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joelbooska
Reviews
Mercy (2016)
It's not rocket science
This is middle of the road for me. I did not think it was an exceptional thriller by any means but the story made sense in the end. ***SPOILERS****
Basically, the sons are from 2 different dads. The current dad is a hard butted shady dad, the previous dad was a wife beating jerk. 4 sons, 2 sons per whack job dad from the current timeline/past abusiveness hubby.
The mother is suffering so the church spokesman/doctor comes to drop off a mysterious kit to "aid", "painlessly kill", the mother? We do not know..yet.
Meanwhile, the brothers argue and all of a sudden, a home invasion. After about 1/4 of the movie finishes, the events are all recounted with a sloppy explanation as to what "really" went down.
What went down was...the mother's old church group exacted vengeance in the form of baiting the brothers to give the mother the "kit"..what is the kit? Still don't know...yet. This is where the writing becomes super sloppy. Why all the hoo ha? Why not just take a bro hostage if instead of killing an entire family? Or, do the kit on the mother yourselves...or...wait for the family to leave, or...this is a big one, make your move BEFORE the family gets together. Frustrating story.
We see a quick scene of conspiring via a cell phone with the church doctor. "Meet me at sundown". Hmm...that's a little hammy.
Let me finish this up.
The church completely guts the household just so one last remaining brother gives the mother the "kit" remedy?
Yes, it is a remedy. It seems this entire time, the reluctance to give the mother the kit offered by the church DR. was because the family wanted her to die to get the inheritance.
OK, so it wasn't pain meds, the mother wasn't some sort of Christian Scientist that was against the use of drugs, that wasn't the reason they might have honored her wishes. The mystery is solved...she would have LOVED to get some pain meds or, as we find out in the last moments, an experimental cure.
But the family wasn't having it. It was payday. Everyone was dirty including the father who, very early on in the film, resented the offering of the kit by the church doctor.
The church gets revenge against the mother's abusive husband years earlier by staging an accidental death and then years later, wipes out the whole fam in hopes someone will feed her the drug to make her all better..and..to rid the mom of vulture like family, just waiting for her money.
OK. Fine. Whatever. I got it. I think?
Who cares? The more I think about this story by actually writing it out, the lower my rating goes and now, at the end of this final paragraph, this film goes from the middle of the road to the bottom of the stack for me. Whoops! I shouldn't have tried so hard to think about it!
The Ghastly Love of Johnny X (2012)
Atmospheric Sci Fi Comedy Supreme
I've read many reviews and their reasoning as to why The Ghastly Love of Johnny X is a bad movie. First of all, I have to ask, at what point does this film try and take itself seriously, and if and when it does, what is the motivation behind it? This question should be asked and answered before a dismissive judgment be made on this film. I feel as if I need to defend this film because I see what can only be described to my eyes as "sheep mentality" in regards to this film. The bottom line is that this movie works on what it set out to do. As far as I am concerned, this film wanted to look good (check). This film wanted to be an atmospheric and campy Comedy Sci-Fi Musical(check, and this film wanted to tell a morality tale without getting too heavy handed (CHECK!) In the process, if one decides they can not relax enough to sit back and make an honest effort to stop picking things apart and to truly just let the movie transport you to the world it has set out to create (successfully), then it is simply not a movie for the spectator. And not every thing is for every body. Fair enough. No need to take a sprinkle on the experience, just move on. Maybe I am blind, but I cannot see anything that would be considered offensive here. Quite the opposite, actually. But to condemn this film for "trying to be this film, or that film", is just dumb. At no point did I find myself wanting to throw rice at the screen or sing along. I simply enjoyed a lighthearted musical Sci-Fi that not only entertained me and put me into a mood that 99% of modern films never can, but also saw a film that had enough balls to agitate the gravel enough to keep the viewing experience from being Disney without crossing the line into Argento or Corman.
Thank you, film makers! Thank you for using a beautiful collection of lenses to capture this great film, thank you for using a deep, nicely contrasted black and white look and thank you for taking it on the chin when you took this project out into this ungrateful climate of supposed film lovers. It didn't aim to be Gone With The Wind, so WHY does it have to be Gone With The Wind? It didn't aim to be The Rocky Horror Picture Show, so why is it being compared to The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
Now that's what I call "REAR PROJECTION"!
"The Ghastly Love of Johnny X" IS a modern day Classic and like many Classics, it will take time for most people to "get it".
It's not the best movie ever made, not by a long shot. It simply is a great movie that does what it says. The title is not misleading. It is a simple, goofy, beautifully shot, corny, campy sci fi musical morality tale action picture that is meditative at the same time it takes getting there.
Dreamscape (1984)
Definitely cut out the boobies on the DVD
the scene where the husband walks into the red lensed bedroom and finds his wife horse riding his bro got massacred for the DVD, unfortunately. i remember this scene explicitly. you can't mess with a 10 year old's sexual fantasy or recollection.
the DVD , for whatever technical or political reason, does not bare the original beta and VHS American versions released in the eighties clear vision of a "totally pg-13" movie.
the F word, boobies and heart ripping out of chest and severed snake heads and nuclear holocaust. man, today pg-13 is so mild, it's ridiculous.
two words: kelly le friggin' brock in "woman in red".
genital nudity. never seen again by these eyes in a pg-13.
crazy eighties. what brass one's they had!