Tag: Bad CGI

Stallone Month: Rocky Balboa

Rocky V was supposed to be the last Rocky movie. In it, Rocky is robbed of all his money by an accountant, and he has to retire from boxing due to brain damage. His final fight, and there is always a final fight in a Rocky flick, took place on the streets in front of Mickey’s gym, where it all began. It was meant to wrap the story of Rocky up with a nice little bow. In that, the film did its job, even though the mediocre quality of the film left some fans feeling a little let down. But, by the mid-2000s, Sylvester Stallone was feeling nostalgic, and along came another sequel, sixteen years after the last. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Rocky Balboa”

Empty Balcony: Kill Command

Will it be good? Will it be bad? I didn’t know when I decided to give Kill Command a shot. I had never heard of this film before searching around for something to watch. While a small, almost nonexistent, theater run is a bad sign for a movie, there have been plenty of good movies that didn’t have much of an audience. Maybe I would get lucky. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Kill Command”

October Horrorshow: Lake Placid

Giant animal flicks have had a resurgence of late, thanks to the adventurous executives over at SyFy. Every week seems to see the introduction of a new Asylum or Roger Corman b-movie with gruel-thin plots and awful CGI. These movies fill a niche, sure, but while some viewers find these movies’ intentional cheapness a main draw, endearing even, most are such amateurish productions that they are unwatchable. That’s a shame. Flicks such as Dinoshark or Mega Python vs. Gatoroid share a pedigree with Them! and The Beginning of the End, but while Bert I. Gordon could never be accused of being a great filmmaker, his silly movies are still watchable 60 years later. These newest monster flicks are just putrid, marring what can be a very dynamic subgenre of sci-fi/horror. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Lake Placid”

October Horrorshow: The Relic

I love a good monster flick. Hell, I love a mediocre monster flick. Which is good for The Relic, because, while it’s a passable diversion, it’s not the second coming of Alien.

From way back in 1997, The Relic, from director Peter Hyams, features one of the more complicated beasties I’ve encountered in my decades of watching horror flicks. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Relic”

October Horrorshow: Poltergeist (2015)

I remember being a child in the 1980s, and movies from the 1950s looked old. The people in them wore weird clothes, had strange haircuts, and drove ridiculous-looking cars. Everything was in black and white, too, making me think, probably up until I was in kindergarten, that the world used to be black and white, and sometime during my parents’ childhoods, all of a sudden it snapped into color. I vaguely remember asking them about that. Oh, the conclusions a child’s mind will come to absent any other information. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Poltergeist (2015)”

October Horrorshow: Harbinger Down

Back in 2011, Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc., got screwed. ADI, an Academy Award winning practical effects company, had worked hard on the remake/prequel of The Thing. But, sometime during post-production, the decision was made to replace all of ADI’s work with CGI. The resulting effects were poorly received, and with good reason. They don’t look good. They’re the type of effects that make film buffs pine for the time before CGI was a thing, when makeup and puppetry were king in horror flicks. My biggest issue with the CGI is that it is clearly CGI. It never manages to cross over into believability. It looks like a cartoon is intruding into a live action movie. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Harbinger Down”

October Horrorshow: Extraterrestrial

A few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by Grave Encounters, the first feature from the writing/directing team of The Vicious Brothers (Colin Minahan and Stuart Ortiz). They were working with a miniscule budget and an overdone idea, but managed to make a very good little ghost flick. Last year saw them release another film that couldn’t make it past the festival circuit, but, thanks to the internet, is reaching viewers in ways that were impossible even ten years ago. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Extraterrestrial”

October Horrorshow: Ragnarok

Ragnarok, the 2013 film from Norway, is not a horror movie. At first glance, it has all the makings. There’s a small cast, a remote locale, an abandoned Soviet military bunker, and there’s a monster. So this is a monster movie, then? Well, yes, but not so much. As it turns out, Ragnarok is a family adventure movie. What has the October Horrorshow come to? Have I exhausted my options to such an extent that I have to dip into other genres just to fill out a month? No, I do not. But I feel I have been deceived, and have to share. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Ragnarok”

October Horrorshow: Urban Legends: Bloody Mary

I love seeing famous people in early roles. It’s a reminder that even the most successful of us have to start somewhere, even if grandpa owns a football team. Before she played a conniving investigative reporter in House of Cards, Kate Mara was slumming it as the star of the direct to video horror flick, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary. I’m reminded of Philip Seymour Hoffman in Twister, Paul Rudd in the sixth Halloween movie, Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger in that awful Texas Chainsaw flick, and, the pièce de résistance, George Clooney in Return of the Killer Tomatoes. It seems that horror is fertile ground for the stars of tomorrow. I wonder which young, struggling talent will emerge from today’s shitty horror flicks? Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Urban Legends: Bloody Mary”