Fun Stuff I've Seen, v.2

NOBODY needs more movie/show reviews. The Internet is glutted with them. But I recently had fun writing about random stuff I've seen lately. So I did it again.

Sue me!






Mercy Black

A way better Slender Man movie than Slender Man. And it's not even about Slender Man! This is original IP! Good for these filmmakers. Creepy little gem here.

Love, Death, and Robots

Hit-or-miss anthology show that's mostly hit. Both Joe R. Lansdale adaptations are awesome. Most of them have a whole feature film's worth of story, only without all the shots of people walking down hallways or having pointless relationship melodrama. Which is how every film should be done, really.

The Curse of La Llorona

Second-best Linda Cardellini film I saw in the theater last week.

The Silence

This is based on a 2015 novel, so allegations of plagiarism against the 2018 film A Quiet Place could not be more wrongheaded. Same basic story. Mysterious monsters hunt by sound, wreck everything and everyone in sight. A much different, more R-rated take on things. This shows all the juicy stuff A Quiet Place left out regarding the world being destroyed. The third-act religion threat was weak-sauce and seemed shoe-horned in. The group didn't make any sense at all, either, because their thing is cutting off their own tongues to make sure they stay silent. But cutting off your tongue doesn't silence you. You could still scream. Would have been a better group of villains if their thing was cutting their vocal cords so they'd literally be silenced. Like maybe their religion was started by a mad doctor who performed all the operations himself. But no, it's just a lazy anti-religion allegory by a writer who clearly doesn't understand religion and also exercised no common sense in his depiction of the mad religion silencing itself. Movie was solid otherwise.

Avengers: Endgame

Best Linda Cardellini film I saw in the theater last week.

Monster Party

Takes too long to get going, but not bad. This is a tale of three young folks who cater a party at a fancy mansion with the intent of robbing the place during the job, only to find it's a party full of serial killers in a support group, struggling to not kill anymore. (Guess what? They get kill-happy and things go off the rails! Spoiler in the previous sentence.)

Billions

Stylish drama about a billionaire investor guy going head-to-head with a lawman. Fun to watch them snipe at each other and see all the twists and counter-twists. Great performances, great looking. Worth a free preview on Showtime to catch all seasons. (Though your priority on a Showtime preview should be to watch the new Twin Peaks. Still haven't recovered from that one.)

Psychopaths

Didn't care for it. It's written and directed by the guy who hosts Shudder's talk show, The Core. He's a superb visual stylist. Every frame is a painting. But there's no story and no characters with whom any reasonable person would want to spend 100 minutes.

Santa Clarita Diet, season 3

This show deserves mad props for its delightful balance of gory horror and light comedy, sustained over three seasons. Every cast member is on-point and it is rarely uninteresting or unfunny.

Busted

A really sad, disturbing curiosity item from 1997. Long past their teen-boppy glory days, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim star in this Naked Gun-wannabe "comedy" about a police station in Amity (The place where Jaws happened, I guess, since their station logo is a crossed-out shark?) that secretly runs a brothel. Feldman directs in addition to starring and he does horrible at both. Haim randomly appears in some scenes and not others with his fellow cops. I later found out this is because Feldman fired his friend Haim from the film for repeatedly being late or high on set. And the guy who allegedly abused Corey Haim as a young actor is in this film, sometimes seated next to Haim. Knowing the back-story makes this feel like a true-crime drama. Also the nudity is ugly, boring, and pointless. The jokes are stunningly stale. This makes Dream a Little Dream 2 look like Magnificent Ambersons.

Us

I think it's about social issues.

Split Second

I am pretty much always down for Rutger Hauer. The dude improvised the "tears in rain" speech in Blade Runner. Immortal. He's also awesome in a bunch of pulpy sci-fi/action films from the 80s and 90s. Split Second is one of them. He's a cop who DOESN'T PLAY BY THE RULES chasing a Venom-looking mutant monster through the post-apocalyptic streets of a flooded London. Why aren't you watching this right now?

Drop Dead Fred

This movie is way darker than you remember if you saw it as a kid. Ostensibly about a little girl's imaginary childhood friend coming back to make hilarity ensue when she becomes an unhappy adult. It's actually a dark, deeply unsettling film about mental illness, disillusionment, infidelity, career stagnation, and helpless rage. Fun for the whole family!

Defendor

This one beat Kick-Ass and Super to the punch with its no-frills story of a man trying to be a superhero despite having no powers. It's not the first film to do this story. That would be Hero at Large. But it's well-done enough and Woody Harrelson is great.

