We saw sneak preview of this movie when it came out instantly fell in love.
The plot unfolds something like this: Aliens seem to be attacking a South London council estate on Bonfire Night. The resident of the estate are oblivious to all this except for a close-knit group of young friends, their weed hook-up, one of his clients, and a young nurse that the close-knit friends attempted to mug earlier in the night. It's up to this rag-tag group to save South London, and very possibly the world...
American translation: Aliens seem to be attacking a South London public housing high-rise on a holiday that is celebrated like the 4th of July. There's lots of intermittent fire works and celebratory shenanigans taking place to cover the presence of the aliens.
Watch it if you like: The Goonies, Shaun of the Dead, The Lost Boys, Alien.
The kids: Every single kid in this movie gives a stellar performance, the youngest of them often steeling scenes. This is also John Boyea's first film and he is as fantastic as you'd imagine.
The social commentary: This movie is brimming with sub-textual commentary, not the least of which is a moment that highlights that these boys who've spend the whole movie trying to be more adult than they are indeed children. But the film also touches on race, racism, systemic racism, class, ageism and more.
But what else have these kids been in?: Franz Dramen was in Edge of Tomorrow (aka Live Die Repeat) and John Boyea was in this little movie called Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
But did we like it: We love this movie. Highly recommend watching if you like fun, scary, poignant horror movies.
The Trylon is playing Lost Boys on October 2-4th, and you know what that means: we're talking about the Coreys!
The plot unfolds something like this: Lucy and her two sons have moved to Santa Carla to live with her father. No one seems too happy about the situation except Lucy, who has started dating a hansom and wealthy local man. Unfortunately Lucy's oldest son is about to be turned into a vampire by the local hooligan vampires, and it looks like local vampire hunters Edgar and Alan Frog along with Lucy's youngest son will have to save the day.
Haim and Feldman: This was the beginning of the Coreys branding themselves as such, but this is also the best movie that the pair star in together.
Corey Feldman: By this point Feldman already had Goonies, Friday the 13th III, Gremlins, and Stand By Me under his belt, and right after this he would also have The Burb's.
Corey Haim: While researching things to write about Haim I read his entire Wikipedia page, and I have to say, if you want to read a tragic story about drug addiction and child stardom, it's worth reading. On a lighter note, I also discovered that the 1-800-C-O-R-E-Y line that Lisa Simpson calls obsessively in an early episode of the Simpsons was 100% real! (But also has a sad story attached. Seriously, just give his page a skim.)
A classic for a reason: Everyone's performances in this film are on point, and it's one of the few vampire movies that nails both the humor and the horror.
Almost a decade ago we stumbled across an impressive and fun action short from Australia, aaaaaand instantly forgot the name of it. After several bouts of searching the internets for any sign of it, we mostly gave up the search. But recently while looking into stuntman/filmmaker Nash Edgerton (who's known for his stunt work for The Matrix movies, the Star Wars prequels, and for stunt doubling for his brother Joel Edgerton), we discovered Nash had written, directed, and starred in a short film to feature his amazing stunt skills. And as it happens, that's the short we saw all those years ago! Check it out and see what kept us obsessed for so long...
Mindless action isn't necessarily devoid of plot or proper character motivation, because when you leave too many elements of a movie neglected, seriously bad things can happen...
A Good Day to Die Hard: You shouldn't be shocked to learn the fifth installment in the Die Hard series is the worst, but we never recommended anyone watch this movie. Even when people say "oh we'll watch it anyway, just to see how bad it is" we say: don't bother. The worst parts of this film are the back and fourth between McClane and his son, and 50% of that is them relentlessly yelling each other's names. (Actually, the worst parts of this movie might be the needless, unaddressed, and seemingly endless slaughter of innocent civilians, but it's hard to focus on those parts with all the "JOHN!" and "JACK!"ing.)
The Glove: Look at that poster, read that tagline! What could possibly be bad about this movie? Oh only that it's one of the most BORING movies we've ever watched in mixed company. Our buddy picked this out of a stack a few years ago and he's still not lived it down entirely. The titular glove shows up like it was shot long after the main film, it never really fits into the larger story and takes up almost no screen time! Also the main detective (played by John Saxon) is a lousy drunk who's terrible at his job and refuses to pay his child support. A better tagline for this movie would be "an asshole detective tries to solve a humdrum crime while we wait for an amazing robo-glove to save the day that almost doesn't show up".
Chappie: Oh how we wanted to like Chappie, but not only were the character motivations questionable throughout, this film location hopped more than The Stuff and for arguably flimsier reasons. One moment the hero is at Die Antwoord's hideout, the next he's run back to his office only to run right back to the hideout. It's a mess. And we were extra disappointed because this was a forgettable mess, rather than a fun mess.
Mitchell: I can't imagine watching this movie without the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew relentlessly mocking it. We've never tried, but thinking about it makes me uncomfortable. There's the world's longest, slowest and least action-packed car chase ever committed to film, the most skin crawling "sex" scenes, and it took me far too many viewings to actually understand the plot of the thing. And don't even get me started on the hero's theme song! But, as unbearable as it might be on it's own, it will always be one of our top five MST3Ks.
Prototype X29A: This movie was on our to-watch pile for months before someone finally picked it. Everyone was convinced the phrase "psychosexual dreams" on the box was going to make it a winner for better or worse. But when we actually tried to watch it, it was a SNOOZE fest. One of our friends fell asleep early on only to wake up at the end demanding to know why everything was blowing up, sadly we had no answers for her and we were paying attention!
Bonus movie:
Doctor Justice: To be fair, we did not finish this movie. Maybe someday we'll give it another shot, I mean look at that cover art, action happens at some point! But the 45 mins we made it through was another snooze fest. Seriously though, John Phillip Law, Paul Naschy, and Gert Frobe? How on earth did it end up so dull?!
This movie would have fit nicely into last month's theme as it stars Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly but it's also a wonderfully excessive action movie. Not as mindless as some of the others we'll list this month, but no less action packed or over the top.
A casual racist party. (The party is casual, the racism is overt.)
The plot unfolds something like this: White supremacists have developed a biological weapon they are preparing to dump into the water of three major cities. The effects of this weapon? It kills Black people while leaving white people unharmed. Lucky for the Black and anti-racist population at large, Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly), Jagger Daniels (Fred Williamson), and Jimmy Lait (Jim Brown) are on top of this.
The pacing: The set up for this is a bit slow as they introduce each hero individually, but in the end each man takes on his own group of bad guys, so the payoff is three fold!
The stunts: Hal Needham was the stunt coordinator, and it shows. This movie is FULL of amazing stunt work, and it's also got some of our favorite car stunts. They clearly set the bar that the Ozsplpitation movies of the 70s and 80s were trying to raise.
A lovely surprise: These ladies show up out of nowhere making us wish they had a spin off film all their own. (Unfortunate side note: one of them is in The Glove, and we feel really, really bad for her.)
The director: This is one of the 4 movies Gordon Park Jr. directed before his untimely death in a plane crash while filming over seas. He also directed Aaron Loves Angela, Thomasine & Bushrod, and Super Fly. Makes us sad to think what else could have come from this director.
American translation: Aliens seem to be attacking a South London public housing high-rise on a holiday that is celebrated like the 4th of July. There's lots of intermittent fire works and celebratory shenanigans taking place to cover the presence of the aliens.
But did we like it: We love this movie. Highly recommend watching if you like fun, scary, poignant horror movies.
