Change Your Image
plutoburns
Reviews
Shock Treatment (1981)
Not as Good as Rocky. Still Awesome
The spiritual successor to Rocky Horror stands as a far more interesting if less mimetic musical romp of wackiness. The story of a the Town of Denton, that takes so much pride in their local TV program that the audience will LITERALLY sleep in the stands between broadcast days. And over the course of this movie, a marriage will be broken, stars will be made and a national course of "Mental Health" will be prescribed.
To sum up this movie is nigh impossible as it features an evil twin brother, incestuous doctors and biting social commentary, all fired fast and loose at the viewer. Rocky Horror didn't make much sense either, but Rocky was ultimately pointless nonsense meant to offend the sense abilities. Shock Treatment actually has a point to it all, but that point is mostly that reality television and fame are corrupting influences of evil; an admirable sentiment to hold considering that this movie predates reality TV by about a decade. All the packed in details, looping plot lines and motivations make this a much harder movie to comprehend than rocky and also harder to simply loose yourself in the surreal-ness of it all. But it definitely stands a bizarre movie worth seeing and easily riff able if you've had a few brewskis.
The music is a mixed bag. Stand out tracks of Dear Blender and Shock Treatment constantly delight and there are some trippy introspection songs as well. But others just fall flat, either through instrumentation or staging.
The Family (2013)
A strange movie with some heart and good performances
The Family is about a family. They are on the run from mob killers because Robert De Niro, the father, squealed. They are kept under protective custody by a very fed up with their crap Tommy Lee Jones.
Its a strange little movie, because there's a lot of stuff left to subtext or your imagination. Maybe too much. This is not even CLOSE to the first time the family has been uprooted and shipped around France, a fact tommy makes VERY clear. The whole family is prone to violent outbursts against those who wrong them, but in their new environment the wrongs mostly amount to minor slights they completely overreact too. It can be pretty funny.
But at the same time, you can feel the stress and weight that the constant moving has put the family under. They all visibly care for each other, which gives the movie some much needed heart. But at the same time, you can't help but feel like we are seeing the middle act of a far more interesting story that follows this family from flight to some eventual conclusion. The plot just doesn't go anywhere and the ending fight sequence against a hit squad is underwhelming and ultimately unsatisfying.
In my confusion about how to feel about this film, I settle on calling it an average dark comedy. I boosted the score a bit for the excellent performance across the board from the whole family. A decent watch if your feeling experimental.
After Midnight (2014)
Quite Awful. Boring Strip Teases
Its a basic murder mystery story with a sister trying to find out who murdered her sister. But it is held back because it appears to have been written by an amnesiac rhino. Characters actions make no sense because the script tries to make them all out as possible killers, so there's about 8 red hearings wandering around. A MAJOR plot point gets dropped halfway through the movie, like it was added last minute. The main girl becomes a stripper to find out what happened to her sister. And not a single line said by the owner, the barman, or the other strippers makes sense. Some of the lines are REALLY cringe worthy. The handful of effective scenes were immediately ruined. I didn't see the twist coming, but I wasn't really paying attention.
As for the nudity, there's a lot of strip scenes. Maybe two are good. Not really worth it for the nudity.