Reviews

I remember seeing this short film from Quebec on a Canadian cable movie channel between films in the early 90's, late at night. The first time I noticed it I thought I'd dreamed it, or maybe halucinated it? I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

Fast forward 30 years, and it still left a lasting impression on me. I couldn't recall the name of it (I'm not sure I ever knew it), but some googling for stop motion people flying on broomsticks led me to rediscovering it on You Tube.

Equal parts action-packed, humorous, creative, bloody and downright bonkers, this still impresses me today.

At first glance, the visual appearance of live action characters moving in stop motion is little disorienting. But the way in which the filmmakers make use of it is just so delightful. Equal parts silly fun and technically impressive. There is no dialogue, so language is not a barrier, the action is expressed clearly through visuals, but will still leave you asking, "What did I just see?"

Highly recommended, especially to those interested in experimental film. Sometimes technological limitations actually fuel creativity!

I saw this for the first time, finally, in a theater showing the recent 4k restoration of the film. Part of the reason I had been avoiding watching this was concern about the versions of the film - because this had long ago fallen into the public domain, there are many, many streaming, DVD and VHS versions of this available. I knew it was a classic, so I wanted to be sure I was seeing a decent, complete version.

I am glad I waited - seeing this on the big screen was well worth it! And its status as a legendary film is truly well deserved.

For Orson Welles fans, don't be mislead, he is really a supporting character here. Joe Cotton is a great lead, the entire cast is great. But in the little screen time that Welles has, he really does light up the screen. The famous scene of Cotton and Welles on the ferris wheel is worth the price of admission alone.

The low rating of this B movie seems overly harsh. Yes, it's a low budget B feature, but it's got a lot of redeeming stuff in it. Foremost of these is the great stop motion animation of the aliens. The minature effects and opticals are nicely done, too. It has a pretty good score, too. Oh, and it has some wonderful explosions - and a lot of them!

Clearly this was a low-budget sci-fi flick hoping to cash in on the public interest generated by Star Wars. The story is a little confusing, but we can figure out the main bits. The performances aren't great, but they're not really terrible, either. It has a fun, campy feel to it.

It's a fun little romp with . I appreciate what the filmmakers were able to do here, especially back then. It's by no means a great film, but it has more heart than the ratings om IMDB would suggest.

As far as low budget mock-busters are concerned, this one is pretty good. This rip-off of doom forgoes the complex plot and characters and gets right to the giant worms. While the plot is thin, the characterizations are adequate for this shallow adventure story. The performances aren't bad either and having someone the calibre of Sean Young in a supporting roll certainly helps. The sets and effects are budget, but they make good use of them for the most part and there aren't too many cringey visual moments. This isn't going to win any prizes, but it's a fun little B movie, and I can't imagine anyone was duped into seeing this thinking it was a film based on the Frank Herbert source material.

Let's cover the good stuff first: Decent set design. Nice visuals. A good cast that are clearly capable of doing more than they're given here. They've done a reasonably good job of hiding their low budget which is commendable. However, nothing can save this movie from its poor writing. Painful dialogue, odd pacing and and a complete inability to ratchet up the tension results results in an endless string of scenes where teenagers are being chased by a robot killer. This is an example of a production where the filmmakers decided what seems need to be in a sci-fi movie but they forgot that they needed a story.

Jesse Atlas' blandy titled "Assassins" is based on his earlier, more interestingly titled short, "Let them Die Like Lovers." Perhaps the last of Bruce Willis' late career flurry of quickly, cheaply make action flicks, most of which are largely disposable. Typically they exploit Willis for his star power, hire him for a day to shoot all of his material, and insert it into a movie essentially shot around him. Taking this into account, this film ranks among the top of its heap. Atlas is clearly a skilled director who knows how to set a scene, make great use of sets to create a sense of place and time, and more importantly, he has a talent director of photography and a strong sense of pacing and creating a mood. The cast led by Nomzamo Mbatha and Andy Allo is quite good, and the script has some nice moments for them to work with (but it also has its share of clunky dialogue, too). The story makes good use of Willis, and Mustafa Shakir appears, who also appeared in the short film.

The premise is a fun one: People, assassins, transfer their minds in other bodies to become murdering "drones" and kill the bad guys. The story play with the concept of identity, and there is a love story underpinning all of this, and while it doesn't all gel, I enjoyed how ambitious the filmmakers were in their attempt. The plot itself is very basic (kill the bad guy), and you are REALLY going to have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy this! But if you can, it is a fun film with some interesting ideas and twists. I enjoyed it, and if it is the last Brue lwillis performance we get, well, I am glad it is this movie and not those Detective Knight abominations. I look forward to seeing Atlas' work in the future.

