Lady in the Water (2006)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Written by M. Night Shyamalan
Co-Starring M. Night Shyamalan
Produced by M. Night Shyamalan
Run Time: 109 Minutes
Tagline: Time is running out for a happy ending.
Like most people on the planet, I was terrifically impressed by M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 debut The Sixth Sense. I was wrapped up in the [...]

District 9 (2009)

Written and Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Run Time: 112 minutes
Tagline: You are not welcome here
Peter Jackson’s latest production District 9 is an wonderfully ironic look at man’s inhumanity to man, and man’s inhumanity to inhumanity.
Basically: What if alien refugees sort of, well, parked their spaceship at our planet and couldn’t leave? Yes, we’d toss [...]

War of the Worlds (2005) (plus bonus review! Independence Day (1996))

ATTACK OF THE SCI-FI SOAP OPERA SERIALPART THREE
By Sean Ledden

War of the Worlds – or – quality time with the kids
And now, regrettably, we come back full-circle to Monsieur Spielberg. Remember how I complained in Close Encounters of the Third Kind of our long immersion into Neary household trauma? Well, now that stuff’s the [...]

Mission To Mars (2000)

ATTACK OF THE SCI-FI SOAP OPERA SERIALPART TWO
by Sean Ledden

Mission to MUSH (OOPS, I mean MARS)
Mission to Mars came out in 2000, and unlike Contact, it avoids the God question entirely. This should be refreshing, but unfortunately it is so besotted with sex and romance it doesn’t have another idea in its pretty little head. [...]

Cloverfield (2008)

Produced by J. J. Abrams
Tagline: “Some Thing Has Found Us”
A guest review by stalwart contributor Sean Ledden

Most of the movies ridiculed, I mean critiqued, at the Monster Shack are prehistoric artifacts from a murky past. Born from the swampy fringes of a by-gone Hollywood, they lumbered across the land seeking to thrill and terrify a [...]

Battlefield Earth (2000)

Directed by Roger Christian
Written by L. Ron Hubbard, Corey Mandell, J.D. Shapiro
Tagline: “Prepare For Battle”
Run Time: 119 minutes
Review by Karl Hoegle

This “movie” starts out with exciting slime green lettering informing us that it is now the year 3000, and Earth has been ruled for the past 1,000 years by a race of aliens known as [...]

Exit Wounds (2001)

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
Tagline: " What Can Two Men Do Against A Gang Of Crooked Cops? Whatever It Takes."
Run Time: An 101 excruciating minutes. Sigh.
Review by Karl Hoegle

Let me start this review (my first!) out with an astonishing fact: OUR HERO does not repeat not use the patented ‘get threatened with a shotgun, flip the [...]

Submerged (2005)

Directed by Anthony Hickox
Tagline: “Under water, under cover.”
Run Time: 94 min
Review by Sean Ledden

Like its doughy, stone-faced hero, Submerged is tough. Brutal. Ruthless. It wastes no time before starting to beat the crap out of the viewer with a headache inducing jackhammer montage similar to the one used to torture Malcolm MacDowell’s goon in [...]