UNDER THE RAINBOW (1981)

 Here's a movie I'm sorta mixed about. I love midgets. I hate Chevy Chase. See my dilemma? This movie is packed full of midgets, dwarfs and assorted little people of all types up to no good shenanigans. The plot is pretty silly. It's supposed to take place during the shooting of THE WIZARD OF OZ and there's assassins and secret-agents and even a nazi-midget. All of the little people that played the munchkins are drinking and partying throughout most of the movie. Tons of ridiculously offensive stereotypical scenes follow with midgets hanging off chandeliers falling drunkenly down steps and every Japanese person in the movie getting inadvertently killed. Overall it's a good brainless watch as long as you don't let Chevy Chase bring you down. Oh yeah and Princess Leia is the leading actress looking as good in her undies as she did in that gold bikini.

S. DARKO (2009)

                                                                "Are you a gay?"

Wow, so if you take the movie DONNIE DARKO and get rid of the amazing soundtrack and add in a bunch of horrible actors with terribly written cliche-riddled dialogue this is what you get. Some of the characters from the 1st movie seem to be mimicked here but very poorly. There's the religious pervy guy and a guy who kinda looks like Donnie. I will say that the cinematography looked very good and that's about the only positive thing I can think to say. And just for the record I am a fan of DONNIE DARKO. I feel like that movie had the right combination of music, visuals and a deep engaging story of time-travel and general darkness plus some talented and believable acting going on. This time they got the visuals right and that's about it. Seems like something that coulda went straight to the Sci-Fi Channel.

MARTYRS (2008)

I heard a lot about this movie, both good and bad, before finally seeing it. I was somehow able to avoid all the spoilers out there and I'm glad I did. MARTYRS is a great and memorable horror movie. Seeing it without knowing too much about it is the way to go. I can see where the "endurance test" nature of the film will be too much for many people. Reading some of the negative reviews I see that people who can't take the grueling nature of certain scenes turn into the biggest nit-picky assholes there are. I've read reviews where the movie is called boring and grotesquely offensive at the same time. I'm not sure how someone can be disgusted and bored all at once but if someone can't relate to this film on a deeper level than that I have no desire to think like them. This film works on a deeper level than the torture-porn films like SAW & HOSTEL that it's being compared to. Most of the reviews I have read just list the story components. For such a multi-level constructed film that seems like the lamest way to review it possible. So far it's my fav out of all the nuevo-French movies that started off with HAUTE TENSION. I'm not sure it can be topped by them but I'll be looking forward to other new French horror stuff. This director is supposed to be doing the HELLRAISER remake. That might actually be something worthwhile unlike every other remake of the last 10 to 15 years.