Sex and the City (the Movie)

I am always told that guys hate "Sex and the City" because they are guys. Well it is my pleasure to introduce a guest reviewer. These are her thoughts on the movie.

‘I was led to believe this was a movie for women. I am a woman. This blew.’ – anon.

‘I’ve never been more sure of my sexual orientation.’ –Rupert, gay man, Leeds.

‘I’m pretty pissed off! I found this dvd in my girlfriend’s flat and thought maybe she’d listened to my suggestions for introducing porn into the bedroom.’ –Dave, student, Edinburgh.

For a movie starring 4 women who even my 58-year-old father describes as “used”, expectations were low before the opening credits had begun. For those of you not up-to-date with the series, everything seems to be recapped in a sickeningly saccharine way before the theme-song signals the moment when you realise you’ve just signed away two and a half hours of your life…

I might have been born the same year Kim Cattrall turned 28, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how haggard the women looked. It’s hailed as being a movie about fashion (or something), and whilst I would expect 8-year-old girls to think the outfits worn in the movie were pretty happening, they looked completely ridiculous adorning cleavage speckled with age spots and legs with skin that could benefit from an iron. WHO WEARS A FLOWER THAT IS LARGER THAN THEIR HEAD?!?!

“Fashion” aside, one of my main problems with this film was trying to figure out who its audience was meant to be. Who could possibly relate to these women (Besides gold-diggers and heiresses)? How can you empathise with someone who has enough money to just hire an assistant to help her organise her wardrobe because she can’t pull herself out of an angst-y funk for long enough to DO IT HER FUCKING SELF! And as a gift buys said assistant a designer bag (I don’t know the value exactly, but I am aware designer bags demand prices exceeding $4000). Or who takes 5 months to go to her old apartment to pick up a pair of shoes that cost over $500?! These women are loathsome, vile, and spoilt. And old. But behave like children.

Moving on.

The acting. I cannot write about this movie without bringing up the acting. The acting is worthy (more than worthy in fact) of a million Razzies. These women make Keanu Reeves believable in Chain Reaction.

[INSERT MONTAGE OF SHIT ACTING HERE] (missing video - sorry, will be fixed soon!)

To conclude- watching this movie feels like being raped in both eye sockets with power drill. And just to rub salt in the wounds, you’re left with the scarring images of the movie’s (thankfully limited) sex scenes. .01/10

-R

Never Back down/Step Up 2: The Streets

I remember mentioning to a friend that I wanted to go see Step Up 2, because it looked laughable. At the same time he was suggesting we go to see Never Back Down because it looked like Karate Kid but with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). So on that very week we both handed over our testosterone licence and watched them both.

Watching a film based on MMA wasn't so difficult (although slightly homoerotic), however Step Up 2 was difficult. If you can imagine two guys in a cinema surrounded by either couples or women.... Actually that's a lie, there was not enough people to be surrounded by them, still.. you get the idea.

The other reason for reviewing these films together, is because both of them are essentially the same film, just aimed at different folks.

Step Up 2's plot goes like this, girl is in an underground dance 'krew' but is about to be kicked out of her aunt's house because her aunt does not like dancing. She lives with her aunt because her mother is dead. So she goes to a school of dance where she brings her own brand of street dancing. This proves a problem, as her 'krew' are not fond of this school, probably because it's not 'street' enough or something. The school is posh and does not like 'street', so she struggles to find friends but does attract the attention of a rich guy, who wants to get into 'street'... yo. So she goes to school and obviously proves to both crowds she can do 'street' with a new 'krew' and pass dance school at the same time.

Never Back Down's plot goes like this, boy keeps getting in fights and has had to move to different schools with his little brother and mother. His father is dead. He starts at a new school and finds his way into an underground MMA championship, which his mother does not like. He finds it difficult to make friends but does attract the attention of a rich girl, who likes fighters. So he goes to school and proves to his mum that he can do both. Sound familiar?

Not similar enough? In dancing movie, there is a geeky friend who helps the girl achieve her potential. In fighting movie there is geeky guy who helps guy achieve his potential. In dancing movie there is a teacher who disaproves of the activities she gets up to outside of school (taking dance to the streets yo). In fighting movie there is a wise master who disapproves of the activities he gets up to outside of training (fighting to hurt people is bad).

