XIPHOS AND EVIL DEAD

I saw this on Sunday 7 April and here are my thoughts. This will be quick since everybody and probably their mothers know about the Evil Dead franchise so no back story mumbo jumbo from me.

XIPHOS FINDS SOME FOUND FOOTAGE FILMS

Apparently I’ve also found a love for alliteration which is just one thin hair above the lowest form of primate communication, the high five. Saturday, due to some patchy weather, I went to the movies and since we are coming up on Halloween I decided to go see Sinister and Paranormal Activity 4 because both use the same conceit, the found footage angle and I wanted to see which flick was better able to use that lame story telling device. I am happy to report that one movie used the found footage angle very well probably the best use in a film I have seen to date. The other movie was a Paranormal Activity movie so……

SAVAGES

I am not a fan of the works of Oliver Stone. I think he is an untalented and thus highly rewarded and tongue bathed Hollywood hack of a director and worse he is a supreme asswipe of a human being. He’s a junkie anti-semite conspritarded half-wit dumbfuck. I am however a fan of the works of Don Winslow who wrote the book and allegedly worked with the junkie on the script. For a Don Winslow book, Savages is a pretty straightforward affair and easy enough for even a simpleton like Stone to adapt and yet that moron utterly failed in that and missed some of the most important ideas of the book.

XIPHOS AND THE MOST VAUNTED OF ALL MINI REVIEWS #6

   

I had a couple of days “off” on the 24th and 25th so I decided to watch a few movies. All of these have been covered here before and have been out for awhile but I figured what the hell, why not beat a dead horse some more. These three flicks, X-Men: First Class, Bad Teacher and Conan were all summer releases and even taking that factor into account none of them are all that good. It’s sad how lame movies have become especially summer ones. When I was a kid, we got summer movies like Raiders, Star Wars, Empire, Jaws, Breaking Away and dozens of other big and small movies that were well made and more importantly, fun to watch. Now we get these three dogs or crap like Transformers and dozens of others none of which are all that good or very interesting. Anyway, here are some reviews for your perusal during the slow week between Christmas and New Years.

XIPHOS TAKES ON CULTS IN MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

XIPHOS vs THE BOOK TO MOVIE ADAPTATION #1

There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

Opening narration from The Right Stuff

XIPHOS AND THE QUICK AND DIRTY HIT #6 VISION QUEST

My apologies to Conti. I said I was going to review Hooper as the next installment in this series until Jarv made reference to Mathew Modine in his Married To The Mob review and the light bulb went off. This movie is stretching the new direction of this series since I was about 16 when Vision Quest hit and that’s really on the far side of being a movie that would have a lot of impact on my fragile eggshell mind. The thing is though, I was a high school wrestler and this movie came out during wrestling season and was a big hit with the team and with anybody I have met that wrestled. Also I had read the book the movie was based on twice before, once in 1980 then again just before the start of the wrestling season in 1983ish, so I think by combining both movie and book it just barely meets the criteria for this series. The book is an excellent coming of age story that Catcher In the Rye wished it was. FYI, I will be referring to the book some while reviewing the movie so this is really a twofer review. This combined approach gave me an idea for another series: good movie adaptations of books. There are some believe it or not. I will have to investigate that idea further.

XIPHOS AND the QUICK AND DIRTY HIT #5: THE FLAMINGO KID

Pardon me for hijacking my own series here but for the next bunch of these Quick and Dirty Hits I’m doing I will be reviewing movies that were important in forming the unfocused mind of a young Xiphos. I won’t be doing this in any way approaching any sort of order, just how they occur to me. For instance we are starting with the overlooked and almost forgotten underrated classic coming of age tale from 1984, The Flamingo Kid starring Matt Dillon The next installment, I think, is going to be the Burt Reynolds/Hal Needham stuntman movie from 1978, Hooper. See different genre, different decades.

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES: ROGER EBERT IS A JAWLESS FUCK WHO SHOULD OFF HIMSELF ALONG WITH EVERY OTHER PUSSY REVIEWER THAT HAS A POLITICAL AX TO GRIND BECAUSE THEY ARE LOSERS AND COWARDS AND NEVER AMOUNTED TO ANYTHING IN LIFE AND KNOW IT.

Before I begin let me take a moment to thank the Air Force at Pope Airfield at Ft. Bragg for arranging a screening of this for us since we were stuck at the airport with a minimal combat load. Our rucks held no civies or service uniforms so we couldn’t go anywhere. Also thank you for the nice dinner.

This really isn’t a review so much as massive brutal rebuttal to all the horseshit flying around about this movie and it is being done entirely stream of consciousness on my part. I am only correcting spelling and not all that much. Grammar is going out the window and I am probably going to jump around a lot of subjects as the occur too me. Also Barfy has not edited this since I think it should just be from me to the OpenOffice software I use to the readers so please don’t think she had anything to do with this rambling mess it’s all on me. If you want a good even hand non bombastic check out Bart’s review at his site, here’s the link. http://popcultureninja.com/2011/03/11/battle-los-angeles-movie-review/

XIPHOS VS THE BEST MOVIE NOMINATIONS OF 2010

Or as I am subtitling this hit piece “Why I like movies less each year”. I like the title I’m using but I haven’t actually seen all the movies up for the best picture nomination so don’t expect to see anything about The King’s Speech, Toy Story 3, 127 Hours or The Kids Are All Right.