The Privilege was the okayest movie of all time

The Privilege. Directed by Felix Fuchssteiner and Katharina Schöde. From 2022. On Netflix.

Interesting German horror movie about multi-generational wealth and the shit that gets passed down when you make a shit ton of money off of oppressing others and being cool with demons. Thought they were going to touch on German guilt over the whole Nazi thing but they don’t.

Gist of the movie consists of a wealthy high school kid starts uncovering some weird conspiracy and everyone acts like is going crazy. Meanwhile he is getting crazy drugs for a past traumatic event. The wealthy parents and his twin sister are constantly gaslighting him. “You didn’t see what you think you did,” “your friend committed suicide in a most unlikely way,” “if it was a murder though, you probably did it,” so forth.

Something I found cool was this “drug” they are testing on kids, another thing they could’ve connected to the Nazi shit, ends up being a psilocybin-rich thread fungus. Ends up being an extinct mushroom that grows on dead human remains. Pretty cool. There’s also this cool hallucinogen expert lady that I dig. Has a gypsy Betty Buckley with Alia Shawkat vibe. My kind of lady.

Also love the séance scene. Parents leave so their son can bone the check he likes who came over to study biology, ugh. They practically beg him to have sex with her. Pretty weird. Then they come home super early unexpectedly in the middle of the ritual. Which freaks them out way more than their son raw dogging his little high school girlfriend or whatever.

Follow that up with another real WTF moment. One of those “what if this is the last night of our lives” threesomes between the main dude, his girlfriend, and his lesbian friend. Alright.

Lot of body horror and various homages. Scanners, The Stuff, The Others, Get Out, Hereditary.

Gets a little hard to follow. Little too ambitious. Would’ve been better dial back a little bit. It’s not bad but not great either. Plus the very and was super dumb. Set it up for a sequel that is completely unnecessary.

Meet Me in St. Louis is the greatest film of all time

Meet Me in St. Louis. A good easy watching musical. Judy Garland is such a talent in this film of innocent family merriment and stupid men. All these women could do better. Except for grandpa. He’s cool.

Garland sings the quintessential “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, my favorite melancholy holiday song. She and Vincente Minnelli, the director, met during this movie. Led to the eventual birth of Liza.

At some point all my feminist friends’ talk rubbed off on me. The women in this movie are slaves. Dad is rich but instead of sending them a college, he is marrying them off and giving the husbands a dowry. Pretty messed up. 

On the other hand, the dad is supporting like 20 people and wants to move them to New York but they totally don’t want to do this. Also, no one respects him because he’s a dick.

The little girl that plays Tootie is fucking terrible. Her acting style can be described as exaggerated. There is a good story I found about her getting her bullshit best child actor or some shit Academy Award stolen. Someone found it in a thrift store many decades later and returned it to her. She is still around at 85. Her and June Lockhart, a Garland rival, are both still living. Lockhart is 97. Most memorably from Lost in Space.

The Player is the greatest film of all time

The Player. "Do places like this really exist?" "Only in the movies." Directed in Robert Altman and released in 1992. Stars Tim Robbins in an incredible role/performance. 

Gist of the movie is a Hollywood studio executive sort of spirals after he starts getting death threats from a writer whos script he rejected, which he takes much pride in and does many times a day. He thinks he's figured it out and ends up killing the guy and getting with his girlfriend. Ultimately, however, there is a "happy ending" for the executive, which is great for him, that prick. 

As you might have guessed, this is a very dark, black comedy/satire. It stars Italian film star Greta Scacchi as the love interest, Fred Ward from Tremors and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Whoopi Goldberg, Vincent D'Onofrio, "that guy" Peter Gallagher, Brion James from Blade Runner and 48 Hrs., and Cynthia Stevenson from Happiness (which I do not recommend), Dean Stockwell from Blue Velvet and Paris, Texas, and Richard E. Grant who was nominated for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (he is great in this movie), among many others. It makes many film and meta references, and has 65 celebrities making cameo appearances.

Sum up with: Extremely dark. Super meta. Occasionally funny. Has a very messed up sex scene where a guy tells a gal he’s doing it with that he killed her ex to make it hotter. Oof. Best use of saying the name of the movie within the movie of all time though. 

Choose or Die is the greatest movie of all time

Choose or Die. "I don't see how a video game can kill someone. I mean Pac-Man doesn't go around eating people." Directed by Toby Meakins. Released in 2022 on Netflix. 

