Category: Movies

Now Watching: Cherry 2000 (1987)

cherry 2000 poster

Cherry 2000 (1987)

Directed by Steve De Jarnatt

Starring Melanie Griffith, David Andrews, Pamela Gidley, Ben Johnson, Marshall Bell, and Harry Carey, Jr.

Synopsis: When successful businessman Sam Treadwell finds that his android wife, Cherry model 2000, has blown a fuse, he hires sexy renegade tracker E. Johnson to find her exact duplicate. But as their journey to replace his perfect mate leads them into the treacherous and lawless region of ‘The Zone,’ Treadwell learns the hard way that the perfect woman is made not of computer chips and diodes.

Rating: 3/10

The other day a friend of mine posted on Facebook saying that he had created a Substack, and he linked to his first post.  It was a bunch of nothing. Just a list of some recent movies he’d watched and a couple of words (not even full sentences) on what he thought. That was it.

I was shocked. I’m shy about promoting my official reviews or well-thought-out essays on social media, and here he was proudly posting this nonsense.  I was kind of jealous, actually. 

I have always had this idea that I should post about everything I’m reading, watching, and listening to. I like the idea that this blog could be just a collection of little things, mad thoughts, pictures of my cats, etc. But I’m bad at it. I’m bad at social media. I just don’t have the personality to post regularly everyday.

This is especially true with thoughts about films and the like. I always feel like I should write full reviews. But I just don’t have the time or mental energy for that. This is also complicated by the fact that I do write full reviews for Cinema Sentries and this little blog. When I hope to write full reviews, then I don’t write little bitty ones. But then sometimes I don’t write full reviews. 

Even for things I know I’m not going to write full reviews on, I sometimes write things for Five Cool Things. It seems silly to write some little something here and then have to repeat myself for those articles.

And yet.  And yet, here I am. I’m gonna try and do better. I’m gonna try and write at least a tiny thought on the various things I’m enjoying (or not enjoying, as the case may be.) If I then write full reviews, or include it in Five Cool Things, then that’s just the way it is.

Or, knowing me, I’ll write this one post and then never do this again.

And here are a couple of thoughts about Cherry 2000.  For a movie about a dude hiring a sexy bounty hunter to find his sexbot in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this movie is really rather dull. 

There is a version of this film that is wild, sexy, and fun. One that leans into the ridiculous nature of that story. But this movie just limps along. Melanie Griffith is dressed with absolute drab, and her performance isn’t much better.

Inside Out (2015)

inside out

Every now and again my connections to Cinema Sentries will give me access to something fun beyond just getting Blu-rays to review. I’ll get tickets to a con or to some special event. Just before Inside Out was released, I got to go to an event with my family where they gave you a commemorative poster (I still have it; it hangs on my wall right behind me), and there was some fun behind the scenes stuff on the screen. We had a lot of fun, and the movie was great. You can read all about it here.

Ghost Story: The Turn of the Screw (2009)

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I have this memory from my teenage years of walking through Mega Movies – the former Burger King turned massive video store rental place – looking for something to watch. We went there at least once a week (and in the summer multiple times a week). Going so often, I’d reach the point where I’d seen all the new releases and regularly dug into the regular shelves. But it was a big enough place I’d still stumble upon something that looked interesting.

I remember seeing an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The cover had a girl in a bikini or some scantily clad outfit, and she was standing by a great big hook of some kind. That cover and the fact that the title had “screw” in it made me think this was something titillating, not an adaptation of one of the great literary works of the last century.

I want to say I rented it and was greatly disappointed by it, but I really can’t remember.  But the idea they were trying to reach dumb, horny teens like me with a scintillating cover for a Henry James adaptation makes me smile. I just tried to figure out which adaptation it was, but I had no luck. 

This is not that movie, but a rather dull BBC adaptation starring Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens. You can read my review at Cinema Sentries.