My most favourite similarity between the films though has to be in the climax. Both underground dancing competition and fighting competition take place at an unknown time and date, and all participants get a text message to tell them on that day where it is. In both competitions something happens which stops the event from happening, and instead is taken to the streets. Where the final battle occurs, lit by car head-lights.

To demonstrate this i have used my bad video editing skills and prepared the following video, I have tried to keep it spoiler free. You can imagine that these films are pretty predictable so its not like I would be ruining much .

All this aside, the most shocking similarity is that they are both actually good movies! I know they are formulaic, cheesy and predictable. At the end of the day though watching Step Up 2 made me want to go out and dance, while Never Back down made me want to wrestle men. So they must have done something right.

Both out on dvd now.

movierectum.co.uk has moved temporarily.

Still not been very happy with the way Movierectum.co.uk has been. Wordpress is okay, but been too busy learning stuff for Uni to learn PHP so that i can customize it.  However i am getting pretty good at asp.net and hope to make something from scratch using that.  Might need someone to design it though, i'm useless at looks, and don't have the eye for web design.  

The Bottom line is i am moving all the reviews on here as posts, and will continue to add new reviews and news on this until i have a more permanent fixture for it. (and move hosting)

So look forward to some new reviews!  An Uwe Boll blowout weekend is coming soon!

Flight of the living dead [2006]

Snakes on a plane has a lot to answer for, it has seemingly opened the floodgates for some odd, unrelated spin-offs.

Snakes on a Train arguably had its own ideas at least, the only thing it shared was well.. the name and the snakes, then it went off on its own crazy ride. Unfortunately Flight of the Living Dead is exactly what it sounds like - Snakes on a plane, with zombies.

There are two flaws here that the writers should have noticed before even putting pen to paper. One: If you are shooting a zombie film with a very tight restriction on available population, then you know there is only so many zombies you can have therefore limiting what you can do with them. Two: If you restrict a film to one small location (ie - a plane) you need to come up with a lot of fresh, tense action to keep people from getting bored. It takes a very, very good writer and director to come out of this with a workable product. Obviously you do not have enough zombies to keep churning out good gore scenes to keep the splatter fans happy.

Regardless it has Dr Suresh’s dad from Heroes in it, which makes this slightly more appealing. Maybe.

Ah yes, I forgot about the plot, silly me. Its all about an evil science project for the military of course, whom yet again are fiddling around with a virus that brings the dead back to life (You would think by return of the living dead 3, they would have learned). Obviously during transportation the experiment escapes and feeds. The heroes in this are barely worth mentioning but include of course, a Cop (transporting a criminal - surprise!), an Air Marshal who would rather be out surfing, a Tiger Woods clone and his girlfriend.

The dialogue is awful, and when they set up some witty one liner or a joke ready for a punch-line, its not even bad… It simply doesn’t make sense.

Obviously the meat and potato’s of a film like this is the zombies and gore. I hate to let everyone down, but bar one scene that was actually pretty good, and another i didn’t see coming, it’s very disappointing. There is a complete lack of good gore and some really bad CGI.

So round it all up and you get something that sounds good on paper but fails in execution, I just don’t see how this film could have worked, and I admire (pity) the director for having the balls to try. One exclusively for the hardcore zombie fans, it is difficult to recommend it even to them!

** Notes about the trailer:
It was made under the working title “plane dead”
The trailer does the sneaky thing of not showing any of the characters from the movie, instead blurs and shakes some snippets of the action together. It is definitely not representative of the final product!

2/5

Ninja Terminator [1985]

Unfortunately it is difficult to confirm the history behind this film, however it appears to be two films edited together in a very haphazard way. The plot has obviously been thrown together in an effort to put the films into some kind of context, regardless here it is for your pleasure. Three Ninja dudes each steal a bit of a 3-piece statue which is imbued with ultimate ninja power. However if you possess all three pieces then you will become a Ninja Terminator!

