What I’ve been watching: January 2011
Prince of Space – Turns out that Invasion of the Neptune Men, which I watched last month, was sequel to this. This one establishes the secret identity (but not the origin story) of the random superhero that intervenes in the later movie. Anyway, not much to add about this one – same stuff, except the villain here has the best evil laugh ever!
Wall Street – Not my usual type of movie, but I watched it because a friend was talking about wanting to see the sequel that’s just out. It’s actually pretty good. I can’t pretend to understand all the money market jargon that gets tossed around, but I get the hijinks that are going on. Overall, not a waste of time.
Mega Piranha – Basically the same as Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus, with all the details changed. And yes, it does have an impossibly overgrown fish biting aircraft out of the sky. This movie deserves to be called out for its bad CG, bad compositing, bad acting, bad cinematography and the fact that the entire thing seems to have been filmed through an orange filter for some reason. It’s also the fastest-moving plot I can recall seeing – there’s no tedious mucking about with boring things like character development here.
The Mysterious Doctor – A nice short British style mystery – almost like a classic Dr. Who episode except there’s no SF aspect. It’s also fairly obviously wartime propaganda; the villain turns out to be a German agent and there’s lots of blathering about patriotism and war effort.
The 8th Plague – Pretty standard zombie fare. Rather annoying Blair Witch style direction. One or two rather gory scenes. The only notable thing about it is the setting – an prison that is pretty nice if you like abandoned building ruins.
