Brigham City

Brigham City (2001): This is another good example of the high quality of some indy films. Made in Utah by real Mormons, it is the story of the sheriff of a quiet Mormon community (who is also the bishop of his stake) who is bearing his own cross and is confronted by the arrival of a serial killer in his midst. Richard Dutcher put the picture together and also takes the lead as the limping sheriff. Wilford Brimley is probably the only recognizable actor but all the cast give excellent performances. The cast starts to be reduced and a couple of hot shot FBI agents drop into town to ‘help’. The sheriff hopes the problem will go away and the young deputy is all hot to get involved in his first big case. This is not your typical serial killer movie and spends a lot of time involving you in the community so that you care about the people there. Many scenes occur in church during service, unusual for this type of film. You can also see the ‘Eden’ like quality of the town and the ‘invasion’ of this Eden by the serpent. Beautifully shot in the Bee Hive state, this is a good rent for a dark night. By the end of the movie, you will really care about a lot of the people in town. The movie is rated PG-13 for: excessive kindness, trash seen by the side of the road, some houses in need of paint, treeless hills, and oh yes, I almost forgot…MURDER!

Habit

Habit (1997): This NYC Indy production about love, death, sanity (or lack thereof), and vampires is a good little flick. Written, directed, and acted by Larry Fessenden, it concerns a delusional alcoholic college student/artist/ bartender who falls for a girl he meets at a party. She turns out to be a little nipper…er…..ah…..well…..that is….she kind of nips you during passionate embraces and really starts to bite when you reach the aardvarking stage. Perhaps in this case its aardbiting? In any event, our hero gets weaker and weaker and has lots of intellectual conversations with his arty New Yoak City friends. Is it the inane conversations with his friends or the girl that is making him weak? Or is it the excessive drinking and for that matter what does she see in him if not just the red juice since he is semi-conscious most of the time. Is she a vampire or is he in a terminal alcoholic fog? Will the hero survive; perish from unnatural causes or perhaps by natural causes? That’s the question in this interesting little low budget movie. This should keep genre fans interested and you can really draw your own conclusions about what really happened. The movie is rated R for: Hero and Heroine nudity, aardvarking and aardbiting, high levels of red gel, New York traffic, old ferry boats, and vapid intellectuals.

Isolation

Isolation (2005): True to its title, the plot of this intense little thriller isolates the cast from the outside world. The small cast is facing a crisis, that if not solved could cause the end of life as we know it, but it takes a while until the realization hits home. The cast includes the much needed mad scientist, a shapely veterinarian, a farmer and a pair of young lovers in hiding. While the cast is small, mortality is high. The movie is set on an Irish farm where our mad scientist is running some genetic experiments to increase growth rates of calves and things don’t go quite right during the first birth. Suspense is effectively built up as the plot progresses and true to good old movie strategy; you are not shown the ‘thing’ until the end and you never get a really good look at it. But in this movie they are not trying to scare you with rubber clawed giant chickens. You are required to use your imagination to conjure up a picture of what the group is up against. And remember, having a mad scientist on your side is not always a plus, young lovers are not always rational, and farmers don’t always understand mad scientists even when they are right. Put all this together and you get a real shoestring operation to save the world. With an apparent low budget this little movie delivers a good punch of suspense without many special effects but contains very effective use of mud and slime. This is a recommended selection for suspense/horror aficionados. The movie is not rated but would probably grow a mutated R for: massive leaking roofs, multiple rubber boots, massive mud trudging, multiple cow bowel excisions (ugh), nipping fetuses, winching birth, exploding cows, multiple hammers to multiple heads, way too toothy slugs, a drowning tractor, and for the giant hole in the back of the veterinarian.

