Is there anybody out there? Is there anyone…at all?

Blame GTA IV for my absence…I don’t know what the rest of these jerks have been up to.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

phil: The Fight Club of the 70s.

will: As much as I love Malcolm McDowell’s acting I’ll never forgive his white jumpsuit. It’s burned into my eyes like Hitler is burned into his. I wish real life had milk bars.

paul: Most well-choreographed braining scene of Kubrick’s film career. And since the victim is a British oaf, you don’t feel sympathy!

scott: Darth Vader is in this movie, only this time around, he’s slightly less imposing. Or slightly more, depending on your attitude towards short shorts.

Alien (1979)

phil: Am I the only person who finds it weird that the androids in these movies bleed a semen-like fluid?

will: This movie rules. Also, if I could go back in time, I’m 99% sure I would have a son who is older than me and whose last name is Weaver. That’s my weird way of saying that Sigourney is ridiculously hot. Giant curly mullet and all.

paul: I don’t watch this movie for the alien, more for Sigorney Weaver’s paper-thin panties in the final bit. Hoorah!

scott: If you showed this movie to Sigmund Freud, his beard would burst into flame, and he’d spin around like a top, digging himself underground while making whooping noises.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

phil: The There Will Be Blood of the late 40s.

will: I heard that the treasure is actually just a crappy old baseball glove. Wait, that’s Casper starring Christiana Ricci.

paul: Bogey does his proto-Indiana Jones, except in this version, Indy is mad, MAD for gold! GOLD I TELLS YA!! *shoots old men*

scott: I bet if you found a treasure in current times, it would either be seized by the government under some stupid land law or would be taxed into oblivion. I yearn for the days when a pocket full of One Eyed Willy’s jewels was enough to save the family homestead and you could live happily ever after with a deformed retard.

Laberinto del fauno, El (2006)

phil: At last a fantasy movie for nerdy commies.

will: How is this ahead of the other movie about Labyrinths? I forget the name of it but I think it had David Bowie in it. You know, the one where Jennifer Connelly is in a labyrinth of some sort. What is that movie called? Argh, never mind. It’ll come to me.

paul: For a film based on so much ancient mythology, there isn’t nearly enough animal-fucking…

scott: La la la la what a sweet tale of childhoo–BOTTLE TO FACE!!! Horrifying, just horrifying.

The Shining (1980)

phil: Scatman Crothers = best Magic Negro of all time.

will: All Kubrick and no editing makes film a very dull time.

paul: The one Stephen King story that doesn’t have inherent, gratuitous scrotal shrinkage. Good thing Kubrick adds it in himself, so you don’t feel like you’re missing anything.

scott: I call this movie “My Plan for Retirement,” minus Shelley Duvall, because yikes.

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)

phil: I don’t ‘get’ foreign movies. People on IMDB are so pretentious!

will: There’s just something so magical about a movie winning an Oscar when its genre is known by most people as a place to see a giant tentacle rape a girl. Thanks, anime! See also: Drama, Comedy, Foreign, and Musical. Then again, I could be biased… maybe I should stop exclusively watching movies like “Million Dollar Tendril” and “Grease(d Octopus Leg)” so I have a bit more perspective on film in general.

paul: For a film based on so much ancient Japanese mythology, there isn’t nearly enough shit-demon fucking…

scott: I will choose to associate Japan with their awesome vending machines where used panties are just a few coins away rather than…wait, why did I choose that?

The Pianist (2002)

phil: Contrary to popular belief, Adrien Brody is NOT Jewish. Gosh, you people & your stereotypes!

will: You know what the name of this movie sounds like? Do you? Oh man, you totally do. I don’t even need to say it. Oh, I’m going to say it anyway! LABYRINTH!! THAT was the movie I was thinking of earlier. God, that feels good! What was I talking about again?

paul: Hint: whenever you see Adrien Brody playing the piano in this movie, think of Roman Polanski stroking his member. This film is a big metaphor for ego-masturbation. Oh, and the Nazis are the big, bad American lawmen who seek to bring his statutory-raping cock to justice.

scott: I tried to see this movie four times, but could never say the title without giggling like an immature twat. Which I do often.

