood the world with a beer that makes people violent, stupid, and suggestive. Um, isn't that what beer already does? (Maybe I'm overthinking it.) And of course I am because this movie is based on the Canadian comedy sketch show SCTV routine's of "Bob and Doug McKenzie" (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas), just as any number of movies have been made of Saturday Night Live sketches. The characters are, of course, dumb but lovable. There's nothing particularly wrong with the movie. It just didn't make me laugh that much.   2.5 stars

The Love Punch (2013) – I like heist movies and the concept of a retired couple pulling a heist to get back their stolen retirement money appealed to me. Unfortunately, the writer wasn't that interested in the heist itself. Whole sections of things that would have had to be figured out or solved were just magically swept aside by someone "knowing a person" whenever a problem came up.   3 stars

Clip (2012) – The obvious comparison here is to 1995's Kids. (Man, has it been more than 20 years since that came out? I suddenly feel old.) Clip shows a bunch of modern teens partying, getting wasted, and having random sex, but in a difference from Kids because of the modern era, they all have their phones out recording themselves, too. The reactions Clip has gotten (denial, outrage, cries of exploitation) greatly remind me of those that Kids got - if you think your teen is not partaking in at least SOME of these activities then you've got your head buried in the sand. It also means that you've never been on the internet. Apparently it was the thousands of thousands of clips of themselves that teens post online doing stuff like this that gave director Maja Mlos her idea for the movie. It happens to be set in Serbia because that's where she's from, but it could be teens anywhere. Lead actress Isidora Simijonovic is gorgeous and appears quite natural on camera. And for those people hyperventilating over the fact that there are maybe 10 seconds of explicit footage in the film, she is not in any of it. The director used body doubles for anything explicit since her main cast (including Simijonovic) was under 18 - much like the Kids main cast was. Only time will tell if Clip will have someone emerge from its young cast and become a star, like Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson did from Kids. Personally, I'd be interested in seeing Simijonovic in another movie.   3 stars

This Island Earth (1955) – I started to watch the MST3K movie, which was crapping on this one, and I stopped because I had heard halfway decent things about This Island Earth and I had not seen it yet, When I did watch it I found it to be an above average science fiction movie from among those made in the 1950s. It's reasonably intelligent. Yes, it does go overboard on what were I'm sure top of the line special effects of the day, but you could say that about many, many movies. If you have only ever seen the bastardized version in the MST3K movie then you owe it to yourself to see the real version.   3 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1995) – I never watched the TV show, so I was not coming into this as a fan. Then the movie they picked as "one of the worst of all time" turned out to be one of the better science fiction films from the 1950s (This Island Earth). I stopped watching this and went to see the full version of that first. I then came back to this and I could see how they had completely bastardized the movie to try to make it look as bad as possible, cutting whole sections out of it so the story made no sense. Finally, the jokes and quips just weren't that funny. I read more about this movie afterwards because I couldn't believe the TV show had had such a cult following if the movie was anything to go by. Apparently, all involved hate the movie. One of the MST3K people, when asked what the worst movie ever featured on the show was, replied "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie."   1 star

Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980) – Yup, it was their next movie…..   2 stars

The Mistress of Spices (2005) – This movie didn't turn out to be what I was expecting, but there are still enough parts of it that make it worth watching.   3 stars

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016) – This movie is linked to the first only via Michelle Yeoh's character, the sword, and the title. Don't go in expecting to see the original. And yes, there is another character that would probably have been from the original movie if Zhang Ziyi had signed on, but she didn't so they changed the character name in this movie.   3 stars

Reel Injun (2009) – Not really enough actual film footage, and a little too much time spent with Conspiracy Guy, but still an interesting look at how Indians have been portrayed in Hollywood films.   3 stars

The Rebound (2009) – This is billed as a romantic comedy. It's not. It's a drama with some romance in it. I didn't buy the supposed age difference between them, but I suppose a 31 year old guy playing 25 is nothing what with all the 30 year olds playing teens in movies and TV shows.   3 stars

Deadpool (2016) – This film starts out very funny. I wouldn't even call this part an action comedy, but an out and out comedy that happens to have some action in it. Unfortunately, the movie then goes into a long flashback that features cancer, torture, disfigurement, lost love, and revenge plots. This kills off all the fun in a big, big way. The movie then tries gamely to get it back, with partial success, but it would have been FAR better if they had just kept the humorous tone all the way through.   3.5 stars