Watched June 29, 2015
1994
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ron Silver, Mia Sara
Time travel loops often don't make sense, can you exist in the same place as yourself? Timecop tries to explain this, but it's not perfectly clear. Walker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a cop in 1994 who's newly pregnant wife is killed by some people where were trying to kill him. Jump to 2004 and he's now a time cop. At some point in the 1990's, time travel was invented, but they didn't want it to get into the wrong hands. Criminals figure out to how to time travel to commit time crimes, stealing famous treasures or investing in stocks. Walker now travels back in time to stop these thieves, but he is consumed with the loss of his wife and unborn child.
The officers somehow manage to track who is time travelling and can tell when someone is in the wrong place in time. Walker is sent back to 1929 to stop a stock market crash opportunist who was sent by McComb (Ron Silver) to make a bunch of money. McComb is a senator in 2004 who is running for president, but he needs money to fund his campaign.
The time cop initiative is losing funding because it is run by McComb, who only wants it for his own gain. Walker is sent back to 1994 with Fielding (Gloria Reuben) to stop another time crime. It turns out that Fielding was hired by McComb and she betrays Walker. Fielding is shot and Walker just barely makes it back to his own time. Now the time cop program is really being shut down, but Walker now has a plan to finally stop McComb. He manages one last trip back to 1994, and he is able to find his wife before she was killed.
At his house, Walker's past and future selves are trying to stop McComb and his henchman. 2004 McComb is going to blow everything up in the house including himself because his 1994 self will continue and become president in 2004. Walker brings 1994 McComb and pushes him into 2004 McComb where they merge and die. You cannot occupy the same place with two different time selves. Now is this timeline, Walker and his wife survive and McComb never becomes president.
There are some great action scenes, Walker kicks a man's frozen arm off and he does underwear splits to avoid getting electrocuted. The rule of not being able you can't touch you past future self because the same matter can't exist in the same place at the same time is very strange.There is a super gross and sensual love scene with Walker and his wife Melissa (Mia Sara.) I wish it had been cut out. There is a very dated roller blader at the mall. All of McComb's henchmen have the worst haircuts, but it's a very fun and enjoyable movie.
Watched June 22, 2015
1995
Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Kelly Lynch
Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington) is an imprisoned former cop who was incarcerated after he killed some innocent bystanders during a stand off with a psycho serial killer who kidnapped and killed his wife and daughter. He is still a good cop so he has been recruited for a virtual reality program to train cops for intense scenarios. During a test of the program, named SID 6.7 (Russell Crowe) the other prisoner is killed in real life when his brain is overloaded in the digital world.
The programmer, Lindenmeyer (Stephen Spinella) who created SID is obsessed with it/him. He is approached by a man working in cybernetics to turn one of Lindenmeyer's sexy lady programs into a real being. Instead Lindenmeyer tricks the cybernetics guy into making SID into a cyborg. SID immediately escapes and begins killing people. His programming is that of tons of serial killers so he starts recreating some of those murders like the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson family. Even though Parker is still in jail, they recruit him as the only man who can track SID down, because one of SID's inspirations in the same man who killed Parker's family.
After his Manson style killing, SID goes to Media Zone, the coolest club and takes a bunch of people hostage. Parker shows up in time to chase him out of the club, but SID manages to escape again. SID has a special regeneration powers with nanobots, as long as they can get glass to take the silicon out of he can rebuild any damaged part of himself.
Parker teams up with Madison Carter (Kelly Lynch) the criminal psychologist who is also on the case to try to determine what SID will do next. After a train incident where they think that Parker shot a lady when it was SID, they lock Parker up and tell him that the tracking device they implanted in his brain has a neurotoxin that they can release if he escapes. SID wants to play the game so he kills the drivers and give Parker the keys to free himself.
SID kidnaps Madison's 10-year-old daughter and takes over a TV station that is having a heated debate on immigration. SID just wants people to watch him. Parker cuts the phone feed and it seems like all his viewers have left, which makes SID crazy. Parker chases SID onto the roof of the television station. During their battle, SID falls through a bunch of glass that cuts him into pieces. He starts to regenerate then Parker rips his chip out. But SID was the only one who knows where Kelly's daughter is being held, so what is Parker to do?
Jump to an alternate cut where Parker is thrown from the building and killed, but it's now the virtual world, but SID doesn't know it. SID shows Madison where her daughter is, the Madison detaches from the virtual world. Parker came back to to life in the digital world and is still battling SID, because Lindenmeyer won't let Parker out the digital world. SID almost fries Parker's brain in real life, but Lindenmeyer is killed and Parker can escape. Parker uses the tricks he learned from when his wife and daughter were killed to make sure he can get Madison's daughter out alive.
In comparing 1995 digital thrillers, this movie is way better than Johnny Mnemonic. The digital effects are pretty good, I feel they hold up mostly because they aren't trying to create realistic effects, the effects are for a digital world. Russell Crowe is a good villain and Denzel is great. The programmer is the worst and I can't believes they didn't hold him accountable for bringing SID to life, he really had it in for Denzel for some reason. When SID feeds on glass to make his limbs grow back it's pretty cool.
