Steineded How sad is this?

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Woodyanders A crazed, gory, wonderfully absurd and furiously kinetic piece of Asian supernatural horror hokum; it's a feverishly inventive, turbo-charged, hard-driving trash terror item that's deliriously overloaded with demented imagination, wild-eyed passion, devilishly frolicsome wit and rip-roaring flair to spare. In short, it's a real pip.A brutal, lethal, nearly unstoppable all-powerful otherworldly force wreaks plentiful grisly havoc in a remote rural school, decapitating students and transforming their severed noggins into swift, deadly creatures which are jet-propelled by speedy, ultra-sinewy spider legs. Two teenage guys bravely attempt to thwart the wildly out of this world supernatural mayhem, with the expected madly disastrous full-throttle four-sheets-to-the-wind insane nerve-jangling and life-threatening results.This baby's got it all: briskly efficient pull-out-all-the-stops virtuoso direction, handsome, hyperactive vertiginous cinematography (the quick, super-smooth scuttling POV shots of the killer heads on the prowl are great), an intense, ominous, flesh-crawling mood that gradually escalates into all-out pandemonium, a few breathtaking moments of serenely surreal beauty, frenetically headlong pacing, gorgeously slick high-gloss production values, some pretty pastoral visuals, and a funny, appealing oddball nonconformist bespectacled dweeb protagonist -- he's a rogue, family-tradition-be-damned archaeologist named Hiruko, to be exact -- who's undoubtedly the best scrawny, weak-kneed, chicken-hearted limp dishrag unlikely savior of mankind since Zalman King's sweaty, constantly twitching dippy hippie dropout from "Blue Sunshine" (Hiruko's shrill, girlish screaming is especially hilarious -- and the bulky suitcase full of ineffectual state-of-the-art technological hoodads is a nice touch, too).The splashy, excessively nasty and explicit splatter f/x really deliver the ghastly groceries: Heads are messily ripped off so blood can copiously spew forth like a bright red crimson geyser, gruesome eviscerated corpses are strewn about the school's hallways, one character develops a burning (and smoking!) boil on his neck, a spider head tries to fatally French kiss one dude with its harmful elongated prehensile tongue, and other such gleefully grotesque stuff. The truly off the wall final, in which our bumbling, but stalwart heroes are attacked in a dark, dank cave by a murderous multitude of encroaching spider heads and do their best to fend off the vile beasts with cans of insect repellent (!), deftly walks a fine line between blackly comical bedlam and grimly apocalyptic horror; it induces both nervous giggly laughs and genuine scared shudders in equal proportion. A delectably deranged and enjoyably over the top gem.

siektwo I decided to purchase the film before seeing it. It was a "blind buy". was it worth it? Yes. That's not to say that the film isn't without it's faults however.The story (like many people have already said) is somewhat confusing. I'm not going to go into the basic plot of the film, because you can look that up yourself...lol. I'll tell you that the plot IS interesting though, if maybe a tad to complex for it's own good.I'm just going to point out what i liked and didn't like, so that you'll be able to make a decision on whether or not the film would be worth your time.The effects were OK. This is obviously a low budget flick. That being said, there were only a couple really cheesy effects. Of course, the main gimmick is the whole "heads with spider legs" thing, and that's pulled off pretty well for the most part. I gotta say, they do look pretty creepy and some of them shoot large tongues out their mouths (reminded me of Uzumaki to a certain degree).The film doesn't really know if it's serious or slapstick. Now by slapstick, i don't mean there's scenes like you'd see in "the naked gun" or movies of that type however. One of the main characters runs around with quirky inventions made of household items. he carries a can of aerosol spray that evidently the goblins don't like. There's a lot of tongue in cheek events and scenes in this one...but there's some good horror elements as well.in fact, there's actually quite a few scenes that gave me goosebumps. there was also 2 or 3 moments where i actually jumped a little bit. it's just too bad that it seems like the last 3/4's of the film loses the "horror edge" and makes the film seem like a bad Japanese Indiana Jones ripoff in comparison to what we see earlier in the film.Oh yeah, there's some pretty violent scenes in this as well. so if you aren't a fan of gore and blood...then this might turn you off. however, the violence isn't "shocking" or anything that would upset the squeamish.The premise is interesting, but i honestly think this would have been a much better flick if it was straight horror...and dropped the goofy comedic tone found in many scenes. Overall though, it's a pretty fun ride...and there's really not much out there that has the feel the film has. I'm a big time horror fan, and it floats my boat and was worth the blind purchase.RATING: 7/10

Brian Thibodeau HIRUKO: THE GOBLIN (1990) Surprisingly fluffy supernatural adventure film from the director of the TETSUO movies, Shinya Tsukamoto, perhaps done to prove he could apply a mainstream touch to lighter material. As such, it's still got his trademark bodily aberrations and spurting blood. An archaeologist uncovers an burial mound he believes to be some sort of an appeasement to ancient gods, but he and a student are killed by the critters within.Meanwhile, his colleague (Kenji Sawada), now conveniently a goblin hunter, teams with the man's son to seal off the tomb under the mound before more deaths are caused by the free-roaming goblin, which looks like a human head with spider legs and hypnotizes its victims into a state of tranquil bliss that makes it much easier for them to saw off their own heads. Speedy fun, played with just enough tongue in cheek. Based on a book by Daijirao Moroboshi. I watched the R2 British edition of this. I give it an 8.

Wizard-8 This has the stiff direction and sterile feeling typical of many Japanese films, pretty deadly for a horror movie, especially one that's intended to have a number of wacky and wild moments. The story is extremely confusing, missing even token explanations for many things; it's like it expects us to be familiar with the story from its original source. When it's not boring, it's extremely bewildering. Some of the special effects aren't bad for what was a low budget, but they tend to be derivative of other (and better) horror and science fiction movies. See how many such references to other movies you can spot, if you should decide to see this movie despite what I've said.