Free Solo

One of the few movies to make me jump around in my seat, squirming helplessly and murmuring, "No, no, no." The fact that the guy in this movie didn't die--climbing these insanely steep and dangerous mountains without a rope--is a miracle. A remarkable human achievement, but I'd like him to please stop. You know, so he won't die.

Hourglass Sanatorium

You know this one, it's that 1973 Polish film all the kids can't stop talking about. Just kidding. This is pretty obscure, but it's a wondrous cinematic achievement. It strives to create a dreamlike environment and remains hypnotic all the way through. A work of art for the ages. Some parts make more sense than others, but it's a wild, colorful ride.

Captive State

This was in theaters for like five seconds. It's an apocalyptic alien invasion movie with no apocalypse, no invasion, and almost no aliens. John Goodman is a Sonderkommando officer for the aliens and it mostly follows a crew of angry characters determined to take down the galactic goons. The little glimpses of action and aliens are fun, but it feels like missed potential. Or that they were holding way too much back with the expectation that they'd get a sequel.

Bomb City

Based on a true story of punks-vs.-jocks in a small Texas town in the 90s, it stays tense and tight and then explodes with a horrifying ending that just gets more and more horrifying. Worth Googling about after you watch it to find out more details about the fate of the main perpetrator.

Hands of Steel

A lovably awful piece of Italian 80s pulp cinema. It tries to be a Terminator ripoff then about 20 minutes in, forgets that the main character's a cyborg and just turns into a melodrama about a man working in a diner. And then there's a whole lot of arm wrestling, probably because the Italians heard about Stallone doing Over the Top and decided arm wrestling must be the next big commercial thing they needed to cash in on. Then in the last 20 minutes or so, the movie remembers the main character is a cyborg again. And then it beats Terminator 3 to the punch by 15 years with its FEMALE cyborg. She says some really crazy stuff and the movie's worth it for her antics alone. Also John Saxon is here, looking serious and saying serious things. Why aren't you watching this right now!?

Stay Alive

This is a mega-mess. It's about a video game that you play and then it kills you. It stars the dad from This is Us a few years before he became a parent. A few other familiar faces with names I don't know. I recognized one of the balconies in New Orleans where it was shot and was like, "Oh, I recognize that place." That was the highlight. The PG-13 version is supposedly unwatchable, but I saw the unrated version with all the extra gore and naughty bits. It was also unwatchable. Notable as the only slasher movie ever produced by Disney. Not Miramax or Dimension or a subsidiary, but straight-up DISNEY.

Bathtubs Over Broadway

Highest recommendation to this documentary about a dude who collects vinyl recordings of "corporate industrial musicals." Basically disposable one-off performances of fully-produced musicals about toilets or food products done for sales conferences. "My Bathroom" is one of the best songs ever recorded.

The FP

This is a divisive one. I'm okay with it, but it would've worked better as a short than a feature. It stars the eyepatched guy who went on to be in those recent ultraviolent Slayer videos as a lone wolf who excels at a game that's basically Dance Dance Revolution. It takes the dance game very seriously and it's frequently deadpan hilarious. There's a sequel that looks like much the same. Your mileage may vary, depending on your tolerance for teh dumbness.

The Final Girls

Not one you hear about a lot, which is a shame. This is a masterful horror-comedy that manages to be genuinely warm and touching. It's basically about a daughter's love for her mother and the painful necessity of letting go. Also it's a hilarious PG-13 spoof of slasher movies that also manages to be a solid slasher film in the process. Tough to summarize, but basically: a girl's mom acted in a slasher film 20 years ago, and she just recently died in reality. The girl gets transported into that old slasher film by movie magic and gets to be with her mother again, the downside being that they're together in a slasher movie. Solid gold.

Letterkenny

A rural uber-deadpan Canadian comedy with rigid, precise cinematography and note-perfect performances. Very, very funny, but so fast and the language is so arcane, you might miss some of the jokes because you're too busy focusing on catching everything they're saying. Elevator pitch: a TV-MA Napoleon Dynamite with a hilariously tough lead character.

American Crime Story: Assassination of Gianni Versace

Ryan Murphy basically runs every show now. 9-1-1 is my fave of the bunch at the moment. American Horror Story has been iffy lately. But this one is solid. It's all about the little details as we see the tragedy right away and the story blooms outward, from the fallout to the decades of life events leading up to it. Not a weak performance in sight. Some of the best episodes have very little happening in them, as they're just there to deepen and reveal character. Solid use of the episodic television medium.

Eli Roth's History of Horror

Roth's films are hit-or-miss for me. But his documentary series, divided by subgenre, is mostly entertaining and engaging. My main beef is that he dominates every roundtable conversation. He's sitting with Rob Zombie in almost every episode and I think Mr. Zombie got about thirteen words in edgewise over the whole series.

