ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2007)

Werner Herzog and Antarctica. I mean, come on, what else do you need to know to know that you need to see this film? Instead of just talking about the environment and the various creatures, Werner does what he does best and focuses in on the people who work in this remote land...and what a weird bunch they are! I'll let you discover them for yourself.

The film opens with Werner and his longtime cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger in a cargo plane landing in Antarctica on a frozen bay that's big as fuck and covered in like 8 feet of ice! Next they arrive at the research station and Werner is disappointed in how depressing it looks so after attending a survival school they ventures out to met some of the scientists at some of the more remote substations including some divers, a guy who wears tweed, seal researchers, an awesome volcano and a penguin scientist. The penguin part was the saddest because while they're filming a lone penguin starts walking off in the wrong direction (towards the interior of the continent, not the ocean!) and the science guy says that sometime a penguin will do that and if he returns it to the group it'll just turn around and walk off again to certain death. I found that to be very depressing and I really, really wanted to see where that penguin was walking to with such certainty as fast as his little penguin feet would take him. Poor little guy.

If you've seen any other of Herzog's wonderful documentaries then you know how talented he is at capturing the small little unique moments that make life so wonderful and EATEOFW is no different. It's a magnificent film and 99 minutes is nowhere near long enough. It could've easily been 5 times that and I would have still begged for more.

Highly recommended.

CASTLE FREAK (1995)

A troubled couple and their blind teenage daughter inherit a castle. They celebrate their good fortune by arguing a lot. Luckily for us viewers though...there's a castle freak in the basement!  He's just hanging out, waitin' to get his freak on! And freak on he does. But this castle freak wasn't born a freak, oh no, he's a man-made freak. Story goes his mother was really freakin' angry at the young boys father, so she freaks out and attacks the boy. Freakin' up his face, freaking out his tongue and even freaking off his dong! She then locks him in a bare room for a bunch of years and that's when he gets all freakified. Eventually, the woman dies and when the new family moves in, the freakin' freaker freaks the freak out and escapes his freakhole.

Once freed from his freak cell, the castle freak stays within the walls of the castle and actually does a pretty piss poor job of hiding himself, but the couple is so preoccupied with arguing that they miss the obvious clues that there's a freak on the loose. The body count starts to add up, but overall it's pretty slow going.  And while the freak is uglier than Papa Smurf's butthole, I kind of felt sorry for him...right up until he freaks off a woman's nipple! Holy shit that was awesome!!! Yeah, the Castle Freak might not have a ping-ding, but he's still a perverted motherfreaker who wants to get superfreaky with the couple's teenage daughter.

For a low-budget 90's freak flick, CASTLE FREAK has it's moments, but for the most part I couldn't help but think how cool this story could have been with a higher budget and a more imaginative script. Slow start, boring looking castle, not enough extreme freak action, unattractive topless scene, medium amount of blood, no gore, boring ending. Worth a one time watch, but that's it.  I'd love to see a remake where the castle freak gets loose and runs around the local village.

Remake - Castle Freak (2020)

MEMORIES OF TOMORROW (2006)

Masayuki has a nice life filled with a loving wife, an easy job as a manager at an advertising agency, a pretty house and a daughter that's about to get married. Then he starts to forget things. At first, it's small stuff like his car keys or an exit on the highway, but soon his forgetfulness becomes more pronounced and he's forgetting meetings. At his wife's urging he goes to the doctor and it's even worse than they ever feared: at age 49 Masayuki is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and within no time at all he'll be what they call in the medical field: all fucked up.

I'm normally not into these person-with-a-heart-of-gold-gets-sick tearjerkers since they're predictable and depressing, but this one stars Kazue Fukiishi so I wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, her role is pretty small. Ken Watanabe does a great job as the sick guy and Kanako Higuchi is touching as his patient wife, but as I suspected even before I even sat down to watch this film: it's too predictable to be truly enjoyable. Blah, blah, hard working man, gets sick, heart of gold, tears, The End.

Worth watching, I guess, if you're into this sort of thing, but as for me, outside of the brief Kazue Fukiishi moments, I was pretty bored and I'll never watch it ever again.

TIME TRAVELER: THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME (2010)

If, like me, all you know about the GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME story is the 2006 anime, then just forget all that and start over from scratch if you decide to watch this 2010 live-action version because they are completely different. Different story, different feel, different mode of time travel, everything, even this main girl's name is different!

The 2006 film, which I really enjoyed, was funny, perky and a lot of fun to watch, even if the story was kinda sad. This 2010 version though is not fun. It might try to be fun, but it's not. A dingbat girl's mother is run over by a car, so while in the hospital she asks her teenage daughter to drink this liquid she has hidden away and think real hard about 1972. Once she time travels back to 1972 she needs to give this dude a message for her mother. Of course, since the girl is a fooking moron she time travels back to 1974 instead. And despite the fact that she still has enough liquid for one more trip she instead wanders around 1974 looking for some guy who doesn't even exist in 1974. Naturally, she falls in love with some random guy she meets...of course. Time travel drama ensues, but no actual time travel happens. Boring!

I didn't hate this version since it at least tries and it does look good, but it's still lame. You know what? Just skip this turkey and watch the anime again.  Watch CYBORG GIRL also. That movie was awesome!

Anime version - The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)