Halloween II is the greatest movie of all time

Halloween II. Got myself my first pumpkin beer of the season so it's that time. Gonna start with these and hopefully gonna make my way through them all in time for the new one that comes out in October. The new one, by the way, ignores all the sequels including this one. Loved all these as a kid, we'll see if it holds up. Sooo, this one. The one that made Michael Myers and Laurie Strode brother and sister. The one that started the franchise down the path that would eventually take us to the Mark of Thorn that completely derailed the series. But we are a ways away from that. Last one with Jamie Lee Curtis until Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. John Carpenter/Debra Hill wrote it. Guy named Rick Rosenthal directed. Carpenter hates it. Critics hated it, too and it got horrible reviews when it came out. A lot of those focused on this being a continuation of the first one that doesn't stand up on it's own (which is somewhat valid). But this is overall a pretty solid movie. In fact, greatest film of all time.

Pros: This is where we get The Shape's movements down (assuming you like him not looking down when climbing stairs and stuff). JLC and Donald Pleasence are both great though not in the movie as much as you'd remember. Pretty tense but less so than the original Halloween movie. Genuinely pretty scary.

Cons: Starting to feel more like Jason Voorhees than Mike Myers at this point. Also get the sister stuff which is what it is. There is also a fair amount of bullshit in this movie with the razor blade kid, Ben Tramer getting hit by a car and exploding, and Sheriff Brackett blaming Loomis for letting Michael out, which totally didn't happen.

Picking up directly where the 1978 Halloween film left off, slasher Michael Myers goes back after survivor Laurie Strode--killing many nurses and doctors and such, maybe two EMTs, and one random girl along the way--who was taken to the hospital following the traumatic events of the first flick. Dr. Sam Loomis, meanwhile, searches desperately for his former patient whom he sees as pure evil. This was supposed to be the last of the films featuring The Shape, and the first time I saw it as a child it was, but as we know that changed 1988 with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Halloween III: Season of the Witch, you will see, followed an unrelated story as the franchise was supposed to be more of an anthology type. Apart from JLC and Pleasence you'll probably really only recognize the two EMTs from the movie. They are Lance Guest from The Last Starfighter and Leo Rossi who was the serial killer from Maniac Cop 2 and a million other things.

Lots of pretty ladies in this one. Have JLC who is universally considered a hotty. Then there are the nurses. There is Ana Alicia who is the dark-haired nurse who doesn't know how to use a walkie talkie, she did warn the security guard in her defense, and could have prevented the whole thing. Super cute but dumb. Tawny Moyer who is the short-haired blonde and my fave. Pamela Susan Shoop who is the one that goes to the bone zone with Budd (played by Leo Rossi) who got her face melted off in the hot tub. Pretty sure that can't happen.

Favorite line is "His wife’s always picking on him. He probably got angry and decided to start beating her…Big deal!" Oh casual domestic violence. Always hilarious. Big deal indeed. No. This is in reference to Alice who hears a scream coming from next door at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Elrod.

Some pretty alright kills but my favorite is the one with the nurse played by Moyer. In that, Laurie is out of bed running around and this clueless nurse--everyone in the hospital is dead by that point--is like "What is going on? Where is everyone? Get back in bed." That is when Myers pops out and scalpels her in the back, lifting her high in the air. It isn't so much the kill as what happens afterwards that made this my favorite as her little white nurse's shoes pop off and clang against the floor.

Best scene of the movie is when Michael Myers has chased Laurie into the basement of the hospital and they get to the elevator. This whole bit is easily the most intense point in the film and arguably the scariest. Finally gotten ahead of Myers a bit, Laurie is backed into the end of a hall with an elevator. She sees Myers coming and smashes at the button. It finally gets there and Myers is closing in. That is when she smashes the close door button repeatedly which works just as he gets to the door, sticking his hand in. You think that the door is going to pop back open as it would with a new elevator, and likely one then as well, but it doesn't and she gets away safe.

There is some shit in this movie... At the beginning of the movie we see this kid going into the hospital with a razor blade in sticking out of his lip. This is based on that urban legend of people putting razors in apples and poison in candy on Halloween. There has never been a documented case of the first and while the second did happen, it was a piece of shit dad that poisoned his kid, not a person that randomly poisoned trick or treaters. We later see them leaving with the mom saying they will go home and play board games and stuff. No going to the police and none show up, I mean, they are busy and all but still. So not only do they have to deal with Michael Myers, now they also have this psycho out there trying to kill kids by putting razors in candy. But that is of little concern in this universe.

The real Myers, up in flames... Totes survivable

We also have Ben Tramer, Laurie's crush from the first one, get hit by a car and explode before the car even completely crashes. The whole scene is fucking insane. First Loomis spots him wearing The Shape mask. He runs at him, waving his gun around like a wild man, stops and points it, about to shoot. Tramer starts looking back at him like WTF when a police car comes out of nowhere and pins him to a van with crash and burn. The cop gets out of the car and protests that the guy came out of nowhere. After more explosions and such, the deputy comes and whisks off Loomis and Brackett, tell Brackett that his daughter is dead. They get in the car and go but the guy involved in the crash is just standing there like an idiot. No big, just an officer caused fatality.

