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. 

30 Days of Night: A vampire's wet dream

 30 Days of Night - David Slade - 2007

★★--Remember the trailer for this film being great. Produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert of Evil Dead fame. Execution wasn’t really there. Kind of glad I waited 17 years to watch it. 
 
Gist is an isolated Alaskan town that experiences a 30-day-long polar night gets overrun with vampires. Hate when that shit happens. Pretty smart of the vampires though. 
 
Director David Slade has mostly done TV including the first three episodes of American Gods (which where great) and several early episode of Hannibal (also great). He did do a few movies though, like Hardy Candy about a young girl that tortures a child rapist/murderer, it’s pretty decent, and one of the Twilight movies (never saw it). 
 
Stars Josh Hartnett whose career was screeching to a halt (my man is back now though), Melissa George (whom I mostly think of as the mother of the kid that get the slap in the show The Slap [both the American and the Australian version]), Danny Huston of the Huston clan, Ben Foster who was who is always solid and is married to my former queen Laura Prepon,  and Mark Boone Junior, who always plays a crazy guy. Personally think of him as the pizza stealing FBI guy in Se7en. He is in most of Fincher’s movies though. 
 
Fantastic premise—vampires in Alaska during the longest period of darkness—but sort of waste it on non-traditional vampires. Should have stuck with the classic variety. These vampires have pointy shark teeth, have a military-based hierarchy, speak Aramaic or some other weird shit (Romulan, maybe), have a feral quality to them, but look and dress like Danny Huston. These are not fucking vampires. 
 
Early in the movie have an awkward Chekhov's scrap metal pulverizer. Speaking of, get a lot of gore, if you are into that thing. Decapitation is the preferred vampire killing method of this movie. Usually with an axe. Sometimes a shotgun. 
 
Again, it’s not the best, but the premise makes up for a lot. However, never lives up to its potential. Josh Hartnett is alright. Ben Foster is really good but not in the movie for very long. Huston is wasted. The end is lame. It also had potential. Overall, just sort of meh. 

Oppenheimer might end up being the best movie of my lifetime - Christopher Nolan - 2023

★★★★★-Barbenheimer is fucking here! Initial thoughts after seeing Oppenheimer as early as possible. An easy five star movie. Nolan has gone full nuclear. Couple of reviews had built it up to something between The Social Network and Citizen Kane. It's better than both. We are talking earthshaking cinema. Everyone walked out of the theater silent, mesmerized, and in awe. 

This is a man that knows his place in history. With his expression and gaunt, hollow face, he looks like a man that's cursed. 

Cillian Murphy as Oppie is incredible. No doubt he'll be up for all the awards. Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Robert Downey Jr. are all great. Of them, I'm thinking Damon will probably see some recognition at awards season. Florence Pugh is maybe a little underutilized, but is stellar every second she is on-screen. Figure she might see some nominations as well. Also have solid work from Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, and Rami Malek, among others. Lastly, Casey Affleck has a small but pivotal part. Thought he was still persona non grata. Seeing him breifly took me out of it, but his character is an unbelievable asshole, so that fits. 

Seeing it in IMAX 70mm is an experience. I even found where he said where to sit, “right near the front, middle of the third row,” and sat there. Unreal. Believe the hype.

Two minor complaints. 1.) I thought the movie was a little too long. Feel like it maybe could have trimmed a bit off, and been a little tighter. 2.) Was expecting it to be way trippier. Wish Nolan would have leaned into the abstract maybe a little bit more. But I still loved it. Heard people asking if they really detonated an atomic bomb for the film, which is insane, but that is how good it look. 

Favorite scene is after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Oppenheimer addresses the people on the base, telling them what has happened. Everyone, including him, is completely shell-shocked. Nolan does an incredible job of replicating that feeling on screen. Music and sound are perfectly utilized here (and throughout) as well. 

Stellar film. Having seen it a few times now, I truly believe this overtakes There Will Be Blood as the greatest film released in my lifetime. For me, probably ever. A must-watch. 

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre - Guy Ritchie - 2023

★★★★-Went in expecting a fun, humorous action movie featuring beautiful people in beautiful clothes having a great time. That was exactly what I got. Loved it.

Gist is Jason Statham plays a mercenary named Orson Fortune who is hired to stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology. The broker of the deal is billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds played by Hugh Grant. To help, Fortune assembles a reluctant team of the world’s greatest and most beautiful operatives including Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride), Bugzy Malone (the rapper), and Aubrey Plaza. They end up recruiting Hollywood's biggest movie star, one Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) to go undercover and save the world.