Clint Eastwood's latest is a great vehicle for Clint Eastwood... 20 years ago. Don't get me wrong, he looks amazing for a nonagenarian - and I almost believe he could beat up a man half his age in a fist sight - but clearly this story is intended for an actor in theirs 60s or 70s. The difference is palpable in a scene where a much younger woman (MUCH younger) tries to seduce him. I felt my suspension of disbelief waning.

There is much to admire in this film, though. Eastwood is a confident director who knows what he wants, and he delivers a solid picture here. And for fans, it's good to see his cowboy persona get another kick at the can with this nicely understated performance.

While it's a decent film I still felt it unsatisfying somehow. It would have been interesting to see how the material would have been handled if they'd made this movie 30 years ago with Roy Scheider in the lead role.

I think a lot of the reviews have been pretty harsh on this small indie film. Does it have issues? Yes, but it has a lot of strengths, too.

The future imagined here seems kind of familiar - it isn't set too far apart from many other dystopian societies we've seen before - but the virus angle has a nice timeliness as we are suffering through a pandemic still. The filmmakers have made the most of their tiny budget by leveraging this.

Some of the performances are just fine. Malkovich is clearly having some fun with this role, though he is sidelined for much of the screen time (another wise film making decision to minimize his days on set, given he was undoubtedly the most expensive cast member). The main supporting cast is good, but becomes somewhat uneven with the lesser players. Still, they do a workable job supporting the story.

The biggest problem I have with this film is the backstory. It is poorly revealed through flashbacks, and I found it terribly distracting. Not only distracting, it is disappointing because it really doesn't pay off. The flashback story doesn't even relate to the outcome of the conflict, or the actions that the hero takes following the conflict.

But while that portion of the film didn't work for me, the performances in the flashback scenes were still pretty strong, perhaps weakened by some forced or obvious dialogue.

Also, the action scenes were quite well done, including the most western shoot-out you'll see in a movie that isn't a western this year.

Nicholas Cage is always interesting, regardless of the quality of the material he is working with. He drew me to this film, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

I had read that this wasn't a "revenge" film, which Cage has become associated with, mostly due to his participation in "Mandy." And it's true - this is not a movie about revenge, it is a film about love, and about loss.

Paced very well, with good performances throughout, and some very nice cinematography (as well as some very amateurish, ugly hand-held camera work - so it is a little uneven), this is a finely made film. Especially if it is true that it was shot in 20 days!

The premise, the characters, the whole world (a fight club for chefs?) requires a certain suspension of disbelief... but if you allow yourself to be immersed in this world, the performances will not let you down. The characters, their motivations, and their journeys, all hold true.

I really look forward to seeing more from this director, and I am happy to see Cage appreciated for his talent.

I didn't watch this for a few years based on some of the negative response/press this film was getting. Having watched it tonight, I find that reaction was based on something I don't understand.

Very high production values throughout, and excellent performances across the board - this is a fun transplant of a standard action movie plot into a fantasy setting, with Orcs, Elves and Fairies. Once you get your footing about 15 minutes into the film, you can appreciate the allegory of racism toward Orcs and other beings. There's not of plot here, but there is a nice buddy story laid onto this scenario. It's a lot of fun, and the actors really bring life to the material.

Maybe it's not a classic, it is very effective in the telling of the story it intends to tell. To do more in this world would require a TV series, diving deeper into the world that the filmmakers have created. As it is, it's a fun film wth two excellent leads, leaving us wanting more.

This is not a "great film" in the filmic sense, but I loved it all the same.

First, it is great to see films like this getting made at all! The last time I saw something comparable with a mature cast was "The Leisure Seeker" and that was a few years ago. This gets extra marks because it is so good to see!

Second, what a cast! Seeing Burstyn performing at such an incredible level at almost 90 is so inspiring. The cast is uniformly excellent, imbuing the characters with so much more than what is merely delivered thru dialogue. There is a great scene of conflict between Burstyn and Curtin that doesn't even include any dialogue - it is all in their body language and expressions, so wonderfully unstated.

It's fairly light fare compared to Burstyn and Caan's body of work, but it is very well crafted, and is a joy to watch as a result. So nice to see a character driven film featuring older characters, reminding us that character development doesn't end!

I would recommend this to all but the most cynical.

Shot during the COVID pandemic, I read that this was shot in something like 10 days. Taking place mostly in one location (the inside of a department store), I can see how this was possible.