Which brings us to the whole bit where Brackett blames Loomis for Myers is insane and has always sort of irritated me. When Brackett is told that there are three dead kids and "one of them is Annie," he turns his anger toward Loomis. The conversation is basically "you son of a bitch. What have you done?" Loomis is like, "uh, I'm sorry. I haven't done anything." Brackett, losing his shit, "You let him out!" Which totally doesn't happen since Loomis always believed him to be evil incarnate and all and responds "I didn't let him out. I gave orders for him to be restrained." So you know. The opposite of that.

And lastly, the ending of the movie is pretty definitive with Loomis sacrificing himself by turning on all this flammable gas and shit and blowing himself and Myers up by flicking his lighter which he got from Marian Chambers, the nurse that he was rolling with in the first one and who picks him up to take him out of Haddonfield on orders of the governor (uh, what?) in this one. Michael is definitely some sort of supernatural being to survive this shit as he gets shot point blank in both eyes and then completely torched... But as we see in the later installments, he and Loomis both survive. It was a miracle, apparently, but obviously this was, according to Carpenter's script, supposed to be the end of The Shape.

Found a Monstervision segment for the movie which is dope. Love me some Joe Bob Briggs. Linking that shit below. Learned some crazy shit from it as well. Basic gist is that a year after the movie came out, this guy in California named Richard Delmer Boyer stabbed this elderly couple to death whilst high on PCP whereupon he hallucinated he was in this movie and killed this couple. What the fuck, bro? The jury was then subjected to this film which seems pretty unnecessary. No idea. But the defense didn't work and the dude got sentenced to death.

MVP of this movie is a tough one. Doesn't seem that JLC was in the movie enough to get MVP status but I think you have to go with her. Pleasence is pretty close but going to JLC because of that elevator scene and the one where she goes outside and hides in the car. When Pleasence and company show up to find her and she tries to scream but can't, that shit is gold. Also, how exhausted and traumatized she seems. Very much how I think a real human would be at this point. MVP performance right there.

But yeah. Movie was pretty solid. No John Carpenter's Halloween or anything but it is probably the third or fourth best movie in the franchise. Still have a little ways to go before the wheels totally come off.

Lumberjack Man is the greatest movie of all time

Lumberjack Man. Bar was pretty low after the Sleepaway Camp movies but this camp flick ended up being a sort of a better version what that franchise was going for with some supernatural elements thrown in. It's more or less like other camp movies, but is a little more self-aware. The camp is a christian one, as well, which they play up for comedic effect. Plus, Michael Madsen is in it which is the real reason I decided to give it a go. Good thing I did too as it was the greatest film of all time.

Pros: Gory and campy fun. Decent amount of generic gratuitous nudity. Like that it was set at a Jesus camp. Lots of pretty ladies/nudity. Had a couple of good chuckles. Diverse and frequent kills.

Cons: You'd think with a name like "Lumberjack Man" the killer would dress like a lumberjack, man. Pretty sure Madsen was drunk during all of his scenes. Not the best acting. People say a bunch of shit that humans would never say. The ending was pretty lame and went on too long. Too much talk of pancakes. Two dumb guys even call boobs "flapjacks" which is stupid.

Here's the gist. A motley crew of counselors go in for training at the Good Friends Church Camp when they start getting picked off by a vengeful zombie that uses their blood as his pancake syrup. Pretty sure the only person anyone has ever seen before in this flick is Michael Madsen who plays a doctor or historian or something who is also a pancake expert who drives a Smartcar which is supposed to funny, I guess. Also in the movie are the likes of Alex Dobrenko, Ciara Flynn, Chase Joliet, Jarrett King, Brina Palencia, Andy San Dimas who appears to do porn, and Adam Sessler who I guess was sort of famous in the gaming world or something for a show he hosted called X-Play. None of these people have I ever heard of or seen before but they are fine. The dudes are all 35 playing teenagers while some of the girls are probably early 20s.

As a militant atheist, dig that the camp is a Christian one and they make them all look like ridiculous hypocrites (as like 7/10 of them are). Stuff like the head camp guy, Doug who is played by Sessler, is one of those doesn't-like-hearing-uncomfortable-things Christians that peeps on chicks and when shit goes down pushes campers out of the way and barricades himself in a room telling people about to get slaughtered that he "wouldn't open the door for Jesus." Also like the dumb guy--spoiler, they are all dumb--who dressed up like Jesus and bones two chicks, saying stuff like "are you ready for the second coming?" and "he is risen" when he pops a boner. This was easily my favorite scene of the movie.

He is risen

Lot of sick kills like ripping a guy's head and spine out Mortal Combat style, tree taps a girl's head, tree falls on a guy from toe to head and his brain explodes out the top of his skull, and chopping a guy in half with his legs continuing to run. But my fave is when a chick gets her breast implants ripped out through her back and then the Lumberjack Man throws them at a guy and kills him. That was, indeed, pretty humorous but there is a serious amount of carnage in this flick with 25ish total kills.

