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eyespy3001
Reviews
Southland Tales (2006)
Watch this movie at least 5 times...trust me
So I've watched this movie about 5 or 6 times now (which is a testament to its enjoyability in its own right) and I'm finally putting together MOST of the pieces.
The first time I saw it was in the theatres and I liked the movie a lot. I was confused as all hell, especially considering I showed up a bit late, but I appreciated where Kelly was trying to go with everything. As a lot of people have mentioned, the movie was a glorious mess. Well, at least the first time around.
I then Netflix'd the movie and have been watching it over and over for about a week now.
The second time, I threw it on to go to sleep, so I only got about half way through. The strange thing was, I began to dream about the movie that night. Weird stuff. I woke up and felt the need to watch it again. Which I did.
The third time around, I paid close attention to things, picking up subtle hints and noticing themes. I started becoming super interested in the knowing what happened BEFORE the movie started. So I went out and bought the prequel saga.
The prequel stories are fascinating and shed sooooo much light on the movie's characters and stories. All the things that I noticed people complaining about in these IMDb boards (loose plot, too many characters, not enough backstory, blah blah blah) were mostly all answered in the first three chapters. And it's amazing stuff.
Kelly created this parallel universe chalk full of inventive science, religious and political mayhem, drugs, and people that if you map it all out and think about it hard enough make complete sense, according to that world. All these things that apparently "make no sense at all" in fact make a lot of sense. You just have to do the work and think about it.
So then I watched it a fourth time, after reading the prequel saga, and I was like "Ooooohhhh, I see now. Right on!" Then I watched it again today, just for the hell of it (actually, I started watching it to get the melody of the opening sequence song, which I'm trying hard to track down) and I'm still pulling out new things from it. There's just so much in there that it still draws me to it.
Now, people will always complain "Why do we have to do all the work in figuring out a movie?" and that is a valid point, but isn't so much fun when a mere movie has the intention to turn you into a detective, a literary scholar, a scientist, and a philosopher just so you can figure it all out (ie. make you actually think about and investigate further into what you just saw)? I think so. And for me, at least, that's what this movie does.
Watch it once and be like "What the hell?". Watch it twice and be like "Ok, but...". Watch it a third time and be like "Hmmm...I think this means this." Then read the prequel saga and watch it at least two more time and be like "Aha!" That's my take on it all.
Peace!
Monsters (1988)
Man, I used to watch some crazy stuff when i was 8.
I used to love this show, even at the age of 8. I remember staying up late to catch it, I think on Saturday nights. I'll never forget the opening: a bird's eye view of a seemingly normal town, which continues down through the neighborhood, eventually ending up inside one of the homes in which all the family members are gathering around to watch some TV, then the camera reveals that they're all monsters. I believe the father was, like, a cyclops and he was eating something like little critters out of a popcorn bowl. The theme music used to bug me out.
The one stand out episode that I still remember was the one where the guy had a bed that he would feed his dates to. At the end, one of his dates feeds him to her refrigerator. I may be wrong about he details on that one, but I'm pretty sure that's how insane it was.
This show, in the end, was a campier Twilight Zone, but it definitely pulled it off. I'd probably still dig this if it were shown today.
Slaughter High (1986)
Freaked me out when I was a wee tyke
Wow, praise IMDb and Google, for I have been trying to remember the name of this f'ing awesome movie for over 15 years now. Slaughter High, man! Hells yeah!
I'm not going to bore you with a plot summary, and actors, and yadda yadda yadda, 'cause you all know what's up. That's why you're here anyway. What I will do, however, is explain the fond memory I have of this quintessential 80's D-Movie slasher joint.
In 1987, when I was around the age of 7, my father used to rent all these horror movies. Would he care that his kids were watching them with him? No. So, at that young age i saw Slaughter High. What I saw in that movie stuck with me big time. I haven't seen it since, but I remember to this day most of the ridiculous kills in the movie. For example, the post-sex scene (why is there a metal bed in a school?) gets electrocuted. Or, the guy being drowned in a cess pool. Come on! My personal favorite, though...the exploding stomach from the tainted beer. Amazing! How can you honestly hate on a movie where one of the characters finds a beer in an abandoned school, like, 10 or 15 years later and thinks it would be a good idea to drink it? Then his stomach explodes? What!? And that great line: Let's take my car...it always starts. Classic crap all the way.
I mean, I look back now, almost 20 years later, and laugh at it. But when I was 7, I was scared sh!tless. That jester hat (or was it a mask?) that the killer rocks throughout freaked me the f*ck out!
All in all, yes, a crappy movie. But for nostalgia purposes and for humor factor this movie gets a 9 out of 10 from me. Either stay up every night real late and hope to catch this on same Late Late Late Movie show, or hunt down a VHS copy and dust off your VCR.