We Are the Sprocket Holes vol. 7

more movie ratings;

Beowulf - 7.5/10: LEAVE GRENDEL ALONE!!!!!! Looks like the whole motion-capture thing is starting to get perfected. the females looked a little too smooth, but the details of the men were pretty incredible. as for the movie itself, Neil Gaiman did a good job of stripping the story down to it's basics, as time has made the oral story a bit overlong and convoluted. Lots of great visuals, but i must say the movie lost an indefinable something when Grendel (played by Crispin Glover) made his exit. The look of Grendel was perfect; somewhere between Gollum and Jason Voorhees from New Blood, but it's Glover's discomforting charisma that brought the character to life. i teared up a few times...for trues.

Gemini - 9/10: another stroke of brilliance from Tetsuo mastermind Shinya Tsukamoto. demented tale of mistaken identities and brutal revenge, with jaw-droppingly beautiful/mangled viscera ugly imagery.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Beginning - 2/10: *groan*. what a useless lob of turgid sperm-turd this thing is. i don't even know where to begin. first off, it's a PREQUEL TO THE REMAKE. no longer will i wonder how R Lee Eremy's character got his dentures, or how that guy who pawed at Jessica Biel's ass lost his legs...FINALLY I'LL KNOW THE SECRETS OF THEIR EVIL. so Leatherface is really a malformed orphan who was fished from a dumpster as an infant by some ugly rednecks who would go on to work in a slaughter hous... you know, i don't even feel like recapping this stupidity. it wants to be "Leatherface Begins", but instead it winds up being another uninspired rip off of the first movie (the REAL first movie...the GOOD ONE). they spend maybe ten seconds on the back story of these characters (99 % of whom we don't care about in the first place), than go right into chopping up impossibly beautiful "teenagers" into edible chunks. the embarrassingly deliberate gloom of the atmosphere is more bland than menacing, and Leatherface himself looks more like pro wrestler Abyss in an aprin than the horror icon we've come to know. poo to you.

Hard Candy - 9/10: LOVED this movie. Tense. Vengeful. Ms. 45 for the Myspace Generation. Everything from the performances to the look to the soundtrack ("I...fucking...HATE...Goldfrapp"). Let's see one of those Perverted Justice Decoys pull this on Dateline.

Nowhere - 7/10: same guy who did Doom Generation, which is a movie i hate with almost every fiber of my being. this was better though. more fun/not as insistent upon itself as its predecessor. the best analogy i can muster is comparing Marilyn Manson's Portrait of an America Family (this will be Nowhere) to Antichrist Superstar (this will be Doom Generation). sidenote; i know POAAF came before AS, and Doom Generation came before Nowhere, but trust me, this comparrison makes more sense in my head, so fuck out. anyways, Portrait while nowhere near as "dark" or "abrasive" and Antichrist, is a more solid, focussed effort that doesn't let itself get bogged down in it's own pretensions. it doesn't try so damn hard, it just takes the lurid subject matter and has some cartoonish fun with it instead of trying to be the end-times in extremis. that what Nowhere does, takes the whole fucked-up-dopey-outcast-sex-crazed-industrialpunkgoth kid thing and just makes fun of it, where as Doom Generation tried way to hard to be mean, violent, satanic and abrasive, so much so that it had no focus or humor or truth to it. alright enough of that. there are TONS of "look-at-that" cameos; everyone from John Ritter to Gibby Fuckin' Hayes...and Jordan Ladd is too adorable for words. you may have your future Harley Quinn in ms. Ladd.

Quills - 9/10: one of my all-time favorite films. a brilliant, albiet fictional account of the Marquis DeSade's last days. The Asylum Aura is one of the most incredible in all of cinema. Geoffrey Rush plays DeSade with gleeful sadism, arguably the most joyfully ruthless performance of a cold-hearted bastard since Malcom McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.

Out for Justice - 8/10: Segal's best film....though this is William Forsythe's film all the way. he's a bloated coked out mess...and he's got a gun. he SHOOTS A WOMAN POINT BLANK IN HER FACE IN THE MIDDLE OF TRAFFIC. that alone seals the deal. they don't make good character driven action films like this anymore. guess we'll have to wait until John Rambo.

My First Mister 6/10: Leelee Sobieski plays a goth kid who becomes friends with her boss at a clothing store, played by Albert Brooks. starts off decently enough, but then looses steam in the third act when it gets all melodramatic and "love your parents" and stuff.

Borat - 8.5/10: i laffed. a lot. nuff said.