While I did dig the movie, I have some bones to pick about the ending that just goes on forever. Basically have to go through all of this ritualistic stuff to be able to kill him. Like the virgin among them, i.e. the survivor girl, has to strip down and cover herself in maple syrup in order to do anything to him because he hates maple syrup. He gets shot, blown up, we get his backstory about how he is a demon or whatever, all that shit right here while they keep trying to find a way to kill him. There is some humor here like when the chick calls out Madsen for making her strip down and when Madsen tries to open up a syrup packet but can't and just throws it at him. But yeah, goes on too long and even after they kill him there is another ending where they go to the road and hitchhike back to town in real time. They are covered in blood and this guy in a truck shockingly picks them up and then they treat him like shit. All he is asks is what happened and they are like, "fuck you!" Ok. So then he is like, "do you want pancakes?" and they are all "you don't know shit about pancakes, bra," and "you don't know what pancakes is!" which whatever. But still pretty solid overall.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is the greatest movie of all time

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Horribly reviewed when it came out in 2015. 44% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audience score isn't much better. I fucking loved it. 10 out of 10. These people don't know what the fuck they are talking about. It had me LOLing which doesn't happen often. It's got everything. Gore. Yucks. Zombies. Strippers. Zombie strippers. Like I said, everything. It is the greatest movie of all time. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse fails to live up to its intriguingly wacky title, instead delivering yet another zombie comedy-thriller with a tired T&A twist.

Pros: Humorous. Mostly solid practical effects. Manage to do a lot with little. The kids and the stripper: super solid. If you like this type of comedy horror flick, then it is nearly perfect. 

Cons: Sure, it's kind of juvenile, but what do you expect? 

Here's the gist. A camping trip gets cut short for a trio of boy scouts when zombies take over their town. With the help of a local stripper, the boys with their ingenuity save their "cooler" classmates who are at a rave getting crunk. The movie stars Logan Miller (Carter) from Love, Simon (never heard of it), Joey Morgan (Augie) whom I've never seen, and Tye Sheridan (Ben) who is the lead from Ready Player One, as the scouts. The film was directed by Christopher B. Landon, son of the late Michael Landon of Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven fame, who previous directed Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones and has since done the flick Happy Death Day which I loved. Landon, in my opinion, is a rising star whose career I will definitely follow closely. Also appearing in the movie are Blake Anderson aka the frizzy haired guy in Workaholics, Sarah Dumont as the stripper (not to be confused with the zombie stripper), David Koechner (Champ from Anchorman) as the scout leader, Halston Sage (Kendall: sister of Carter, crush of Ben) who was the love interest of the two main frat bros in Neighbors, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's kid Patrick as the dick boyfriend of Sage's character. 

The movie draws you in quick with the Workaholics dude working as a janitor in a hospital. He goes to a quarantined area while the doctor leaves to get a snack from a machine. There, alone, going where he shouldn't, dude thinks he kills the zombie patient zero and attempts CPR which smashes his rib cage. This wakes the zombie up and they go at it. You can see him flying around behind the doctor's back who can't hear him through the sound proof windows. Dude eventually comes back and eats the doctor who has his hand up the vending machine that just ate his dollar and his snack. Ok. I'm in at this point. 

We see pretty early on that these are the Dawn of the Dead  zombies that still go through the motions of being alive and doing what they did in life. In that movie we saw them head to the mall in droves. Here we see the scoutmaster returning home from the woods and a stripper doing her whole routine including a disgustingly gory and extremely hot (kidding) pole dance. We also get some honking of a big tittied cop zombie that loses her shirt on a fence. 

Favorite scene is sort of a tough one. The opening is great, as is the strip club sequence, as well as the ending. Ultimately, it's one where the trio, now accompanied by the lone surviving stripper, head to Carter's house to find his sister's diary to find out where the big party is going down. While there in the sister's upstairs bedroom, Ben ends up confessing to the stripper that he has a crush on Carter's sister, Kendall, and how he is nervous or about making a move or whatever. The stripper, though, is like "you just need some practice," and they start making out. It is a weird turn, for sure, but while that is going on, you sort of notice something in the background: a zombie jumping on a trampoline just behind them. Once shit goes down and they all have to flee, they end up using the trampoline to clear the wall into a neighbor's yard. All of them bloop down from the window and boing over the wall no problem until they get to Ben who sees the diary they are looking for. In the time it takes to grab it though the trampoline become overrun with bouncing zombies. He grabs onto the only thing he can which we see is a zombie in a robe's dick, much to his horror. My female companion laughed nonstop like a wild woman the whole time that was going down, which seemed like too long. 

Best kill, in my opinion, comes when the old cat lady that lives next door, wanders over and attacks Carter. She attacks him by pulling his past down and biting his ass but doesn't have her teeth in so just keeps gumming him. It is gross but hilarious. He ends up turning the tables on her though and smashes the window and slams it down on her neck, decapitating her. It is sick. Her cats attempt to avenge her though as they have all turned to zombies that look and act just like hobgoblins from one of the best MST3K riffs, Hobgoblins. 

MVP of the movie, for me, has to be Landon as this is the second of his films I have seen that are totally my type of flick. He's on a list of newer directors (along with Jeremy Saulnier and Ti West) whose shit I will eagerly anticipate. Having previously wrote those Paranormal Activity movies (which were meh), dude wanted to do something more upbeat with a bit of humor which is more in line with his personality and sensibilities. "I'm kind of a goofy dude and so this felt very much like a reflection of my personality and the stuff that I grew up watching. When I read the first script, I was like, 'Wow, I can actually make a gory R-rated version of The Goonies and Gremlins or even Monster Squad,' and so that was the big appeal for me." Yeah, I think we should totally hang out. MVP for sure. 

Overall, the movie is fun as hell and has a kick ass ending. They basically get to the dance and use all of the ingenuity they learned scouting to build killing machines that they use to great effect. The carnage is gnarly and extreme and they come out to "Rock You Like a Hurricane." Shit is dope. 

