Friday, August 2, 2013

THE PUBLIC MENACE (1935)

Not really all that good, overly-complicated story about a lowly newspaper report (George Murphy) who is tricked into marriage by a source (Jean Arthur) that ends up not having any information.  At the same time he's fired and can't afford a divorce.  More needlessly complicated things happen and soon these two are mixed up with a trigger happy gangster who has every cop in town hot on his tail.

Arthur does the best she can with this mess of a script, but it's honestly beyond repair.  I watched the entire thing, but I didn't care at all what happened cause you know no matter what stupid shit they get into everything is gonna work out just fine at the end and it does.  Weak humor, uneven pace, no chemistry between Arthur and Murphy, ridiculous story.  Skip it.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008)

Hmmm.  I'm a little torn on this one.  On the one hand the story is interesting (at least at the beginning) and the action is fun, but then as it goes on, things start to fall apart and you got some dude swinging through the tree with a bunch of computer-generated monkeys!

1957.  Indy is kidnapped by some evil Russians and brought to a gigantic government warehouse in the Nevada desert.  Stuff happens and next thing you know Indy's involved with a nuclear explosion!  Once back at his teaching job, he learns from a Marlon Brando impersonator that there's some shenanigans going on with a crystal skull in Peru.  Indy goes to investigate.  All kinds of crap happens: Indians, lens flares, spaceships, floods, computer-generated ants, lens flares, sword fighting, bad accents, a graveyard, motorcycle chase, car chase, lens flares, auto-writing, dry quicksand.

I understand that the filmmakers were going for a kinda 50's sci-fi feel, but it didn't really settle all that well with me.  Fun first half, but it loses steam towards the end.  Worth watching for sure, but my least favorite of the series, so far.

Part 1 - Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Part 2 (prequel) - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Part 3 - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (2008)

JASON X (2001)

Who in the hell thought it would be a good idea to put Jason in outer space?!  The entire reason the original movies are so awesome is because it's just a simple story about people at and around a camp getting killed in awesome ways by an unstoppable masked psychopath.  Keep it simple stupid!  But oohhh no, instead of Jason stalking cute half-naked teens around a lakeside cabin we gotta have Jason frozen and then discovered in the year 2455 by some nerds on a fuckin friggin motherfuckin field trip to Earth!

Jason soon thaws out and starts killing people in crappy way onboard this crappy looking spaceship.  It's really lame, but then surprisingly it gets even lamer when the students reprogram their android into a battle droid, so now Jason gets upgraded into a cyborg called "Uber-Jason". Somebody literally got paid actual money to write this?!!

Maybe good for a few laughs only, but, as a serious Jason fan, I found the whole thing to be so irreverent that it was actually depressing to see Jason reduced to this kind of rubbish.  Dated special effects, stupid story, dark lighting all over the joint, David Cronenberg cameo, forgettable kills, weak nudity, annoying characters, bad acting,.  Only worth watching to laugh at it.

Part 1 - Friday the 13th (1980)
Part 2 - Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Part 3 - Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
Part 4 - Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Part 5 - Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
Part 6 - Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Part 7 - Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
Part 8 - Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Part 9 - The Final Friday: Jason Goes to Hell (1993)
Freddy vs Jason (2003)
Remake - Friday the 13th (2009)