Pearl - Ti West - 2022

★★★★- Thought the Maria Goth performance was GREAT but the movie was not. Close though. Love a period horror movie. Many allusions to The Wizard of Oz, which was interesting and cool. Also love Ti West. And this Mia Goth is something special. Never better than when she was playing hero ball. 

This is the second of a trilogy. Takes place during WWI. The origin story of the psycho biddy from the first film, who was played by Goth as well who had dual roles in the flick. Get to see her Hollywood dreams and the seeds of craziness growing into violent psychopathy. Nice. 

In addition to Goth, film stars David Corenswet, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Matthew Sunderland, and Tandi Wright, none of whom I recognized. 

Super captivating and memorable. Liked the style and music. Love the final scene too. That was uncomfortable and awesome. You could hear people in the theater being like WTF. Love those kinds of communal view experiences. Excited AF for that third installment, which goes to the 1980s. 

X is the greatest movie of all time

X. I thought it was amazing up until a somewhat stupid thing thrown in at the end that sort of changes how you can interpret the movie but doesn't really change anything. Without giving anything away, it is one of those, "oh, um, okay, whatever," things that are sort of irritating. However, movie redeems itself with an incredible last line. Fantastic. Glad Ti West is making horror again. 

Set in 1979, a group of young people set out to make an adult movie in a rural Texas farmhouse. The elderly couple, it turns out, has some creepy shit going on and shit hits the fan when the wife gets all riled up. It's what you'd call a psycho-biddy movie. 

All the men in the movie, in true final girl genre fashion, are extremely incompetent. They are the first to die, are sexually worthless (except for Cudi's character), and don't recognize when they are in extreme danger. Typical dudes in slasher shit, except they each display a little complexity. Not as much as the women, who are extremely well done, but come off as real people instead of just existing to die. I'm currently reading The Final Girl Support Group so this is all fresh in my mind. 

Some real talent on display here in this A24 picture. Not only is it West's return to horror, it stars Mia Goth from the Suspiria remake, Jenna Ortega (who is having a real moment), this Martin Henderson guy I only know from Smokin' Aces, and Kid Cudi (the rapper guy). Rounding out the cast are ones Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, and Stephen Ure, none of whom I know. 

This Jenna Ortega chick is on fire right now. She was dope in Scream and is in two other movies at the top of my watch list -- American Carnage and Studio 666. She's great in this flick, too. But the real star and MVP of the movie is Goth. She plays both the final girl porn actress and the old psycho lady. They are two sides of the same coin, sympathetic victims, both of them, one getting opportunities because of her looks and drive, the other who is old and has lost much of her self-worth. She is incredible in both parts. 

See it as something of a love letter to the movies West grew up on, like Tarantino for horror, especially Tobe Hooper's 1974 masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The layout of the murder house even appears to be the same as the one the family occupies in Chain Saw. There is a lot to love here. First off, I am a sucker for a meta treatment, the whole film-within-the-film with an adult twist with The Farmer's Daughter. This is the way to go with a contemporary slasher if you want it to be any good. 

Other obvious influences include Psycho (1960), Hardcore (1979), Alligator (1980), and Boogie Nights (1997). Also 1970s pornography--I hear, though I am not familiar. 

Lastly, West secretly made a prequel, Pearl, which was shot back-to-back with X. It's part of a trilogy, apparently, which I am stoked about.

Pet Sematary (2019) is the worst movie of all time

Pet Sematary. Baaaaad. Such a disappoint. Stephen King got me into reading. There for a while it wasn't cool to like King but I never went through that phase. Might have hidden his books under something more highbrow but I still read them. With the exception of William Shakespeare and maybe Paul Auster, I've read more of his works than anyone else. This is partly because he is so prolific. But I legit have enjoyed almost all of the books of his I've read. This book was a little dark but had its moments and was easy to blow through. This movie, on the other hand, was tough. Not because it was disturbing. Because it was shit. Though it was occasionally unintentionally hilarious.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Pet Sematary takes its source material in a few different directions, but this remake feels like an exhuming almost as often as it does a revival.

