“The Playboy Murders” review

• Executive producer: Holly Madison

Holly Madison guides us through a six episode series of Playboy murders. Did she know all these playmates?  No, but she links them all to Playboy with her own domination of the Mansion as proof positive she knows all about Playboy’s plots and schemes. Six sordid tales of Playboy bunnies either being murdered or involved in the murder of others.

There’s one distracting element to all of this murder and mayhem. Her name is Holly Madison. She wasn’t necessary to this tale. She has no connection to any of this. Other than making a living off the Playboy name and then trashing it constantly, she has no business here. Although I suppose if her business is trashing Playboy then I must concede that this is right on brand.

Three episodes are tales of Playboy employees being killed and the other three episodes have them being involved somehow in other murders. The stand out episode is of poor Jasmine Fiore who was brutally murdered by her husband. Jasmine worked for Playboy Golf (which I didn’t know existed), and married her husband after briefly dating, (days of dating). This did not end well for all concerned.

But her murder has nothing to do with Playboy. It makes for an interesting hook for people like me to watch all six episodes but this constant “Playboy covers up tragedy” doesn’t ring true for all of these tales. In fact, some murders happen decades after leaving Playboy. Star Stowe dies twenty years after leaving Playboy while working as a prostitute in Florida. Another episode has a Playboy cyber model getting murdered after bring home a drug dealer for sex and then stiffed him on paying for drugs. Not sure what Playboy could have done there. Unless the show is implying these women make terrible life choices which includes believing in the Playboy mythology.

But I did find myself immersed in these tales of desire and near instant regret. It does give you important life lessons on what not to do. Like for instance, one episode had an elderly doctor getting his head bashed in after giving up $300,000 to a “sugar baby”bunny. When wondering why he would part with so much money, the show says he was a very generous person. Generous person? Perhaps he was the one who believed too much in the never ending allure of Playboy glamour. Maybe Holly wants us all to stop believing it, But why stop when it feels so good? Well, maybe not good for everybody.

SCORE: 2.5 out of 4 lost bunnies

“The Scary of Sixty First” review

The Scary of Sixty First

• Director: Dasha Nekrasova

• Writer: Dasha Nekrasova, Madeline Quinn

  
  

  
  

  Jeffery Epstein’s evil permeates New York as cheaply as possible in The Scary of Sixty First. Three girls ruminate on the nature of moral bankruptcy, government conspiracies and furious masturbation as the curse of Epstein infests their lives. 

  
  

  I must say I wasn’t expecting Jeffery Epstein to show up in this movie. No one expects Epstein. But in hindsight he makes for a great super villain as his story still hasn’t been finished and much more of his evil will be uncovered. Or will it?

  
  

  This conundrum is at the heart of The Scary of Sixty First. Too many people got off on violating young girls that nothing can stop them from protecting their identities. Ask Maxwell today and she still won’t talk about it. Epstein is powerful from beyond the grave.

  
  

  Our three leads in the film try to fight the good fight but to no avail. His supernatural perversions are too pleasurable no matter how wrong. One girl masturbates constantly to Prince Andrew or on the front door of Epsteins condo. The other two talk a lot about reasons how and why Epstein got away with it. And then they have sex. Jeffery would be pleased from his perch in Hell to see his invasive influence in their lives.

  
  

  I liked this movie. I loved all the female leads. Not liked, loved. As Epstein sordid tale continues to haunt the world, I have hopes for a sequel. The Scary of Saint Jeff’s island. Or perhaps the Masturbating Maxwell. That might be too scary.

  
  

  SCORE: 3 out of 4 obsessed Epstein hunters

  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  

  
  

IMDb:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12226872/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Julie K Smith

The world needs more Julie Smith. You know it. I know it. Why are we arguing about this?

I’ve got the worlds greatest woman’s prison movie in my head. I need a director with the stamina to make it happen . Julie Smith as the warden. A mass shower scene. Or two. A knife fight. More Julie Smith. It writes itself!  Box office gold. Have you seen a woman’s prison movie lately? My point exactly.