Gets a little convoluted, but I honestly didn't really care. All of Guy Ritchie garbage crime movies are fun as fuck and this is no exception. Also, love how he plugs the wood-burning grill/table he invented in all of his movies now. 

Grant and Hartnett are so fun. Both of them yuck it up and steal every scene they are in. Plaza was a little much at first with her weak sarcasm, but comes around and is pretty great. 

Overall, nothing new and isn't going to win any awards. One review said “It’s like someone doing Guy Ritchie doing Guy Ritchie.” Fair, but still loved it. Sort of reminds me of a movie like Beat the Devil when John Huston made a movie starring Humphrey Bogart that gently spoofed the other movies they made together just so they could go and do cool shit in cool places and get paid for it. Having a great time shows on camera in projects like this. 

So, yeah, humor, action, movie stars being movie stars, Guy Ritchie, Aubrey Plaza looking fine. I'm buying. 

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is the greatest movie of all time

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Saw it in the theater with my old man and my bro back in 1998. Sophomore year of high school. Thought it was weird shit back then. Didn't know it was retconned and what have you. Confused the shit out of all of us at the time. They shitcan the whole Man in Black/Mark of Thorn bullshit from Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers which was obviously not working. Also, everything that happened in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. So all of the Jamie Lloyd stuff gets ignored. In Halloween 4 it is glossed over that Jamie Lee Curtis's character, Laurie Strode, died in a car accident. The movies that H20 follows are the original John Carpenter's Halloween and Halloween II. It is in that universe. I sort of picked up on this back then but during the opening credits we see a newspaper clipping with a headline that explains that she was indeed killed in a car accident. What the fuck? Later, when we see that she is alive, she explains that she faked her death. This shit pissed me off back then. Is it in this universe or isn't it? It obviously isn't if it ignores the Cult of Thorn shit and doesn't mention Jamie, but why make it more complicated? None of this was very clear back in the day. Now, however, knowing that whats what, I took the film as it is and other than taking a while to get going and some truly awful and grossly unnecessary CGI which is fucking mind blowing, they CGI the mask for god's sake, this one is pretty solid. Unbelievable. But solid. In fact, greatest movie of all time.

Michelle Williams... Attractive lady.

Also, I should mention that the upcoming Danny McBride written, David Gordon Green directed, Blumhouse produced Halloween movie, watch the trailers here and here, which looks okay but also sort of dumb, retcons the franchise as well. This one, however, ignores everything past the original. So basically another attempt at this movie only ignoring everything from the point when Myers disappears after getting shot six times in the original up to this new one. We'll see if it's a shit show or not in a couple of weeks. Early reports have it being pretty solid so I've got hope.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Halloween: H2O is the best of the many sequels, yet still pales in comparison to the original Halloween.

WTF is this shit?

Pros: Opening is pretty dope. The ending is sort of amazing. Michelle Williams. Found her so attractive when I originally watched this. She holds up. Once it finally gets going, for that last 20 minutes or so, the movie is pretty great. This is basically when JLC goes back into the school with an ax to the very, very end.

Cons: LL Cool J's character is extremely irritating with his romance novelist ambitions for no reason. Takes too long to get going. After the opening scene kills, nothing really happens until the end. Unlike the original where it builds and Myers is lurking, it's more he just isn't there a lot. CGI mask.

Quick note on my Halloween watching/commentary. I have, since the last piece of shit Halloween movie I watched, discovered this dope podcast doing the same thing as yours truly. It's called Halloweenies and is part of the Consequence of Sound Podcast Network. Discovered it after being a semiregular listener of The Losers Club which is a Stephen King podcast. They are both great. Trying not to rip off any of their stuff from their humorous observations but I'm thinking there is a little bit of overlap. Like with our takes on the ending. But check out that shit if you are into any of those shits.

I owned that shit back in the day

Anyway... The gist of the thing goes thus... 20 years after Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, was attacked by her homicidal brother, Michael Myers, she comes face to face with "The Shape" again who has tracked her down from Haddonfield, Illinois to a California boarding school where she is the head mistress after having faked her death to protect herself and her son, played by Josh Hartnett.

Also in flick are Adam Arkin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (JGL), Adam Hann-Byrd, LL Cool J, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, JLC's mother Janet Leigh from Pyscho has a couple nice little cameos, and Michelle Williams. Directed by Steve Miner, who started his career off hot with Friday the 13th Part 2 which is probably my favorite of the franchise and Friday the 13th Part III which is also super solid before doing the underrated film House about a writer whose child goes missing at his aunt's haunted home that he then inherits and moves into (I'm going to have to rewatch this soon), before what should have (and sort of did) killed his career with 1985's Soul Man about a Brett Kavanaugh type who dresses in blackface to pose as a black dude to achieve his dream of attending Harvard with a full scholarship. It didn't exactly age well. Anyway, Miner thought the previous three Halloween movies were trash, saying as much, and didn't watch them. So with his background he more or less decided to make a Jason Goes to Boarding School movie.