Taking the short production schedule and low budget into account, I find there is a fair bit of positive material here.

Malkovich is a fantastic actor, and his work here is strong (for what it is). His couple of scenes with Gibson elevate this film. It would have been nice to have seen more scenes developing this relationship, and just eliminate the flashbacks to the source of Gibson's PTSD.

The rest of the supporting cast is pretty strong, too, particularly Luna Lauren Velez who really brings her character (and those that interact with her) to life!

By comparison, Gibson's lead role is played perhaps a little too woodenly. It's clear he is capable of a better performance than this, but he seems to be performing as a Standard Stoic Action Hero Figure. The scene where he is supposed to be drunk really doesn't land because of it. Only some of this can be blamed on the script. Michael Jai White also phones in a wooden action-hero ex-Marine performance. The two have a quiet scene together that they really could have done something with, and it seems like a huge wasted opportunity. Perhaps a result of the fast shooting schedule? In any case, the film suffers for it.

So while the story is ok for action fodder, and they make good use of their limited sets, the product isn't wonderfully successful. There are a few nice stunt sequences, though. One in particular I was surprised to see given the budget!

A few times throughout the film I felt like bailing, which isn't a good sign. The conclusion was reasonably satisfying, however, so I was glad I stuck around for the last scene with the two leads. I have an idea how difficult it is to make low-budget films, particularly action-oriented ones, so I respect what the filmmakers have done here, even though I can't recommend it.

Tony Hale is in familiar territory playing this character, but it is nice to see him get the chance to play the lead. His Sid Straw is an nice, honest, decent guy who happens to be social media-challenged. His lack of online savvy drives much of this story.

Hale plays awkward, self-unaware characters really well, but he keeps the tone pretty naturalistic in this story, which was a good choice. The apparent absurdity of his situation on Facebook, and the way everyone else reacts provides most of the grist for the conflict here. It's a nice commentary on the superficiality of social media, and how small actions/statements can become magnified beyond any reason.

There's a nice character story arc here, and while not necessarily driven by the character's development (he really hasn't changed that much by the end), it does wrap up in a rather heartwarming, if slightly convenient way.

A good, gentle comedy that delivers well for what it is.

This is a gorgeous movie, and the PEI locations create wonderful atmosphere, and it's worth watching just for this. The cast give worthy performances, too.

The soundtrack is solid too, although I found the use of songs somewhat distracting - I am not sure if it's because the lyrics were taking me out of the moment, or if the tempos didn't jive with what my brain was expecting. It may highlight an underlying concern with the structure of the film.

I enjoyed watching this, so I don't want this criticism to come off too harshly. There is a big story here with lots of backstory, and a bunch of characters that are important in it - so there are lots of ways this story could be told, and from a variety of perspectives. But the way this story is structured didn't help my empathize with the characters perhaps as much as it should have, as I felt oddly detached from everyone in the family right up to the conclusion.

The scenario is setup quickly for us, and very early on the family is reunited. We quickly learn that something in their past has driven a wedge between them, but what and why is revealed very slowly to the audience. VERY slowly. Which means that we have a lot of angst-filled character exchanges and we, the audience, are confused bystanders unable to relate to what is motivating the characters interactions with one another.

I feel the scene structure probably would have worked better for a novel, where we have access to more of the internal narrative.

So while it's not a story problem necessarily, it dilutes in the effectiveness in my opinion. Pretty much everything we need to understand is eventually revealed, but I don't think the finale was as cathartic as the soundtrack makes me feel they were shooting for.

I am not a hockey afficionado, and the hockey scenes worked adequately for me. I see that serious hockey fans are being quite critical here - I think that is unjustified. This isn't a movie about hockey any more than it is a movie about fishing. This is a drama about a family with a troubled past, and one of them happened to be a hockey player, which provides the character with the necessary local notoriety required for the story.

A nice effort, and I would suggest it is well worth watching for the performances, and for those that just love to see PEI on screen. I would love to see more movies like this.

Discovered this little Canadian indie gem by accident - and there's a lot to like here!

Some of the negative review comments talk to how this film doesn't have enough typical horror film stuff in it. To me, that was a definite plus.

Amelia Moses is clearly a very talented new director, and she delivers a well-paced beautifully shot film here. It is so nice to see such great use of locations made - always a challenge for budget-constrained, small films. But this movie doesn't look low-budget. For a story about a songwriter, it also has some excellent music by Lowel, daughter of screenwriter/producer Wendy Hill-Tout. They wisely use the werewolf effects sparingly, and make good editing choices around these.