 

Something Obsessive

 

Something Bold this Way Comes

Something Taut This Way Comes

 

Forward to victory

 

"We Summon the Darkness" trailer

Any excuse to put up pictures of Alexandra Daddario must be taken.

https://youtu.be/ChksJ8AL9Lk

Nikki Fritz

💔💔

"Cold Pursuit" review

Cold Pursuit (2019)

Directed by:  Hans Petter Moland

Cast: Liam Neeson and some other people

 

As I sit here in my underwear, recovering from surgery and listening to a wound vac suck blood out of my abdomen, I know there is only one man who can heal me. Liam freaking Neeson. Only he can bring justice to the carnage that has befallen me. The man has killed because his daughter was taken, his murdered wife was, well, murdered, and hungry wolves had the audacity to try to eat him. That just pissed him off. Now he would help me to gather the strength I need to carry on.

Liam Neeson is a man of few words in “Cold Pursuit”. His son gets killed because that’s what happens to people who are related to Liam Neeson. This leads Liam on a quest to find out what his son did for a living because he barely knew him when he was alive. Of course in Liam Neeson movies, only death matters. Liam climbs up the ladder of drug dealing scum in Colorado and relishing every kill along the way. This inadvertently starts a drug war between the corporate gang in Denver and the Indian gang that split the drug trade. Neeson is so cold blooded he can start drug wars without even meaning to. It all ends with gunfights and snowblowers as Neeson takes out the trash.

I was in the hospital for two weeks recovering from surgery. As I sat there watching Friends reruns and more episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians than I’d care to admit, I found myself thinking of all the other things I rather be watching. Like anything other than Kardashians going to Bali to find themselves. But when you’re pumping morphine into your body for pain, everything seems very reasonable. I really did want to know if Kanye and Kim were going to confront Kanye’s old friend in Chicago. But now that I’m not tied down, my head is free of morphine and Kardashians. It was a very potent mix.

Praise the movie gods as along comes Liam Neeson to drive the Calabasas Kardashians out of my head with his never-ending quest to kill anything that displeases him. “Cold Pursuit” is a remake of a Norwegian movie, “In Order of Disappearance”. In a way, this plays against Neeson’s strengths. The original movie was full of humor as it showed the two gangs plotting against each other and amusingly taking each other out. The problem is that Liam disappears for a while as the movie shifts focus on the gangs plotting and scheming. When he does appear, he’s back to his dead serious demeanor that we know and love but it sometimes feels out of place with the rest of the cast making light of murder and mayhem.

“Cold Pursuit” turns a Norwegian revenge movie into a standard Liam Neeson flick. It’s got all the elements you would expect from a Neeson movie with some goofy drug war story on top. It’s worth a look.

SCORE: 3 out of 4 for endlessly cold pursuits

"The Babysitter" review

The Babysitter (2017)

Director: McG

Writer: Brian Duffield 

	Judah Lewis	...	Cole
	Samara Weaving	...	Bee
	Robbie Amell	...	Max
	Hana Mae Lee	...	Sonya
	Bella Thorne	...	Allison

“The Babysitter” is a tale of a boy and his babysitter. Cole is in love with his hot babysitter (Samara Weaving). They are good friends who laugh, dance and make merry. But alas, Cole is just a boy and the babysitter wants to hang out with her satanic cult friends. After sending Cole to bed, the teens play Truth or Dare which leads to a gruesome satanic death. Cole is discovered peeping on the party and dragged downstairs. The rest of the movie has Cole running from the teens and trying to outsmart Satan’s minions. Much blood and brain matter will splatter throughout the house before the night is through.

I’ll give you three guesses as to what my favorite scene was. No, make that one guess. Actually there’s no need to guess as it would be the same scene any B-movie maniac would have loved. Or maybe it’s just me. But I couldn’t help but feel a kinship with young Cole. As he spies on his babysitter at the top of the stairs, the teens begin to play a game of Truth or Dare. Some genius dares her to kiss everyone. This leads to a prolonged kiss with the other babe of the bunch, (Bella Thorne as The Cheerleader), which is captured in slow motion to the 80’s song “I Want Candy”. Cole and I understand each other. We are both voyeurs and loving every second of it.

