Dinner and a Movie with Moxie

  Torrey Pines (2016) Animation is such an amazing art form because there is really so much that can be done with it, so it is unfortunate that most mainstream animation tends to follow a very cookie cutter design, but then there comes along a film like Torrey Pines, from 2016.   Torrey Pines is an amazing stop motion animation film from artist Clyde Petersen, a seattle based artist most notable for his documentary films and music videos.    Torrey Pines is a stop motion animated film based on the true story of when Clyde Petersen's schizophrenic mother kidnapped him and took him on an across country trip, that ended in her being arrested.  The film is a queer punk rock coming of age film set in the early 1990s.  This is not a traditional style of animated film, there is no actual dialogue between the characters, the story is told through emotions and images, rather than through dialogue.   Then as the film is closing the song Torrey Pines by Your Heart Breaks (featuring Kimya Daws

  The Messengers (2007) Do you ever watch a film that makes you feel like, I've seen this before, but then you realize that you haven't.  That is how The Messengers from 2007 was, the first time I watched the film, I felt like I'd seen it before, but then I realized that it was just a mostly unforgettable film, that is also quite reminiscent of countless other films from the past, to the point that it struggles to have its own identity.  I don't want to give you the opinion that I don't like this film, because I am quite fond of it really, and I feel like it did a lot of things right, and to me a film doesn't have to be original to be great, as long as it is well done, and I do think that The Messengers is well done. The Messengers is a 2007 paranormal/psychological horror film directed by the Pang brothers (twin brothers from Hong Kong named Danny Pang Phat and Oxide Pang Chun). The screenplay went through went through so many changes and rewrites, that the onl

  Silent Hill (2006) Bringing video games to life has been a struggle for filmmakers over the years.  How do you take a game that might be 20 or more hours in length, into a two hour or under film, and make it watchable?  Some films stray so far from the video game that they are hard to recognize as an adaptation of the game, other times the films try to capture the feel of the game but develop their own stories, and others attempt to stay as true to the game as possible.  However a film will always be a film, and never truly be the same as the game.   Director Christophe Gans was a huge fan of the Silent Hill game, and he made a video interview that he sent to Konami, the developer of the Silent Hill games, telling why and how he wanted to do a film adaptation.  Konami was impressed enough that they gave Gans the rights to the film adaptation of the Silent Hill game.   Gans went the extra mile, and brought a 40 inch television and his Playstation 2 on to the set and he would have the

  Cabin Fever (2002) Eli Roth's 2002 directorial debut Cabin Fever is a bloody disgusting horror comedy about a group of college graduates who set off to a remote cabin in the woods to celebrate their being finally done with college, but soon after arriving the kids start coming down with a flesh eating virus.   The film was directed and co-written by Eli Roth, the screenplay was also co-written by Randy Pearlstein.  Cabin Fever was distributed by Lionsgate and Black Sky Entertainment, and was quite successful in the box office bringing in $30.6 million against its $1.5 million budget.  Though critically the film was met with mixed reviews. Cabin Fever stars Rider Strong as Paul, Jordan Ladd as Karen, James DeBello as Bert, Cerina Vincent as Marcy, Joey Kern as Jeff, Arie Verveen as Henry the hermit,  Giuseppe Andrews as Deputy Winston, and Eli Roth as Justin/Grimm.   The cast of this film are great at playing characters that are easy to despise and root against.  I don't think

Pandemic Double Feature: Outbreak (1995) & Contagion (2011) "The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus" - Joshua Lederberg Phd, Nobel laureate.  Content Warning:  This one gets a bit political (how could it not really considering the subject matter) I believe in science and I believe in wearing face masks and following the guidlines suggest by the CDC and the WHO, and I believe in Vaccines, if you are an anti-vaxxer, anti-masker or politically conservative, maybe consider skipping this review please. In 1995 when the film Outbreak was released, the world was looking at the ongoing HIV global epidemic, and the Ebola epidemic, and it had been a long time since the world had seen a full on pandemic, the last major pandemic was the Swine Flu (sometimes referred to by the racist term Spanish Flu) in 1918-1919, so the idea of a global pandemic seemed a bit of a fiction of the past, but there was potential that Ebola which tended to st

