If you don’t know about our family, my father is a movie freak.  He owns thousands of movies, mostly on tape because he still sees the new innovation of DVD as still in its infancy.  Now this alone isn’t enough to make fun of him but it is the specific movies he owns which make his collection special.  He has bought some of the crappiest movies ever to be made, and sometimes when he forgets he bought it once, he buys it again.  But it goes much further than that.

He is also known to rent movies that have tricky names.  There have been numerous occasions where one of us boys goes over to find that he rented “Snakes on a Train” or “Transmorphers”.  Am I making this up?  Sadly I am not.  Check it out on IMBD if you do not believe me.  And if Movie Gallery was still open, I would love to have had a copy of his rental history.

When we were kids, he would rent movies from Northeast Video in Waterville, Maine.  He would bring himself home a new Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson while at the same time bringing his boys home the newest horror releases.  It was not only the known movies but the crappy ones like Troll 2.  This set us on a collision course with “B” movies, which inevitable led us to the greatest “B” horror series of all time “Evil Dead”, staring Bruce Campbell as Ash.  If you have not seen Army of Darkness, you should immediately punch yourself in the face for you have missed out on so much.

With this sordid past, I have decided to create a new movie ranking, based on Robert Derosby.  Each movie will be ranked from one to five, based on the very intricate Bob renting policy

ONE BOB:  I would not add this movie to my collection…and I have some crap in my collection.

TWO BOBS:  It has an 80s star or a former wrestler in it.  It must be good .

THREE BOBS:  2 well known actors.  Enough said.

FOUR BOBS:  It may not have dead Nazis, a lot of explosions, or Sly Stallone as a cop on the run, but I think this is going in my collection.

FIVE BOBS:  I need to buy this movie for my sons for Christmas.  3 copies of Transmorphers please.

I’m expecting Cloverfield-type disappointment to set in about a week after seeing Monsters.  In an age of incredible possibilities through CGI, I guess I get a little suspicious nowadays when the directors refuse to show you what everybody in the movie is running or hiding from.  There’s a fine line between suspense and “we have no idea what to make this thing look like, so we’ll work around it by pretending to be artsy and creative and not show you anything”.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/monsters/

I’m planning for mainstream-horror fare from Case 39, a psychological looking Omen-meets-The Exorcist  movie starring Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper.  It looks like it has real potential, which is the problem.  I can handle a bad movie that knows it’s bad:  they’re fun to watch even when they’re meant to be serious.  It’s the ones that have all the potential in the world then fail to deliver that I can’t stand.  After watching this trailer, I relegated this one to the Red Box pile pending further review.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/case39/

Let Me In, starring Chloe Moretz (the entertaining and amazingly vulgar Hit Girl from Kick-Ass) looks to be the best of the bunch and has a real indie-horror feel to it.  Kid befriends the girl next door who turns out to be a murderous vampire.  Maybe I’ll drag the other Derosby Brothers to the theater for this one. 

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/letmein/

Thanks to Apple Movie Trailers.com, without whom (?) I’d have been extremely less productive this morning.  You can see all of these trailers and more by following the link to their site http://trailers.apple.com/.

-CWD

Click on the pictures below for full size images.

….so come on Marvel, where’s the promo poster for The Avengers?

-CWD

The GI Joe movie may be good.  I hope it’s not the Van Damme Street Fighter movie reincarnated.  Twice-baked poo is just as bad the second time around.  Follow this link for some spofulous new photos of our brand new Joe team.  Yo Joe !!!  (thanks, IGN…I hope I’m allowed to post this link) http://media.movies.ign.com/media/552/552248/imgs_1.html

Star Trek:

I was always a Star Wars fan, but I can appreciate good Sci-Fi.  Thanks to Kevin M (a friend of mine from college) who enlighened us to the good, the bad, and the Shatner that is the Star Trek movie franchise.  The trailer for this movie looks amazing, and the promo media I’ve seen is well done.  I’ll definitely see this in the theaters (if time, money, and babysitter provides).  

Dragonball Z:

….just kidding.   This one does look like the reincarnation of Street Fighter.  James Marsters…..what the hell was he thinking?