Much like my own cat, Richard Parker, Church is a monster

Saw this on opening night. This was a while ago. Obviously. Packed theater. I'm hating this movie. Get to the end. That's my MO after awhile. Almost there at this point. The girl, Ellie, is back from dead. Jud is dead. Mom, Rachel Creed, is getting stabbed to death by the girl in the upstairs of the house. She heroically tosses her baby, Gage, down out the window to the husband, Louise, outside by the car. He catches the baby. Meanwhile, wife is fighting for her life with their undead daughter. So, you know, time is of the essence and what have you. Gotta take the baby somewhere safe, I guess, so off to the car they go. Now you would think that he would lock the door and be off but no. Here he starts telling the baby that he is locking the door and not to unlock the door for anyone except him. He then proceeds to name all of the people he shouldn't open the door for. He is like, "don't unlock the door for your sister, Ellie, mommy, Jud Crandall, your grandma, gramps, aunt Zelda, Victor Pascal, the cat Church," and so forth. I couldn't stop laughing. I haven't laughed like that in years. We are talking like hysterical, belly laughing for over a minute. I mean, I could not stop. I was the only person in the packed theater that had this reaction. People were getting pissed. The guy next to me, whom I didn't know, didn't get it and said something like "that was a good kid, staying where he was told." I guess he was, man. He was obviously not self-actualized.

That is more or less all you need to know about this movie I'll give you a little bit more. The wendigo stuff was cool. But not as cool as the book though it never really is. They flesh that stuff out a little bit which everyone was hype about and indeed was interesting. The movie looks cool. Everything is all dark and New Englandy lighting wise in a way that doesn't really happen in the Midwest. It's a hard to explain aura. You have to have spent some time in Maine in the fall to experience it. Good to see Amy Seimetz, the mom, Rachel Creed, in like real main stream flicks. She was also in Alien: Covenant. Before then she was in a bunch of cool, independent horror, stuff like You're Next and Ti West movies. She was really great and probably won the movie. Though one could make a case for Jason Clarke, the dad, Louise Creed, who is solid as well. Was sort of excited to see John Lithgow in as Jud Crandall as he is usually pretty good. But this role didn't do anything for me.

The movie, on the whole, is just dumb. The changes from the book/the first movie were pretty shitty. Made the movie darker which is was pretty unnecessary and pointless (though the twist fucking got me). Much like the original 1989 movie staring Dale Midkiff as Louise, Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster) as Jud, and the lovely Denise Crosby, one of my first onscreen crushes as a child, who played Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation, meow, I shan't ever be watching this one again. Trash.

Green Room is the greatest movie of all time

Green Room. Movie is good shit. Of the two movies I've seen from director Jeremy Saulnier, this and Murder Party, both are out of the park (gonna have to watch his other film, Blue Ruin, as well). While Murder Party had a literal $0 budget, Green Room is obviously spending some coinage as this cast is dope and not at all amateurish and includes Sir Patrick Stewart. The movie is intense, brutal, has a solid storyline. It is the greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Green Room delivers unapologetic genre thrills with uncommon intelligence and powerfully acted élan.

Pros: Super engrossing with highly tense situations. Nice premise. Patrick Stewart! This guy brings it. Rest of cast is solid too. Little bit of unexpected humor in there as well.

Cons: Not super taut. A couple of things don't make a lot of sense. Pretty violent.

Gist is a bust of gig, a band of struggling punk rockers lands a show that they are warned is a little different that ends up being at a neo-Nazi venue where they play a song with the hook "Nazi punk fuck off" which the Nazi punks consider confrontational. They are run off the stage early, back into the green room where a murder has taken place. They lock themselves in and the movie then turns into a very much nontraditional home invasion flick. Reminds me of a Trump-era Your Next, also a home invasion movie with a twist, if you are familiar with that masterful piece of cinema (though it came out before all the Trump supporting racists came out of the woodwork). Directed by Saulnier, whose shit I fucking love and seems to be the new Ti West, has cemented himself as a dude whose flicks I will anticipate for sure. Staring in the film are Macon Blair (a favorite of Saulnier) who was in Blue Ruin and Murder Party, Imogen Poots from films such as 28 Weeks Later and Need for Speed, Alia Shawkat who is Maebe in Arrested Development and was in Final Girls which was one of my faves from the last few years, the Patrick Stewart, and Anton Yelchin, known for Alpha Dog, Hearts in Atlantis, and Star Trek, in one of his last roles (he died in a freak accident in 2016).