  The Satanic Rites Of Dracula Christopher Lee first put on the cloak as Dracula in 1958 when Hammer Films Productions released Dracula, eight films later in 1973 in the final Hammer Horror Dracula film The Satanic Rites Of Dracula, Lee's Dracula faces off one last time against Peter Cushing's Dr. Van Helsing.   However this film was not a well received entry in the Hammer Dracula film series.   The film played more like a less witty episode of The Avengers, but with supernatural horror elements, and overall it just struggles to find itself.  The Satanic Rites Of Dracula was directed by Alan Gibson, and written by Don Houghton (who made a name for himself by writing for BBC's Dr Who television series), and was originally planned to be called "Dracula Is Dead...And Well, and Living In London".   Though Christopher Lee protested the comical title for a film that has no actual humour in it.  The film was made by Hammer Film Productions, and was distributed by Columbi

  Deep Red (1975) From the mind of Dario Argento, one of the greatest directors in Italian horror comes the 1975 classic Deep Red (aka The Hatchet Murders) or Profondo Rosso in its native Italian.  This film is part "whodunnit" murder mystery, and gory horror, with an actual surprising twist ending that I didn't see coming at all.   Deep Red was directed by Dario Argento and written by Dario Argento and Bernardino Zapponi.  The film was distributed by Cineriz  an Italian media company.  The film was released in the USA in 1976, but had 20 minutes cut from its run time, which was decided by Argento himself. Deep Red stars David Hemmings as Marcus Daly, Gabriel Lavia plays Marcus' friend Carlo, Macha Meril plays Helga Ullmann a psychic medium and Marcus' downstairs neighbor, Glauco Mauri plays Prof Giordani, Daria Nicolodi plays Gianna Brezzi a newspaper reporter and Marcus' love interest in the film, Eros Pagni plays Supt. Calcabrini the detective investigating

  I Am Legend 2007 saw the third film adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend find its way to the big screen.  I Am Legend, released in 2007, used the novel's title unlike the Omega Man or The Last Man On Earth which came before it.   Though like the previous two films the main characters profession was changed to that of a doctor rather than a factory worker like he was in the novel.  The creatures in this film were also not the vampires that they were in The Last Man On Earth or in the novel, these creatures were more like the "plague" mutants from The Omega Man.   This film is very much a product of the post 9/11 world, much like The Omega Man was very much a product of a post Vietnam war America.    I Am Legend was directed by Francis Lawrence, with a screenplay by  Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman.  The screenplay is based on both Richard Matheson's original novel, but also on The Omega Man's screenplay written by John William and Joyce

  The Omega Man In 1971 The Omega Man brought Richard Matheson's 1954 novel to the big screen for the second time.  This version of the story made in the post Vietnam War America, finds the deadly plague caused by man rather than by nature, as the plague that wipes out humanity is caused by germ-warfare.  The Omega Man was directed by Boris Sagal with a screenplay written by John and Joyce Corrington, based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.   The Omega Man stars Charlton Heston as Robert Neville, Anthony Zerbe as Jonathan Matthias, Rosalind Cash as Lisa, Paul Koslo as Dutch, and Eric Laneuville as Richie.  This might be one of Charlton Heston's best science-fiction roles ranking up there with Planet Of The Apes and Soylent Green.  Though Charlton Heston is guilty of his typical "overacting", it works well in this role, as a man who has taken up talking to himself because he is the only person left in the world that can still exist in the world of the light

  The Last Man On Earth Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend has been adapted for the big screen three times over the years since it was published.  The first adaptation was The Last Man On Earth in 1964 and starred Vincent Price, the second was The Omega Man in 1971 starring Charlton Heston, and the most recent version was I Am Legend in 2007 starring Will Smith.   All three versions somewhat follow the same story, of a virus that sweeps over the earth, and the infected turn into vampires, but the hero of the story is somehow immune to the virus.  There are various differences between the films, and they all differ from the original novel in someway or another. The Last Man On Earth released in 1964 is a low budget b-horror film that was directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow.   The screenplay was written by Logan Swanson (Richard Matheson's pseudonym that he used because he wasn't satisfied with the script) and William F. Leicester, the Italian version was writt

  Beneath The Harvest Sky Tonight's Maine Monday film, I take a look at Beneath The Harvest Sky (aka Blue Potato), an independent film that is set and filmed in and around the border town of Van Buren Maine.  The film was written and directed by husband and wife filmmakers Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, and is about two teenagers growing up in a small rural potato farming town in far northern Aroostook County Maine.  The two young men, Casper and Dominic dreaming of leaving Van Buren to move to Boston Massachusetts, but as their dream is on the verge of becoming a reality, there are complications.   Casper's father is involved in the underground prescription drug trade, and as his uncle starts becoming unreliable and shifty, his father brings Casper into the "family business".   Casper is also told in the beginning of the film by his fifteen year old girlfriend (he is seventeen), that she is pregnant, so he feels that he needs to step up and take care of her, and is