Op-ed section with rants, opinions on industry developments, commentary or counter arguments
Mirage (1995) – Director: Paul Williams – 3/10 (very mediocre/bad) A paltry rip-off of Vertigo with not a whole lot of interesting features or differentiating factors other than its bewildering stupidity and Sean Young’s vexatious Irish accent perhaps. Not only does the motion picture ring hollow in the way it approaches […]
Death Machine (1994). Director: Stephen Norrington – 5/10 (okay/decent)There is much to like about film’s starting point and its overall setting, nevertheless, something seems to be missing to differentiate it from a myriad of other early to mid 1990s actioners. The primary issue appears to reside in that the flick […]
Jakarta (1988) Director: Charles Kaufman – 2/10 (very bad)The man who made the trailer for this thing should get an award for making the motion picture seem to be something else entirely. I mean the music, the editing and the selection of shots are all just perfect and the VHS […]
Beyond the Rising Moon aka Outerworld (1987) – Director: Philip J. Cook – 8/10 (excellent)Whoever was responsible for putting this thing together must truly dig the genre, as this has to be one of the nerdiest sci-fi outings I have ever come across as well as a true work of love, […]
Deathline aka Redline (1997) – Director: Tibor Takács – 4/10 (passable/mediocre)Unique as its locations and grimy interiors prove, there is not much else to recommend about the movie, which fails to satisfy in terms of technical execution, characterization and the subject matter; one could uncontroversially call it a dead-on standard […]
The Banker (1989) – Director: William Webb – 3/10 (very mediocre/bad)The work constitutes a confused thriller significantly hampered by its stillborn attempt to encompass and detail too high a number of subplots and topics within its modest scope: the narrative essentially trifurcates in portraying routine police work, killer’s activities and […]
Shadowzone (1990) – Director: J.S. Cardone – 3/10 (very mediocre/bad) Appealing as it may seem at a glance, the sci-fi outing simply proves too impaired by its technical defects and poor production values all around. These deficiencies manifest themselves most painfully in its sordid, tawdry sets certain parts of which […]
Midnight Killer (1986) (orig. Morirai a mezzanotte) – Director: Lamberto Bava – 6/10 (good)One could argue Midnight Killer essentially constitutes a budget version of Dario Argento’s Tenebre: though it is nowhere as visually sophisticated as the original, most of its elements ultimately coalesce into a perfectly serviceable and adequate whole. […]
Screamers (1995)] / Director: Christian Duguay – 7/10 (very good) – While it is kind of hard to deny that some of the film’s content feels rather cheesy, especially towards the end and in the course of its denouement, most of that is pretty much negated by the fairly sturdy […]
Deep Space (1988) – Director: Fred Olen Ray – 2/10 (very bad)This is basically a low-budgeted rip-off of The Thing (1982), The Blob (1988) and Alien (1979), but without any finesse or sophistication exhibited by these classics. From the very get-go, the motion picture bears all the hallmarks of cheap […]