COOL AS ICE (1991)

From the cinematographer of SCHINDLER'S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN comes the preposterous story of a young rapper, Johnny Van Owen (Vanilla Ice), who's riding with his crew through a small town when suddenly his homeboi's bike starts trippin'.  Forced to stay in this two-bit town until the whip is fixed, Mr. Vanilla fills his time by flirting with the only attractive girl in town, Kathy...whom Vanilla calls "Kat" because he is clever.  Added to this already exciting drama (bike getting repaired, Vanilla courting Kat) is the nail-biting news that Kat's father (Michael Gross) is actually in the Witness Protection Program and now the people he's hiding from have found him!  Will lil' 'nilla be able to save the day and still have time to jump his motorcycle over a fence, dance randomly, randomly rap, drive his motorcycle through the wall of a house, ride a horse backwards, wear sunglasses at night and go across the street to, uh, schling a schlong?  Probably.

Based on the film's (current 6/2015) IMDb score of 2.8/10 and all of the snide comments you see online about this film, you would think that it's an incompetent turd of a movie, but it's actually entertaining.  The story is straight forward, the photography by longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kamiński is impressive, the music numbers are worked seamless into the story and not forced, the supporting characters are all memorable, interesting set designs and the acting by the whole cast (yes, even Mr. Ice) are all perfectly fine.  Honestly, I enjoyed Ice's playful manner and goofy lines like "...I'm just cooling." and "Then let's g-o."

Recommended for people who don't take life 2 seriously and/or fans of cheesy 90's cinema.  If I had the financial means, I would gladly finance COOL AS ICE 2: STILL SCHLIN' DAT SCHLONG with absolutely no regard to if it made money or not.  I'm also curious as to why the song "Ice Ice Baby" was not used?

BRAINSCAN (1994)

Teenager Edward Furlong lives in a big house with his parents nowhere to be seen.  One day his best friend tells him about a new horror video game called Brainscan.  Eddie gets a copy and next thing you know he's going on a virtual reality trip where he's fantasizing about killing a dude down the street and chopping off his foot.  Eddie awakens from his gaming session totally stoked about how awesome Brainscan is...then he finds the guy's severed foot in his freezer and things aren't so cool anymore.  Bummer.

The story is predictable to anybody who's paying attention, but it's still a fun ride down the mid-90's memory lane back when virtual reality was a hot property and featured in stuff like THE LAWNMOWER MAN, VIRTUOSITY, JOHNNY MNEMONIC and so on.  Brisk pace, good enough acting, numerous cheesy CG effects that were pretty neat back then, super brief topless scene, nowhere near as much violence as I had hoped, Metallica and Aerosmith posters, 90's rock soundtrack featuring White Zombie, Mudhoney, Primus, Pitchshifter, Butthole Surfers, etc.

Not a bad way to spend a hour and a half.  Recommended for fans of 90's movies.