The cast is strong across the board, everyone giving fine perfromances. The character elements are all fine here, which is important because this is, in my mind, a character drama with horror elements. And I found this very refreshing. Bare of many of the standard horror tropes, Moses doesn't resort to throwing in superfluous jump-scares and other nonsense. The horror here is understated in favour of focusing on the lead's struggle with both her creative life and her transformation.

It would have been nice to see more of Michael Ironside's character in this, and maybe give a chance for the lead to delve deeper into that struggle. One criticism I have of the script is that it is a little too "functional," and giving the characters room to breath would have helped. The script is a little too tidy in terms of explaining everything, which has a negative impact on some of the dialogue as characters explain things. Leaving some of this open to the audience's interpretation wouldn't have been a bad thing.

Script issues aside, this is well worth a watch as a refreshing variation on Werewolf horror films.

This is a very engaging and thought provoking look at how the Green Energy and Climate Change movements have been "corporatized" and may potentially be leading Humanity down exactly the same path as our old fossil fuel-burning, greenhouse gas-producing habits are.

The film posits that there is no easy way out - just getting away from oil and switching to a solar panel isn't the solution. Reducing our rate of consumption (potentially only achieveable in a meaningful way by reducing the world population) is the only solution.... And maybe we're too late. Like a Documentary Thanos, this movie provides something of a bleak outlook on what our options are.

There are a lot of scientists and scolars in this film presenting a bunch of mathematical comparisons (this solar panel = this much coal, etc.) and I have no idea where the real "truth" of these comparisons is. However, this is still a valuable film to watch, even if those indivduals have gotten it wrong. It certainly raised several new questions for me in terms of the effectiveness of various green solutions in relation to the fossil fuel issue.

There is a lot of emotionally heavy material here. There isn't much of a sense of scale, however, which is always a problem in science-heavy material. The exception is with Biomass Generators, in which a shocking number of them are shown on a map of the U. S. And I tend to agree with the filmmaker, biomass seems more opportunistic than is does an actual solution. Still, watching this I don't have a very good feel for how these other technologies stack up in the grand scheme of things. Worse, the lack of alternatives to the alternatives is not exactly inspiring.

If I seem to be focusing on flaws, I should say that I found this to be a very engaging, interesting, and thought-provoking film and would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic of climate change.

Wonderfully shot and performed, this is an understated British drama about a widow who opens a bookshop in a small town in the late 1950s.

Great performances make the most of this material, and the cast is wonderful throughout. I have not read the source novel, but greatly enjoyed the dialogue here in the film.

Highly recommended to viewers who want to bring something to a film, and take something thought-provoking away, without being given a tightly-closed ending.

When a movie gets yanked from theatre schedules and shows up on Netflix a few years later, well, that isn't a great sign.

But this was a good thriller.

The cast is excellent, although, as other reviewers have pointed out, some of them are under utilized. We seee the story from Amy Adams 's perspective, and only encounter other chatacters when they interact wih her.

I have not read the book, so I can't comment on the adaptation quality, but I really enjoyed this as a thriller with nods to Hitchcock's Rear Window, while being fresh enough to keep me guessing at the twists.

A very capable flick that is worh a watch.

I grew up with the Bandit and Dukes of Hazzard, so I am the target market for a film like this - and there's some really good stuff here! But unfortunately I think the low budget created obstacles that just could not be overcome.

First, the good: The pace of this film is really good, it moves along and never drags. There are some editing issues which I'll get to, but the filmmakers were clearly very capable in a larger sense, which is so important, particularly for this genre.

Great performances across the board. Schneider (who stars, wrote and directed) is a fine actor. His dramatic performances show us he can hold his own, and in lighter fare like this, his charisma shines through. The supporting cast is in my opinion uniformly good, too. Robinson, as the bride, hits all the right notes. Tyrus, as the Sherrif, was delightful. What he lacks in acting experience he more than makes up for in presence, and as a result I loved every minute that he was on screen.

There were some nice stunts here. One car is jumped, another is rolled, and a bunch are dunked into rivers and swamps. They even include the famous Bandit stunt where the roof of the police car is torn off - that was pretty ambitious for such a small film!

I love the indie nature of this film, and I have a tonne of respect for Schneider for setting up John Schneider Studios to make small-scale films of a more personal nature. While I don't agree at all with his politics he shares on YouTube, I can see he is a decent man who is putting his money where his mouth is. I really do respect him as an artist. Everyone should check out his other films (they are criminally under-rated by users on IMDB for some reason, whereas I feel this film is rated too highly - but hey, this is just my opinion).