Double Indemnity (1944)

phil: It’s a fact that all the essential film noir [co-]stars Edward G. Robinson.

will: The Penis. I was talking about The Penis. What is Double Indemnity, anyway?

paul: Fred MacMurray’s eyebrows in this film noir are like Jesus popping up during the Superbowl… It’s really just icing on the cake.

scott: Your double indemnity wasn’t enough to protect you from the Spoilerist! Wait, 1944? Oh, you’re all dead. Never mind.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

phil: There is no movie that is more annoyingly overquoted than this.

will: There was this kid who sat in front of me in one of my English classes who quoted this film at least once a day, directly to me, in a scratchy, noisy falsetto voice, for an entire school year. I almost hated British people forever for subjecting me to that torture via him. Then I got my head on straight and realized who I should actually hate: the terrorists.

paul: Finally, a movie shows that even the greatest legend in Western civilization is covered up in shit-strewn, diseased peasantry. But this one is more of a documentary on how to make an historical epic. For real Arthurian comedy, watch First Knight (1995).

scott: I can’t say anything about this movie that I didn’t already say in a slightly higher-pitched voice back when I was fifteen.

Forrest Gump (1994)

phil: I hear that this was loosely based on the memoirs of George W. Bush.

will: More like “Snorest Dump!” Get it? Because it’s boring and shit? Oh, never mind. TOM HANKS! (more like Bum Wanks, am I right?)

paul: Only a retard is successful in America. This movie IS historical fact.

scott: Clearly Forrest Gump was a high ranking member of the Illuminati with a very hands-on approach. Hopefully this post makes it to the Internet so the truth can be known.

WHOA HOLY FUCK GUYS! THIS GAME IS MASSIVE! FIRST OF ALL, IN ITS FIRST WEEK ALONE IT SOLD 12 MILLION COPIES WORLDWIDE! THAT IS MORE THAN CDS BOUGHT AND MOVIE TICKETS BOUGHT COMBINED! ALSO, IT STARS MASTER CHIEF WHO IS THE BIGGEST HERO OF ALL TIME! IF YOU HAVE A 30″ TV IT WILL BECOME A 40″ TV BECAUSE HE IS THAT WICKED HUGE! AND HE FIGHTS THE FLOOD WHO ARE A HUGE FORCE OF ENEMIES! PLUS IT IS IN THE FUTURE– MEANING THAT THE NUMBER THAT IS THE YEAR IS ALSO HUGE! PROBABLY HUGER THAN 2008, ANYWAY! Continue reading →

I love zombies. Not in the creepy Internet I-want-to-have-sex-with-zombies way, but in the way a man loves a fine cigar or the sound of his arch-enemy’s skull being crushed beneath a fresh tire.

I’ve watched most zombie movies, I’ve played zombie computer and video games, I’ve read zombie books and listened to the audiobook versions of the zombie books. (Consider this an invitation to our four readers to send me links to awesome zombie things I might not have seen or heard.) Continue reading →

The basic premise is this: a signal has been broadcasting from the television and over the phone lines, and the longer your exposure, the more erratic your behavior becomes. This sets the stage for a lot of very creative and very graphic violence. As the movie progresses, the characters get caught up in their various delusions to

the

For example, the…

…wait, was I supposed to bring a shovel to this party? I didn’t know it was a theme party…what’s the theme, is it shovels or gardening? But then why do you have a golf club? WHY DO YOU HAVE A GOLF CLUB?!?! SOMEONE TELL ME

SONMEIONE TELL ME WHGAY SHE HAS A GOL,DF CLUB

WHY IS THERE A CLUB

YOU’RE FNOT CLUGGING ME

NOT WITH THAT CLUB\

hahashahHHaHAHAHAHAHHAAHI RUN THIS

tuhis shit

i runs

it

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10

–sssssssssssssssscotttt

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Did you ever want to go to space? Maybe you dreamed about it when you were a child, wishing you were the next Roberta Bondar. Unfortunately you will never be able to be the next first woman in space because that makes no sense. However, you can play Mass Effect! Continue reading →

Hello Internet friends!

