Mister Jacob's Citadel

Commando (1985) was directed by Mark L. Lester and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as retired Colonel John Matrix (a great 1980s action movie name) who launches a one-man war against South American thugs led by his former comrade Bennet (Vernon Wells, who looks like a fat Freddie Mercury) who have kidnapped his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano).     If you watch Commando like a serious action movie (which I think it was intended to be…I think) then it is one of the worst action movies ever made. The acting is terrible and the action is so implausible that it makes the feats performed by video game characters seem real in comparison. However, if you watch Commando as a straight up comedy it is one of the funniest movies ever (even if most of the comedy is unintentional). I will say this about Arnold Schwarzenegger, his comedic timing is incredible. His one liners in this movie are so ridiculous that you can’t help yourself but laugh. The action sequences and the body coun...

      Halloween (1978) was a horror film directed and scored by John Carpenter and co-written with Debra Hill who also produced the film. It was the first movie of the Halloween franchise and kicked off the slasher film craze of the 1980s. Halloween cost only $300,000 to make and made $70 million dollars at the box office which is an 11,000% return on investment (the film has probably made even more money due to TV rights fees and DVD sales) making Halloween one of the most successful independent films of that era. The film involves an escaped mental patient named Michael Myers going back to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois to stalk and murder a group of teenage girls on Halloween night, the fifteenth anniversary of the murder of his older sister. However, his psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is hot on his trail and is willing to do anything to stop him.      From a pure filmmaking perspective, Halloween is phenomenal. John C...

      Jaws (1975) was directed by Steven Spielberg and is based on the novel of the same by Peter Benchley. Upon its release in the summer of 1975, Jaws became the highest grossing film ever made up to that point, making it the first blockbuster movie. The movie had such a cultural impact that beach attendance dropped because people were so scared of going into the water.       The movie’s plot is fairly straight forward. A killer shark begins attacking people in a New England resort town which causes the town’s police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), a young marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw) an eccentric and obsessed shark hunter to team up and try to kill it.       I actually have not seen Jaws from start to finish. I have seen the whole movie in bits and pieces before this point. Jaws is one of those movies that you come across on TV and no matter what point the movie i...