I really enjoyed this poorly reviewed flick. A lot of those controlling a player from a game from the 80s movies. Interesting premise. One of several old games coming to phone movies. How many Jumanji knock-offs can there be? Don’t know, assume we are about at the peak here, but I’m a total sucker for them.

Only people I recognize are Asa Butterfield from Sex Education, Iola Evans (the star of the movie) from The 100, and Eddie Marsan from The World's End (among other things). We also hear Robert Englund who lends his voice to the film as himself. 

Picture was so dark I could barely see it at times. Even with the picture all the way up on the darker scenes I could barely see anything.

There’s some real moments in this movie. There’s a scary-ass rat scene where the main girl controls her mom like in a video game. Eerie industrial music heightens the suspense. 

Sort of falls apart briefly when they put it in a “cheat code”. Hey, it’s still winning in my book. Some games, like Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, were impossible without a cheat code. But it completely rebounds during the “Boss Battle”. It’s a truly amazing scene. It’s seriously dope.

Ending sets up at sequel that I would totally watch.

Dark Knight Rises - Christopher Nolan - 2012

★★★-The Dark Knight Rises. I'm Gotham's reckoning. Here to end the borrowed time you all have been living on. Christopher Nolan directed movie from 2012. The third movie in his Dark Knight trilogy. His eighth film overall. Don’t buy the critical consensus. This is a solid flick, but not a great one. 

Gist is that Batman returns after nearly a decade after the events of the previous movie, The Dark Knight. This is after the Joker's reign made Batman a public enemy. Now, the League of Shadows has returned to create terror for the citizens of Gotham. Led by Bane, the group isolates the city from the outside world with the threat of detonating a nuclear bomb and killing 13 million people. Batman returns to save the city and take down the League for good. 

Christian Bale returns as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Also staring in the flick were Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Gordon, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, Tom Hardy as Bane, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, Joseph Gordon Levitt as John Blake, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. 

Best two scenes of the movie are the opening one with the plane crash. Followed by the football scene which is great. Weird to follow up Batman and Bane chilling and talking with pure chaos. Love how they are cut off and Bane comes out and tells them all who is white before killing Pavel, the only one who can save them. “ We give it back to you, the people.” About the time they are freeing the “oppressed,” I’d start questioning this. 

Fight scenes are bad. Obvious misses and slow haymakers that land. Nolan hasn’t made a bad movie. Momento is his best though. 

There is a little bit of nonsense. Plot holes or whatever. Batman’s vertebrae protruding for example. Falling with a rope ran your waist with a bad back isn’t a winning strategy. Some free solo shit. 

Cast is stellar. Tom Hardy, of course, is insane. But just go with it. His voice is dumb, yeah, but I still love that dude. Even when he makes a lot of old man noises whilst dying. Peak Tom Hardy. At least at his most Tom Hardy. 

How is Joseph Gordon Levitt not a star? Anne Hathaway is straight fire. She is not a fighter though. Probably my third favorite Catwoman, but out of the seven I can think of off the top of my head, they are all pretty fire. Post peak Christian Bale. He is my favorite Bruce Wayne and Batman not in costume. Keaton is my favorite Batman. But Bale is more physical. He would probably be the best but the voice is terrible. “Tell me where the trigger is then you have my permission to die.“ Boo. Lot of hubris there. General rule for Batman in this universe is just stop talking. 

Notice the pop star chick from Ted Lasso is in this. Hangs out with Catwoman mostly. 

Gets a little weak when it gets sentimental. Dig the League of Shadows, but you can’t be the Unabomber and be taken seriously. All makes for a week last 20 minutes. Then DB Sweeney shows up. Also, Matthew Modine redeems himself and then dies off-screen. Um, OK. 

I’m fine with a happy ending. I guess I think it’s just sort of whatever. Explain it all with some auto pilot stuff which is easy to mess and sort of feel sandwiched in.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is the greatest movie of all time

Everything Everywhere All at Once. Insane. I loved this crazy adventure flick. In fact, it was one of the funnest movies I’ve seen in a long time. Can’t get enough of an absurdist action-dramedy. Hilarious, great fight sequences, completely original. Kung fu. What more do you fucking want?

Movie is about a Chinese-American woman being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Her home life is also going to shit. Whilst meeting with the IRS, she discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself and prevent an all-powerful being from causing the destruction of the multiverse. Obviously shares a lot of DNA with The Matrix and Rick and Morty. Homages to various kung fu flicks throughout. Stuff like Master of the Flying Guillotine. Except instead of the flying guillotine, they use a dog and fanny pack. However, it is definitely its own thing. Boy is it ever. No explanation does this movie justice. It has everything. Googly eyes. A version of Earth with no life. A version where people evolved to have hotdog fingers. It is a true experience that includes a black everything with literally everything.