If you’re observant enough, you might have noticed that there are a bunch of new links at the top of the site. This is because the crew of the Spoilerist has decided that movies are not enough to sate our appetite to ruin things. We’re expanding. Growing ever fatter on the meat of pop culture. Pooping reviews.

Enjoy our spoor.

Hey all,

Just so you’re aware, the site isn’t dead exactly - it’s just in a critical sort of content-less coma. I have the makings of the latest IMDb Top 250 Slowly Destroyed segment sitting around in my email, but it’s a big pain in the butt to format, so I’ve been sitting on it for a while. Sitting on that pain in my butt.

Will the Spoilerist recover from its coma? Will it find that its wife has remarried its long-lost twin brother who is actually a woman magician?

FIND OUT NEXT TIME

No, I’m not dead. I just ran out of clever things to say about movies for a while, and also didn’t see any worth commenting on.

So here we go.

Mos Def works in a video store that is owned by Danny Glover, who is clearly too old for this shit. So old, in fact, that his store rents out nothing but VHS tapes in a time when VCRs are defunct technology, forgotten by the entire video rental industry.

Jack Black likes to hang out at this video store, to the detriment of Danny Glover’s character, because Jack Black plays a paranoid weirdo who lives in a van that sits in a junk yard next to a transformer station, and he bothers the customers. One day, Jack’s character decides he’s going to sabotage the station, but his plan backfires and he becomes magnetised. Remember what happens to VHS tapes when they’re around really powerful magnets? Well, that’s what happens to all of the tapes in Danny Glover’s
store.

Since Danny Glover’s business hinges on having VHS tapes with movies on them, and the building his business resides in is condemned, Jack Black and Mos Def scramble to find ways to cover up this horrible tragedy. Their first instinct to is recycle all of those tapes and remake all of the movies themselves with a VHS home video camera.

You’d think this might result in a lot of angry customers, but it turns out that the people in this community are all awesome and love every single “Sweded” remake. The store becomes an instant neighbourhood cultural phenomenon, and soon everyone is lining up around the block to rent no-budget remakes.

Eventually, the MPAA, represented by Sigourney Weaver, gets wind of this operation and behave like the assholes they are, destroying every single tape in the store. But since everyone in the neighbourhood is awesome, they all get together and make a whole new movie of their own about a local imaginary legend.

In short, this movie is hilarious and inspiring, and also an instruction manual for how to bring people together with low-budget film making.

I don’t know why any of the other reviews I’ve read about this movie have been particularly negative, or why two of the four other people that were there spent the $20 to get in and left ten minutes into it. I guess some people just have no imagination. I’ll admit there were some loose ends, but they don’t really detract from everything else that makes it good.

I give this movie 11.3/10

-illuminoid

Here! Read these! I’ll add links later or something to that end.

Amelie

phil: If I had my own miniature pig to turn off the bedside lamp for me, I would’ve taken far less crap from my mum for falling asleep with the light on.

paul: Good. *cough* (Sorry, I can’t think of anything smarmy to say about this one).

will: This movie is Type II Diabetes on 35mm film. And no, I don’t mean that in the “good” way. Why did you even think there was a “good” way to have diabetes? You’re awful.

cara:
It’s all so charming and French that you kind of forget that nothing really happens.