Special Unit

I was a big fan of Christopher Titus' early confessional stand-up work, along with his too-short-lived Titus sitcom. Haven't kept up with him. Then I randomly noticed this on Amazon, a movie he wrote, directed, and starred in. I don't know what to say about it. It's incredibly offensive. But at the same time wildly tolerant and open-minded. I don't even want to talk about what it's about because it's hard to describe without giving offense. It didn't seem quite funny enough to justify itself.

Velvet Buzzsaw

A Final Destination movie for people who think they're too good for Final Destination movies. (You're not, btw. No one is.) It's nice to look at, I'll give it that. But the blah characters are a bit too blah for me.

Battlefield Earth

I noticed some flaws.

School Ties

Brendan Fraser is decent in here, but it's mostly cool for the early 90s glimpses of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and a bunch of other actors you'll recognize (though you won't be sure what they're names are). Also message-movies like this have a timeless quality, especially in our current climate.

Furry Vengeance

Another Brendan Fraser message-movie. This one is about the environment. Supposedly the environment is good. A super-sized crap sandwich of a film where Fraser does battle with angry forest animals. Cheaper than a lobotomy, but has the same effect.

The Perfect Witness

Tense thriller about a documentarian who catches a serial killer and blackmails him into letting him make a movie about him. Over a decade old, but it's more relevant now than ever, what with our current cultural murder documentary obsession. What's up with that?

Holmes and Watson

I saw this one in the theater solely to see how many people would walk out on it. As I recall: six people. More than half the total number of folks in attendance. The rest of us poor suckers stuck it out for one of the unfunniest comedies my jaded eyes have ever seen.

Lisa and the Devil/House of Exorcism

Poor Mario Bava. He made one classic film after another, many in the horror genre (Black Sunday, Danger: Diabolik, Blood and Black Lace, Black Sabbath, Kill Baby Kill). They were so successful and reliable, he finally got carte blanche to make whatever film he wanted. He delivered the borderline-incomprehensible-on-a-first-viewing dream-like masterpiece Lisa and the Devil. The distributor said "Meh" and deleted most of the barely-there plot and tacked on a bunch of garbage exorcism scenes and released it in the U.S. as House of Exorcism. Both versions are now available, but when Bava died, his personal favorite among his films still only existed as House of Exorcism. I hope someone finds him in the next world and tells him we all finally got to see the original cut of Lisa and the Devil and it looks great in HD. He'll probably reply, "What's HD?" Silly ignorant dead guy!

All About Nina

Important film about a justifiably abrasive female stand-up comedian. The lead actress is great here, as she is everywhere she appears. Worth it for her intensity alone.

Epidemic

I just learned Lars Von Trier was making movies in the 1980s. Odd ones, too. This one is half deconstruction-of-creativity and half dark-fantasy. It's about Lars Von Trier trying to write a script about a plague while a plague is actually happening (or is it?). Very ahead of its time and insider-baseball. Also boring lots of the time. Udo Kier is here and that's great, though.

Big Man Japan

Great satire about a low-key slacker who regularly transforms into a Godzilla-sized super-being to reluctantly combat invading kaijus in his city. It's all very low-key and knowingly ridiculous. Many a belly laugh to be had, though its glacial pace can be grating.

Fragile

Intense slow-burn ghost story with Ally McBeal in a hospital. Pays off as it goes. Beautifully shot.

The Car

Thanos' dad, Josh Brolin, goes head-to-head with an evil sentient car driving around and menacing people in a small midwestern town. This 1977 Jaws ripoff never makes a lick of sense and takes itself way too seriously, but it holds the attention well enough.

Exterminators of the Year 3000

Been binging with a pal on Italian post-apocalyptic 1980s Mad Max/Escape from New York ripoffs lately and this is one of the best (worst). Some surprisingly over-the-top stunt work and explosions where I'm quite confident people were terribly hurt. This one is a blast to watch as you can point to any random scene and spot the movie they're ripping off and it's a different movie in almost every scene!

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

I forget which ones in this series I have and haven't seen. I think I saw the first two. Maybe three? Please investigate that for me. Anyhoo, this one came recommended and it was okay. Solid ending showdown. Good jump scares. Didn't like it as much as Paranormal Activity 2, which I mostly remember.

Machete

This wild-and-wooly grindhouse film's take on illegal immigration is more important than ever. It's not just about ripping out intestines and using them as bungie cords. It's also about politics!

Starry Eyes

Tough to watch on a lot of levels, but this fairy tale-ish allegory about how far a young woman is willing to go for fame should be a rallying cry for the #MeToo movement. Unflinching and merciless and not much fun. The directors recently made the Pet Sematary remake, which was a bit better. But also mean.