Jesus fuck, bro

There is some shit. Like how the movie takes for fucking ever to get going. There are the kills in the beginning and then it turns into a shitty slasher at a boarding school where no one dies and the killer is halfway across the country. He doesn't even get to the area until about the halfway mark. Then it still takes a while for him to get in and what not. Which brings me to some more shit. Every second LL is on screen, reading his old lady garbage from the romance novel he is writing instead of doing his job the top priority of which is protecting the kids from homicidal killers. And finally the movie riding out to the soundtrack of Creed is borderline offensive. Jesus fucking Christ. Wow, Creed sure does suck.

Young JGL

Now for some good shit. There are three really good contenders for best scene. For me, they totally made the movie worth watching. They were the opening, a scene where Michael goes into a restroom at an isolated rest area on the highway and reaches under a stall and steals a woman's purse to get her keys while her small child hums while she takes a shit or whatever, and the final 20 minutes of the movie which bleeds into my pick for MVP. The opening is a pretty solid attention grabber. Starts the way II ended, with "Mr. Sandman" playing over the credits. From there it reintroduces the pertinent characters from that flick that we need for the current film (basically Marion who was Loomis's nurse and Laurie Strode), and kills off one of the biggest stars in the movie in JGL who takes a hockey skate to the face, off screen, as well as Marion who gets her throat slit as Haddonfield's finest search the house next door, long story. It's in this opening scene that we get the best line of the movie. In that scene, one these two hockey punks, the one that is not JGL, asks Marion, "Hasn't anyone ever told you that second-hand smoke kills?" and Marion says, "Yeah, but they're all dead." That was pretty much how I felt when I was a smoker... But now that I'm not and am like many years removed from it... Yeah.

The next great scene, the aforementioned rest area one, is creepy as shit. Definitely the closest the movie gets to real horror. The woman and her daughter are in an isolated area. Women's restroom is locked so they go in the men's room. Light doesn't work. Open it by wedging it with a rock. That works for a minute and then the door slams shut. The little girl is nervous but the mom tells her to chill at which point a hand reaches under the stall and snatches her person. It happens out of nowhere and is a fucked up situation with some potentially sexual stuff that could go down which makes it even more terrifying. Fuck. Anyway. But the best scene is the ending which brings me to the MVP, obviously JLC.

MVP is hands down JLC. It was crazy that she was coming back. I remember being stoked and surprised by that. And she fucking rocks it in that last 20 minutes. Prior to that not so much, I feel she isn't the same character as she was in the first two movies like at all. Don't really think she's the same Laurie Strode at the end either but it's all pretty compelling nonetheless. (Little aside here, hoping this is the thing they really focus on for the new movie: having Laurie feel like the same battered victim that indeed has been through some shit). It's basically when the film turns from complete shit to a solid fucking sequel. It happens suddenly after Laurie has lost her boyfriend, played by Arkin, and has just saved her son and Michelle Williams. She sends them off and shuts the gate so that it is just her and Myers on the grounds. She then gets herself an ax and goes into the darkness, looking to settle this shit with her brother once and for all. It is a powerful scene and then they get it on. Everyone in the theater lost their shit here and at the very end when Myers is finally got, once and for all.

So, yeah, saved the best kill for the the end here as the conclusion of the film also features the best kill as it is Laurie killing Myers himself. How they kill him is fucking ridiculous. He is stabbed many times, thrown off a balcony, thrown through a windshield, rammed by a van, crushed between a tree and said van after it rolls down a cliff, and finally decapitated with an ax. Hell of a way to go. No coming back from that. But wait, he must as there is one more shitty sequel. Have never watched it as I always considered this the true ending of the franchise. Now is the time though which is exciting considering that this is called one of the worst horror sequels of all time. So look forward to that shit show.

