New reviews from Nick at Nite:

The Thing

Has John Carpenter ever made a bad movie? Hello. They are all glorious. The Fog, Escape From New York, Escape From LA, VAMPIRES, and Ghosts on Mars - is there a better group of work? Hell, he even composes the soundtracks for these movies. Got caught watching The Thing again last night and felt it deserved a quick review. Basically, evil martian is awakened in icy grave by crazy Norwegian, not Swedish, scientists. Evil martian eats dogs, scientists, etc ... Turns out when evil martian eats things it can take their form. As such, he hides among the American scientists living in the artic wasteland and takes his time killing them. This is a great short science fiction story, was originally made into a movie in the 50s, and was carefully updated by Carpenter in this adaption. It has a high gore factor, for 80s type movies, no nudity, some gun play, and a very cool flame thrower. This is also probably Kurt Russell's greatest movie. I give this movie an "A."


Taking Lives

This movie sucked. It has Angelina Jolie in it and it still sucked. Not much plot, hard to follow, not much to look at. Ordinarily, I like violence, nudity, loud music, and gore, but in this movie it did not work. My favorite moment: in this very serious movie, Angelina Jolie gets in her car to chase the bad guy on an overcast day and apparently stops to put on her sunglasses because in one frame she does not have them on and then in the next frame she does. Please. There is also a very misplaced sex scene, not sure what it added to the plot, it might have been only added to the director's cut. There is also an equally odd, disturbing twist at the end. I won't give away, but when I saw it at first ... I thought what kind of sick b*stard would write such a thing. Angelina Jolie needs to make another Tomb Raider to restore my faith in her. Ethan Hawke, well what can I say, he obviously doesn't have good judgment - he left Uma Thurman. I give this movie an "F."