We Are the Sproket Holes vol. 2

Movies I've seen in the last 2 months and the ratings;

The Nomi Song - 8.5/10. Documentary on Klaus Nomi. lots of amazing performance footage. He really was one of the most uniquely talented individuals of all time. i liked that they spent most of the time on the music/performance aspect, and they kept the whole "he's a damn weirdo" and "he could fucking belt it out" pretty balanced.

Sleepaway Camp - 7.5/10. very dated and silly, but still a blast to watch. not nearly as gory/mean spirited as some of the slashers of the day, but makes up for that with one of the strangest plot twists (that Neil Jordan lifted for the Crying Game) and that final image of the protagonist with her jaw agape is still haunting.

The Departed - 7.5/10. extremely disappointing. it was great to see Nicholson in a role with some meat to it, but the huwhatatwist-fest at the end was smacking its own lips in the face of its stupidity and directionlessness. It wasn't terrible, but when you consider that this film gave Scorcesse his first Oscar win and NOT Raging Bull, it's just baffling to me.

Mr. Frost - 2/10. nonsensical "psychological thriller" starring Jeff Goldblum as the titular character, a serial killer who believes he is the devil. looks like a soap opera and stinks like one too. fucking atrocious.

Transformers - 7.5/10. already wrote the review. Megatron kicked some ass. Starscream needed more screen time...maybe they could've taken some away from that annoying Pseudo-Soundwave Gremlincon and given that to Starscream. hopefully the next one will have Starscream in all his insubordinate cunt glory...and Unicron would be an amazing visual as well.

Nightmare Detective - 9.5/10. brilliant film from Shinya Tsukamoto ( Tetsuo: the Iron Man). sort of an Existentialist's take on Nightmare on Elm Street.

the Notorious Bettie Page - 7/10. Gretchen Mol is gorgeous and lovable in this, but the rest of the cast just felt like props.

Thank You For Smoking - 7.5/10. Falls apart completely in the third act. otherwise it was a fun subversive film with an impeccable cast. Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, J.K. Simmons, Robert Duvall, Sam Elliot, Rob Lowe, William H. Macy and David Koechner were all pretty excellent. can't wait to see Eckhart play Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight.

Rubber's Lover - 7/10. fucked up Japanese cyber-punk nightmare film. some strong visuals and cool F/X sequences.

the Keeper - 5/10. Transient Exotic Dancer (Asia Argento) is held captive in the basement of frighteningly religious cop/children's puppet show host (yeah) Dennis Hopper. this is the movie that Black Snake Moan and Captivity ripped off, but those films i'm sure are a million times better than this piece of shit. two great talents completely wasted with a bonehead script and visionless cinematography that looks like a bland Sci-Fi channel original movie. the film makers rely too much on Argento's inate sexiness and Hopper inate insanity to properly create characters for them to work with (or for the audience to care about). but it was Asia and i could watch her in almost anything....almost.

Higher Learning - raped in the ass with a rat-feces-envenomed screwdriver/10. puerile exploitive humorless irony-deficient trash that can only be taken seriously by the most simple of "revolutionaries" and whiny white-guilt cunts. there are so many embarrassingly awful moments that how a film of this ineptitude was made/attracted a list of "name" actors, let alone granted a wide release by a major studio is beyond all reasonable comprehension. Tyra Banks screaming "WHYYYYYYY????" after she's been shot in howl so calculated it would make Nancy Kerigan blush, as well as the Legion-of-Doom-Level Super Villianly of the Aryan Brotherhoods, rank among those moments.

Vital - 9/10. yet another masterwork from Shinya Tsukamoto. one of the most heart breaking, beautiful films i have ever witnessed.

Mermaid in a Manhole - 8/10. a surprisingly touching piece of macabre from the infamous Guinea Pig series. a really twisted gore film mixed with fairy tale elements.

He Never Dies - 7.5/10. satire of suicide. another from the Guinea Pig series. funny little piece of mayhem.

The Untold Story - 10/10. hands down the most misanthropic, unapologetically brutal film ever made. must be seen to be believed.

Stuart Saves his Family - 6/10. Love the SNL bit. the movie? not so much. i did like that it was kind of dark and mean spirited, but i wish they would've taken it further.

the Devil and Daniel Johnston - 10/10. Hypnotic, Beautiful, Psychotic, Romantic, Unpretentious...everything Johnston's music has always been. a truly astounding piece of work. the music and the story an all the interviews and footage were eye opening. it may be the single most inspiring film i have ever seen. an incredible insight into a very complicated man.

Rocky Balboa - 6.5/10. i like the cold somberness of the first act. immediately looses steam when the fight talk starts up. the fight itself was weak, and had no drama or real conflict. Antagonist Mason "the Line" Dixon (nice to see Stallone hasn't lost his penchant for stupid-ass names) is the weakest of all Balboa's opponents. he has none of the Ali-Meets-Billy-Dee-Williams charismatic arrogance of Carl Weathers' Apollo Creed, nor the evil pro-wrestler attitude of Mr.T's Clubber Lang, nor is he the Icy Meta-Human that was Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago. Balboa may be a better film than the other sequels, but it suffers from lack of a real opposition, same way Rocky V suffered. at least the other ones were fun, chewing on their own melodrama, vomiting in a blender, hitting "liquefy", than injecting the solution into our veins. this film was just a bland character study capped off with an anti-climatic pseudo-symbolic fist-fight.