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Pete Fowler recommended Hot Rats by Frank Zappa in Music (curated)

 
Hot Rats by Frank Zappa
Hot Rats by Frank Zappa
1969 | Rock
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Zappa divides opinion massively. Bottom line is, he's a dick. And you can't escape it. The years as they've gone on have been less kind to him. His later stuff is horrible – misogynistic, very jock-ish. He was famously anti-drugs, would fine band members if they used drugs. He was very showy too. I've got a bunch of his records and I never listen to them… apart from Hot Rats, which I just love. The cover is fantastic and deeply unsettling. The band playing it are insanely talented – Ian Underwood, Shuggie Otis… Beefheart. For me, the album is the first two tracks. 'Willie The Pimp' has one of my favourite guitar solos ever – it's completely mind-melting. Zappa had a really big following in Liverpool amongst casuals – I remember going up there in the '90s and seeing his name daubed on walls in emulsion. Considering how much he hated drugs, he really did seem to connect with stoners."

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Starship Troopers (1997)
Starship Troopers (1997)
1997 | Action, Sci-Fi
Do you know what? Starship Troopers is a 5 star film and there's nothing anyone can say to convince me otherwise.
It's 90s sci-fi at its absolute best.

It has a great cast - Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Michael Ironside, Clancy Brown, Dina Meyer, Neil Patrick-Harris, Jake Busey - none of them feel replaceable.
It has special effects that genuinely still.homd up over 20 years later, and also a fuck tonne of genuinely horrific practical effects - some of the violence in Starship Troopers is next level, in true Paul Verhoeven style.
It has a corny yet airtight script, it's suitably cheesy when it wants to be, and wonderfully satirical throughout.
It's also got a top tier score courtesy of Basil Poledouris.

I saw this film when I was in my early teens, a few years after it released and it has always stuck with me since. Starship Troopers is perfection, fight me.
  
Sharknado (2013)
Sharknado (2013)
2013 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
1
3.5 (18 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Jesus. H. Christ.
It's 2019, and I've finally sat down and watched Sharknado, after hearing many years worth of friends and even random people tell me how it's the epitome of a bad-good movie.
That, my friends, is just a big fat badly-rendered shark of a lie.

There is nothing redeemable about Sharknado. The acting from everyone is awful and the special effects are laughable (Easily worse than a late 90s music video).
There are some scenes that just baffle me with their inclusion. Nothing really makes sense, and all of this would be perfectly acceptable if it was indeed 'bad-good' or mildly funny, but any attempt at humour made me want to tear my ears off.

I would say a hard avoid on this one, but I'm going to persevere and watch the whole lot of them, just to add a review here. Will they get better as they go on? Pretty sure they can't get any worse!
  
    H8U by Liz Huett

    H8U by Liz Huett

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    Album Watch

    Singer/songwriter Liz Huett is following up her debut single “STFU & Hold Me” with the release...


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There's Someone Inside Your House (2021)
There's Someone Inside Your House (2021)
2021 | Horror
4
5.6 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Straight off the bat, I didn't hate There's Someone Inside Your House. As far as 90s inspired teen slashers go, it's relatively entertaining - it's has some solid gore, it's pacing is snappy for the most part, and the opening 15 minutes or so has some genuinely unsettling wide shots of houses with subtly open doors, hinting at someone unwanted being inside. It's a neat trick that's repeated once, but then unfortunately abandoned.
The main issue with TSIYH is how darn predictable it is, down to every set piece and narrative beat. The eventual killer reveal is sadly an obvious one, and there are even moments where the plot threatens to get a little ballsy but chickens out at the last second.

TSIYH had some fun slasher moments for sure, and I did like the multiple mask concept of the killer, but it's over reliance on genre tropes, and tendency to play it safe drag the overall experience down.
  
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David McK (3734 KP) rated True Lies (1994) in Movies

Mar 29, 2020 (Updated Apr 10, 2022)  
True Lies (1994)
True Lies (1994)
1994 | Action, Comedy, Mystery
The early to mid 90s were a great time for action movies.

Cliffhanger. Speed. And this.

Starring a pre-Governator Arnold Schwarzenneger, Jamie Lee Curtis, and a pre-TVs-Faith-from-Buffy Eliza Dushku, this basically posits the question "What if James Bond was a family man? And what if his wife doesn't know he's a spy?"

When he then discovers that said wife is - he thinks - having an affair (but is in reality falling victim to a scam artist), he then decides to 'give her a bit of excitement', which leads to her getting caught up in his 'real' job and finding out more about his life!

With a rarely-looking-hotter Tia Carrere, those tango scenes (and *that* striptease) alongside plenty of stunts and gunplay (and the Harrier jump jets) - and, of course, the one-liners! - this is a pretty enjoyable big budget action movie

(Edit: I've just discovered it's directed by a pre-Titanic James Cameron, which helps!)
  
Anaconda (1997)
Anaconda (1997)
1997 | Action, Horror, Mystery
Is there a better example of a film that's so shit but so great at the same time than Anaconda? I would argue that there is not. Something bad about Anaconda - Ice Cube making "your mum" jokes. Something good about Anaconda - Ice Cube making "your mum" jokes. Something bad - Jon Voights dodgy Paraguay accent. Something good - Jon Voights dodgy Paraguay accent...you see where I'm going with this. Everything that makes this movie shit also adds to its weird brand of 90s monster movie charm, right down to the snakes facial expressions sometimes being disturbingly human. I'm also a fan of how Johnathan Hydes character goes from being the token pampered rich dude who is uncomfortable in a jungle/safari setting and has a silly amount of suitcases (there's always one of those fuckers in these kind of films) to the only one who I wanted to survive. Character growth right there.
God bless Anaconda for being so entertainingly shite 🖤