Return to Sleepaway Camp is the worst movie of all time

Return to Sleepaway Camp. Jesus Christ. I was excited to see this after the pieces of shit that were Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland. Thought this one had potential as it was handed back to original Sleepaway Camp writer/director Robert Hiltzik since that first one, though completely bonkers and over-the-top, was actually pretty enjoyable. This film was not in any way whatsoever and managed to offend and annoy me on multiple occasions which isn't all that easy of a thing to do (don't fucking have violence towards animals, that is all I fucking ask). Return to Sleepaway Camp is unwatchable trash. In fact, this is the worst movie of all time. 

Pros: Much of the original cast returns. Ret-cons the second, third, and I guess fourth movies that were just completely terrible. 

Cons: Might be legitimately the worst of the series. Animal cruelty. Nearly every character is loathsome. Fat shame the shit out of the dip shit protagonist (who is pretty terrible). Kills are borophyll. This shit ain't funny. The twist at the end is fucking terrible. 

Getting gisty with it here... A truly insane amount of bullying is slowed down temporarily after the body count at Camp Manabe escalates to alarming proportions. But camp counselor Ronnie, played by Paul DeAngelo who reprises his role from the original, is on the case... He totally suspects Angela who committed a similar series of murders at the same camp when under a different name/ownership and enlists the help of Angela's cousin, Ricky Thomas (played by Jonathan Tiersten). Only problem is, Angela is in prison (or mental institution or whatever). Ricky assures us he just visited her a few days ago. Must be one of the kids at the camp. Spoiler. It's not.  Mixed in with the cast of mostly unknowns are Scientologist Isaac Hayes (released after his death) whom you know as Chef from South Park, Vincent Pastore aka Big Pussy in The Sopranos (at one point an out of control kid he grabs yells "let me go you big pussy", and Lenny Venito who is one of those "oh, that guy" guys.

Most of the film follows the goings on of this tubby kid named Alan who is obviously much older than the others who is stinky, dirty, dumb, and kind of an aggressive prick. He tools on the littler kids and talks about a girl at the camp in a total stalker way like she is his girl friend. She is not and wants nothing to do with him and even does some super fucked shit to him that would probably get her and others arrested and called out on the local electric TV news machines these days. A lot of the horrific taunting or bullying or whatever included his brother who is fucking loathsome and skins frogs, the fat kid's only friends, for fun. I fucking hate that dude and was pretty alright when Angela skinned him at the end of the movie. Like, the dude is pretty terrible, but his life here looks rough as hell. The skinning his frogs thing made me nearly puke. So there is that. Then there is this scene where his bro and his bro's paintball bros stalk him through the woods and light his ass up. Who enjoys this shit?

Yeah, well, hard as shit to watch... But at least the movie is consistent, unlike with II and III which has Angela just killing people willy-nilly. In this one they at least have to break the rules of camp to get the wrath. When the stoner dude, a real prick, rolls up a turd in a joint and the fat kid smoke smokes it, he gets gas poured on him and his ass gets torched. And the bro getting skinned. I historically have had a thing for ironic punishment, Dante calls it contrapasso, I wrote numerous papers in college on this and think it is really cool, so this isn't too much of a surprise.

MVP is Paul DeAngelo. It was sort of nice seeing him, the sort of hero in the first one (he plays Ronnie, the head counselor), agian. He is a pretty absurd character and pretty much is Ken Marino from Wet Hot American Summer. He clearly loves being in this flick and really swings for the fences. He does a good job in an otherwise unwatchable flick. I'd say the same for Jonathan Tiersten who plays Angela's cousin, Ricky Thomas, in the first one and reprises the role in this one. Both of them were good shit and I wanted more of that. Also, one of the reasons the movie really sucked is that they didn't really utilize Felissa Rose as Angela as she only appears as herself in the last scene of the movie which makes no fucking sense. The rest of the time she is dressed up as this male cop with a voice box, that is obviously Angela from the moment we see him, preaching an anti-smoking message to the kiddos. But in the final scene, just like the first one, we see only Angela and it is pretty terrifying. Here she cackles like a mad woman after having killed more or less everyone, again, and sort of snaps at the camera with a dead-eyed stare. Those were about the only things in the movie I liked and that last bit was still pretty dumb and incoherent although it does send shivers down the old spine. 

These Sleepaway Camp movies, especially this one, are not worth your time. The first one is okay but they just keep going down hill from there. It's crazy that I was looking forward to this one. Had a lot of hope but Jesus fuck, man. This whole experience was unpleasant.

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland is the worst movie of all time

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland. Somewhat more enjoyable than Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers because of how ridiculous it is but probably a worse overall movie. Since this is worse than that second installment and that is the movie that broke the whole every movie is the great of all time run, gonna have to call it. Sleepaway Camp III is the worst movie of all time.

Racist ger

Pros: Lots of kills (but none of them are really very good). Some pretty ladies. The ending isn't too bad. A few decent moments of dark comedy.

Cons: Makes no sense. Has a bunch of characters that are completely out of place. Everyone is insanely stupid. Hot chick drops an N-bomb for no reason.

