Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½ 2

  Flashbacks within flashbacks, endless fades and wipes replacing simple cuts. In its own way as elegantly straightforward as THE FOG or PRECINCT 13 but filtered through the fever dream of IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. I like this one more every time I see it.

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  Review by Tony the Terror 666 ★★★★ 28

  A 2.3 average rating?! Y’all some haters up here on Letterboxd and I just don’t get it because I love this dumbass movie! I’m also very heavily medicated so forgive me for name calling an entire community and also for the very real possibility that nothing I’m about to say will make any sense.

  I just got over a stomach flu last month and now I have the actual flu so I’m laid up in bed wondering what I did to deserve this much ickiness. Really, I’ve never been as sick in my whole life as I have been this winter and I’m so over it. I don’t want to watch anything new because I’m in and out of consciousness…

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  Review by David Sims ★★★ 2

  I like the Mars train, choo choo

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★½ 17

  Natasha with her clothes on. Craig without Smokey. Foxy Jackie Brown. A hostage from Argo. The original Nerd. Some guy I've never seen before. Uno, Dos, and Tres. Big Daddy Mars looks like The Crow on roids. The Transporter doing his best Billy Sole impersonation as a character too badass to survive. The Horror Master John Carpenter paying homage to himself. It's The Thing meets Assault on Precinct 13. So what if it's set on Mars and the main characters are a hottie more known for being naked and a gangsta rapper turned Are We There Yet star. It's pure Carpenter and it kicks ass.

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★½ 16

  Starring: The Bold, Bald, Gruff Action Man Jason Statham

  Objectively speaking, this may be a bad film by any standard. The acting leaves a lot to be desired. Everything looks very phony, unreal quality with some poor CGI or its very clear it maybe was shot on a set. And both the music and a lot of the editing do nothing but age the movie.

  But what can I say? As someone who saw this film probably at least 10 times as a kid, the film is still was pretty fun. Even if the acting isn't fantastic, everyone (particularly Ice Cube) does a nice job selling the campiness, and even Statham isn't too bad. The notion of ghosts controlling people…

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  Review by nathaxnne <3 [hiatus] ★★★★★ 4

  John Carpenter's 'Ghosts of Mars' is of a piece with its immediate predecessor, 'Vampires': a 1950's Western genre-transposed, in this case recast as a sci-fi/horror, but make no mistake, this is pure afternoon matinee fodder from any decade in the second half of the XXth Century and beyond. If anyone other than John Carpenter had made this movie, I think it would be far more beloved than it is, and I think it is a film in deep need of re-evaluation. 'Ghosts of Mars' operates at near-'Planet Terror' levels of crazed, what-the-hell cheapness/looseness, but does so with exquisite craft and care. The sets are like any dusty mining town Anywhere saturated in red-filter. The vehicles are pure 60's/'70's scale model-kit.…

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  Review by Mike Thorn ★★★★★

  Frames within frames within frames. Carpenter's weirdest film: thrash metal invocations via pulpy space-horror/Hawks revisionism. Took me a couple viewings to even begin comprehending what this was getting at.

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★½ 1

  This was apparently written as a second Escape From New York sequel, with Ice Cube in the role meant to be Snake Plissken. The finished product feels more like a sci-fi remake of Assault on Precinct 13, with ghost zombie dudes versus some soldiers and a few deputized criminals on Mars. It got terrible reviews in 2001; it’s beloved by a lot of Carpenter fans today. I thought it was mostly somewhere in the middle. It’s not bad, but it would be better if Jason Statham was playing Chev Chelios.

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  Review by Ian West ★★★ 6

  My snowed in Carpenter fest began last night and I now have 14 fresh inches of snow I’ll be shoveling today! Anyways, I’m hopefully going to watch this, The Ward, and maybe Memoirs of an Invisible Man... fingers crossed!

  I decided to start off by revisiting Escape from Precinct Mars. There’s some things I reallllllly like about this movie—for starters, it’s absurd and totally made in the wrong decade... I could see this as an amazing Snake Plissken yarn filmed in 1985... hell even if Snake wasn’t involved it would still be awesome. Filled with over the top madness, mars ghost POV shots, matriarchal society (!!!!! I just wish that was utilized better), heads on spikes, mars train, and nods to…

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  Review by Will Menaker ★★★½ 2

  Marilyn Monster leads army of nu-metal goth barbarians in revolution against the oppressive matriarchy.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 6

  Random thoughts:

  * Awful soundtrack. Carpenter should stick to the more eerie stuff and never, ever work with Buckethead.

  * Great action sequences, even if the effects (especially because the effects) are a little cheezy. It's easy to follow, there's a lot of ridiculous gore, and there's tension. Watching my favorite character get gibbed was a bit startling, too, even if I knew who made it to the end.

  * The black lesbian dies first. Ugh.

  * Oh the effects really are awful. I laughed at the red mist coming out of someone's body, and at least one tragic death cracked me up.

  * Regardless, Carpenter seems to have had fun with the Rashomon meets Doom thing he has going. I love Mars as a setting, come to think of it, especially one with some sort of archaeological or mystical mystery.

  * Carpenter needs to do a Marvel movie.

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★½ 2

  Cinematic Time Capsule
  2001 Marathon - Film #122

  "They started cutting people’s faces off and wearing them for masks."

  It’s Ice Cube VS the Zombie Reevers of Mars!

  Welcome to pure B-Movie madness with a pounding metal soundtrack and more flashbacks than a LSD Anonymous convention.

  It’s nowhere as good as it could have been, but it’s still some stupid fun and sometimes you just need a spoonful of sugary stupid action to help the popcorn go down.

  "You got any fresh ideas?"
  "Yeah, what we should’ve done in the first place."

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 2001 Ranked