The Immigrant (2013)

the immigrant dvd

I’m once again going back through my old Cinema Sentry reviews and posting them here.  I wrote this review back in April of 2016, so almost exactly 11 years ago. I haven’t seen the film since. Reading my review, I seem to have liked it so I may have to remedy that soon.

The Immigrant stars Marion Cotillard as an immigrant to the United States. Jeremy Renner and Joaquin Phoenix are two guys that make her life miserable.  Yet it is a story of hope and grace. You can read my full review here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Q: The Winged Serpent (1982)

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My daughter is celebrating her birthday this weekend. We spent a large chunk of last night putting up decorations, cleaning the house, and otherwise preparing for her party. By the time we were done, I was whooped. I managed to watch this movie, but I was way too tired to write about it. So once again you get a Friday Night Horror Movie on Saturday morning.

When I think of movies from the 1980s, I naturally think of movies I loved as a kid. Movies I actually watched during the ’80s. Then there were also movies that I did not watch. Movies I knew about, but that wasn’t for me. Weren’t for kids. Movies for adults I had no interest in. There were other movies that I’d see in the video rental store but didn’t rent for one reason or another.  And finally, there are movies like Q: The Winged Serpent. Movies I’d never heard of until much later.  Way after the 1980s.  I mean, I don’t think I saw this film in a video store; surely I would have remembered that crazy cover of a dragon-looking monster on top of the Chrysler Building.

But as an adult, this film kept popping up in my feeds. Someone would talk about it on social media, or it would come up in some list. It definitely kept rearing its head when I went searching for movies to watch from the 1980s.

I put off watching it for a long time because I kept getting it confused with another 1980s horror movie. One whose name I can’t remember now, but that apparently has some pretty nasty rape scenes, and I’m never in the mood for that.

But it popped up again last night, and the Letterboxd reviews didn’t mention any nastiness, so I put it in.  It’s actually pretty good for a goofy, low-budget monster movie.It was directed by Larry Cohen, who was kind of the king of surprisingly good low-budget horror movies in the 1980s. He made movies like The Stuff, A Return to Salem’s Lot, and Special Effects. 

Someone is killing people in a gruesome, ritualistic way. At the same time, a number of people have literally lost their heads (and other body parts) whilst wandering around New York City. Detective Shepard (David Carradine) and Sergeant Powell (Richard Roundtree) are on the case.The ritualistic killings seem to be a part of some kooky Aztec cult, and Shepard starts to think they might have awakened Quetzalcōātl, an ancient Aztec serpent god. He’s right, of course; otherwise we might not have a movie.

Accidentally mixed up in all this is Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty), a cheap crook who really just wants to play jazz piano. He gets mixed up with the wrong guys, and when a robbery goes bad, he decides to hide in the top of the Chrysler Building. Guess where old Q the Winged Serpent, is hiding out, has made a nest, and laid an egg?

Made on a very modest budget of $1.1 million, Cohen keeps the monster off screen for most of its runtime. He makes great use of shadows sweeping across the New York City landscape, and we get snippets of wings, claws, and beaks.  Once it fully shows up toward the end, it looks like…well, it looks like a claymation monster made on a budget. But I’ll still take that over most of the CGI slop we get these days.

The acting is quite good for a film like this. Moriarty plays Jimmy in a way that is both sleazy and heartbreaking. He’s a guy who just can’t catch a break, and yet constantly makes the dumbest decisions.  After learning where the monster lives, he goes to the authorities but refuses to tell them where it is until they agree to give him $1 million in cash, amnesty for all his crimes, and photographic rights to the serpent.

Carradine and Roundtree are having a lot of fun as the cops. They are tough and smart-assed. Cohen keeps things moving at a clip, and he creates plenty of modest thrills.I’m a big fan of the low-budget monster movies they made a lot of in the 1950s, and it’s always fun to see homages like this from later decades. It isn’t a great movie, but darn if it isn’t a fun one.