Here's the gist. Angela, played by Pamela Springsteen, goes back to the camp where she killed people the year before (might be the camp from the first Sleepaway Camp though), now called Camp New Horizons under new ownership after having killed everyone the previous summer, where she immediately starts killing off other counselors. Same shit, different assumed identity. In this one she mows down this chick Maria (who has the hilarious tattoo "Milk Shake" on her tits) with a dump truck and then steals her name, clothes, and job as a counselor. She even has the same hair as this Maria chick which is unnecessary since no one has ever seen anyone before and no one knows what Angela looks like as she killed everyone in the previous movie. Doesn't get the tattoo though, thank fuck. The film also stars Haynes Brooke as the idiot rapey one, Tracy Griffith as the pelo rojo survivor girl, Mark Oliver as beefcake Tony, and Michael J. Pollard whom I distinctly remember as one of the homeless guys in Scrooged (the one that freezes to death in the sewer [if you remember that]), are all in... irrelevant.

These three...

Black guy being angry. Did I mention the movie's racist?

Favorite scene is indeed the most absurd. This comes early in the movie when a newscaster shows up to the camp and interviews all the new counselors, just saying their names and where they are from and what archetype they are and so forth. Well, the newscaster, having just met Angela but being able to tell she knows how to party, I guess, asks her if she can get her coke. She is going back to the city or whatever but needs coke now, apparently. She obviously has a huge problem. Angela ends up selling her Comet which kills her. Having had shit up my nose that shouldn't have been, there is no way that she doesn't get extreme pain in her nostril the second that shit goes up her nose. But this chick keeps doing it and she dead.

A lot of nonsense in this flick. A memorably absurd scene comes in the middle of the flick when it suddenly gets all meta. Here Angela finds a hockey mask in the woods like Jason wears. She then asks what day it is and someone says it's "Saturday the 14th." Wacka wacka. Probably the most unbelievable shit in the movie is that the male owner, played by Pollard, who is a gross old man married to this gross old lady ends up doing a very attractive counselor with fake breasts even though he is like a 1/10. This gets them both killed, by the by. The wife, meanwhile, gets buried up to her neck in trash and then Angela mows over her head with a lawnmower. More insanity is this black gang member guy that "works" as a counselor at the camp. This guy is crazy aggressive and refuses to do shit. The owner of the camp asks him to do shit and he is all like, "fuck you, bitch, suck my dick." Not really the way you keep a job. Plus that shit is racist as fuck.

Skipping IV! Yay!

Speaking of racism and attractive females, this one chick out of nowhere drops the N-word in reference to that aggressive prick. For this Angela strings the girl up on the flagpole during the trust walk and drops her on her head from the top, killing her. It's pretty lame. Despite this, the racist chick, played by one Kim Wall, is indeed a pretty lady. As is Jill Terashita, the Asian one, whom you may remember as the attractive Asian chick in Night of the Demons. She dies, too.

MVP for this one is more or less no one because everyone phoned it in. I guess maybe the aggressive black guy or the red head survivor girl who seemingly kills Angela. She beats down Angela like a wild woman and ends up stabbing her in self-defense. When it is going down you think this is it for Angela, sort of, but you are wrong as we see in the last scene that she is in an ambulance coming t, killing the EMT and making her escape.

And that is Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, a real piece of work. So, uh, you know. Don't cry. Don't raise your eye. Only one more of these movie left to go as I can't find Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor anywhere. This seems just as well since it was released in 2012 after mostly being shot in 1992 as test footage with spliced archival footage from films I-III. Not going to count this garbage, whatever it is, as a real movie. Am looking forward to Return to Sleepaway Camp which ret-cons the other sequels. It is also the only one with involvement from original director Robert Hiltzik. So, yeah, should be fun(ish).

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.

BlacKkKlansman is the greatest movie of all time

BlacKkKlansman. It's great. I thought director Spike Lee was done. Didn't think he would ever make another movie that I gave a shit about. The last movie of his I really, really liked was Clockers and Oldboy ended it for me. I wasn't ever going to get excited about a Spike Lee joint ever again. Also, he really turned me off when I went and saw him give a talk that he obviously hadn't prepared for where he railed on the Academy Awards making "make up calls" (which, to be fair, isn't wrong), choosing majors, and kids texting/playing video games. I know a dad ramble when I hear one and that was a dad ramble. It did start off with this pompous dean from the business school that gave a 10 minute masturbatory intro that culminated with him gifting Spike the gift of an IU Adidas basketball jersey to which Spike fucking told the dude "I can't take that. Don't you know I have a Nike contract? Respect that." which was pretty baller. Also, love me some Reggie Miller and the 1990s Indiana Pacers and their feud with Spike didn't really impress me much. But anyway. Yeah. Thought that dude was past his prime. But this shit was god damned amazing. Instant classic. Greatest fucking movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: BlacKkKlansman uses history to offer bitingly trenchant commentary on current events -- and brings out some of Spike Lee's hardest-hitting work in decades along the way.

Pros: Spike Lee is fucking back and bringing that shit. The casting is pretty great and everyone fucking brings it. A lot of these roles can't be easy either. Denzel's kid is the next Denzel. Adam Driver is fucking sick too. The story is crazy interesting. Spike fucking nails the late 1970s. Great soundtrack.

Cons:  The tone of the movie at times seemed way off. The first half of the movie was too light, bordering on comedy, for how heavy the last half gets. Otherwise it was perfect.

