Men Behind the Sun

This is another of those super extreme gore movies that I guess I felt I had to watch as a horror snob or whatever. It's not especially gorier than like, Day of the Dead or the Saw movies, but it's incredibly difficult to watch because it's based on an actual historical Japanese unit (731) who conducted lethal biological research on captive Chinese civilians during World War II, killing thousands of people. (As far as the filmmakers, they killed a bunch of rats for the movie and filmed a real child's autopsy so that's nowhere near as bad but still rough to watch.) Anyway, at least the people in charge of the real camp got tried for war crimes. Oh, wait, what's that? They were granted immunity by the United States in exchange for all their research? Well that's just super.

RATING: 74%

Halloween II - The Television Cut

There once was a time when you couldn't put nudity, violence, profanity or drug use on television. There were only a few stations back then and even fewer shows than we have access to now. Sometimes those stations would want to show movies. But if the movie they wanted to show featured any scenes of nudity, violence, profanity or drug use, those scenes had to be edited. This was often done very poorly. Nobody knows why. Take for instance, Halloween II. The Television Cut of Halloween II edits or removes every scene from the film that featured nudity, violence, profanity or drug use. You may be thinking, "Wouldn't this ruin the movie, seeing as it's a horror movie and horror movies are pretty much required to have scenes with nudity, violence, profanity and/or drug use?" You'd be right, of course. It pretty much ruins the movie. "Then why would you watch the Television Cut of Halloween II?" you might ask. Well, due to the fact that the movie was going to be much shorter without all of the nudity, violence, profanity and drug use, a number of additional scenes were added to the Television Cut. They're mostly additional scenes of dialogue between the hospital staff. "Was anything cool added?" Nope. "Is it worth going out of my way to see this version of the movie?" No, not really.

Rating: 45%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Magna Carta

Once upon a time there was a such thing as kings and queens, and I guess there still is. But in merry old England some richos decided that it would probably be a good idea if kings and queens had to follow laws and shit, so they busted out a case of Keystone Light and drafted the hell out of the Magna Carta. This flimsy piece of paper also guaranteed certain inalienable rights for the citizens of England, so it turns out the Founding Fathers of America were just a bunch of plagiarizing assholes. Anyway, that doesn't matter because all the best countries don't even have kings, like Canada, USA, Afghanistan, Rwanda, East Timor, etc.

RATING: 83%

The Elephant Man

"I am not a two hour long video of paint drying! I am an actual movie!"

(I guess)

RATING: 21%

JFK

#29 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Oliver Stone is sometimes a great director (Natural Born Killers) and sometimes an awful director (U-Turn), but for JFK he truly created a movie that transcended film and became a cultural phenomenon. And it's also really great, since I guess Titanic was a cultural phenomenon too, but that sure didn't make the final cut of my list. Anyway, I don't personally believe that there was any kind of massive, complex conspiracy to kill Kennedy, but the movie really takes an interesting look at the way we as a nation perceive and interpret the events around us, and whether there is actually any such thing as one solid "truth" to be found.

RATING: 92%

The Wheel

Boy I bet some dumb caveman is kicking himself in Hell right now for not patenting this baby (the caveman is in Hell because "Know Jesus, Know Heaven; No Jesus, No Heaven" [bumper sticker]). The wheel is great because it makes the transportation of us and other items way easier largely due to calculus or something, who am I, Professor Brains-a-lot? The wheel is bad because when the wheels of time keep turning that means I die, you die, everybody dies, no stopping it, the end. Cheer up, at least there's also the Ferris Wheel, which I forgot to mention and is also awesome, and Wheel Of Fortune the tv show which is fun but sometimes the people on it are hella dumb.

RATING: 93%

Gandhi

Gandhi is a long, very well-made, boring movie about a guy named Gandhi, maybe you heard of him. I don't know, maybe I just don't have the attention span for massive historic epics anymore, but I bet if I saw this ten years ago I might have loved it. It was made in the 80s, but seems like one of those David Lean epics from the 50s/60s. Ben Kingsley is great, but one thing I wonder is how come in every movie about a famous person who was assassinated they always have to show the assassination in full gruesome glory? Although I guess in Mary Antoinette we were all a little sad not to see Kirsten Dunst get her head chopped off. Wait, what exactly was I talking about again? My attention span?

RATING: 58%

The Renaissance

One day a bunch of Europeans decided they were sick of being dumb and dying all the time way early, so they decided to try to get smarter. That was called the Renaissance. It means "To Get Smart Real Quick" in French talk. Basically, everybody started being interested in Classical literature like Dracula and shit and also they invented perspective in art and I think the toaster oven. It was a grand old time but people were still all crazy about God in a way that meant you could be excommunicated and murdered for forgetting a nipple on Jesus in a church commissioned painting. So points off there but I guess it was pretty good if you like book learnin you liberal pansies.

RATING: 79%