The strange part here is that some of the film appears to be in America, the rest in Hong Kong, the two main characters Jaguar Wong and Ninja Master Harry communicate between the two films with the use of a Garfield phone. It’s amazing what you can do when you dub a film.

Basically most of the film is Ninja Master Harry running around trying to get the remaining pieces of the statue, he ends up fighting a variety of ninja’s and the combat is mostly sword play and silly (puff of smoke) magic. The action varies here between bad to average while maintaining a good level of entertainment.

Where the film really shines though is every scene with Jaguar Wong, who is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most ultimate bad-ass’s I have ever seen on film. Through the phone conversations its made clear that he’s trying to defeat Tiger whom is trying to get his evil hands on the statue (apparently sending ninja’s across to the other film). What Jaguar Wong actually does usually consists of this:

Random gangster: “Hey, you Jaguar Wong?”

Jaguar Wong: “Yeah, why you got a problem?”

[A fight ensues]

It follows this for most of the scenes he is in, and when he finally reaches Tiger we are treated to an excellent fight scene with some good, solid choreography. It’s not without its flaws but is right up there with some of my favourite kung-fu scenes. Unfortunately they did not use this scene as the climactic battle, instead using Ninja Master Harry for this purpose, which is a bit of an anti-climax after Wong’s.

On top of all that, there are some excellent ‘WTF?’ moments like, when Tiger removes his wig for the final fight, when Jaguar Wong gets angry over his jacket, the realisation that Ninjas use toy robots to send messages to each other and last but not least, an incident with crabs.

I have only scratched the surface here, but ultimately Ninja Terminator is more than the sum of its parts and so far is probably my favourite film to have reviewed for the Movie Rectum. It’s a classic and one I can recommend to all types of people.

And finally just to show off, here’s a trailer of Niiinjaaaa Termiiiiinatoooor!

does the Ident at the beginning remind anyone else of the Columbia Tristar ident with a Star Wars soundtrack?

5/5

Earth Defence Force 2017

Okay, okay so its not a film.
Don’t worry this won’t happen often, however EDF 2017 has many qualities that make it appealing to B-Movie fans everywhere.

The plot of EDF 2017 is at best a way to drive the action, similar to old 1950’s invasion films it is simply about an invasion by an alien race with superior technology, despite this lackluster plot the atomsphere is spot on. The designs of the Alien Technology - Giant walking machines with Death Ray’s, Flying mini gunships, and of course giant insects keep your interest, while the voice acting is spectacularly cheesy.

The game itself is in third person, you control one member of an EDF unit. You do see other EDF soldiers, but largely they are there for comedy value and just end up getting killed pretty much constantly. The controls themselves are sluggish, this is especially notable in vehicles where it doesn’t seem to care if you have inverted the y axis or not. The weapons (of which there are 100’s) are great fun, although some are pretty useless. Despite all the flaws in the games core gameplay it still fun, especially if you play co-op (not live enabled) with a friend. Destroying an entire city just to drive out an army of giant Ant’s is just a fun thing to do.

Another thing of note is that the graphics are functional at best, but this leaves way for a ridiculous amount of enemies on screen at once, which is really what makes this game fun. Also the game engine is dodgy as hell, you kill things like ants, they tend to just bounce about like a dead 3d object, everything else seems to explode or fall through you. Some might put the game down when they see this, but instead it just made me laugh my ass off.

Best of all it’s just a fun game overall, its easy to pick up and play for 30 minutes just for a laugh, don’t expect Crysis, but enjoy it for its complete lack of substance and silly physics.

3/5

Voodoo Academy [2000]

This may sound a little un-Politically Correct, but stay with me. With complete confidence I can say that Voodoo Academy is the gayest film I have ever seen. Now I am not trying to insult the movie (yet), nor am I trying to insult an entire sexual orientation. I just mean this movie is constantly on the verge of gay pornography. Its like it was meant to be a gay porn, but with all the porn scenes cut.

Half of the film consists of men wearing nothing but tight underwear and talking.. In fact I can hardly remember what else was in the film… Oh yeah, the plot.

A teenager (allegedly, I reckon he’s 26) comes to study at a religious school. Apparently the head of the school is some kind of religious guru, but he is soon discover that the school only exists to turn its members into ceremonial voodoo dolls!!

