Country: United States
Genre: Action/Horror/Science Fiction
Director: James Cameron
Year: 1986

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
James Cameron manages something pretty special with Aliens. He takes an absolutely classic first film and while honoring what made it great, takes the concept in an entirely different direction.
If Alien was “truckdrivers in space,” Aliens is “marines in space.”
It seems that while Ellen […]

Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Fantasy/Action/Romance
Director: Corey Yuen
Year: 1991

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
A discombobulating pastiche of fantasy, romance, farce, action, and costume pageantry, Savior of the Soul is the wacky masterpiece that made me a lifetime fan of Hong Kong film.
As our story begins, city soldier Mae (a smolderingly sensual Anita Mui) has foiled the assasination of […]

Country: United States
Genre: Action/Science Fiction/Suspense
Director: Gary Fleder
Year: 2001

Rating:

MOVIES THAT PASS UNDER THE RADAR
Michael Douglas, the producer of The China Syndrome, must have gotten down on his knees to thank the movie gods after the 3-Mile Island nuclear accident. The dovetailing of front page news with his paranoid eco-thriller turned The China Syndrome into a […]

Sometimes, worthy movies aren’t noticed. This can happen for many reasons.
In the case of some Hong Kong movies, in the late 80s and early 90s, so many high quality gangster movies were being made that they risked being lost in the shuffle.
Other times, current events can make studio heads nervous. After 9/11, a lot of […]

Country: Italy
Genre: Drama
Director: Liliana Cavani
Year: 1974
Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
I struggled a bit over whether to include The Night Porter on this website. Clearly, it is an art film. However, it has it’s sleazy, salacious aspects.
When The Night Porter was released back in the 70s, the critics were up in arms over it’s depiction of […]

Country: United States
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Director: Mark Harmon
Year: 1986

Rating:

COOL MOVIES CRITICS DISRESPECT
One of the greatest and most misunderstood horror movies ever, The Hitcher represents a high point in the careers of the majority of the cast and crew — Robert Harmon never directed this well again, Eric Red never wrote a better screenplay, and the score […]

Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/Martial Arts/Comedy
Director: Jackie Chan
Year: 1988

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Somehow, I managed to avoid seeing Police Story II until now. I think it’s because I thought Crime Story, which was directed by Kirk Wong, was the English title for Police Story II, much like Supercop was the English title for Police Story […]

Country: United States
Genre: Action/Blaxploitation
Director: Abdul Malik Abbott
Year: 2002

Rating:

NOT WORTH YOUR TIME
The first thing that comes to mind when you start watching State Property is “Dang! This is straight up exploitation.” They START the movie in a titty bar with the dancers miming various fornication positions. The camera ogles the dancers for several minutes before […]

Country: United Kingdom
Genre: Action/Drama/Comedy
Director: Martin McDonagh
Year: 2008

Rating:

COOL MOVIES CRITICS DISRESPECT
Let’s see: funny hitmen - check; conversations about topics that have nothing to do with killing people - check; graphic violence - check; lots of cursing - check; must be a Tarantino knockoff. That’s the lazy and reductive reasoning many critics used to arrive at […]

Premiering today is a new section in the site - Cool Movies Critics Disrespect.
Just as there are acknowledged trash cinema classics that are absolutely terrible, every once in a while, a movie comes along that critics completely miss the boat on.
To me, it seems important to set the record straight, not only out of […]