A Sound of Thunder

A Sound of Thunder (2004): I had never heard of this little gem and the write up made it appear like a really bad B movie but I gave it a try anyway and found a gold nugget. Based on a short story by SiFi master Ray Bradbury, this Euro produced, Czech Republic shot flick was much better than expected and handled its time travel theme with aplomb. Set in Chicago about 50 years in the future, it proposes that time travel allows people to go back in time and hunt dinosaurs for a very high price. Most of future Chicago is digitized but done so with some Imagineering as to what will evolve as skyscrapers in half a century. Even the famous Chicago El is shown in a modern double decked form. And this is one of those rare movies set in the future that still shows traffic congestion on city streets and even though the vehicles are clearly digital images, they are done reasonably well. Starring Sir Ben Kingsley and Edward Burns, it shows what might happen if something is inadvertently changed in the past. You get a massive butterfly effect (literally) as Chicago is hit by time waves that start radically changing things. The crew of the time travel company must desperately search to find out what was changed in the past and then try to prevent it from happening before humanity is evolved out of existence. While this is primarily and action movie, it stays within its time travel boundaries and even allows a few paradoxes along the way. While not a great movie, it is a pretty good action SF adventure movie that should keep you interested for its almost two hour length. The move is rated PG for: scientist’s sleepovers, deadly ice bullets, gnarly plants, thorny plants, deadly plants, apelike reptiles, reptile-like apes, subway serpents, big bad bugs, tropical Chicago, and for the extremely high attrition rate of time travelers.

Timeline

Timeline (2003): Time travel movies are usually snubbed by mainstream critics and this one was no exception. I actually had read the Michael Crichton novel on which the movie is based and thought they covered the subject pretty well, but most critics trashed the movie version. However, the Tapehead frequently doesn’t see eye to eye with the usual suspects. Starring Gerard Butler, in a pre-300 muscular format, he nevertheless appears the most buffed of all the male stars. He also appears to be in a knock down drag out fight with Billy Connolly as to who has the thicker Scottish brogue. Hoot mon and don’t spare the haggis.

The story goes something like this; a group of archeology students on a dig at a 14th century French castle discover a bifocal lens in a sealed cavern under the castle. Since bifocals wouldn’t be invented for another 300 years or so and the prescription matches that of the professor who is leading the dig, many questions are generated. The professor had gone to visit the large corporation financially supporting the dig only about three days before. Plus they find his handwriting asking for help on an old manuscript found near the glasses, and the manuscript tests as being over 600 years old. This leads to the time travel element of the movie which isn’t explained in too much detail but the rules are quickly established adding much of the suspense to the movie. Needless to say, things don’t go exactly as planned, and they wind up in the middle of the English and French armies in a battle for the same castle during the 100 years war. What I liked about the movie is that it actually tries to deal with some of the paradoxes that have to creep up in a story of this type. Early on, the now time students find an old sarcophagus with a man and woman carved on top and the man is carved with an ear missing. Well, goll-durn, doesn’t a time traveler get an ear knocked off in a fight and realize its his grave they had seen and that he ain’t making it back to good old now time.

Overall, this is an action movie with SF elements. It also has a few love interests and has a happy ending and I enjoyed my nearly two hours of viewing. The movie is rated PG-13 for: multiple thick Scottish brogues, thick armor, thick headed nobles, excessive fire arrows, oil fires, Greek fire, fire in the castle, fire in the barn, fire in the hole, fire in the loins, misaligned aortas, rogue time travelers, unwanted grenades and especially for the short average life spans for modern men in ancient times.

Insecticidal

Insecticidal (2005): Yes it’s another dead teen in a box movie but this classic comes with giant CGI bugs! The movie appears to be mainly an excuse to have a large number of UBIDATS (under-dressed bimbos in distress and terminally stupid) in the cast. True to form, these college kids appear to have missed most of the benefits of higher education. The only exception to this appears to be the nerdly sophomore who is doing genetic research on insects in her sorority house bedroom! The less well endowed gals (brain wattage that is) make fun of her and spray her modified bugs with bug killer. This starts the little critters to cease being that way. Soon we have the standard theme of giant bugs chasing well endowed (physically speaking now) gals around the sorority house. Most of the male party goers soon bite the dust (or in this case the giant dust mites bite them) while some of the gals hold out a bit longer. One of the gals appears to be mutating into a bug since maggots keep falling out of her hair when she scratches and she also seems to have a case of psoriasis from hell. The remaining gals (and one guy) eventually beat the bugs and escape the infested sorority house but at the end of the movie they all walk past a guy who’s limping really badly. I haven’t quite figured out if that was supposed to be a hint the bugs won or just if some hobo walked by during the last shot and they didn’t have enough funds for a re-shoot. The movie is rated R for: multiple shower scenes, multiple breastulations, bug interrupted sex, massive goo dropping, sweaty Asian American, inept peeping Toms, football player on steroids, skin peeling, and for excessive maggot dropping,