There is only one lady in this film, who from what I can tell is supposed to be a dominatrix type… However she’s not very intimidating, and the worst actor in the whole film.

Now back to the main point in the movie, the almost naked men. Its not just naked men… but they get drugged and then you see scenes that last far too long where they writhe about and touch themselves..

There is seriously not much else to say about this film. It’s good to watch and have a laugh with your friends, just make sure all of your male friends are confident about their sexuality first, one way or the other.

2/5

Leonard Part 6 [1987]

On paper Leonard Part 6 should be the most enjoyable bad movie of all time.

Bill Cosby Plays Leonard, family man, restaurant owner and CIA agent. He is separated from his wife and is convinced by the CIA to do one more mission. He is to retrieve a secret weapon from Medusa Johnson, head of some kind of Animal Liberation Front style terrorist group. This weapon has enabled Medusa to control animals and is using this new found ability to wipe out CIA’s secret agents. Medusas henchmen are all vegetarians, which for some reason plays a large part in how Leonard deals with them.

The insanity doesn’t stop there. During the course of this movie, Leonard meets a fortune teller who is supposedly speaking in Albanian but sounds like a made up language, rides on the back of an ostrich, attacks vegetarians with various meat products, does a ballet dance and drives about in a Porsche Tank.

The whole thing is supposed to be a comedy, a parody of James Bond and various action movies. This unfortunately fails in every attempt at humour. The timing is off, the jokes are very old and when watching it you can tell what they are trying to do, but don’t manage with any kind of success.

There is a problem when a film is meant to be a comedy and fails, it renders it so cringe-worthy and so hard to watch, that even a bad movie fan will have trouble getting through it. When horror or sci-fi miss the mark and fail to achieve, they usually have various redeeming factors that combine to make a great ‘bad movie’, unfortunately when comedy does this, there are very few ways of saving it.

To hit home how truly bad this movie is, you only need to ask Bill Cosby, whom while touring the US chat shows to do PR for the film, told people to not watch it, and in addition bought the rights to the TV broadcast of the film to ensure no station could ever air it.

If you want to see an example of a really bad movie, it is difficult to do worse than this. However bear in mind that it is more likely to make you pull your own teeth out in despair than make you laugh.

For your enjoyment heres a trailer….

Don’t say i didn’t warn you.

1/5

Body Melt [1993]

“The first symptoms are hallucinogenic, the second is glandular and the third is… Grahhraarghhhhh!” From the VHS box I can tell you that the third is Body Melt, whatever that really means.

An evil drug company called Vimuvile market tests its evil ‘Body Melt’ drugs on the residents of a small neighbourhood called Pebble Court. Why a sinister pharmaceutical company would want to sell something that causes ‘Body Melt’ is never explained. Of course this results in various set pieces and a variety of gory deaths. If you think this sounds like a tenuous way of holding together a film of short stories you’d be right - but that’s not why you’re here…

Without ruining too much, Body Melt includes: a husband being attacked by his pregnant wife’s placenta, an exploding penis, snot, mucous, tentacles, mutants and finally some random deaths that are completely unrelated to the main plot.

This of course will wet any low-budget gore movie fans appetite, but its enjoyment is increased dramatically for daytime TV fans in the UK.

It has Neighbours’ stalwart Harold Bishop in it. Not only that, Harold Bishop is a bad guy….who swears!

Now if that isn’t a selling point - I don’t know what is. The film also contains some other Neighbours’ stars - all dying in fantastic ways.

A particular favourite, is a scene that’s linked only to the plot in a very tenuous way. Two guys from Pebble Court stop off at a gas station to see if they can get a windscreen fixed (the scene where it was smashed is missing) and find themselves stuck with a family that clearly practice in-breeding.

This film loses some points as it feels that, because it is an Australian gore film released after Brain Dead, that it tries too hard to be a Peter Jackson film. It really wants to be a cult movie, which it has managed, but it never quite really reaches the same level of all-out craziness Brain Dead did. And a lot of the comedy comes out of the improbability of the whole plot and the really awful editing.

All things said, this is a great gore fest movie, just don’t eat while watching it.

3/5