Gist of the movie, based on a true story, is that undercover Colorado Springs police detective Ron Stallworth, a black man, miraculously infiltrates the the Ku Klux Klan through a series of phone calls to organization leadership including Grand Wizard/former Republican (of course) Louisiana State Representative/presidential candidate David Duke. Obviously unable to meet the group face-to-face, Stallworth gets veteran detective Flip Zimmerman to take on the role as they work to take down the hate group intent on white-washing their violent image to garner more mainstream appeal. Staring in the film are Adam Driver as Zimmerman, Topher Grace as Duke, Laura Harrier as foxy lady Patrice Dumas, and John David Washington as Stallworth who just knocks it out of the fucking park.

Some extraordinarily powerful scenes. The one that really got to me was one that featured Harry Belafonte at a black power rally where he tells the story of a mentally handicapped boy's lynching that he witnessed as a boy. White people at the lynching took pictures of the guy being tortured and made postcards out of them. I went to the movie with a history teacher who talked about how this was real and how some guy compiled a bunch of them to bare witness. This site shows some but be warned it is truly disturbing (as is this part of the movie). I wish I hadn't clicked on it as I am too sensitive for that stuff. Spike splices this in with a Klan rally where they watch super racist silent film Birth of a Nation that portrays black men (mostly played by whites in blackface) as obsessed with raping white women and the KKK as heroes giving the two sides a nice juxtaposition. One as clearly fucked and the other is clearly not. No both sides bullshit.

This is where the film excels in that the film does a great job of making the contemporary alt-right, white nationalist group look ridiculous while also illustrating dangerously horrific they were at one time and have managed to become again in the Trump era. While the movie takes place in the 1970s, a lot of the rhetoric that is getting thrown around today. Stuff like "make America great again" and "America first" and so forth. Stuff that they really said that right-wing shit heads say all the time. Spike also splices together a couple of minutes of footage from last year's Charlottesville rally, including the woman getting hit by the car, and Trump saying it was "both side". So if it wasn't clear throughout the movie that this shit is still a problem, it totes is clear, then there is no mistaking it by the time you leave the theater.

Another uncomfortable scene is one where a klansman's chunky wife gleefully talks about "killing niggers" which is seriously fucked. This chick was really stoked. It was like she was anticipating having her first child or something. Showing just a pure joy and what not.

MVP of the film is an easy win for Washington. I had no idea this was Denzel's boy, the one that briefly played in the NFL, and kept thinking how he was Denzel-esque. Even sounded just like him and the performance has to have Oscar buzz when that time rolls around. Favorite little ditty with him is when he asks David Duke if he can get a photo with him and at the last second puts his arm around him in a baller move. He is gonna be a star, this guy. It's not even close although this made me a true believer in Spike Lee again and Adam Driver is a 10/10 as well. Driver's best scene comes when he talks about being jewish. It's not something he ever really thought about, but now, as someone who has infiltrated the KKK, he thinks about it all the time and this assignment is getting to him and what not.

So that was BlacKkKlansman. Movie totally kicks ass. Now that I've cancelled MoviePass for finally going to shit and picked up AMC's deal where you can go see the same movie more than once, I'll likely go see this one again before it's out of the theater. Yeah, greatest movie of all time.

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is the worst movie of all time

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. What does everyone remember about Sleepaway Camp? Tiny penis. Take away the penis, Angela's motivation to kill, the main actress, and a plot that sort of makes sense, and then bate and switch the cover with the film and you have Sleepaway Camp II. This is the movie that did it. I can't ignore the shit. No more every movie is the greatest of all time. I genuinely believe that I could do a better job. The crap a buddy and I did in college was better than this and it was like really, really bad. Like worst movie anyone had ever seen at a film festival bad. And this is maybe worse. It's Rotten Tomato score of 38% is shockingly high. It was maybe the worst movie I've ever finished... yet there are more of them to come. Yeah, you fucked it Sleepaway Camp II. You are the worst movie of all time.

Pros: Hotter chicks than the original. Decent amount of nudity. That's about it.

Cons: The actress that plays Angela. There is barely a plot. Nothing makes sense. Shits on the previous movie. Some disgusting kills. The ending made me angry it was so dumb.

Gist of this movie is that half a dozen years or so after the event of the first movie, Angela, the trans character from the original, had a sex change and is reformed whilst living under a new identity, we hear at the beginning. She has become a literal campfire tale meant to scare bad counselors. But that shit don't matter as even slightly irritating Angela, who unbeknownst to anyone is working at the camp, results in a creatively gruesome death. Angela is now played by Pamela Springsteen, who is indeed sister of "The Boss", for the next few movies who is not so great. Along side Springsteen are Renée Estevez of the Sheen/Estevez clan whom you may recall from Intruder, Tony Higgins from nothing, and hotty Valerie Hartman who was in an episode of Cheers and what appears to be a soft-core porno called Intimate Obsessions. Hartman also got work in Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland as the assistant the director/raccoon wrangler which sounds like a hell of a gig.

Some quick takeaways. The chicks are pretty decent looking and are not children in this movie. The one that Angela really fucking hates, played by Hartman, named Ally, who refuses to wear clothes and shit--which, you know, okay with--looks like Alicia Silverstone. Angela is completely in love with camp now since it went so well the first time around. Her winning councelor of the week or whatever is like the peak experience of her life, we eventually see. Weird since here everyone calls her a "dyke" a lot and what not which aged extremely well and all. Also great for the old self-esteem, I'm sure. This is probably why she is just a straight up psychopath whereas in the previous one she needed a reason to kill people. They sort of address how she kills anyone whether they follow the rules or not when she kills one chick because she talks to much and a chick that witnesses it because she is "going to tell" and she's "whiny". Lastly, so many mullets. It's insane. Even by 80s standards.

