Hard Eight

good slight drama

hard eight is paul thomas anderson's first feature film and it's a good drama about a young man (john c reilley) who's down on his luck outside of meets up with sydney (philip baker hall) who teaches him how to make money at gambling. he becomes like a father figure to john, but he may have some ulterior motives for this. the film is kinda slight in nature, but well acted and paced. very good early film from reilley and PTA.

Puddle Cruiser

Schizopolis

quite fucking unique

schizopolis is one of steven soderbergh's earlier films, and certainly the most unique one i've ever seen. the film has no credits, often people speaking in different languages, actors playing the same character but in different roles (somehow), and plenty of other oddities. the humor and story is hit and miss in my opinion.
steven soderbergh plays the main character, who has to write a speech for a motivational speaker type guy, and is going insane from the task. the story is almost irrelivant though and most of the film seems to make little or no sense. it's more or less a take on modern business life... kinda like office space, but weirder. i liked it overall for the originality.

Lupin III: Dead or Alive (Rupan sansei: Dead or Alive)

decent, not amazing

lupin is on the hunt to discover treasure hiddin within an amazingly well guarded island. in order to uncover its secrets he must impersonate a dead prince of sorts and he almost gets killed a few times. its all fun and games, but nothing too original to be added to the series. but hey, its Lupin the 3rd! Awesome.

Jack Frost

"well it aint fucking frosty!"

with brilliant dialogue like that you know it must be a great b grade christmas horror flick. jack frost is terrible. that's the only way to describe it overall. now i really love terrible movies that are entertaining, but this was dreadful. the filmmakers idea of action was close up shots of various snow men body parts, followed by cuts to some bloody mess, back to the snow men, etc. there were almost no wide shots whatsoever in the film. the story even rips off david lynch's twin peaks in many ways! not to mention how horrible the "snow" looked in the movie... we also don't get to see shannon elizabeth's boobs. what the fuck?

Larger Than Life

Bill Murray... oh, and an elephant

sure it's dumb, and family friendly, but larger than life has some good moments. bill murray is the 2nd funniest man alive (just behind jerry seinfeld in my opinion), but this is not his best work by a longshot. he basically just picks up a paycheck, and gets some elephant love in the process. good story for kids, not many laughs, and oh yeah... bill murray.