Goldbeater

This was a hastily made TV movie with less than perfect visuals and C-listers as actors and it shows. The lead actors especially are dragging the quality down here. It also shows that Michael Mann's ambitions were set for much higher things. However, the benefit of this movie is clear - Mann was able to practice what does and what does not work in the screenplay, and then fully develop his own vision six years later with the Heat. LA Takedown was the foundation that he needed to hone his craft and build on.

The audience should not expect too much of this zombie flick. Bob Clark was one of the first followers of George A Romero and his Night of the Living Dead, together with the screenwriter Alan Ormsby (who directed a decent horror movie called Deranged) and who also plays the lead here. This duo present a fairly unique horror comedy about a bunch of theater actors who are trying to earn some kind of a weird bravery badge on a deserted island. Under the leadership of the maniacal master manipulator Alan (Ormsby) the “kids” go overboard playing with “dead things” and end up waking up the dead from the nearby cemetery. Do not expect any zombies rampaging all the way through, the walking dead only appear in the last third of the movie, which is something that will turn off a big part of the audience for sure. Clark did take his time before the plot developed and allowed him to reveal what the seething audience was waiting for. However, I did enjoy even the first and less entertaining half of the movie with its intense atmosphere and what came after was good.

Well, this movie really does not have any coherent plot, likeable and logical characters, or at least average actors, decent production value, competent directing or any noteworthy humor to speak of (should one look for this to be a horror comedy). This movie does not have much going for it at all, but what it does have is unique make-up and well done practical effects. You can tell it was inspired by classic horror movies such as Evil Dead or Night of the Living Dead. Spookies is more like a toss up of various ideas and inspirations that does not work as a whole, but it is because of the effects and make-up, and the fact there is always something happening in this god-awful flick, we can say it is entertaining. Well, apart from the blue werewolf or whatever it was that was wandering throughout the movie, that one I was not a fan of at all.

George R.R. Martin's novella was already a pretty kitschy read, and making it into a movie is something hard to even imagine. I do have to say that without knowing the source material, I would not even get the plot, or rather, I wouldn't understand why certain things are happening in certain scenes. In spite of all that, however, Nightflyers has an interesting premise and does provide for some kind of entertainment, but it should not have been wrapped up in such a cheap and cheesy way.

This is a very contradictory slasher movie. From the beginning, you can't deny that it is an intensely atmospheric horror, plus it has a vivid setting with the deserted island’s abandoned buildings and a raging thunderstorm, yet the plot gradually trots out all sorts of horror movie clichés and in the end, it does not really make sense at all. Nevertheless, The Slayer offers very well-done gory effects (like being run through with pitchforks), substantial amount of suspense, and the aforementioned atmosphere underscored by the setting. It appears to be an imaginatively packaged garbage movie, but some day I will willingly and enthusiastically watch it again.

This is a slightly weaker attempt by American International Pictures to follow up on Roger Corman's stylish adaptations of the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Although Vincent Price is in the main role, he is relatively put in the background of the story, and the other supporting actors are given more room to perform (among them the co-star Christopher Lee). It has a fine atmosphere and mise-en-scene, however, it only functions as a horror in a small way, which is due to the relatively average direction by Gordon Hessler.

This is a political satire produced by Barry Levinson that is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago. I also think it could be more and more relevant in the future. It does not have an entirely cohesive style from start to finish - it turns from a tame comedy into a relatively powerful cautionary drama, but it still appeals to audiences mainly thanks to the great cast (I do not want to single out any of the actors in particular, the whole ensemble is simply great). Director Joe Dante reportedly said that he considered this television movie to be his greatest directorial achievement, and the cast here was the best he had ever worked with.

This is a visually attractive melodrama about two people fated to love each other, set during the times of Stalinism in Poland. It is beautifully shot, but the screenplay does not shed enough light on the motivations of the two main characters - especially why they both keep saying how much they love each other, and yet every time they briefly live together they can hardly stand each other, constantly on and off, which means they, therefore, can not stay together. The "adversity of fate" seems like quite a convenient excuse there. It reminded me of the old Finnish drama Something in People, where there is a peculiar romance going on over a period of several years between the two main protagonists, who were also attracted to each other in a tragic way.

Fish simply have us, the humans, figured out. Denis Villeneuve made a chilling existentialist drama with a romantic storyline and slightly reflects Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, where a group of fish also philosophized over the question of human existence. This is an interestingly structured story with a pinch of black humor, and is a movie that will definitely not be to everyone’s taste.

The idea of a power outage in the setting of a lunatic asylum is a solid foundation for a horror thriller, especially when the accomplished screenwriter S. Craig Zahler is involved in it. Unfortunately, he probably did not have the last word on the screenplay, or he was just using this movie as an exercise for his movie making style, because it is quite half-baked and the end of the movie is quite chaotic, lacking interesting characters and dialogues, which is normally Zahler's strength. It could have turned out much better.