Far From Home (1989)

Normally resident in L.A., Joleen (Drew Barrymore) finds herself stranded with her father in a small town near the Nevada desert. It’s a shitty situation for a teen, but it becomes even worse when a few dead bodies turn up. The psycho killer at the trailer park scenario is played out alongside a young girl’s first steps into sexual maturity. She’s not shy but she’s inexperienced, experimenting with finding excitement in danger.
It lays on the menace overly-thick at times, but for a B-Movie it does a decent job at keeping the tension trundling along.
Special mention to Richard Masur, who made his character stand out.

2½ wristwatches out of 5

Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)

I sincerely hope that in an alternate reality Matt Frewer is getting the breaks he deserves and has an agent to keep him in the roles he's perfect for, because in our reality his unique aura is often wasted by being cast in crap like LM 2, in which he plays an unhusked Jobe. It's best not to dwell on that odd turn of events, or indeed anything else, because it's a shambolic, unnecessary sequel to a film that really didn't need one. Beyond Cyberspace? Beyond Ridiculous would've been more apt.

1 obsolete system out of 5

WATCHMEN - THE ULTIMATE CUT [2009]

Clocking in at over 3½ hours, Zack Snyder's Ultimate Cut of the film adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' acclaimed graphic novel Watchmen is the definitive version without a doubt.
As faithful as the film is to it's source material, in the end it's the dedication that hurts the experience most.  Snyder pretty much films exactly what is seen on the pages of the graphic novel and forgets to translate it into film with a voice of his own and in turn adds nothing to the works that wasn't already said in it's original form.  However visually and stylistically it's a wonder to watch such gritty, violent beauty on film.  I applaud Snyder's putting all his heart and soul into a hard R-rated film that would be a hard sell to franchise greedy Hollywood executives.

3½ Black Freighters out of 5

DAWN OF THE DEAD [2004]

More miss than hit director Zack Snyder thrusts his rabid fitness zombies on us in the 2004 remake of the George A. Romero classic Dawn Of The Dead.

With some help from a strong cast and a impressionable script courtesy of wackjob James Gunn, Snyder's version manages to heavily entertain with homages galore and stick out from the rest of the tired zombie genre.  It's bloody vicious, at times hilarious and ruthless fun that delivers the flesh-eating goods by the buckets.

3½ Night Of The Living Dead vehicle accidents out of 5

Riding the Bullet (2004)

A twenty-one-year-old guy obsessed with death hitchhikes back to the town where he grew up. You can guess the rest from the cover art.
Mick Garris can’t decide if he wants to make a comedy, a trippy road movie or a straightforward horror and as a result there are too many different approaches that drag the viewer out of the story, causing the atmosphere that he seems capable of building to collapse in a fractured shambles. The biggest shock was that David Arquette was good. 0_o

2½ if you’re going to suicide just do it and quit being a little bitch out of 5

QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY [1997]

Camp director Mick Garris has a lot of fun adapting two lesser known short stories written by horror authors Stephen King and Clive Barker.  

The Chattery Teeth segment, based on King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes story looks like it was more fun making it than watching it.  While Clive Barker's Books Of Blood story The Body Politic is actually really entertaining not unlike one of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's campier episodes.  Matt Frewer gets top points for taking it that extra step to make it better than it really is, while Christopher Lloyd seems horrendously out of place in a silly wig. 

2 reigning hands out of 5

Stephen King's Bag of Bones (2011)

A writer is haunted by visions of his late wife and the mystery surrounding a lake house in this made-for-TV adaptation. Pierce Brosnan seems oddly out of place in this type of movie, but I warmed up to him by the second half. It's not terribly well-done, but it's okay. Yeah, that's the best you're going to get out of me. "It was okay."

2.5 Dark Scores out of 5