Border Blues

Eric Roberts AND Gary Busey in the same film?! Am I dreaming? Pinch me! I SAID PINCH ME!!!

Replicas

I've seen some awful Keanu Reeves films in the past, but this might be the worst yet. Was a special treat to see it in a nearly-empty theater. I have no idea how or why this got a theatrical release.

All Hallows Eve 2

I'm a sucker for a Halloween anthology film. And this is a Halloween anthology film. The shorts are unrelated and very hit-or-miss, but enough hit to be worth any tolerant viewer's time. The "pumpkin seed" bit was a highlight. As was the "trapped in the elevator with a killer" bit. Some solid talent on display.

The Dirt

Motley Crue did lots of drinking and drugging, screwed groupies, screwed each other over, killed a guy while drunk driving, and played music sometimes. The end.

Critters: The New Binge

Ah, for the days of respectable cinematic treasures such as Critters 3 and Critters 4! Bah. This is a very silly series that is nothing like the old Critters movies. (For the record: the first film was legit, the second one was sillier but legit enough.) If you can accept this show as its own stand-alone bizarro postmodern thing with some pretty goofily bad puppet work, you'll be okay.

Climax

I haven't seen a Gaspar Noe film since his grime-encrusted 1998 I Stand Alone. (Lucked out and skipped Irreversible. If you saw it, I pity you.) So I knew I was rolling the dice on this one. The verdict: eeeeeh. The dancing is tight and there's some effective dramatic bits once everyone starts tripping. But it's mostly terminally boring chit-chat scenes and eye-irritating camera-swinging. Will probably wait another 20 years or so before watching another Gaspar Noe film.

Triple Frontier

I love me a heist movie and this one about a military crew in a heist gone very wrong is a heist movie. Ben Affleck and the rest of the cast prove once again that there is no difference in the cast of a Netflix original film and a non-Netflix original film.

Escape Room

This one was great! For a movie about a fad, it's one of the best. One superb claustrophobic thrilling sequence after another. Ending felt a little half-baked and the setup for a sequel was weak-sauce, but the first two-thirds are rocket-sauce.


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.

From Sinemia/MoviePass to Eternity (Part 16 of ?)

In the happiest bit of Sinemia news ever...

They're shutting down!

Canceled! Kaput! Thanos-snapped!

Direct from their stupid website:

Also they're under pending FTC investigation as they file for bankruptcy!

And there's a petition on change.org to arrest their CEO!

Bwahahaha! Take THAT, you account-canceling fraudsters!

Wise move, in all honesty. Take the money and run before burning endless millions on a record-breaking Avengers weekend.

Indiewire called it first about Sinemia's pending shutdown, and properly called them out for their desperate super-unethical last-minute cash-grabs. Selling unlimited plans for several weeks in a row while their users have been unable to see anything on their app.

They are the worst. Good riddance.

And in case you haven't already done so, contact your bank or credit card directly to get a refund. Sinemia does not have you high on their list of creditors on their bankruptcy proceedings. So they won't be refunding your money anytime soon.

Your chances at getting a refund with your bank or credit card company are higher now than they used to be. A reddit sleuth noticed one of Sinemia's creditors on their bankruptcy filings is an automated dispute resolution company. Meaning: Sinemia was automating the dispute process on every chargeback request and now they will not be doing that anymore as that company will no longer work for Sinemia for free.

Justice comes slow, but it packs a wallop when it arrives.


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.

From Sinemia/MoviePass to Eternity (Part 15 of ?)

Not a whole lot to report, other than MoviePass making waves for losing 90% of their customers.

You know. Because they offered an impossibly good product and then made it impossibly awful.

I'm honestly surprised it wasn't worse. I would've expected them to lose at least 99% of their customers. Still having 225,000 after their career-high 3 million is still respectable.

Though, of course, they deny it. Because why wouldn't they?


Another interesting number in there is that only 13,000 people have signed up for the new "Uncapped" plan.

You know. Because they throttle movies and showtimes randomly and eradicated customer trust and now no one wants to give them a chance anymore.

As for me? I saw two movies with Uncapped in my first week and it was fine. I check the app now and then and get the "No screenings available" up until noon and late in the evening. And sometimes there's only two or three movies available. But that's at least something. I haven't run into any situations where there are no screenings available all day long.

But of course...That's because the new Avengers hasn't come out yet.

*

MoviePass and Sinemia both love to accuse their customers of fraud, though Sinemia has been way more crooked about using it as a pretext for cancelling accounts of people who actually cost the company money.

