Sunday 19 May
OKG Newsletter
Rod Lott
Zombie A-Hole
Yawn of the dead.
Horror
Rod Lott
Even if it sported a bland title, I still would've wanted to see Zombie A-Hole, for the simple fact that it's writer/director/producer/editor/animator/etc. Dustin Mills' follow-up to 2010's The Puppet Monster Massacre, one of the more fun films the cult world has yet to embrace, because not enough of its residents have seen it. That's my theory, anyway.
Ten Thousand More Ways to Die: Spaghetti Western Collection
Saddle up ... for, oh, about 18 hours.
Apartment 143 [Emergo]
This is why landlords require deposits.
Horror
Rod Lott
Cross Paranormal Activity with an "ALL BILLS PAID!" banner, and you have Apartment 143 [Emergo]. That's not to suggest the film is, er, low-rent.
Piranha 3DD
Wetter be good to me.
Horror
Rod Lott
As the junky, jokey follow-up to 2010's Piranha 3D (a remake of the Roger Corman drive-in classic of 1978), Piranha 3DD takes place a year after the prehistoric killer fish laid waste to a popular lake during spring break.
The Lucky One
Generates no Sparks.
Drama
Rod Lott
Life can change in the blink of an eye, according to the opening minute of the turgid romance The Lucky One. It's the kind of empty observation that has become such a cliché, it no longer holds weight. But somehow, against God and every force of nature, grotesquely arrogant novelist Nicholas Sparks has built a lucrative career stringing such things together.
Area 407
The found-footage film travels to Jurassic Park.
Full Metal Jacket: 25th Anniversary Blu-ray Book
More than just the movie that made ‘me so horny’ a household phrase.
Drama
Rod Lott
When Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam film, Full Metal Jacket, hit theaters in the summer of 1987, I was all of 16 years old. Even I could tell it was far better than Oliver Stone’s Platoon, which by then had won four Academy Awards; by comparison, Jacket would be nominated for one, Best Adapted Screenplay, and lose it to The Last Emperor.
The Heineken Kidnapping
'Heineken? F**k that s**t! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!'
Thriller
Rod Lott
Beer brewing can be a risky business. Consider Alfred Heineken: In 1983, the CEO of the Dutch corporation that bears his name was kidnapped and held for a sizable ransom, all of which is dramatized in the near-epic film The Heineken Kidnapping. It's more engrossing than its generic title lets on.
Shark Week
It bites. Hard.
Thriller
Rod Lott
What do you get when a prosecutor, a police officer, a journalist, an accountant, a judge, a bodyguard, a paramedic and one unemployed junkie skank are drugged, shackled and forced to play a game of survival involving man-eating sharks? The Asylum Home Entertainment's Shark Week, not to be confused with the Discovery Channel programming people look forward to.
Dexter: The Sixth Season
Six years down ... and still killer.
Television series
Rod Lott
Sins and sons — those are the driving themes for the sixth season of Dexter, arguably the anchor of the Showtime cable network. Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall in his Golden Globe-winning role) is a Miami Metro PD forensics analyst who moonlights as a serial killer of serial killers.
Mickey and Me
The 'Manhattan' and 'Annie Hall' heyday of Woody Allen is channeled in Mickey Reece’s Norman-set story of hilarious heartbreak.
The Viral Factor
Warning: This Asian actioner can be infectious.
Action
Rod Lott
Directed by Dante Lam (The Stool Pigeon), the action-thriller The Viral Factor revolves around the world’s last two surviving samples of the smallpox virus, one of which is an arm’s length away from being used to develop a biological weapon to unleash of five of the world’s seven continents.
The Chapman Report
The women of 'The Chapman Report' are as uncomfortable talking about sex as they are having it.
Drama
Rod Lott
Judging by the 1962 portrayed by The Chapman Report, everybody smoked cigarettes, LPs of poetry readings were a hot commodity, and the female orgasm had yet to be invented. While this film from legendary old-Hollywood director George Cukor (My Fair Lady) was determined to be earnest and serious in its time, it's quite a hoot today.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
The truth hurts.
Documentary
Rod Lott
I can't believe — just. cannot. believe. — that Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory lost the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature this past spring. And to a football movie, no less! It's another case of the jocks running ragged over the outcasts, except these outcasts were able to effect something few docs achieve: change.