American History X

phil: I kind of wished that this movie was a retelling of American history by the Nation of Islam.

paul: Mental note: Never put your huge frikkin’ swastika tattoo where you can’t grow some nice concealin’ hair.

will: Ed Norton, Sinead O’Connor and Adolf Hitler buddy flick! Awesome!

cara:
I really expected this to be a biopic about Malcom X.

The Departed

phil: Suffers from ‘Oh no, we’ve got too many plot holes & loose ends & we don’t know how to end the movie so let’s kill off everybody!’

paul: Martin Sheen scores the coolest death scene in 2000 and 6. “AAAAAEEEIIGGH!!!” *SPLAT!*

will: Why this movie rules: take a bunch of celebrated actors, throw in Marky Mark, have Marky Mark show up celebrated actors with wicked Boston accent and total wickedawesomeness. Matt Damon, please retire.

cara:
Solidifies how much we hate Matt Damon and love Mark Whalberg.

Paths of Glory

phil: I’ve lost track of how many war movies are on this list.

paul: I find Kubrick tedious… Spartacus was better. Kirk Douglas’s chin distracts you from his manly loincloth.

will: I haven’t seen it, but I like the word “paths.” Good word to say out loud. “Paths.”

cara:
I haven’t seen it, but I’ll bet it’s edited with great prejudice.

M

phil: When I was younger, I thought that this movie was a James Bond prequel.

paul: The idea that Germans would gather together to kill a psychotic, compulsive murderer instead of following him? Scoff!

will: Nowhere near the quality of other Criterion releases like “Armageddon” or “The Rock.”

cara:
I pronounce it “Mmmm”

Chinatown

phil: Keep your nose out of other peoples’ business or Roman Polanski will cut you.

paul: Nicholson hides his post-surgery cyst wound behind a bandage. Production saved!

will: Never seen it. Fun fact: I actually hate movies. So I’ll take this opportunity to talk about Americna Gladiators. MAN AMERICAN GLADIATORS IS SO GOOD I LIKE TITAN AND WOLF THE BEST~!

cara:
I seriously can’t dislike anything Polanski’s ever done.

To Kill a Mockingbird

phil: To high school students who hate reading: ditch the Coles Notes & watch the movie instead. You’ll probably get the same mark anyway -> C+.

paul: Begins the legal film subgenre: Literate-honourable-flawless-white-man-defends-America.
will: I’m glad that this movie came out and solved all of those racism problems in America OH WAIT WAT IS JENA SIX PLZ SOUNDS LIEK A PORN STAR NAME.

cara:
Saved countess high school children from having to read required literature.

The Third Man

phil: 150 times better than ‘Citizen Kane.’

paul: Few people know that this was the last film where Welles appeared MOVING… All subsequent films were shot strictly above paunch-concealing dinner tables. Unicron will CONSUME you!

will: The movie least likely to win the NBA’s annual “Sixth Man” award.

cara:
Orson Welles’ persona is big enough to be the first three dudes plus the fourth, fifth and sixth men.

The Lives of Others

phil: I guess the late Ulrich Muhe was sick of bad things happening to him in Michael Haneke movies. Anyways, he’s pretty friendly for a bureaucrat.

paul: There is a little known fetish in Germany called audio-voyeurism, or “People who wear really big headphones while fucking”. This movie celebrates that fact.

will: Ich habe diesen Film nie gesehen.
Es tut mir leid. Ich liebe Kinder zu essen zu Mittag.

cara:
Is this about voyeurism?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

phil: I’m sure having a spotless mind involves shock treatment & possibly a lobotomy.

paul: Fun IMDB fact: Nicholas Cage was up for the lead in this film. Wow. I just vomited a bit.

will: Fact: I liked every single person attached to this film more before I saw it. Proof that a movie can in fact be LESS than the sum of its parts.

cara:
The cast and sweet old school special effects distract you from the fact that this film is boring.

50/250 

There’s something I found was lacking in all of the kid fantasy movies that have come out recently… Narnia, Terabitha, The Golden Compass, they all lacked one key element. Well, I have found that secret! They didn’t have any Nick Nolte! Whisper it with me now, children: “nicknolte“!