A new article this week actually listed specific types of fraud MoviePass deals with.

And I have to admit: there are a couple in there that never even occurred to me.

Specifically:

-A Williamsburg theater setting up their kiosks to charge MoviePass cards an additional $3 for tickets.

-A California theater that made its employees sign up for MoviePass and use it to buy tickets for movies during slow times.

Evil genius there.

Fraud is bad, yes. But I still think the biggest financial problem MoviePass had was, you know, offering unlimited movies for $9.95 a month.

*

Oh, and MoviePass also picked up a film for distrubution called Villains.

Will it be the next Monsters and Men? Or another Gotti?

We shall find out! Ah, the anticipation!


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.

Fun Stuff I've Seen

Been a good long while since I had fun sounding off about cool stuff I've seen lately.

Too long!

Let's fix that!

Crying Freeman

This film always felt like unfinished business. If you're a movie lover who came up pre-Internet, you probably have some informal checklist in the back of your mind; films you heard or read about that you never could find. The age of laserdiscs and then bootleg Japanese laserdiscs and then DVDs and then bootleg DVDs and then the Internet has checked off most of my never-could-find films. (Still unseen: London After Midnight, uncut Maximum Overdrive, and uncut Hellraiser.) I first read about Crying Freeman in a 1994 Fangoria issue and it said it was a crazy martial arts film from the producer of Re-Animator and From Beyond. Sold! I didn't know anything about its anime origins (still don't), but I kept my eyes peeled for this one at all my local video stores. It never appeared, not even at the great Video Vault. Well, last week, prompted by a new episode of Joe Bob Briggs' The Last Drive-In (Shudder is the BEST for putting that guy back on the air!), I was investigating the latter-day filmography of that Re-Animator guy. Such gems as Amphibious 3D, Beneath Still Waters, Arachnid, Everdark, and Rottweiler that all somehow passed me by. And there it was: Crying Freeman. Checked YouTube and there it was! The full film! It's in English, but it's a French source file, so all the subtitles for the scenes where they speak Japanese are in French. But you get the idea. Crying Freeman is a super-assassin who sheds a tear when he whacks folks. Very John Woo-ish with mucho melodrama and people swinging swords and firing guns whilst flying through the air. I would have loved it in 1995 and watched it over and over, but in this over-saturated world of 2019, it's about as hardcore as an episode of Into the Badlands. Now that's pretty hardcore, don't get me wrong! But it's not precious. You don't have to savor and devour these fun little gold nuggets anymore, since we're in a constant avalanche of gold boulders rolling down the mountain right at us.

Destroyer

Nicole Kidman pulls a "Charlize-Theron-in-Monster" and makes herself makeup-ugly to give an astounding performance. Her voice is an avalanche of gravel and her face is a road map of pain as her cop character pursues a cold case that jumps around in time and morality. Almost every shot is a work of art and even at two+ hours, it never ceases to be compelling.

Hellboy (2019)

If you wanted a third Guillermo Del Toro Hellboy film, this is not it. This is something very different. Much as I liked Del Toro's work, this is an interesting new take, from a director I like an awful lot. (He made Doomsday! Also The Descent. But Doomsday!) The gore and naughty bits are a bit overdone, perhaps just to trumpet, "Look! We're rated R this time!" And it's sloppy and all over the place and tries to cram too many thingamajigs into a single film. But it's a romp. Not the total train wreck it's alleged to be. It's a train fender-bender, at worst.

Black Summer

This "Netflix Original" show has a fascinating pedigree. Surface level: it's a stark, urgent, intense series about the early stages of a zombie outbreak. It's the best part of every zombie movie--the first ten minutes---stretched over eight episodes. A cake with nothing but the frosting. And it works! Stephen King had kind words about it, correctly identifying it as a scary ride; "existential Hell in the suburbs." On that basis alone, it merits attention. Here's where it gets spectacular: it turns out this is a prequel series to Z Nation, the completely bonkers gonzo zombie series where anything goes and it burns through a whole season's worth of Walking Dead story material in every episode. And Black Summer looks and feels nothing like Z Nation. It's slow-burn and done in long wide shots, bringing you into the world and making you feel like you're moving through the world with the characters (and sometimes with the zombies). Much as Z Nation spanks The Walking Dead, this spin-off mega-spanks Walking Dead's lame-o spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead (which looks and feels exactly like Walking Dead, just with different and more annoying characters). Black Summer is produced by The Asylum, the same folks responsible for the Sharknado series and countless other craptastic pulp monsterfests. This shows they are also capable of sincere, serious-minded horror.

Shazam!