Gotta say something about the cover of this flick. I remember seeing this at the video store as a child and being super into it. Basically thinking it was going to be the greatest/scariest movie of all time. On it, there is an actress that isn't in the movie, prettier than Angela, carrying a backpack with Freddy's glove, Jason's mask, and Leatherface's chainsaw. I sort of imagined this to be like Freddy vs. Jason with Leatherface thrown in and this pretty lady that was like hunting them or something. This was obviously not the case. It was basically kids playing around and putting that stuff on to scare people which got them on Angela's radar and ultimately killed. That's some bull shit.

Favorite scene is sort of dumb but whatever. It is at the end when Estevez's crush gets his head chopped off and Angela sticks it in a smashed TV at the cabin she is storing everyone at. When she gets Estevez subdued or whatever in the cabin and is like, "let's see what's on TV" or what have you. It was dumb but got a little bit of a chuckle out of me.

As far as an MVP goes... Jesus. IDK. I guess the hot chick that refuses to wear clothes. But she gets drowned in an outhouse. What you would call a "bad death". Thought about going with Estevez since she survives to the end although that's about the only reason she would attain such honors... Nope, still going with the one topless chick that gets leached/drowned to death in shit.

Ger

Tag is the greatest movie of all time

Tag. Was pretty reluctant to see it, honestly. I thought it kinda looked dumb and unfunny. Wrong. In fact, definitely the funniest movie I've seen in the theater going back many years. I am not one to just nervous laugh or whatever. LOLing is pretty rare, in my experience. This had me in tears. Fucking tears. Everyone in the theater had a great fucking time watching it and most of them tagged their way out of the theater on their way to their cars. How this movie isn't fresh on Rotten Tomato or Metacritic or whatever, I have no idea as it is the greatest movie of all time. Also, sort of massive spoiler at the end here. 

Ger

Rotten Tomato Consensus: For audiences seeking a dose of high-concept yet undemanding action comedy, Tag might be close enough to it.

Pros: Funny as shit. Light and carefree until it's not. Great stoner comedy, for sure. Casting is dope. Surprising amount of action for a movie of this nature. It's a pretty touching movie about bros doing the bro thing. Pretty ladies. Especially that Rashida Jones.

Cons: Gets a little too dark there at the end.

Gist of the movie is that five archetype buds take part in an elaborate, highly competitive annual game of extreme tag that lasts the month of May that takes them all over the county. Directed by first-timer Jeff Tomsic, the film is based on a true story that is way bigger, older, and less intense. Staring in the film are Hannibal Buress as the dumb one, Jon Hamm as the rich CEO one, Ed Helms as the family man, Jake Johnson as the unemployable one that is always stoned, and Jeremy Renner as the personal trainer who has never been tagged. Also in the flick are Isla Fisher from Wedding Crashers (among other things) as Ed Helms's extremely competitive wife and Rashida Jones as the longtime love interest of the CEO and the stoner. She is also a recent widow which the dudes find sort of hot, I think. Sort of sandwiched in is this whole news story angle--whilst writing an article about the CEO one for The Wall Street Journal, a reporter chick played by Annabelle Wallis (whom you may recognize from the Annabelle: Creation POS from last year or that Tom Cruise The Mummy movie) witnesses some of the tag business going down and decides to, uh, tag along to compose her Pulitzer winning story.

Saw this like a month ago but three scenes still stand out as exceptional. The first comes early in the movie which does a good job of illustrating the lengths these dudes will go to smack one of their brethren. The first one features Helms's character taking time off from his white collar  job as a professor or whatever and getting hired on at Hamm's company as a janitor. Helms then dons a disguise and works for a solid week, learning the ends and outs of Hamm's schedule before backing him into a glass room during the interview with the WSJ reporter. Once finally cornered, Hamm tries to breakout by throwing a chair through the glass, which doesn't work. The second is the scene where they try to tag Renner at his house but it appears that he is at Helms's childhood home, threatening to jerk off on his favorite stuffed animal... But it turns out he has constructed an exact model of Helms's room in his basement which is fucking crazy. And the final one is the wedding scene which is supposed to be a time when tagging is off limits. There is a lot of solid build up as to if they are going abide by this truce time or what which you know they don't if you watched the goddamned trailer, spoiler. In each of these scenes it not the actions themselves that make all the shit LOL funny but the dialogue and the interactions among the characters. You likely just have to see them. Trust me. 

MVP is the one on the floor at the AA meeting he's crashing

Only thing I didn't really like about the movie is that it gets pretty heavy out of nowhere. Suddenly one of them, Helms, is dying. "Fuck, I'm not ready for this shit," I thought. Not going to be around next year, so wanted to get Renner this year was the gist here which everyone think might end up being a ploy but isn't. Just some dark shit to end this otherwise light movie on. WTF?

MVP of the flick is Jake Johnson as Randy "Chilli" Cilliano who is the lovable, unemployed stoner, loser guy. He ends up beating out Hamm for Jones's affections, generally doesn't fall for any of the various tag ruses, and seems like a super fun dude to smoke a bowl with. I'm probably a little biased though because I basically am that guy. So take that with a grain or a nug or whatever your preferred nomenclature.

