Tag: Movies

  • Earworm Wednesday: It’s from that Movie, Right?

    “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was suggested by my daughter, who associates this song with the end of Real Genius. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that this song does play at the end of that movie, you know, when all the kids are jumping in the popcorn that exploded out of that professor’s house. For some reason I thought this song played at the end of a John Huges movie, like The Breakfast Club. (I was thinking of “Don’t You (Forget About Me.” which I might use next week.)

    Anyway, the kid hates how easy this song gets stuck in her head. My memory of it is listening to it on the radio when my Mom was driving me around in her Chevette in the late 80’s. We might have been on our way to the J.C. Penny’s at Six Flags Mall to buy me a pair senseable slacks.

  • The Bad Movie Bible: A Top 10 Best Worst 1980s Movie Monsters

    The Bad Movie Bible is back, and when I say that I mean that Rob Hill released a new video on his YouTube page. This time around he is tackling movie monsters from the 80’s. And with all of Hill’s videos, they are more entertaining than most of the movies that he mentions. I was rather proud of myself as I had seen one of the movies that Rob lists here.

  • Bad Movie Bible – Borrowing Blockbusters: RoboCop Rip-Offs

    Rob Hill and his Bad Movie Bible are back with another installment of “Borrowing Blockbusters: Robocop Rip-Offs.” The funny thing is that like a week ago, I started wondering if Rob was due with another video…

    I’m a fan of bad movies, and Rob does a great job of tying all of the production companies, directors and producers together to give a complete picture of how the world loves to rip-off a good movie.

  • Short Story Review: “Something Out of a Horror Movie” by Mario Aliberto III

    (The short story “Something Out of a Horror Movie,” by Mario Aliberto III appeared on February 27th, 2025 in Milk Candy Review.)

    (Image from Milk Candy Review)

    When I was a teenager, and well into my twenties and beyond, I spent hours debating with my friends about the mechanics, tropes, and clichés of horror movies. How most horror movies, more than any other genre of film, are made up of an uncountable number of rip offs and copies of more successful horror movies. For myself, as a person who loves awful movies, bad horror films are an entertaining gift that just keeps on giving.

    So, when I started reading Mario Aliberto III’s “Something Out of a Horror Movie,” I was intrigued as to what he was wanting to accomplish is this flash fiction story. It reads like it was written but someone who loves the awful character clichés of the genre. What I appreciated in this piece was that as I started reading it, I couldn’t put my finger on if this is a story about characters in a horror movie, or if they are characters in “real life” that find themselves in a horror movie situation, or if these are characters that have seen too many horror movies and went to that places because of the situation they were in. By doing that, structuring the story that way, left me feeling off balance which played very well to the theme of the piece, and ultimately the climax of the story.

    But what I enjoyed most was that this story took a stock clichéd character that I have seen in millions of horror movies, and made me think of her differently, and also made me view her actions in a fully well-rounded way for that character. Aliberto does this rather effortlessly, and compactly. The last paragraph is just great.

    I will never look at the Bad Girl trope character the same way again.

  • Man, Am I Tired

    Not sure what happened. I went to bed at my normal-ish time last night. I did stay up and watch the Oscars, so maybe that had something to do with it.

    I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the Oscars, but it has been over 15 years since I have seen all the best picture nominees, let alone half of them. But I am a movie fan, and I like the spectacle, and it is something fun to debate with friends, and I wanted to see what Conan would do. With all of that said, it was a rather dull affair. My kid wanted to stay up and watch it with me, which I agreed to, but she was out by 9pm.

    When the Oscars were over, and the kid off to bed, I started to watch Becket. I hadn’t seen it since high school, and I didn’t get too far into it. I found Peter O’Toole’s Henry II grating on my nerves, which I understand was the point. Then I thought about watching Lion in Winter, which is also about Henry II but at the end of his life and with succession being the driver of that plot. Though Lion in Winter is not a sequel to Becket, with O’Toole playing Henry II in both films, it sort of very loosely, kind’a is.

    I bring all of this up for no other reason than it occurred to me last night.

    And this morning, I just felt off. Very tired, a little anxious, and all around uneasy about myself and the day before me. The last time I felt like this was when I was working a particular job that I started to despise, and knew it was time for me to leave. But I couldn’t pin down why I was feeling this way, especially on a day like today.

    But there is a very harsh reality with being the age that I am and also having responsibilities of my family; I had to push through it. I had to make breakfast for the gang. I had to get people up and on their way. I had to do laundry and clean up. I had to making chicken stock for dinner, and lunch for the wife. In a little bit, I will take that chicken stock and tech my kid how to make Greek Lemon Soup.

    I just have to keep pushing through, but that feeling hasn’t gone away today.