So nice I saw it twice. The kid-turned-superhero antics are hilarious and delightful. But major points to this film for making the Big Bad and his crew of seven monsters seriously intense and scary-fying. These things bite off heads, beat people to death, and hurl people out of high-rise windows. This one is like House With a Clock in Its Walls in that it's a throwback to the "kids movies" of the mid-80s like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Goonies, and the Indiana Jones films where they're fun but the scary parts deliver the scary. Great deconstructive humor throughout. Between this, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman, DC Comics films finally got their mojo back. There are things I like about Zach Snyder's uneven work in the DC film field, but it's nice to see other non-washed-out, non-gunmetal voices breathing life into this cinematic world.

Three Women and Images

Robert Altman is mostly known for fancy-pants critically-acclaimed three-hour dramas (Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, Gosford Park), but he also made a couple surreal horror movies in the 70s, at the height of his creative powers. Images and Three Women are haunted peas in a pod. Altman aims to be Bergman with Images and, by golly--he shoots, he scores! Great eerie magical fragmented slow-burn ethereality rules the day. Three Women has early-career Sissy Spacek helping at a nursing home and getting obsessed with fellow worker Shelly Duvall. Not as much of a zinger. Mainly a well-acted drama with some psychodrama around the fringes.

Zombie 5: Killing Birds

I could write a book about this one. In fact, I might. Will discuss another day.

Rifftrax Live: Octaman

Rifftrax = the late-90s crew from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Their live events are held at venues around the nation where the three goofballs stand on stage and riff on a movie (and usually a short subject) on a screen nearby. The short subject on this one was a live-action McGruff the Crime Dog short from the 80s and it was magnificently stupefying. The movie itself, Octaman, had an early Rick Baker-designed creature and it kept the goofy-looking monster on display in almost every scene. No suspenseful Jaws-ish slow-reveal here! The whole experience was so giddily hilarious, my face hurt from smiling and I was laughter-drained by the end. If you like this kind of silliness, highest recommendation goes to these Rifftrax Live events, especially if a broadcast of one comes to a theater near you, as this one did.

Say Anything

Saw this when it came out at the age of nine and was like, "Blah. Grown-up stuff." Just saw it as a grown-up and was like, "Blah. Kid stuff." It missed my receptive window. The boom box scene is great, but the movie's slower than frozen molasses. Every character is deeply sympathetic and human and I tried really hard to like it, but there's just not much there. Almost everything Cusack's character did and said with the father of his girlfriend was head-smackingly annoying. It's supposed to be deep and romantic, but it mostly comes off as arrogant or clueless. And there's a bunch of intelligent female characters, which seems ahead of its time, until you realize all they're talking about is their ex-boyfriends or how great Cusack's character is. Props for adding emotional depth to teen dramas that was sorely missing from the Porky's-shadowed 80s teen sex comedies. But it's a dull ride.

Ray Donovan

Saw the first four seasons on a Showtime preview week. (Gonna watch the next two seasons ASAP when there's another preview!) Ray Donovan is a ruthless fixer in L.A. who deals with celebrities and execs who make big, big mistakes and he's constantly in over his head with everything. It's a grabber. One sticky, twisty, punchy dramatic situation after another. Screws tighten on every character in every scene. Extremely naughty stuff, but also extremely compelling. Not a phone-checkable moment in sight.

Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Director Terry Gilliam spent 30 years trying to get this made. 30. Years. There's even a documentary about his last attempt to make it with Johnny Depp as the lead, the 2002 Lost in La Mancha. This man is nothing if not persistent. And he did it! And it came to theaters for one screening on one night in a few theaters nationwide. That's a mighty small payoff for 30 years of effort, but I was there! It defies criticism, as it's an intensely personal work of art, every frame feels like exactly what Gilliam wanted to say. So even if it drags with its two+ hour running time, it's a miracle that it exists. Jonathan Pryce is perfect as Don Quixote, as well.

The Domestics

A surprisingly fun, wild, post-apocalyptic ride through America's wasteland. A couple was about to get divorced when humanity was nearly wiped out. And now they're together and trying to make it work among roving murder gangs. And, you know, they do pretty well! This thing has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and I am surprised it's not better known.

Wild in the Streets

This wild-and-crazy 1968 film was a revolutionary battle cry for youth culture at the time. It's pretty bloody silly now. Basically a story of a young musical rebel who rises to political power by "telling it like it is, man." Their campaign position: let people run for elected office at the age of 14, mandatory retirement at 30, and round up and send anyone over 35 into re-education camps. Groovy, baby! The editing was probably lightning-quick for the time, and it still mostly flows well enough, but the musical numbers are interminable. Hal Holbrook and Richard Pryor are terrific. Worth your time as a cultural artifact, that's about it. Regarding the final scene, where (SPOILER!) kids decide to do away with anyone over the age of 10...I wonder if Stephen King had that in mind when he wrote "Children of the Corn."

