Battlefield Baseball

   Or known in some other, more obscure, circles as 'The Mask is a Dick', well, probably not but it seemed appropriate. It'll be hard to put joking aside while trying to write this review, because that is exactly what this movie was, a (really effing funny) joke. An hour and a half trip on the Asian train to goofy town will make some people go nuts quick style, but this guy had a great time!

  I thought going into this that it may just be another rip-off of Shaolin Soccer, but I was far from the truth. this film makes what some may consider the absurd scenes in Shaolin Soccer seem tame in comparison. There's a complete lack of effort to make this anything resembling a traditional film: musical numbers thrown in with ultra goofy and gratuitous gore, people dying only to be brought back to life over and over again and a bizarre setting in which everything important in the script seems to happen in precisely ten minute increments are just the tip of this nut job of a scripts iceberg.

   There's really not a lot I can say about the content of this film that will sound sane on any level, but I can however, strongly promote the watching of it. It is rioutous, unpredictable, assinine and classic all at the same time. If you can deal with the pure lunacy that can be asian culture at times, I suggest you get yourself a copy of this, watch it, and try to avoid foamy or carbonated beverages while doing so.


7/10 detached retinas

Hells Ground

   I thought this was a freakin' zombie movie! Even though the trailer I watched for this was a good five minutes long, the story was barely less of a mystery to me upon watching this then it was before watching the trailer. But I'm not complaining, despite my being misled into thinking this movie was about the undead, it still entertained me to no end!

  Pakistan, yeah you heard me right,Pakistan is the country responsible for this....this....well I'm not very sure what "this" is, but it's awesome! I guess it's sort of a ripoff of a lot of things, but it isn't annoying because of the culture gap between the makers of this film and most of the films one could say it 'ripped off'. The story feature five young adult-ish Pakistanis on an adventure to go see "the hottest band in Pakistan", on route the get predictably lost and briefly run into some zombie plague victims (the reason I rightfully thought this was a zombie film) but they escape the fiends and continue on their confusing journey. All while speaking English half the time while the other half is subtitled, don't ask me why or how, but it worked. They then get into the meat (no pun intended) of the story after getting more lost. They meet the killer and his lovely family upon stopping to ask for directions...... Like I said, it's sort of a ripoff, It's just the antics, cultural differences and similarities, that make this so watchable. The killer ^^^that guy on the poster^^^ or burqaman (fantastic name b.t.w.) is freaking AWESOME! Apparently he is the product of a widowed mother who decided at some point that he was her daughter and not her son. So at an early age, he was made to dress like a female, and thus a killer was born. Old news, I know, that is how most killers are born you're saying right now......I'm aware of that fact, but it's still awesome so shut up. Also there is a good eco-conscious not so subliminal message around the reason for the zombie outbreak, showing extended scenes of the garbage devastated water supplies in the region and the filthy conditions most in that area are subjected to living in (a truly sad and disturbing note within a tongue in cheek film)

  Apart from the entertainingly and badly acted story, there is still sooooo much good stuff in this movie. The gore is amazing B-rate stuff, grisly, messy, butcher store stuff. When you're killing people with what looks like 45 lbs of morningstar, it's gonna have some splatter effect. The zombies, are classic Romero -esque stuff, but still fun, and their horde even includes a dwarf which is a great addition to any zombie scene/film if you ask this guy. All around grade A... B grade, to say the least.

 Get culturized, if for no other reason than watching your first Pakistani film. And why NOT this one? My guess is ninety percent of the rest of the movies from there aren't even half as entertaining as this one!


8/10 detached retinas

Inside

   This film made me feel like a 13 year old version of myself, watching a horror movie for the first time. Not to say I was scared, just exhilarated, blown away and almost overwhelmed. This movie was non-stop sensory punishment, in all of the the most successful and asked for ways. Any mothers to be or aspiring to be, my suggestion is that you wait 'til your baby is safely outside of your body to watch this one, otherwise you will not be sleeping for the rest of your term, and we don't want that.

   France..... I don't know what's in the water over there, but they keep killing it over and over and over again, every time I think they have maxed out the potential of the horror genre, they come back with something so above and beyond what I thought possible and completely reprogram the parameters of the genre. Inside is no different, taking what should be a simple and straightforward concept and warping it into something the devil himself would have a hard time stomaching. That's what they (the French) do, when they aren't completely owning original story lines, they take the tired elements from classic horror fare and breathe some sort of cursed and most certainly godforsaken life back into them, and when you get results like this....I am anything but complaining.