The Faculty is the greatest movie of all time

The Faculty. Most pro meth movie of all time. Saw it sophomore year of HS at the $1 theater (watched a shit ton of movies that year at that theater, remember it super fondly, RIP the $1 theater) and fucking loved it. At the time my favorite of the 700 high school movies from that year. I also got the soundtrack which was great. Had some Garbage, some Oasis, a Creed cover of "I'm Eighteen" which isn't terrible, and an awesome rendition of "Another Brick in the Wall" from one pop supergroup Class of 1999 featuring Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Stephen Perkins and Martyn LeNoble of Jane's Addiction/Porno for Pyros. That supergroup covered three of my favorite five bands at the time. Anywho, what I remembered about the film itself was that John Stewart was in it and dies hilariously via a Bic through the eye, they bet hard on Usher being a breakout star, and the movie was insanely pro meth. All of these things are true and are what you should walk away with from said movie. So of course it's still dope but way doper than I expected. In fact, greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Rip-off of other sci-fi thrillers. Ouch.

Pros: Great cast. Like amazingly so. Josh Hartnett is like the coolest. The plot was super fun albeit a total rip off of like 100 other science fiction flicks. Pretty good pacing. Wrapped up with a lot of personal nostalgia. Pretty ladies.

Cons: Basically Scream with aliens which was getting sort old by that point and is pretty dated as a movie from the late 1990s. Actually, looking at the credit list, wasn't shocked to see Kevin Williamson, who wrote most of the Scream franchise, wrote the screenplay for this as well.

Gist of it... A motley crew of high school student archetypes--the overachieving cheerleader (Jordana Brewster), the goth maybe lesbian (Clea DuVall), the new kid/southern belle (Laura Harris), the genius (Josh Hartnett), the miscast dumb jock (Shawn Hatosy), and the nerd (Elijah Wood)--must save the world from an alien invasion that for whatever reason has begun at their high school, first getting into their teachers' brains and taking control, then moving on to the town folk, student body, and their parents. Only not all of the archetypes are what they seem. Spoiler, some of them are also possessed by aliens. Movie was directed by one of the masters, Robert Rodrigues, who has done all kinds of dope ass shit (From Dusk Till Dawn, the Sin City movies, Planet Terror, El Mariachi, Machete, to name a fraction).

Got to give it up for the casting director in this flick. We get an insane 1990s ensemble, like if you were drafting 90s teens, most of these would be in your top ten, plus the faculty themselves are way more star studded than what I recalled. Some of the teachers and parents include an equally star studded bunch in Daniel von Bargen (Kruger in Seinfeld), hotty Famke Janssen who was Jean Grey in X-Men, super hotty Salma Hayek, Piper Laurie from Twin Peaks, Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin), Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith from Cheers), Robert "T2" Patrick, and Jon Stewart. Usher Raymond is also in the movie. This is when they were really trying to make him a movie star. But dude can't act so he has maybe like five lines even though he was on the damn cover. Even get some recognizable extras. Like playing "Fuck Up #1"and "Fuck Up #2"--those their listed roles on IMDB--are Fuck Up #1 IRL Danny Masterson (famous for Hyde from That 70's Show and rape) and Wiley Wiggins whom you might recognize as the main freshman kid Mitch Kramer in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused which went instant classic, not sure what he's up to now but he doesn't appear to be raping people so I wish him the best.

Best line of the movie is "not the pole!" screamed by Elijah Wood when in his intro like six dudes pick him up, spread his legs, and repeatedly smash his genitals into a light pole. These guys are not chill. 

Favorite scene is easily the one where they recreate the old John Carpenter's The Thing blood test except instead of a hot copper wire they all do meth ("skat" that Hartnett's character makes in his basement) which turns out to be the aliens' weakness. So basically a slightly more exaggerated effect on the aliens than on humans. In it they each have to do a bump to prove that they aren't aliens. I couldn't imagine a worse way to get fucked up than doing meth with potential aliens that are trying to take over but maybe that's just me. It's also great that one of the hulks out when she takes it because she is indeed other worldly.

MVP is absolutely Josh Hartnett, awful hair and all. As The Ringer explains, Hartnett really had a moment and this was his greatest role in said moment. He plays a fifth-year senior who purposefully repeated the grade to sell drugs which is a good thing since it is mostly his ingenuity that stops the outbreak. How does this dude not win the movie is a better question. Some examples of his coolness. He's about to fuck his English teacher, played by Famke Janssen, before she gets turned into an alien. He gets her all... intrigued with his astute comments in class and then when she catch him selling meth out of the trunk of his car he offers her some then laxatives then condoms. She weakly tells him he is being rude. Then she is all over him as an alien and lays into him and talks hella shit to him in front of the whole school. But he acts all cool and signals to her to bring it on in this cool way. I get the feeling that alien actually just wants to fuck him. Her end is pretty great with Zeke crashing his hot ass muscle car into a bus. We get some crash and burn and decapitation. Movie wasn't nearly the greatest of all time without him. Good thing they did.