Only true complaint about the movie is that some shit that doesn't add up is why exactly the girl they stumbled upon with the knife in her head dies in the first place. I guess they sort of explain it but it is super confusing. Then the dead girl's boyfriend, also a Neo-Nazi, flips sides and starts helping the green room peeps. This too makes no real sense. I mean, it is sort of explained, but that explanation is hard to follow and pretty weak.

There are a lot of times in the movie where things appear to turn the green room people's way but then doesn't which really gets you. Like when that guy flips sides. He has info on what is going down and how they can survive and what not but then dies immediately. Bummer. Then when the group gets a shotgun you think they are going to at least take some people out. But that does no good either and ends with a horrific death.

Best scenes of the movie are also some of the hardest to watch. Like when Chekov (Yelchin) and the rest of them negotiate with Stewart and the Nazis, the gun for getting out alive, when the skinheads double cross them and nearly cut off Chekov's hand. The most satisfying scene though, in a movie without many of them, comes when Poots and Yelchin's characters are the last two standing from the room, spoiler, and they stop "playing war" and start using their noodles and do some real damage. Also like the scene at the very end when everyone is dead and this dying pit bull that has killed multiple people finds his Nazi owner, who is dead, sidles up to his guy, lays down with him, and presumably dies. Even though the dog is a terror and his master is a Nazi, I was still touched by it... Dogs are just so goddamned loyal.

MVP here is Stewart who elevates the film from punk indie to legitimate hard-hitting thriller. His Neo-Nazi is truly impressive. He is always sinister and not to be trusted. He comes off as a real leader in a totally different way than he does as Dr. Xavier. He is a Shakespeare villain who is awesomely intense and wicked. This movie probably works without him but it's not nearly the same level of film with broad appeal.

That's Green Room. You definitely should check it out. I'm pretty stoked for to watch Saulnier's other movie, Blue Ruin, as well as his new flick that is due out next month, one Hold the Dark which is coming to Netflix. It starts Blair (of course), daughter of Lisa Marie Presley one Riley Keough from Mad Max: Fury Road, Alexander Skarsgård (Skarsgård the lesser) of The Legend of Tarzan (not the Skarsgård from It which is his bro), and Jeffrey Wright from Westworld among other things. So, yeah, that shit is definitely on my radar.

Hereditary is the greatest movie of all time

Hereditary. Man, this sure goes to some unexpected places. This is a new movie and there will be massive spoilers so don't fucking give me any shit if you read on. It rarely happens but still. So, anyway, yeah, weird. Was one of four people in the theater. The other three, a little family consisting of middle-aged couple and a high school (ish) daughter, were like, "uh, well, what did you think of that? Really something, huh?" Yeah, that sentiment, I'd say that pretty much summed it up.  I can totally see why critics love it and audiences hate it. So if you liked that movie The Witch that came out a couple of years ago and that everyone is comparing this to, you'll probably like this in that it was a lot of "what the hell is happening" followed by an "oh my god it's over." Yeah, they are both very much those critics A-, audience D movies, if you know what I mean. An extremely disturbing ending will do that for you. So, if you liked that other movie or movies that have endings that are super fucked, then I've got something for you over here... Hereditary is the greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Hereditary uses its classic setup as the framework for a harrowing, uncommonly unsettling horror film whose cold touch lingers long beyond the closing credits.

Pros: Ending is super out there. Toni Collette is a hell of an actress. Does a pretty good job of insane. A lot of detail to make the reveal believable (much like Get Out). A slow burn that builds to insanity.

Cons: Not all of it holds up under any sort of scrutiny. Little too over-the-top.