What I’ve described above is affectionately known in cinema as the “Male Gaze”. The Male Gaze theory tells us that images in film are there for the male, (drooling B-movie guy), to enjoy and perhaps get some sexual pleasure from merely watching, (Voyeurism or Scopophilia if you will). If you saw Megan Fox in “Transformers” fix Bumblebee’s crank shaft, you know what I’m talking about.  “The Babysitter” is a proud representative of the Male Gaze as we look longingly and achingly at every move Samara Weaving makes, (and Bella Thorne too in the aforementioned make-out scene).

This is all my way of telling you that “The Babysitter” is a fine film. I recommend it. It has everything a male gazer needs. Babysitters. Blood. Bella…The list goes on and on. This is prime Saturday night B-movie extravaganza. Oh Samara, let me gaze upon thee.

SCORE: 3 out of 4 babysitter dares

Gaze away

"The Cloverfield Paradox" review

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

Director: Julius Onah 

Writers: Oren Uziel

	Gugu Mbatha-Raw	...	Hamilton
	David Oyelowo	...	Kiel
	Daniel Brühl	...	Schmidt
	John Ortiz	...	Monk
	Chris O'Dowd	...	Mundy
	Elizabeth Debicki	...	Jensen
	Ziyi Zhang	...	Tam

*Warning* Here there be spoilers*

A crew of misfits head into outer space to solve the world’s energy problem. At least I think that’s what they were up to. They are charging a giant laser which in turn will give the world peace and prosperity. Apparently there is a (unseen) war raging on Earth and this lovable, mismatched crew of scientists holds the key to survival. But there’s a catch you see. A paradox if you will. If you charge the flux capacitor to the required 1.21 gigawatts then it will explode in an orgy of inter-dimensional mishmash and what have you. But no one listens to mad scientists or their paradox detractors so they march ahead and make a derivative sci-fi flick anyway.

The lead actress in this movie, (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), is very talented when it comes to portraying despair. She cries a single tear at least five times in this movie. There are many instances where we see a lone tear roll down her face as she conveys the agony of losing a child and again with the knowledge that her children may still be alive in another dimension.  The filmmakers pushed her to show emotion as there was not a lot to care about on the doomed spacecraft.

I also shed a lone tear while watching “The Cloverfield Paradox” as I (slowly) realized that out of all of the insane inter-dimensional events that transpire, none of them will unleash a monster. Wasn’t that the point of this movie? To explain how the creatures came into existence? Tears ran down my face as I witnessed the ending to this movie. As our brave heroes descend from space, their craft falls through the clouds and a giant monster springs up out of it. My God man. The real movie was on Earth this whole time! Why were we wasting our time on the spacecraft when we could have been watching the Cloverfield Godzilla? What a lame paradox.  

Do you have any idea how many movies I have seen where the mad scientists march ahead and things go awry?  Too many to think about. Aside from a few minor interesting takes on dimension swapping, (Elizabeth Debicki pops up woven into a maintenance panel), this movie had nothing new to offer. What would have been interesting is seeing what level of Cloverfield hell they unleashed on Earth. But that would have been too entertaining and this movie will have none of that.

I liked the first “Cloverfield” and I really liked “10 Cloverfield Lane”, (John Goodman should have gotten an Oscar nomination), but “The Cloverfield Paradox” will leave you wishing you were back in the bunker with Goodman. At least on “10 Cloverfield Lane” there were nightmares worth hiding from.  For this movie, we are left with scientists bumbling along on a spacecraft as they blame each other for the banality of this movie. While “The Cloverfield Paradox” is certainly watchable, it’s a movie that has been made many times before and not necessary to fill in any perceived Cloverfield gaps of knowledge.

SCORE: 2.5 out of 4 crying scientists