The Movie Journal: March 2026

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I watched 45 movies in March. 29 of them were new to me. 14 of them were made before I was born. It was Westerns in March, and I watched seven of those. That’s a piddling number. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times now, I’ve been trying to up my game in terms of writing for Cinema Sentries. The more “official” reviews I do, the less time I have for watching what I want. You would think I’d want to watch whatever theme I’m doing in a given month, but that winds up feeling like work again, and so I just watch other stuff. I may be winding the whole monthly theme thing down. Or, more likely, I’ll just plan on writing about one theme movie a week or something like that.

It was a good month. It felt like a weird month, and looking back on everything I watched, I was a bit all over the place. I caught two movies in the theater (The Bride! and Project Hail Mary), which is rare for me. Favorite new-to-me watches included Project Hail Mary, Hamnet, Bleeder, and Hidden in the Fog.

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The actors list changed quite a bit. I watched three films from director Nicolas Winding Refn, which tied him for second place, but those three films had actor Zlatko Burić in them, and apparently he is also in The Bride! and Wolfs, which put him in the top spot, even though I’d never heard of him before. We’ve been watching some Tom Baker era Doctor Who, and he’s tied for number one with five films. I’m glad to see Lino Ventura in the list as well. He’s one of my favorite French actors.

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I got a boxed set of Yves Boisset films the other day.  Technically I watched them this month, but since Letterboxd doesn’t break them down like that, he gets counted in this journal.  I’ll have a review of that boxed set soon.

It is nice to see the director’s list getting filled out even if I haven’t seen a lot of movies from any one person.

Anyway, here’s the full list.

Bullet in the Head (1990) ****
Project Hail Mary (2026) ****
The Deadly Companions (1961) ***1/2
Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen (1985) ***1/2
A Perfect Murder (1998) ***
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) ***
Pusher II (2004) ***1/2
Dial M for Murder (1954) ****
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) ****
Tea and Sympathy (1956) ****
Bye Bye Morons (2020) ***1/2
Once a Thief (1991) ****
A Bridge Too Far (1977) ***1/2
It All Came True (1940) ****
The Dancing Hawk (1978) **1/2
The Funhouse (1981) ***
Maigret Sees Red (1963) ***1/2
Hidden in the Fog (1953)
Hamnet (2025)
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)
Doctor Who: Warriors’ Gate (1981) ****
The Bride! (2026) ****
Big City Blues (1932) ***
Decision at Sundown (1957) ****
Doctor Who: State of Decay (1980) ****
The Marvels (2023) ***1/2
Jason X (2001) **
Ganja & Hess (1973) ***
Re-Wind (1988) ***
The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) ****
Dead for a Dollar (2022) ***1/2
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) ****
Doctor Who: Full Circle (1980) ****
Pusher (1996) ***1/2
Dead Again (1991) ***1/2
Bleeder (1999) ****
Valdez Is Coming (1971) ***1/2
Suspicion (1941) ***1/2
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) ***
Excalibur (1981) ****
The Quick and the Dead (1987) *1/2
Hour of the Gun (1967) ***

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Invitation to Hell (1984)

Wes Craven’s debut film, The Last House on the Left (1972), was quite successful financially, but its brutal violence led it to be censored and banned, and didn’t exactly make it easy for him to get financing for another film. He actually returned to his porno roots, making the hardcore incest film The Fireworks Woman, before he was able to get financing for another horror film, The Hills Have Eyes (1977). It was also a big hit, and from there he started to get really noticed.  He moved to Los Angeles and made several modest hits before directing A Nightmare on Elm Street, which made him a horror icon. 

Just before that film came out, he made this one for ABC TV. It is unbelievable that he made those two movies back to back. One is a horror masterpiece; the other is this film.

Invitation to Hell is like a mix of The Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Matt Winslow (Robert Urich), is a brilliant computer scientist who prefers to work alone. But there isn’t a lot of money in that, so he eventually agrees to work for some big tech firm with his fraternity brother Tom Peterson (Joe Regalbuto). This involves a lot more money than he’s ever made before and a big office. This allows him, his wife Pat (Joanna Cassidy), and two children, Chrissy (Soleil Moon Frye) and Robert (Barrett Oliver), to move into a big, fancy house in the suburbs. 

