Kids (1995)

Shock value is definitely one thing that "Kids" has. From extreme language and subject matter, to incredibly amoral teenagers. It really wakes up the nervous system as well as the moral obligations of the audience through pure shock value and startling of the soul.
"Kids" portrays a day in the lives of several New York Teenagers and the mid-nineties that have no moral bounds, nothing is off limits. The shock value aspect starts off the film with the main character Telly having sex with a thirteen-year-old girl, taking her virginity. This ends up being a reoccurring tragedy of the film with Telly. Along with the plot line following Telly, there is a separate plot line following a girlfriend that he previously had sex with, a girl named Jennie. These plot lines follow their own paths until a secret is revealed that will change the lives of Telly, Jennie, and everybody associated with them.
This movie amazed me with how in-depth both plot lines were and how they fused them together at the end of the film. It was very easy as a viewer to become immersed in the lives of both characters, which was achieved by superb acting by both Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) and Jennie (Chloe Sevigny). By the end of the movie the emotions running through both of their minds are smacking the viewer square in the face. My roommates definitely had some trouble getting through the first scene and I had to finish it on my own. Overall a very blood curdling movie about what goes wrong when morals are out of the question. Despite the gruesome shock value of "Kids", it receives a 4 out 5.

Magnolia (1999)

"Magnolia" is part of the Paul Thomas Anderson film library which includes "Punch Drunk Love" which I also recently saw, but that's to be discussed later. "Magnolia" follows several plot lines of different characters that are entwined in some subtle way, such as family ties and random occurrences. It also uses an all-star cast showcasing Tom Cruise, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, and John C. Reilly to name a few. At its root, "Magnolia" is about life and how different and apparently random things are connected. Lying is also a major factor and most of the plot lines are derived from either a lie that was told in the past or a mistake that was made. In the end of the movie, all of the lies and mistakes are confessed to but its so incredibly heart-breaking because you become so involved with the characters and their separate but similar emotions.
There isn't very much that can be said about this film without getting into a whole slew of explanations so I won't really say anything about the plot (except that frogs fall from the sky!). This is a must-see movie which will blow your mind with the excellent acting as well as the incredibly in-depth plot and analysis of people living together and how their lives relate to create a much bigger basis of analytical potential. "Magnolia" receives the coveted 5/5 review. See it!

Zombie Honeymoon (2004)

"Zombie Honeymoon" is an independent film that definitely does not fit the norm for zombie movies, rather it fits a genre that I like to call "romantic zomedy." The film starts off with a cute, newlywed couple on their honeymoon in a house on the beach. Things go wrong when the couple (Danny and Denise) are playing in the surf on the beach and a zombie appears out of the ocean and infects Danny with his seed. He appears to die for ten minutes but returns to life as a normal human being, or so it appears. The gore-fest begins when Denise finds Danny chowing down on their obese neighbor in the bathroom. The film continues with, until the end, with Denise attempting to cope with the love of her life and his new found appetite for human flesh.
I have seen a lot of zombie movies, and "Zombie Honeymoon" definitely presents some new ideas and concepts about what a zombie is. Different zombie movies present the transformation from living to undead differently and "Zombie Honeymoon" uses a very interesting concept in the transformation of Danny into a zombie. Danny starts out by getting sprayed in the face with blood by a zombie hailing from the ocean, which is a pretty standard practice as presented in "28 Days Later." Danny then passes into the next realm and a few short minutes later, reanimates. Now what makes this different from other zombie movies is that when Danny reanimates, he is a completely coherent human being. Then throughout the movie, it shows how his body slowly decays and his hunger for flesh grows into an insatiable desire for blood. In beginning of his transformation he attacks and eats people but he can control himself around Denise and more or less act normal, for the situation he is in.
This film ended up being a pretty interesting movie with a very interesting zombie concept and plot, and special effects and gore comparable to any major zombie movie. It wasn't really what I was expecting and has a very strong emotional aspect to it as you become attached to the couple and their undying love for each other, even given the circumstances. This attachment leads a pretty sad ending, but a necessary sadness. "Zombie Honeymoon" gets a 4/5.

The Black Dragons (1942)

"The Black Dragons" is an excellent representation of the film noir period of the 1940's and is a significantly more in-depth film for the creator, the famous horror genre pioneer Bela Lugosi, as an actor, as well as a director. Bela Lugosi is probably best known for his role as Count Dracula in "Dracula" and for his work with other famous monsters, such as the Wolf Man and Frankensteins Monster.
"The Black Dragons" follows an incredibly deep and involved plot in which he plays a plastic surgeon who transforms six members of the Black Dragon Society in Japan into lookalikes of 6 famous industrialists in America. The Black Dragon Society plans to infiltrate major American industries before the war. However, their plan backfires when they make the mistake of locking up Dr. Melcher (Lugosi) who kills the other occupant of his cell and takes his face for his own (metaphorically of course). So Dr. Melcher goes to America with the face of Monsieur Colomb (his cell mate) in order to extinguish the presence of the Black Dragon Society in America.
Of course none of this makes sense until the end of the movie when the motives and past on Monsieur Colomb are revealed. Throughout the entire movie it appears to the viewer that something strange is definitely at work, but it is unclear who the culprit is or what his or her motives are. "The Black Dragons" gets a 4/5 for being an great old movie.