   Every character is played to perfection, although apart from the killer no one else really had to do much but get killed, scream, whimper, gurgle and cry. But Beatrice Dalle, the killer, was captivating and disgusting all at once, creating a very intimate nightmare with her psychopathic bedside manner and her oddly maniacal beauty.

   The gore in this film was masterful, and even that is a sad understatement. It's rare that movies that take themselves this seriously throw the sheer volume of gore that this one did at the viewers. But then again, this is not most movies, and I praise every ounce of un-apologized for blood and severed flesh that covered nearly every cubic inch of this set.

   I would love to try and get everyone and their mother to watch this film, but the fact is it is far too intense for the greater portion of society and 99.7 percent of mothers (<true fact I Googled it), but if you do decide to brave it I commend you, for this is a brilliant film!


10/10 detached retinas

Scarce

   I've got to give it to these guys, they take their craft seriously (to the point of seriously injuring themselves), and maybe with time they could be significant contributors to the horror genre. But for now they're a ways off from getting it completely dialed.

   For the first part of this movie I was fairly certain I was gonna hate this film, it screamed "RIPOFF!" from the get go. But as it progressed and I witnessed the physical torture the makers/actors endured in real life (extended and plentiful scenes of them running through the snow and freezing creek beds barefoot and in their skivies) to get this film made I started to come around by way of their commitment. The story is, like I earlier said, a ripoff of any number of cannibal films set in the rural United States, complete with a group of city boys given purposefully bad directions in an effort to get them to an area in which they will be dispatched by said cannibals. Nothing noteworthy there, but I will say that the acting and camaraderie between the group of friends was pretty entertaining, they did a good job of recreating the banter and conversation that most dudes in their age bracket partake in.

  The gore and violence in this film was decent stuff, it got the point across and even induced a shout or two out of me at points mostly via a great shotgun chestsplosion and a few other nicely executed bits of carnage.

  I wouldn't go out of my way to see this one, but if you're wanting to get the jump on viewing the early work of some possibly future big time players in the horror genre, by all means check it out.

6/10 detached retinas
 

Stag Night

   Boooooorrrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnngggggg. this word was ringing in my head the whole time I was watching this movie. If only I had been in the room when they pitched this to the studio, I'm sure it would have sounded a lot like this:
creators:"Ok, so we have this great idea. So, you know how good The Hills Have Eyes remake did, right?"
studio:"yea"
creators:"Well, we're thinking of stealing that story, changing the setting to a New York subway system, and making it all happen to a bunch of guys at a bachelor party instead of a family, what'dya think?"
studio:"sounds stupid."

   Now, at this point I think that they probably had to go with their ace card because there aren't a whole lot of redeeming points to their "script", and they were quickly losing steam.

creators:"Well, what if we told you that the villains butcher the people they kill and feed em to dogs?"
studio:"...still stupid"
creators:"....and look like Rob Zombie circa 1999?"
studio:"Oh shit.... that might work, he looked f**kin' scary back then!"

  And with that another piece of boring, plagiarised, American cinema dung rolled out of studios and into living rooms and a select amount of theaters nationwide.

3.5/10 detached retinas

Feed

  Gross, that's what this movie was, but in all the right ways. Focusing on humanities depraved sense of sexuality. Bringing to light how the powers that seek to control and censor are usually just as depraved as the ones they seek to stifle. Not quite so in this particular case, but not a far stretch.

  I was enormously impressed with some of the acting in this movie, most of all by the villain who lines consisted of some of the best soundbites I've heard in a long while. While not everything was acting gold, the way the movie plays out makes up for it, and the general bizarreness of the films concept really keeps any acting issues out of the viewers focus.

  This movie was a little hectic in the way it was shot, alot of scenes were cut and pasted together in a semi confusing fashion that, until the end of the film, made it slightly hard to follow, but the end cleared most of the random flashbacks up well. Overall the movie looked good, as good as a movie featuring mostly naked 600 plus pound women can anyways.

  This movie may feel to most like it was created for one reason, to gross the audience out, and it will, there is some really raunchy vomit and piss-stained material in this film. But all of that is just the package that the creators social commentary is wrapped in. I'm not going to tell you what I got out of it, I'm going to leave that for those of you who watch this one to decide. I just think, for a shock based film, this one had a deeper message than most of its counterparts.

  This one needs a bit of a warning prior to recommending, I'd love to tell everyone that they have to see this film, but I have a feeling that a few of you upon watching it may take your disgust out on me at a later date. So, all that being said, I recommend this movie to everyone that thinks they've got the meddle or are at least trying to prove they've got it. Bon appetit


7.5/10 detached retinas