The Bride: I Prefer Not To

★★—The Bride? More like The Ex. Am-I-right? I sort of liked this, at first. It seems that it is universally hated, but I thought it was sweet, though incredibly unfocused. I think it would be more accurate to say I wanted to like it… But the more I think about it, the worse I feel about it. 

 

Recent Oscar winner Jessie Buckley is Jean Harlow is Marla Singer… with some shit on her face. She’s also inexplicably possessed by Mary Shelley some of the time. Quotes Melville a lot, ye olde “I prefer not to.”

 

Some Gyllenhaal-on-Gyllenhaal action. Maggie directs what I assume will be her last film for a while. Jake plays a Fred Astaire type that Frankenstein is really into. Speaking of weird siblings, this super niche Swedish electronica band, the Knife, showed up playing not period music. The band is made up of Karin and Olof Dreijer. You can’t miss them. Karin looked more like a zombie than Frankenstein. 

 

Like Christian Bale in everything. This was no different, though it was no Big Short. People are constantly trying to fuck with him. Kids, if you are listening, picking a fight with a large man that looks like that is ill-advised. Then again, he passes as a waiter at one point. Am I sure I liked this movie? 

 

Takes place in the mid-1930s, roughly around the time Bride of Frankenstein came out. Love a period piece, usually. Way more dancing than I was expecting. Lot of film references. Ones I recognized, in addition to Bride of Frankenstein, include Bonnie and Clyde, Natural Born Killers, Moulin Rouge, Poor Things, Young Frankenstein. 

 

Overall. Too long. Too referential. Too little substance. Plot is insane, but not in a good way. Everything with Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz was unnecessary. 

Send Help: Raimi's still got it

★★★★★--Super early yet, but this is my favorite film of 2026 thus far. Sam Raimi makes one hell of a horror movie. No one does splatter and gross-out humor like him. And he keeps you guessing. This movie was fun as shit. Go in knowing just what you see in the trailer.  
 
Caught Raimi's three common easter eggs in all of his movies ("The Classic," the Evil Dead necklace, and Bruce Campbell). Most of the time they are pretty easy to spot. I was sort of surprised I saw all of them in this flick as I'm not very observant and these were somewhat well hidden.  My favorite of the three was the Bruce Campbell portrait in the son's office. 
 
Anyway, yes, this is the ultimate "good-for-her" flick. No character is a true hero or villain in any Raimi movie, even the superhero ones. Such is the case here to the extreme. For example, the male lead, the POS CEO played by Dylan O'Brien (he is mostly thought of as the guy in those Maze Runner movies) is comically unlikable. Every time you think he is actually alright, then he comes back extra douchey, practically screaming "fuck you for thinking I'd change!" But you understand why he is that way and sort of feel for him in the end. 
 
Rachel McAdams is always fantastic, but is all-time here. Surprisingly does a pretty good job of making her kind of gross early on, but she's smoking by the time she is on the island. Doesn't surpass Regina George, but the woman has range. I'm sure this will go down as one of her most memorable performances.

Evil Dead Rise - Lee Cronin - 2023

★★★★★-Shotguns. Chainsaws. Wood-chippers. Eyeballs getting bitten out and spat into a child's mouth. A literal bloodbath, they use over 6,500 liters of fake blood. This is what the Evil Dead films are about. 

I found this to be shockingly good. A near perfect movie worthy of the franchise, my favorite in all of horror. Blows the 2013 movie out of the water. My only minor complaint is that I don't really like not knowing where this fits in with the other films. But how do any of them fit in? 

Gist is estranged sister Beth (played by Lily Sullivan) visits older sis Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her three kids (Morgan Davies plays Danny, Gabrielle Echols plays Bridget, Nell Fisher plays Kassie), two of whom are high school aged, and the youngest girl, Cassie, who is roughly seven or eight, probably, I don't know. They live in a dilapidated LA apartment that is about to be condemned and torn down. It apparently had many other lives before it was converted to apartments, including a bank. After an earthquake opens the floor of the parking garage, Danny goes into what used to be the vault and finds the dreaded Book of the Dead and some records translating the ancient text. Despite his sister Bridget's warnings, he listens to the translations, which unleash the Deadites. Standard Evil Dead setup, but in a new local, which was pretty cool. What follows is glorious apartment dwellers vs. the dead action. 

Directed and written by Lee Cronin. His only other feature to date is The Hole in the Ground back in 2019. The fifth installment in the Evil Dead film franchise. The main guys associated with the original creators had their hands in this film as well. Rob Tapert, who produced the original, produced this one as well director Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell executive producing. The idea for this film came after plans for direct sequels to Evil Dead (2013) and Army of Darkness were abandoned and Ash vs Evil Dead was cancelled after the third season, which still hurts. 

Overall, loved it. The opening is fantastic. Doesn't mess around. Wastes no time putting you in this world. Then, when the kid plays the record, and we get that old familiar “Kandar”, followed by the zoom, got chills. 

While I may see the first three films in the rosiest glasses possible, I was pretty critical of the ones that don't star Bruce Campbell. However, Cronin gave me everything I wanted in terms of nods to Raimi's films while also making it his own. The monster's final form is not something we've seen before and was the perfect way to one up the holy hell vibe. Definitely not for the faint-hearted, this is the bloodiest film in the franchise with any character potentially dying horrifically. It's groovy. Come get some.