GREEN ROOM (2015)

A hipster punk band hears about a gig at a bar out in the woods that'll pay $350 for one of their weak ass performances.  They go, do the gig and then due to their stupidity (and lack of manners), witness a murder.  Ahh, shit!  This ain't good.  And it's even worse when they realize the people who did the murder are running a heroin operation out of the basement.  A heroin operation?!!  Booor-rring!  It would have been more awesome if one of the band members had been into snuff films and then realized (when he got lost) that the (literal) green coloured room he accidentally wandered into...is the set of the most brutal snuff film he's ever seen...and he's being watched right now!  A SERBIAN FILM-style, motherfucker!!! 

Lack of imagination aside, GREEN ROOM was surprisingly low energy and nowhere near as violent as I had hoped.  Muted colours, average acting, a few good songs playing in the background (Napalm Death, old Slayer, etc), weak ending, zero nudity, mild violence (the majority of it was offscreen and/or so poorly lit that you could only guess what was happening...when I watch a movie about a dog ripping out somebody's throat I want to see it!), Patrick Stewart trying to act evil (but without him actually ever doing anything demented onscreen I just wasn't buying it), medium pace, Minor Threat t-shirt, Dead Kennedys t-shirt.

Worth a watch if you're into this sort of thing, but it's nothing to get worked up over.

THE SHALLOWS (2016)

Meh.  An attractive woman goes (alone) to a remote beach in Mexico.  While out in the water, she's attacked by a shark.  Injured (with a gnarly laceration on her left leg), she manages to swim to a rock, but now she's stuck 200 yards from shore with no immediate means of escape or rescue.

In the hands of a proper writer this could have been an exciting story, but as it is...I've honestly had more heart-pounding shark experiences playing Far Cry 3.  That's not saying THE SHALLOWS is a bad film, cause it's an alright time waster, but the whole thing was just kinda...average.  No ups, no downs, just predictable and safe.

Mediocre pace, a bunch of unneeded filler about her family life that I didn't give any fucks about, zero nudity, one really pissed off and determined shark, a cute seagull that reminded me of those crazy singing seagulls in THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER, continuity error when she eats the apple (watch the direction of her first bite), lame ending.

I know this movie has only been out a few months, but I'd really like to see an R-rated remake with tons of gore, nudity and awesome action scenes!

THE CRYING GAME (1992)

Northern Ireland. A small group of Irish Republican Army members kidnap a British soldier (Forest Whitaker with a distractingly bad accent).  They want to exchange him for some IRA members that are being held by the British.  During his short imprisonment, Whitaker forms a bizarre relationship with IRA member Stephen Rea.  When it becomes apparent that he is going to die, Whitaker asks Rea to visit his girlfriend, Dil (Jaye Davidson), in London.  Things turn south when the IRA camp is raided.  Forest and most of the IRA members die, but Rea escapes.  He goes underground and after finding work as a construction worker in London, he decides to visit Dil.

Now here is where things get interesting, but unfortunately I'm going to have to use some spoilers to discuss it properly.  (If you haven't seen the film yet, then please skip to the next paragraph.)  [SPOILERS AHEAD]  Okay...so Rea meets Dil.  He doesn't tell her about his past with Whitaker.  It appears that he has a crush on her...even though it's blatantly obvious that they are in a gay bar and Dil is actually a dude.  At this point, I didn't think anything of it because Rea and Whitaker already had some gay vibe stuff going on earlier (Rea touched Whitaker's penis twice for god's sake!).  So, things progress and Dil and Rea go out a few times, she even blows him and then later on when Rea discovers that Dil is a dude he freaks out!  Was Rea actually surprises by this?  It seems so, since he pukes then takes off, but maybe it was just more of him facing the fact that he's gay?  I don't know.  The whole thing seemed way more dramatic than it actually needed to be.  If the filmmakers were honestly trying to fool the audience and pass Dil's character off as female then why didn't they just cast a woman in the role and then use a body double (or prosthetics) in the reveal scene?  It worked for SLEEPAWAY CAMP. [END OF SPOILERS]

Anyway, I liked THE CRYING GAME, but the pace was too slow (Dil didn't even show up onscreen until 40 minutes in!) and I honestly believe a lot the crisis in the last act could have been adverted if the two leads had simply talked to each other.  Then again, I see this same unneeded drama in movies and television shows all the time.

Worth a watch, but it's nothing worth getting overly excited about...although, I do think the story would have worked out really well as a novel.