He loves his job. The company is building a fancy spacesuit for NASA, and Matt is in charge of fitting it with lots of computer stuff so the astronauts will be able to do things like tell the surface temperature and determine if the living creature in front of them is human or alien.  The suit is also fireproof and shoots lasers.

Everyone at the office keeps pressuring him to join the Steaming Spring Country Club run by the beautiful Jessica Jones (Susan Lucci). But Matt isn’t a joiner, and something seems fishy at the club, so he keeps declining. But the wife and kids like the place, so they keep going to it, and eventually join.

With a title like Invitation to Hell, I don’t think it really counts as a spoiler to say that Jessica is some kind of demon or maybe even Satan him (or her) self. When people join the club, she gets your soul, which she keeps in Hell, and some kind of replicant comes out. The mechanics of all that are left to the imagination.

All of this is reasonable well done. If you recognize it is a made-for-TV movie from the early 1980s and keep your expectations real low, then you might find you can enjoy yourself. The final 15 minutes are pretty great. Sort-of spoilers ahead for (again) a movie called Invitation to Hell – Matt finds a portal to Hell at the club, dons his fancy space suit, and goes in to save his family. Hell looks amazing. Craven saved all his budget for this scene. There are some great matte paintings and killer set designs. The climactic battle with Jessica (who wears an amazing dress) is, well, not all that climactic, but it doesn’t matter because the sets are so darn cool.

I can’t really recommend this film except to Wes Craven nerds, but if you dig the man, then there is enough here to allow me to recommend it.

Bullet in the Head (1990)

bullet in the head uhd cover

It is a fine time to be a John Woo fan. A great many of his films have recently received the UHD treatment. Bullet in the Head is just the latest, and the second one I’ve reviewed.

This is John Woo at his most epic and most personal. It features a trio of friends who constantly get into trouble and find themselves in the middle of the Vietnam War.  You can read my full review here.

Tea and Sympathy (1956)

tea and sympathy bluray

The Hollywood Production Code did not allow for homosexuality to exist in their movies. Gay people were not acceptable. That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Clever filmmakers often included gay characters in their films. They just couldn’t come out right, and state it. But if you look closely, you’ll find all sorts of gay-coded characters hiding in plain sight.

Tea and Sympathy is a great example of this. Based on a play in which the main character is explicitly gay, the film was never allowed to call Tom (John Kerr) a homosexual, and he never shows any interest in men.  Instead, he’s just not “manly” like the other boys at his school. He likes poetry and art and listening to classical music by himself. When he’s caught sewing a button on a shirt while hanging out with a bunch of teachers’s wives instead of horsing around with the boys, things come to a boil.  

His only refuge is the housemaster’s wife (a wonderful Deborah Kerr), who seems to understand who he is, and who attempts to help. This is still a 1950s movie, and it is still entangled in that production code, but it is a surprisingly sympathetic and heartfelt little drama.  You can read my full review here.

It All Came True (1940)

it all came true bluray

Humphrey Bogart is my favorite actor. He made some of my favorite movies – The Big Sleep, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Casablanca, and so many more. But the thing I always have to remember is that he spent more than a decade as a second-tier star. He played gangsters and heavies for a long time. He was often the third or fourth actor billed on a poster or in the credits before he became the star that we know and love.

He is exactly that in It All Came True. Originally he was third billed. He plays a gangster causing trouble for top-billed Ann Sheridan. But not long after this movie came out, Bogart did become a big star. In subsequent rereleases, suddenly Bogart was top billed. They even changed the opening credits for him.

Which is kind of dumb because this is Ann Sheridan’s movie through and through. It is an odd movie.  Part of it is a fairly serious drama, but then they keep injecting magic tricks, show tunes, and vaudeville acts.  That makes it less than a great movie, but it sure is fun. You can read my full review here.