Monday, March 6, 2023

OUT OF AFRICA (1985)

East Africa, 1913. A wealthy female moves to Africa to marry a serial philanderer. They happily live together on a coffee farm and he even stops screwing other females long enough to give her syphilis. What a guy. Throughout all of this, the woman has secretly been wettin’ her panties over a local chap who is a professional elephant murderer. She hooks up with him and eventually their relationship advances to the point were they can go out and murder animals together.

OUT OF AFRICA was a big deal when it came out back in the 1980’s. As evident by the fact it won multiple Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and was #5 at the box office for 1986. Beating out everything from THE GOONIES to FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. Revisiting it nowadays, it is entertaining and watchable, but that story is garbage. Very "unslay" as modern day kids would say.

Solid acting by the entire cast, gorgeous scenery, medium pace, rich people problems, some weird crap going on in the background at the beginning of the movie that looked super fake, unrelatable main character that I had zero sympathy for, dumb decisions left and right, onscreen bird murder, disappointing ending, average direction, cool-looking dog, zero sexual tension between the two leads, zero sex scenes, zero tits, zero dicks. Looking at the Winners and Nominees list for 58th Academy Awards, it’s difficult to see even one award that OUT OF AFRICA actually deserved. Then again, I think the overall winner for the year should have been BACK TO THE FUTURE.

As always, my uneducated opinion is totally formulated in my stressed out, little simpleton brain and holds zero weight at all.  I'm just a big dummy who likes yapping about movies.  That said, OUT OF AFRICA is an interesting time-capsule back to what was considered highbrow Cinema back in the mid-1980's.

Monday, February 27, 2023

THE CAT FROM OUTER SPACE (1978)

Not to be confused with The Human Centipede from Outer Space, THE CAT FROM OUTER SPACE is the mildly delightful tale of an alien, Jake, who is forced to land on Earth to repair his space ship.  Jake is just a normal cat, except that he's very smart and has a highly advanced collar that pretty much gives him god-like powers.  It can freeze people in place, make objects fly or speed up or slow down and all kinds of other stuff.  It can also make his voice appear inside your head as a way of communication.  Anyway, Jake's small space ship is taken by the military, so Jake needs human help to assist him in getting the large quantity of gold needed to repair his craft.  He enlists the help of some local scientists who take to rigging (with the help of Jake's powerful collar) sporting events and gambling on the results.  No word on the thousands of gamblers whose lives were probably destroyed by the insane results of these events.

In a weird way THE CAT FROM OUTER SPACE reminds me of THE MILLION DOLLAR DUCK.  Cute critter with a special ability is hunted by the government and needs the help of a small group of well-meaning humans that include Sandy Duncan.  And that's not a bad thing because I like THE MILLION DOLLAR DUCK alright.

Medium pace, super cute cat (or cats?) as Jake, impressive cat "acting", cast full of well-known old Hollywood faces, Roddy McDowall as a bad guy, lifeless direction, very impressive aircraft stunts that looked dangerous as fuck, tons of plot holes, goofy humor mainly directed at children, zero tits, zero gore, dumb ending.  Modern audiences would probably find TCFOS to be a boring turd, but it does have a certain innocent charm to it.  I'd watch it again and I would totally 100% love to see a remake!