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Attack of the Giant Leeches definitely can be classified as a classic horror movie, complete with bad acting and even worse special effects and costume designs. The plot is pretty stereotypical of the time period (1959) and goes from mysterious deaths and disappearances around the vicinity of a swamp in the Everglades. To the dismay of the townspeople, they realize that they have become the captives of giant leeches which seek to suck the lifeblood from every single one of their victims. They end up blowing up the swamp and destroying several giant leeches that float to the surface after the smoke has cleared. But is that really all of them?
I have a soft spot in my heart for these kind of classic old movies, not only because they paved the way for the later classic horror movies that I love, but because I'm sure if I had watched this when in came out in 1959, I would have made a mess in my pants. Nobody wants to encounter regular leeches, let alone giant leeches! Some people don't know how I put up with the terrible acting and the less than par special effects, but really it's all part of the experience. Film directors from this time period didn't have very much to work with in terms of the technology that we take for granted today, and I think that they did an excellent job with what they had at their disposal. For the sake of the general public, Attack of the Giant Leeches gets 2.5/5 solely because I have a feeling that nobody else would enjoy watching it except for me. However, if you are a fan of this period in film, definitely check this one out, along with other "creature" movies, like The Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Salo (1975)

Salo: The 120 days of Sodom, is the most disturbing movie that I have ever seen. Period. Unless you can handle some really disgusting stuff, I would not even consider reading this review. Anyways, lets continue with the crapfest.
Salo depicts a symbolic event in which four wealthy aristocratic men in World War I Italy act out and follow through with the most disgusting sexual pleasures ever conceived by man. There's everything from sodomy, to eating human feces, to scalping. All this is going on while all of the victims are completely naked. I ended up stopping it about thirty minutes in and really thinking about whether I wanted to finish it. I caved and decided that I needed to finish it because I had already started it, and because I had a partner in crime so that I didn't have to watch it alone.
After watching Salo, and doing some research to see what other people were writing about it, I found a parallel between Salo and terrible things that it portrayed, and Dante's "Inferno" and the different levels of hell, which when I think about it, that could be what the director, Pier Paulo Pasolini, was alluding to. It's also apperent that he was drawing parallels between what is portrayed in Salo, and the terrible living conditions for Italians under the facist ruling of Benito Mussolini.
Honestly, I had to dig very, very deep to find anything about the symbolism and meaning of this movie. It was difficult to really get anything from it except that the living conditions were terrible in Italy during the time. The only time that "Salo" is mentioned is in the first five minutes of the film when it is seen on a street sign.
In my opinion this movie should difintely be given serious thought to if it is to be considered watching. This morally shaking film is so incredibly grotesque and disgusting that it really shook me to the core. It gets a 2/5 for ruining my life.

Special (2006)

Special is an emotionally gripping independent film about the adverse effects of a drug-in-testing on the main character, a lonely meter maid named Les. The drug gives Les the impression that he has amazing super powers in which he can read peoples minds telepathically, walk through walls, and levitate. Of course, Les being the comic fan that he is, decides that it's his duty to protect the general population by stopping and preventing crime (he ends up doing a lot of "preventing" a.k.a. tackling people who he sees as suspicious). He finds out later that he has become part of something significantly more in-depth than he ever thought.
This film was definitely one of the better ones I've seen in a while. What I liked most was the transformation in Les from a lonely, nervous guy that doesn't really have that much to live for, to realizing his real superpowers, that being his perseverance and his kindness. I think that's the main moral of the film; that we don't need what most people consider "superpowers" to do good, and I think Les realized this at the end of the film. At the beginning, Les is under the impression that with so many billions of people on the planet, not all of them can be unique or special, which he of course proves false by the end of the movie.
This movie also kept me thinking because it's filmed with situations that sort of neutral about whether Les actually does have superpowers or not. For the majority of the movie you are wondering whether he can actually walk through walls, or whether it's all in his head. Of course this leads to many hilarious instances of Les running full-speed in to concrete walls. Other than the heart-warming factor of this movie, it had a pretty interesting concept and was very well made for most likely being filmed on a very low budget. Special gets the coveted 5 out of 5.