video review : CHUD

video review : CHUD

The one payoff to sitting thru this shitty excuse for a horror flick, the monsters of which look like Halloween costumes with light-bulb eyes, is the ending credits. Over it plays the full version of the opening theme music and it sounds good.

The title stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers; the homeless population of Manhattan turned killer creature as a result of a secret Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal; and the movie is as stupid as those acronyms.

my rating : 1 of 5

1984

video review : Do The Right Thing

video review : Do The Right Thing

There are plenty of stupid things in this movie, beginning with the opening dance sequence, but the stupidest or at least most annoying are Smiley and Buggin Out. They’re characters who live in Brooklyn and are obsessively infatuated with the black race like seemingly every other black character in this movie. Smiley, who stutters whenever he speaks, is a retard. Buggin Out just acts like one. The problem with the two is that their annoying ways are played-out almost to the point of caricaturization. They come across as virtual cartoons in a movie that’s supposed to be about real life.

It’s a hot summer day and Mookie, who works as a delivery man for an Italian pizzeria, is just trying to get thru life. That’s the gist of a plot that cares more about observing characters in their everyday environment; the neighborhood of Bedford–Stuyvesant; than telling a cohesive story. At one point, the story is temporarily abandoned for an impromptu insult session. That bit too is, of course, all about race. “Tawana (Brawley) told the truth,” reads a graffiti message in a another scene. All this racial tension peaks at the end when a guy named Radio Raheem becomes the victim of police brutality.

my rating : 3 of 5

1989