Sorry to Bother You is the greatest movie of all time

Sorry to Bother You. Fuck. Wow. Not the mind fuck I was expecting, that's for damn sure. All I knew about this flick was that a black telemarketer adopts a white voice while selling shit and it fucking works. What this was was an acid flashback unlike anything I've ever seen. It was part Puttie Tang, part Get Out. But way crazier than either one. I wasn't sure if I hated it or loved it but am pretty sure that it was the greatest film of all time. Since it's new, few spoilers and none of shocking stuff will follow.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Fearlessly ambitious, scathingly funny, and thoroughly original, Sorry to Bother You loudly heralds the arrival of a fresh filmmaking talent in writer-director Boots Riley.

Pros: Well, it certainly isn't like anything I've ever seen before. Solid message. Solid acting. Especially from that Tessa Thompson who is in everything (Annihilation, Creed, Thor: Ragnarok, Westworld, so forth) and isn't bad to look at, and that Lakeith Stanfield who was the guy in the sunken place in Get Out. Forces the viewer to question their own ethical limits. Definitely a solidly anti-Trump era flick that never overtly gets political. I'd consider it the best socialist movie I've ever seen.

Cons: It's a little much at times. It's also hard to get over.

Remember this guy?

Gist of this film you want. Yeah, well... It's Oakland in maybe the future. Broke protagonist Cassius Green, living off his uncle, played by Terry Crews, who is also broke, lies his way into a job as a telemarketer where he quickly excels and moves up the corporate ladder all thanks to the use of his "white voice". As he moves up said ladder, into the mythical realm of "powercalling", the people that helped get him there get repeatedly shafted while he is forced to make progressively morally sketchier decisions which usually directly shit on the people he once called his friends. The movie stars Lakeith Stanfield as Cassius and Tessa Thompson as his on again, off again female companion, Detroit, who seems to be some kind of allegory and works as a performance artist/sign twirler. She also heads this group of artists/activists trying to overthrow the parent company, WorryFree, of the group that Cassius works for that has some pretty nefarious intentions and the douchiest CEO of all time in coked up wild man Steve Lift, played by Armie Hammer, who offers Cassius his wildest material dreams if he just sells out a little more and becomes a little less human. The shit with WorryFree, an ever present presence on the electric TV machine like with the crooked preacher on the tube, reminded me of Repo Man and the social commentary that film had specifically with commercialism and televangelism. Written and directed by Boots Riley, the first-time filmmaker was previously known for his talents in hip hop as the lead vocalist in The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. Others in the supporting cast include David Cross as the white voice, Jermaine Fowler, Danny Glover, Omari Hardwick and his white voice played by Patton Oswalt, and Steven Yeun who was Glen in The Walking Dead. Know that there is a lot going on with this movie.

Again, since this is new, I'm not going to go into many of the details. Most of the really memorable scenes are super uncomfortable. The one that I can talk about without giving anything away is the one when Detroit does her performance art which is just brutal. In that scene she stands on-stage, nearly nude, wearing only a bikini of leather gloves, one of which is flipping the bird, while people in the audience chuck bullets, cell phones, and water balloons filled with fake blood. During this she recites the words "And in the end Eddie, you know what? You’re nothing but a misguided midget asshole with dreams of ruling the world … yeah also from Kew Gardens … and also getting by on my tits!" Cassius eventually stops it, asking why she would subject herself to that. That's really... something. Lot of irony there. Yep. But Cassius doesn't get it and continues on his path toward evil in following his dream.

Another crazy little thing is when Cassius becomes a meme. After adopting this whole have-to-play-the-game-to-get-ahead mantra that leads him, to among other places, selling out the working folk as slave labor, he has to be escorted into the same building that he worked in as a telemarketer to the elevator that takes him up to the penthouse along with the other powercallers (whom you think is a pipe dream for the first third of the movie). They have to be escorted because all of the entry level telemarketers are striking and making it nearly impossible to get into the building. When that is happening and Cassius is getting taken into the building, some chick pops him in the head with a can of cola. Someone gets this on film and on the internet it goes. After that we see a bunch of kids wearing afros with cans stuck to their heads. It becomes a symbol of the movement eventually.

Favorite scene though comes at Lift's party when the CEO sort of parades Cassius around as his new form of entertainment. In front of this huge group he regales everyone with how he shot this rhino to death with an AK or something when he stops and has Cassius tell a story. Cassius, on the spot, says he has none. Lift is like rap for me. Cassius is like, "I can't rap, it's embarrassing really." The next thing we see is Cassius with a microphone in front of the whole party. He tries, briefly, and it is terrible and you are embarrassed for him. That is when he starts repeating, "nigga shit, nigga shit, nigga, nigga, nigga shit" over and over again. And the crowd gets into it. It is, again, super uncomfortable but a super funny social commentary typical of the humor of this movie.

MVP of the flick is hands down Thompson in her roll as Detroit. This chick is good. Sexy, crazy, smart, cool. She is practically an angelic type being in the movie. They even play this like mystical music whenever she is on screen. She wears earrings that say "murder, murder, murder" and "kill, kill, kill" on them and shirts that say "THE FUTURE IS FEMALE EJACULATION".  It's hard not to read her as an allegory which I think might be a treading on dangerous ground. You can't really take the film or her character literally, but how to interpret all of it is obviously up for interpretation. Yeah, great roll in a great film. Everything she does is fire right now. She is the it girl. The breakout star, however, is obviously Stanfield, who became a leading man with this performance. Check this shit out.