Thursday, October 3, 2024
31 Days of Halloween: Revenge Night: Damian McCarthy’s Chilling New Revenge Horror, Oddity
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
31 Days of Halloween: Tim Burton Night: Edward Scissorhands – A Classic if You Can Stomach Johnny Depp's Bullshit
Edward Scissorhands – Tim Burton - 1990
Gonna start with this… I’m pretty over Johnny Depp’s shit, and this is Johnny Depp at his most Johnny Deppiest. This is a glimpse into how insufferable he would become, with his sort of whiny, shuffling shtick. Get the feeling he is the type of guy that believes he knows what it is like to be a black man getting hounded by the cops because it happened to his character in this movie.
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
31 Days of Halloween: Horror Anthology: Tales from the Hood, an Urban Horror Classic
Tales from the Hood - Rusty Cundieff - 1995
Thursday, September 5, 2024
Zoe Kravitz’s Debut is Perfect Slow Burn Horror
Blink Twice - Zoë Kravitz - 2024
★★★★★--Perfect slow burn horror. Saw people saying the pacing was off because of this. I disagree.
Brilliant flick. Favorite horror movie of the year, so far. Was not expecting a banger from first-time director Zoe Kravitz. Not at all what I expected in general. The trailer is some great misdirection. Got me into the theater and then pulled the rug out. This is part of what makes the film so great, IMO.
Gist is a cocktail waitress is invited to a tech billionaire’s private island, only to uncover dark and terrifying secrets. That is all you need to know going in.
Stars Naomi Ackie in the lead. Recognize her from her television work in The End of the F***ing World andMaster of None. Also played Whitney Houston in the biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Rest of the cast includes Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, former MTV VJ Simon Rex, Adria Arjona from that Richard Linklater movie Hit Man, Kyle MacLachlan, Haley Joel Osment, Geena Davis, and Alia Shawkat. Great cast of characters that all work phenomenally together. You love the women in this movie, especially the leads, Ackie and Arjona. Go in with just the trailer and you’ll love it. The trigger warning is real, as this movie is super disturbing. There is one scene where a woman is screaming in this horrific, visceral way.
Light spoilers ahead. The ladies are controlled by a perfume made from the flowers that only grows on the island that causes them to forget. Literal snake oil causes them to snap out of it. Inspired by the Lotus Eater’s myth from the Odyssey where people live on a small island and consume lotus plants that cause them to live in a perpetual state of bliss. Their lifestyle causes them to lose all sense of urgency and forget where they came from or how long they’ve been on the island.
Forgetting our trauma is a gift. It can be, sure, but you often need that shit to be who you are in the end.
This was the best horror debut I can think of since Jordan Peele dropped that flick in 2017. Love a chick revenge movie. All the women in this are bad ass. Geena Davis is like a Get Out character. She sort of represents an older generation who didn’t get the memo that “women should look out for each other instead of competing.”
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
In a Violent Nature: A Brutal, Unique Take on the Slasher Genre
In a Violent Nature - Chris Nash - 2024
★★★★★-Over the weekend watched three of what are being touted as this year’s best horror movies. Blink Twice, I Saw the TV Glow, and this flick. Two of them do not disappoint. This was one of the ones that didn’t.One of the best scenes comes at the end. It’s 10 minutes of driving and talking between the final girl and a lady that picks her up. It’s super intense as the whole time you are anticipating something horrible. One this is for sure, this flick definitely passes the Bechtel Test.
Gist is a Jason Voorhees-esque killer gets accidentally resurrected in the Ontario wilderness by a group of “teenagers”, whom he then stalks and murders. The cool part about the movie is that most of it is from the killer’s perspective in that video game angle. It’s mostly the killer walking around. Get a lot of long shots of the woods, hearing a whippoorwill in the background.
This is a movie that shows you the stuff you don’t see in most slashers. The time in between kills, for example. This consists mostly of Johnny just playing with bodies and such. Dude is a big fan of overkill. Huge fan.
It is a brutal movie. The kills in this are totally nuts. One that is getting a lot of recognition is one of the best of all time. Hard to overstate how cool it was, this coming from a guy who doesn’t really care about such things unless it is truly something extraordinary. Another one is done all in one cut. We see the killer axe a dude in the head and then hack away at it some more for several minutes as the survivor girl watches on in horror. Think when you are chopping
There is a song at the end of the movie that I absolutely loved. This is over the end credits.
I absolutely adored this movie. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a paltry 44%, which is nuts. I get that it isn’t for everyone, but it’ll make my best of list for 2024.
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
A visually stunning film that lingers despite some flaws
I Saw the TV Glow - Jane Schoenbrun - 2024
★★★-Was one of the movies at the top of my watch list. Didn’t think I was a fan. Drags too much, especially at the end. But I can’t stop thinking about it, and have been listening to the soundtrack non-stop.
For starters, it’s not anything I’ve ever seen before. Stunningly stylish. Like the way it was shot. Dreamlike, beautiful, nostalgic, surreal. But the story was pretty meh. Not that I’m the target audience. It’s not for everyone. Saw the director, one Jane Schoenbrun, say if you don’t vibe with this, congrats on having a wonderful childhood. Alright.
