Cavalcade of Awesome

Steph was away last week. So I did what I always do when left to my own devices…take the opportunity to catch up on awesomely bad movies that Steph would never watch.  Check out a previous man-a-thon article here.

So, here’s what I watched this past week.  I made good use of Netflix Streaming as well as some freebie Redbox codes.

Piranha (2010) – I talked about this movie in my very first On the Shelves over on Strange Kid’s Club.  I finally got to watch it.  And it’s good.  Surprisingly so.  I’m not a huge fan of the McQueen kid in the lead, but Elizabeth Shue (she’s still hot) is great as is Jerry O’Connell who is chewing up scenery like crazy.  I love they got Dreyfuss in a cameo reprising his role from Jaws.  Just a fun little horror flick.  Lots and lots of mayhem and gore.  I look forward to the sequel.  I’m a little pissed they gave away the final scare in the trailer, though.

Ip Man (2008) – I’ve been wanting to see this for years.  It hit Netflix streaming last year and I finally got a chance to watch it this week.  And it is AWESOME.  This movie contains a f**king avalanche of awesome ass kickings.  Donnie Yen is a BAD.  ASS.  I’m now going to have to revisit some of Yen’s previous movies like Iron Monkey, Once Upon a Time in China 2, Blade II (which he was only in for like 10 seconds), etc.  Yen has Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen coming up and there was a trailer for it on the DVD.  It looks AWESOME.

Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster (2010) – So after bathing in the awesomeness that is Ip Man, I rushed right out to Redbox and got Ip Man 2. However, it was a tad hard to find. I stopped by like 3 different Redboxes before I could find one that had it.  But it was worth it.  While not as good as the first one, this one is still pretty bad ass.  Yen is back and this time he brings Sammo muthaf**king Hung with him.  They both have a great fight scene at one point.  This movie has less of a story than the first, it’s mostly fight setup-fight-fight setup-fight.  Plus, there are only like 2 American characters in this movie and, of course, they are both insufferable douchebags.  But it’s a lot of fun and a worthy followup to the original.

Jaws The Revenge (1987) – I had never seen this movie all the way through.  I was listening to Now Playing’s Jaws retrospective podcast and it got me wanting to watch this movie from beginning to end.  So I did.  And it’s terrible.  The acting, the story, the special effects.  Pretty much across the board this movie is awful.  Mario Van Peebles is in it and he speaks with a Jamaican accent.  It’s that bad.  And yes, it’s true, the shark has a vendetta against the Brody family so it follows them from Amity Island all the way down to the Bahamas.  But it’s not made clear what the vendetta is. Is he pissed about the other sharks the Brodys killed?  How’d he find out?  What about everyone else that has ever killed a shark…EVER?  They just get a pass?  It’s just really, really dumb.

Under the Mountain (2009) – This movie was recommended to me by Netflix streaming.  I love Sam Neill and sorcery/alien pics, so I took a shot.  It’s not bad.  It’s a little more low key and B-movie than I was expecting but I enjoyed it.  Sam Neill is great as usual and the two kids that play the twins were fun.  Well, the girl was fun, the guy was kind of irritating.  The effects were low key but done very well.  It wasn’t bad.  Essentially the two red headed twins are somehow the descendants of these alien beings that came to Earth to defend it from attack many many years ago.  The threat has reawakened and the twins must accept their heritage and use their hidden magical powers to defeat the parasitic alien attackers.

Cobra (1986) – I’d never seen this movie and it was on Netflix streaming, so I said, why the hell not? It’s sort of Sylvester Stallone’s The Punisher. And it is absurdly ridiculous and awesome.  Gloriously so.  Cheesy one-liners, crazy characters, bizarre musical montages featuring robots. I don’t know what else to say but YES. It’s miles better than the Dolph Lungren Punisher movie.  I mean, with lines like “Hey dirtbag, you’re a lousy shot.  I don’t like lousy shots” you can’t go wrong.  Plus the opening scene was in a supermarket and I was having a blast looking at all the mid-80s products and logos I remember.  I even spotted a bag of O’Gradys Au-Gratin chips!

Machete (2010) – I thought this movie looked awesome, but, unfortunately, it’s only disappointing.  It feels like they are trying too hard to make it awesome.  Like everyone is in on the joke and they are winking at you.  So many good people in this.  I love they had Seagal as the villain, but he’s only in it for like 10 minutes.  Same with Don Johnson.  Another problem I have is that I’m not sold on Danny Trejo as a leading man or action star.  He’s great as a character actor, but he just didn’t pull this one off.  I loved him in Con-Air as the rapist and he owned the assassin character in Desperado.  But he can’t carry a movie.  I’m probably alone in that assessment, but that’s just how I feel.  Lots of hotties in this movie too.  *shrugs*  But by the end, I just didn’t really care.

The IT Crowd: Season 4 (2010) – I’ve watched all four seasons of this on Netflix streaming. It’s such a great show. It really is.  This fourth season actually had 12 episodes which is unusual because usually these British shows only have 6 episodes in a season.  I love everything about this show, it’s like the British Big Bang Theory.  Clever writing, funny characters, bizarre dry, British humor.  Just a great, great show.

This entry was posted on May 2, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under monsters, movies, reviews with tags monsters, Movie Manathon, movies, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.