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
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