I can relate in some ways. Like having a friend that pops in and out of your life that you at some point realize is insane. Also being obsessed with a television show. Have bought many episode guides in my day, especially in the late 90s, when most of the movie takes place.
It’s really touching, and sweet, at times. Super intimate. Very sad. Said to be an “egg crack” allegory. This is moment when a trans person realizes their true identity differs from their gender at birth. The horror is living inauthentically, in living in one’s assigned gender. Not what you’d call conventional.
Stars one Justice Smith in the lead role of Owen. He’s in a bunch of stuff I’ve never seen like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, All the Bright Places, Detective Pikachu, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Brigette Lundy-Paine plays his friend Maddy. She was Ted’s daughter in Bill & Ted Face the Music. She gets Owen into the show The Pink Opaque before she goes missing. She shows back up years later saying that she has been living in the show and that Owen should bury himself alive with her to get to that place. He declines and talks her before running off. The Pink Opaque is kind of a mashup of Buffy and Are You Afraid of the Dark.
Owen’s dad in the movie is a real fucking asshole. Played by none other than Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, Robert Durst’s son (JK). Owen’s mom dies and he checks out. Knows something is going on with his child, but is incapable of parenting.
Directed by Schoenbrun, who is transfeminine and non-binary. They have said that Owen’s decision not to bury himself alive with Maddy, along with his ensuing existential crisis, reflects their own fears about possibly living life without transitioning. They also directed the film We're All Going to the World's Fair, which I hated, though it was also critically lauded. Zero-for-two for me.
Scariest thing that happens, for me, is Owen comes up to a downed powerline at one point, which is pretty terrifying. He gets out the car, which you are not supposed to do. Ever. I knew a guy that had his legs blown off doing that. No shit.
Probably a movie that requires multiple viewings. Shouldn’t have to do that. Life is too short to rewatch movies you weren’t that into the first time.
Monday, August 19, 2024
Gritty, Working-Class, Romulus is one of the franchise’s best
Alien: Romulus - Fede Alvarez - 2024
Gist is a group of people and their android butler (jk) board a derelict space station to get cryo-pods/fuel to escape their mining colony on a Saturn moon. This leads to them fighting for survival against face-huggers, Xenomorphs, and shitty “synthetics” as happens in these flicks.
The cast is mostly unknowns. Rain Carradine is played by Cailee Spaeny—only thing I’ve seen her in is Mare of Easttown.She is the dead girl. David Jonsson plays Andy, the robit. Others include Archie Renaux as Tyler, Isabela Merced as Tyler’s preggers sister Kay, Spike Fearn as Bjorn, Aileen Wu as Navarro, and Ian Holm who is back from the dead as Rook, another robit.
Director is Fede Alvarez. He previously did the 2013 Evil Dead movie, eh, Don’t Breathe, and The Girl in the Spider’s Web, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
Some of the stuff I like: the acid blood in zero gravity, the thing at the end (no spoilers), robot maintenance, and getting back to the working-class aspects of Weyland Yutani. Actually, this is the most working-class movie of all the movies, which adds to the mythology. We get a lot glimpses of that over the course of the movies, but this one, these guys are the bottom of the barrel grunts. This also really focuses on the whole immortality goal that becomes so important in the prequels.
Also of note, none of the movies are as unsettling as this one, including the original. This is straight up white-knuckle horror shit.
The guy who plays Andy is great and does a lot heavy lifting. Starts out benevolent, becomes a company man, then goes back to being cool and seemingly feeling guilty.
Soo, I’m really looking forward to Alien: Earth, which takes place about the same time as Prometheus. Bummed we probably aren’t getting a sequel to Covenant. But you never know. Hopefully that a lot of the quests get answered then.
I’d put this at No. 4 on my list of Alien movies. My order from favorite to least goes thus: Aliens, Alien, Prometheus, Romulus, Covenant, Alien3, and Resurrection.
Sunday, August 11, 2024
The real Trap is turning M. Night's daughter into a pop star
Trap – M. Night Shyamalan – 2024
★★★-Not the trainwreck I’d been led to believe. It’s not Old or The Happening bad. But it’s not Unbreakable either. It’s just a forgettable meh that went on too long.
Gist is a father and his daughter attend a pop concert, only to discover it’s a trap set by law enforcement to capture the father, who is a notorious serial killer. Hell of a setup.
Like every M. Night movie, the trailer makes it look amazing. But then it’s not.
I feel like of course M. Night has a pair of nepo babies, but his daughter, Saleka, is serviceable, and her voice is amazing.
Big problem is that the film is way too long. Thought it was wrapping up when they leave the concert, but then there is something like 45 more minutes. Also, requires a lot of awkward exposition. Josh Hartnett was fine. He is inexplicably shirtless for a good stretch of the flick.
Monday, July 15, 2024
Longlegs - Cage at his Cagiest in this artsy fartsy crap
Longlegs - Oz Perkins - 2024
The look on my face every time Cage was on screen |