Yes, Nick Nolte is in this movie, and yes, he reprises his role as ogrish, child-eating monster from 48 Hours, Another 48 Hours, Mother Night, and The Peaceful Warrior.

Really, I can’t say too much that’s bad about this film; especially since it’s designed based on the work of one of my favourite fantasy artists, Tony Diterlizzi. His goblins are wicked (bad and good), and the story is well crafted, if not a tad formulaic. The pretty eyecandies made this forgivable though, and I quite enjoyed it when the film shows how more ogrish a kid’s family can seem relative to the freaky creatures just out-of-doors.

That kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is in it, and he is pretty brilliant, playing both halves of a set of twins. His acting and the sublime special effects actually fooled me a couple of times into thinking that the two brothers were played by different people. That, I think is the triumph of this film’s design. Kudos to the writers for keeping little story things like Jared’s anger issues, and the family’s collapse following parental separation, which are all pretty badass to show in what is basically a “family movie” (God, I swear my testicles shrivelled a little, just there). Oh, shit! I realized I’ve been talking about it for a while, but not giving away much of the plot. I’m an ass! Here goes…

The twins, Jared and Simon Grace, and their rapierist older sister Mallory, fight alot amongst themselves while their mom, recently separated from dad, moves them into a new town, new job, and new creepy old mansion surrounded by faerie creatures who all spit on and eat each other.

Jared, the most hated of the children, finds an old book written by his great-great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick. It seems ol’ great-grandypants was a monster scholar, which in this film’s universe seems to be the equivalent of butterfly-catching, replete with knee-high socks, bermuda shorts, and a nerdy satchel. Ol’ Uncle Spiderwick somehow found out all of the monsters’ behaviours and secrets and wrote them down in his book. Nevermind that he did what would take a thousand zoolooolologists a hundred years to do, the important thing is that he knows all their secrets! Apparently, knowing how the sylphs migrate means you have some absolute power over them. Go figure.

Anyway, Jared breaks the seal on the book, and a big magic whoosh disturbs all of the monsters in the area. (Oops, I forgot to mention that Arthur Spiderwick also learned magic spells as well as the entire supernatural world in a couple of decades). It seems that the goblins are feverish, and chomping at the bit to get the book, being poked from behind with a big ogrish bulge in the form of Mulgoroth the Slayer (NOLTE!).

Mulgoroth wants the book because it will tell him all of the secrets of the invisible monsters and let him kill ‘em. At first, Jared and co. are creeped out because the monsters can become invisible at will. But a helpful hobgoblin horks in their faces, and apparently hobgob gob makes you perceive the realm of magic. There are some chases as goblins and trolls harass the heroes.

Finally the kids have to make a stand at the creepy, old mansion, ala Home Alone. But this is better, because it doesn’t suck as much. Kids get bitten and chomped on by the hideously frog-like goblins, and there is lots of implied limb-severing as the family uses kitchen knives and sabers to keep the lil’ freaks from breaking down the doors. Tomato sauce also burns the monsters like acid, so there’s cool explosions as the gobbos burst into goo after being hit squarely b/w the eyes by a tomato-filled baggie.

Various stuff happens, and there are characters that I’m skipping for time’s sake, but they fight the monsters, and the ogre tries to trick them by shapeshifting to look like their dad, but the kids don’t fall for dad’s happy sudden appearance, so Jared fucking shivs him! Good going, Jared! If a parent tells you he loves you, he’s planning to fuck you up, so’s you gotta stab first! Jared and the ogre tussle some more, and they end up on the roof of the house. The anger-issued kid throws the book over the edge, and tricks !MULGOROTH! into morphing to bird-form to snatch it, just as the hobgoblin sidekick eats him out of the air! I love it when a plan comes together!

7/10

–paul