Watched June 15, 2015
1993
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Ned Beatty, Miriam Margolyes, John Glover
Ed (Steve Buscemi) runs a hardware store that his parent's established before they died. His mother passed about a year ago but he can't seem to get over the loss. He shares the same house that he grew up in with his Uncle Benny (Ned Beatty). A mysterious salesman, Mr. Pattle (John Glover) comes to the hardware store and tells Ed he can bring his mom back for $1000. Ed agrees, but when the Mr. Pattle digs up the mom, her corpse is in terrible shape so it costs a little more to find some replacement organs. Eventually she makes it back to the house and it seems like she is just as she was.
Uncle Benny, who is Ed's mom's brother is upset about this resurrection because he disliked her meddling. Ed's mother doesn't act exactly the same, she now sits in the fridge at times, which is strange. After a day she passes out and is dead again. Mr. Pattle comes back and says for some more money he can tell Ed how to keep giving more life to his mom, so she'll stay alive. Steve agrees and now he has to feed his mom two live cockroaches a day. Somehow the mom eats too many cockroaches and is filled with a renewed lust for life. She starts chasing down the neighbor's dog to eat it, to get more life energy inside her.
Meanwhile, Ed's new neighbor Storm (Sam Sorbo) is aggressively trying to seduce him for no real reason. This leads Ed to be distracted from keeping his blood thirsty mom inside the house. Ed's mom is visited by a disgruntled former employee of the hardware store. Ed's mom treats him cordially, offering him tea, then killing him with a chainsaw.
Ed goes back to Mr. Prattle, who's job it is to just milk all the life insurance money that Ed received, didn't want the mom to become homicidal. Mr. Prattle tells Ed that for $50,000 he can share the secret of how to get rid of the mother permanently. The instructions are this: Ed has to chop off her head and bury it in the certain part of the cemetery, then bury her body in another part, and he has to do it at a certain time of night.
After her first human kill, Ed's mom goes to the hardware store and gets a large riding lawnmower to attack her next victim. Her next victim happens to be Storm, but Ed shows up in time to chop off his mom's head. He does manage to bury her head, but just as he is getting the body from the car, the cops show up for a separate incident in the church yard.
Steve ends up going to trial for the murder of his mother, even though he just had to kill her again to stop her from murdering more people. The film is bookended by a black and white sequence of the Ed at the trial for his mother's murder. It seems like the whole thing must have been a dream, but in the end it's not and he is acquitted for killing him mom. Storm turns out to have been hired by the same company as Mr. Prattle to make sure that they got the money out of Ed. After Ed's mom goes nut, Storm quits her job and falls in love with Ed for real.
A very interesting dark comedy. Steve's motivations are so hard to determine because we don't meet his mother until she comes back. A year is a long time to sit in the ground and then come back to life. You have to suspend your disbelief to get into the story. They do a good job of answering some obvious questions that would have been plot holes in other movies. Such as why a super sexy neighbor lady would want to seduce Ed, and the answer is that it was her job.
Watched June 11, 2015
1990
Starring: Anthony Michael Hall, Claudia Christian, Jerry Orbach
I've had this movie for a couple years and I keep bringing it to movie night but due to an aversion to family friendly fare it has never been picked. I took one for the team and watched it by myself, which I'm sure made it a little less enjoyable then it could have been as a shared experience, but it wasn't that great anyway.
Casey (Anthony Michael Hall) is somehow a rookie detective on the police force even though he looks to be about 18 years old at best. He somehow is in a relationship with fellow detective Sam (Claudia Christian) even though they don't have any chemistry. Casey has been on a case trying to nail some diamond thieves and a complicated sting has been set up in a park. There is supposed to be a mole that will take the hand off with the bad guy. Casey is there to arrest them. Somehow an explosion goes off that knocks Casey unconscious before he can catch the bad guy. Sam was waiting in the car and by the time they got over their the bad guy was gone. Casey wakes up and is fine but is convinced that there is a witness in the empty park. He finds a leather bag with a strange stone in it. He heads home but is followed by a curious little guy. Gnorm the Gnome reveals himself to Casey because he wants his bag back, it contains his lumen stone. Casey traps Gnorm in a cage, and is happy to have a witness even if no one will believe what he has. Gnorm has a special ability to make people fall asleep, so he escapes the cage and tries to get his lumen stone back. Casey convinces Gnorm to help his solve his case by finding the bag guy.
Sam wants to help Casey even though the chief of police, Stan (Jerry Orbach) doesn't think Casey is competent. Casey and Gnorm cruise through town trying to track down the bag guy, Gnorm can speak some English and does remember some events from that night. Casey disguises Gnorm as a little kid and they cruise the boardwalk. Gnorm is pretty into butts, it is a strange sexual tone for a kids movie.
They do keep getting closer to catching the bad guy. Gnorm is eventually taken into the police station and strip searched, so you get to see some bare gnome butt. Casey keeps figuring out the clues and it turns out that it was Stan that set up the whole thing because he has it in for Casey. After a shoot out they manage to capture Stan. Casey helps Gnorm get some sun for him lumen to take back to his people so he can be the hero.
Super weird tone for a kids movie. Gnorm is very weird looking. Not partiuclary funny, even though Gnorm bites a bad guys butt and there are several nut shots. He pronounced it G-Nome and G-Norm Whenever Gnorm is walking around looking cool his theme is Lowrider. Mostly just weird, I wouldn't want to watch it again.