Here we go. Movie opens with the death of grandma Ellen. Her daughter, Annie played by Toni Collette, and the grieving family begin having strange occurrences having to do with their shared ancestry that becomes increasingly horrible as per use in the horror genre. Early on we lose one of the two children when son Peter, played by Alex Wolff from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, gets baked at a party and his little sister Charlie, played by Milly Shapiro, eats a piece of nut cake despite her nut allergy and the brother decapitates her in a freak accident while driving her to the hospital (I'll get into this later). From there we get seances and possession and hauntings and crazy people and all that fun stuff. It is a pretty standard horror movie you've seen 100 times for the first three-fourths of the movie. Then shit gets cray. This is a motherfucker of a beast of a domestic breakdown flick. It is writer/director Ari Aster's first feature film. It also stars Gabriel Byrne as the dad and Ann Dowd as the creepy-ass "friend" Joanie.

While Hereditary is most compared to The Witch, I thought it more in tune with the mumblegore film (movies with naturalistic acting and often improvised dialogue, low-budget film production, and a focus on the personal relationships)--which, to be clear, this film is not--is House of the Devil. That film, set in the '80s during the "satanic panic", was directed by one Ti West who is a genius, and deals with a broke college girl that babysits for a strange couple in an old house. When she gets there, the home owner informs her that it is not their child that she will be watching but his ailing mom. As the story goes on, she starts uncovering weirder and weirder happenings revolving around a cult bent on ushering in the antichrist. Like that film, this is a slow burn that gets more fucked as shit goes down, ultimately building into one hell of a crazy ass conclusion.

Joanie. Huge bitch

The breakout star of this flick is 100% Toni Collette who is just incredible. She was totally unhinged and insane with grief. Two scenes that really did it for me were the one where Joanie is trying to tell her about how she conjured up the spirits of her dead son/grandson. There is this crazy desperation to the scene with Joanie pawing at her and her resisting the whole thing as nonsense. It is obviously too much for her and she doesn't know how to handle it. She then turns around and does this same shit to her family much to her husband and son's annoyances. The next scene that really shows off her chops comes at the end when she is just fucking devastated. She is completely leveled in a truly horrible way. It is uncomfortable as fuck to watch but is an undeniably great performance.

This is a flick that requires a lot of attention, likely a second viewing. So basically the whole movie revolves around this body snatching, demon worshiping cult that has maybe already put the demon's consciousness in the girl (it is somewhat unclear if the demon has fully manifested in the girl as it prefers male hosts). Everyone in this world seems to be in on it and everything that goes down was all according to plan (no matter how outlandish). Regardless of if Charlie was always possessed or not, the demon needs a male host. The grandmother tried this once before as Annie, the mom, explains her brother committed suicide because he believed that their mother was trying to put people inside of him. We see that she was basically always willing to sacrifice her family for this cause and even went so far as to Hand-that-Rocks-the-Cradling her granddaughter (i.e. breastfeeding her). With me so far? Probably not. I too was lost.

"It's alright, bra. She'll shake it off. She's a rock."

As this was not a super clean movie, there were so many things that confused me. So my questions are why did Gabriel Byrne catch fire instead of the mom? Who possessed the mom when she cut her own head off? Was this like an Oedipus type of fucked situation that caused instant insanity? Why did the demon baby need to be a boy exactly? Is the boy like in the sunken place forever? Or will splashing with water wake him up as it did when Annie was possessed. Also, why go about possessing the daughter in the first place? Why not perform the ritual on the boy when he is like a toddler or something. The movie definitely requires multiple viewings but I'll be damned if I ever watch that shit again.

I was able to answer one glaring plot hole through a bit of research which I guess makes it not a plot hole, technically. This was from the scene where the girl, who was maybe a demon already, ate a piece of cake with nuts in it and her brother takes her to the hospital but gets into an accident and decapitates her instead (he drives home and goes to bed in shock after this takes place by the way, leaving her head on the side of the road). The issue was if the cult was just like hoping the little girl would die or if they forced that to happen in some way.  Apparently when the decapitated head shot pans up, that one Paimon symbol that everyone wheres is on the pole. The shock of that scene was fucking terrible and insane. It sort of makes you sick to your stomach. Holy fuck, man. That is basically the holy movie. Great but not one to watch more than once.