Pet Sematary (2019)

This one made everyone go insane. I liked it okay. A bit blah to look at, with the washed-out color palette. It's also kinda cold, overall. Hard to connect with the characters. It's a solid B movie from A+ source material. King's book is mega-merciless. And the original 1989 film scarred me for life, having seen it at the right age at the right time. This one was just a decent-enough two hours of movie. Points for flipping the third act from the book, and the super-brutal ending. That's something impressive; taking Stephen King's darkest, meanest book...and making it darker and meaner.

Kidding

Jim Carrey plays a Mr. Rogers-esque kids' show host on the verge of a nervous breakdown after losing a child and getting divorced. Every character is deeply complex and flawed and it never goes for the easy laugh. Just makes you feel off. Which is what it wants. So it works.

Beyond the Door III

The original Beyond the Door was a lame-o cheapie Exorcist-ripoff possession potboiler. Then a few years later, that film's producer got the rights to Mario Bava's okay thriller Shock and released it as Beyond the Door II (It had doors, as well as things beyond them, in fairness). Fast-forward a decade and the producer made a really weird Euro-trashy film about a forest cult and a supernatural train called Amok Train (No false advertising there: the train goes amok, leaping off the tracks and attacking people in a swamp in one scene). But then he decided to randomly release it as Beyond the Door III instead. I have to call shenanigans on this, as most of the movie takes place outdoors, or in train cars. There are almost no doors, or things beyond them.

King Arthur (2004)

I was working at a movie theater when this one came out and nothing about it grabbed me so I skipped it. But then the other day I got mildly curious to see how it compares to the delightfully insane 2017 King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, about which I could wax poetic for hours. The 2017 romp is an ingenious work of cinematic glory, where director Guy Ritchie took a 3.5 hour movie and cut it down to two hours just to make it more awesome. There are giant elephants and monsters all over the place. The soundtrack music is the most awesome thing ever and makes me want to go into berserker medieval combat mode. It jumps all over the place and avoids making sense whenever possible. Sheesh, I shoulda just made this a review of the 2017 King Arthur instead. Because I have almost nothing to say about the 2004 one. I remember it was released as PG-13 when I was at the theater and the DVD is "Unrated." Sure enough, it's pretty darned gory and I'm sure all the gore was cut to get a PG-13. But aside from that, there's not much of interest. It's shot well enough. Looks like an average episode of Game of Thrones. Much like Crying Freeman getting leapfrogged by Into the Badlands, this is a movie that might have been cool at one point but now there's infinite superior similar content. Nothing about it merits archival or revisiting. The 2017 King Arthur, though? Now there's a bonkers-pants movie well worth your attention. Did I mention that already?

Monsters and Men

A shockingly thoughtful and heartfelt film released by...MoviePass. A reminder of the harsh reality many U.S. citizens face every day, living in what is basically occupied territory where your life can be taken at a whim with no consequences for the killer. A much better MoviePass film than Gotti.

Killing Eve

Cool thriller series about a lady cop chasing down a lady assassin. Starts to feel stretched in the later episodes and I started losing track of why I was supposed to care about the secondary characters. But fun overall, and there are too few shows about homicidal females. Mary Kills People, that's another one. I liked that one better. Lifetime network, man. They make five billion ridiculous melodramas about cheating husbands and evil doctors played by Eric Roberts, but they also make Mary Kills People. So they're good by me.

Mike Judge Presents Tales from the Tour Bus

Fun half-hour musical documentary series where the subjects are converted to animation. Great histories of country and funk superstars and almost-stars. Mike Judge's deadpan tone is a winner and takes you along for the depraved rides amiably enough. Executive summary: all country and funk music stars were all doing drugs all the time.

The Oath

A movie for our times about a semi-mandatory governmental loyalty oath and how it divides a family and a nation. Lots of yelling and arguing and the main character is unlikeable, but his unlikeability is a plot point. It zigs and zags a whole lot--maybe too much--but it keeps you on your toes and isn't afraid to go there.