Now the not-so-good: Road trip / car chase movies are tough to do cheaply. We can see that a lot of the budget for this one went into the car stunts/wrecks, and these scenes are all done pretty well. However, the stuff in between has two problems: First, there is not enough coverage shot of the cars actually on the road, resulting in some very confusing and disorienting editing. I suspect this was due to the editor just not having enough footage to piece the scenes together in a better way.

All of the shots in the interior of the vehicles were done using a green screen, and it is very obvious. It would have been less distracting if there was better continuity when the camera switched from driver to passenger, and an entirely different topography is visible on the other side of the road! When I compare these scenes to, say, "Anderson Bench" (also written and directed by Schneider), which had some similar scenes but was shot on location, it looks awful in comparison. I know that much of this film is dialogue-heavy, and the vehicles are the main locations, so I am sure green-screen made economic sense.

These budget-related sacrifices unfortunately will mar this film as amateurish, and unfortunately for a film in this genre I don't think it could have been avoided. However, my biggest complaint could have been: The story here spends too much energy getting the set pieces of the original Bandit in place that it misses the mark on character development. He don't see the bond between Schneider's Duke and Robinson's Fred really happen like it did with Bandit and Carrie in the original. There is one brief scene that hints that maybe that was going to happen (off camera?), but while they have lots of dialogue together in the car, it doesn't drive their relationship forward very well. The actors share some charisma with one another, so I would have preferred some space for that. There are other scenes, including a bar fight, that don't lead anywhere, that could have been sacrificed instead.

It's a decent tribute to Bandit, with enough of a modern twist to make it just different enough that it's not a remake - and there are enough nods to the original, and to the Dukes of Hazzard, to make any fan smile. This is obvious by its high rating on IMDB in comparison to Schneider's other films - this movie has a lot of nostalgia behind it, and that's not a bad thing.

But as a film on its own merits it has some serious flaws. Still, I look forward to seeing what John Schneider Studios will make next, as the world needs more creative independent films. And you know what they say, if you don't fail sometimes, it means you're not trying enough new things.

I watched this because it had one of Rutger Hauer's last performances (the film is dedicated to Rutger, having been released posthumously). I expected his performance to be a small component, as it is in many of his later films where he does not play a main character - but his limited screen time is well used here, and he brings gravitas to the important scenes he is in.

The rest of the performances are pretty good, too. With low budget films you never know if they cast actors or just people they happened to have around - luckily it was the former, in this case.

Also, the production values are quite good, the soundtrack, the editing - everything is very well done, especially for a director's first film. It is well paced and the characters have just enough background for us to care about them as much as needed to make the story engaging. There isn't a lot of distracting "creative" film work here, the scenes are set to tell the story, and they do a pretty good job.

So there's a lot of good stuff here, despite this underdog redemption tale not being anything too tremendously new. It has a lot of the tropes of the films that have preceded it, but they are transported into the world of the pool hall.

There have been some very negative review of this film that have left me puzzled. I find the rating in IMDB is far too low for a film of good (if not great) quality. The only ones with comments seem to hone in on the "inaccuracies" of the sport. These complaints may highlight legitimate mistakes either in the performances or the editing, but they did not distract me in the least. Only someone so absorbed in the sport would notice, let alone care. I find it a little absurd, as this is a good character drama with some heart.

This movie is basically about giving people a second chance. Michael Ironside's character gets a chance to become a better person by helping someone else, which is really kind of a nice theme.

Ironside and Dourif are the stars of this unlikely buddy picture, and together they give great performances. Dourif in particular disappears into his role, becoming almost unrecognizable. He really is a chameleon in this film. Ironside, as usual, gives a reliable, strong performance, giving his loser character some depth and presence.

This was a small production and doesn't get anything like the attention it deserves. More than 15 years later, it still deserves a good look.

The Maddening is a trashy, low-budget flick with a "big" star. I couldn't figure out why Burt Reynolds would appear in something like this, especially since he's always seemed so vain, I didn't think he'd have it in him to play a "bad guy." Looking back, this was made around the time of his divorce from Loni Anderson and the cancellation of his TV Show, so his star was definitely on the decline at the time. Maybe he needed the money to pay for lawyers? That being said, Burt is one of the few really good things in this film. His understated performance and on-screen charisma kept me watching even when the story and terribly pacing made me want to turn it off.

Unfortunately there's only so much that actors can do with material. This film is paced so poorly, and the story is so one-dimensional (just waiting for all of the characters to converge for the final show-down) that there's little the actors can do to help.