Messiah of Evil

Fast zombies weren't invented by Zach Snyder in his 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, or by Danny Boyle in his 2003 28 Days Later. Most scholars cite their origin in 1985's Return of the Living Dead. There is academical debate on 1980's Nightmare City (a.k.a. City of the Walking Dead) as those sure look like fast zombies running around and chomping people. But the film's director, Umberto Lenzi, claims those are just people "infected" by radiation. You decide! George Romero also had something resembling fast zombies in his 1973 thriller The Crazies, but those were also just arguably "infected." (If you want to be a REAL stickler about it, you could point out that Romero himself invented fast zombies in his first undead film, Night of the Living Dead, since the first walker in there vigorously ran after a woman in her car.) Which brings us to Messiah of Evil. A trippy 1973 film about a seaside cult with a couple random scenes where women are chased by what certainly appear to be fast zombies, both in a Ralph's and in a movie theater. Is THIS truly the first "fast zombie" film? Maybe. Who knows!? (If I dedicated my intellect to more noble pursuits, I woulda cured cancer by now.)

-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.

From Sinemia/MoviePass to Eternity (Part 14 of ?)

Great news, everyone!

My credit card issued a full refund on every dollar from Sinemia, above and beyond what I requested!

I think they actually Googled the company and saw Sinemia's shenanigans. That was my main defense. Not elaborate documentation or persuasive argument. I told my credit card company: "Just Google Sinemia." Looks like that worked.

So I've joined the satisfied masses of folks who requested a refund from those scammers--denied--but then requested a chargeback from their credit card company--thumbs-upped.

This is why you pay with your credit card and not direct from your bank account, kids.

Now Sinemia has two billing cycles to appeal this decision. And they will. They usually do, apparently, and spew their usual fraudulent nonsense doublespeak. But I can appeal their appeal and I have a nuclear weapon of a crowdsourced letter to send if that happens.

I guarantee the refund will stand.

*

And guess what I'm spending that refund on?

You guessed it: MoviePass Uncapped!

The refund amount will cover eight months of the service, so basically everything I see with it will be free for the next 240 days. (Because my original Sinemia annual subscription was given to me as a gift.)

And my new MoviePass card arrived a couple days ago! Six business days after starting the account!

I activated it, same process as the old one, and took it right to the theater to see a movie in the evening (Shazam!, also fun on a second viewing). All movies and showtimes were available and the card worked. No ticket verification. You just buy the ticket and go to the movie.

Ah, bliss...

Something else worth noting: MoviePass repeatedly stated that you'd only be able to buy tickets for showtimes three hours in advance. But the app shows all showtimes for the day first thing in the morning. Pleasant surprise!

I wanted to be a good gonzo journalist and max out my usage to see at what point I get "capped" by the "Uncapped" plan, as they promise to do if you watch too many movies.

But alas: there aren't enough movies out I want to see. You couldn't pay me to see the new Dumbo. Already saw the new Hellboy (I was the one who liked it, in a nation of 300 million who hated it). And that new horror movie coming out this weekend looks like mega-trash. I'd just rather be home watching Black Summer or the new episode of The Orville.

But luckily, there are power users on reddit who have reported seeing anywhere from six to nine movies in a two week span on the new plan. This appears to be the limit before they cap you.

And honestly? Anyone watching that many movies deserves to be capped. I assure you: if the pickings weren't so slim, I'd be gallivanting about, engaging in cap-worthy cinematic behavior.

In fairness, there was a movie playing at the Alamo last night I was sort of interested in, but Netflix won out. I was back in that mental spot of "It's free, but do I want to drive 22 minutes round-trip to see this?" and the answer was "No."

That's a nice place to be. Knowing you can use MoviePass, but don't have to. This was how life was from October 2017 to August 2018.

Oh, and they made it clear they're gonna jack the price from $14.95 to $19.95 per month soon. That's fine. I'll pay that, as long as it works.

And heck, the service might implode any minute. That's also fine. As with the original MoviePass unlimited plan, this is one of those things you just have to enjoy in the moment. One day at a time. Verily, like the fanciful trees and flowers that doth bloom outside in the brisk spring air, this too shall eventually decay and die.

But the beauty stands, for now.

*

And real quick, someone did a legal analysis of the patent in dispute in the MoviePass lawsuit against Sinemia.

I understood some of that article.

*

And the New York Times did a reasonably objective comparison between Sinemia, MoviePass, and AMC's plan.

Nothing really new there. Just passing it on. Plus, the New York Times is a pretty big paper.

*

I also keep meaning to talk about how Amazon is killing independent cinema by randomly deleting movies from their video library. Because that's huge cinematic news. But the time never seems to be right. And the time may never be right.

So there it is. I talked about it.

And I have some skin in the game, since a friend of mine is a director and about half of his 16 films on Amazon were deleted, including one I co-directed with him, Craptastic Number Two.

Ironically, he says some of his worst films are still there while some of his better ones got the axe. The criteria for deletion: totally arbitrary.

It's Amazon being Amazon. Ours is not to reason why.


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.