An A24 film (this production company is fucking bringing it) directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as "Daniels"). They also made the highly original Swiss Army Man, another great one. Stars Michelle Yeoh, an incredible talent who you’ll know from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, Reign of Assassins, and as the character Ying Nan in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Ke Huy Quan. My man was Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies. Some iconic shit right there. Also Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu (she was also in Legend of the Ten Rings and has a recurring role in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and James Hong (Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China, a very memorable role in Seinfeld). Jenny Slate (whom I really like) shows up throughout the flick as well.

The Daniels are the MVPs here. Creating something this special. My god. Yeoh is incredible as well. Internet research says that the lead role was originally written for Jackie Chan. I love Police Story and a lot of his work, sure, but thank fuck he’s not in the movie. His whole support of the Chinese government is kind of a dealbreaker for me. Ke Huy Quan. Holy shit. What a fucking return to the screen. He was phenomenal. Everything I’ve seen him in is a goddamned classic. This movie was perfect.

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.

Def by Temptation is the okayest movie of all time

Def by Temptation. "Honey, I've given you something there's no cure for." I'm on a real string of shit movies. However, this was fun. Won a pair of tickets to a screening of this at 10pm at a bar on a school night. If I had seen it was a Troma movie, I would've stayed home. 

Gist of this blaxploitation movie is a vampirous succubus preys on black men in New York City. However, it is this southern kid Joel who is on his way to becoming a "world-famous minister" whom she really wants. She has aspirations of taking him down like she maybe did his father, played by the Samuel L. Jackson who is in the movie for roughly two minutes but is on most of the posters, and whiping out his whole bloodline. Not exactly sure what is going on there. Anyway, this Joel kid comes up from North Carolina to visit his friend K, played by Kadeem Hardison from A Different World. His is the best performance in the movie. Cynthia Bond plays the succubus. I've only seen her in this. Also, there is a cop who specializes in supernatural cases played by Bill Nunn whom you may recognize from the Dennis Leahry show The Job or as the guy who takes a bullet up his bunghole in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead. Ouch. He's pretty solid as well. This 1990 flick stars James Bond III as Joel. He also wrote and directed it. He is pretty terrible and is incapable of carrying this movie, though the talent around him is solid. 

There is a scene extremely early in the movie where the succubus chases a naked, terrified man covered in blood around her apartment. This scene features some full-frontal wang doodle, telling you right off the bat what type of movie you are in for. 

While it was sort of fun with a cast that was mostly solid, a good movie it was not, although it is pretty bonkers in an enjoyable, Troma sort of way. It looks good enough that I looked up the cinematographer. Was suprised to see it was shot by one Ernest R. Dickerson. Dickerson mostly directs television now, with some impressive credits to his name. But I remember him for a few of my favorites from my junior high years, including Juice, Surviving the Game, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, and Bulletproof. That's an incredible four film run. All movies my brother and I watched repeatedly. 

Some of my other faults are that the succubus randomly and inexplicably gives one guy AIDS, there is some explicit homophobia, and the plot goes off the rails a couple of times. Felt it could have been tightened up, for sure. Plus, the ending is dumb and too easy. Things I enjoyed are that it was beautifully shot. The soundtrack was solid. Some surprisingly awesome special effects, like when a character is eaten by his image on his television. And I love that it is super early 1990s New York. 

Secret Obsession is the worst movie of all time

Secret Obsession. "What happened? How did I get here?" "You were in an accident, and you hit your head. You don't remember me, do you?" Awful all the way around. Basically a Lifetime quality movie. Feel that it mostly consisted of the main actress unconvincingly limping around. It's rotten as fuck. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: While it may offer some thrills and unintentional laughs, Secret Obsession is mostly a formulaic and dumb thriller.

Released in 2019 on Netflix, the gist of the movie is a woman suffers a head injury when she is hit by a car. She can't remember shit, but her creepy husband is there to help her put the pieces back together. But she has this suspicious that she is still in danger. There are a couple of parts that made me LOL, but I assure you they are unintentional--again with the limping around and once when an actress is running away from a dude, and has basically gotten away but falls down the stairs out of nowhere.

Directed by one Peter Sullivan, a guy who indeed specializes in Lifetime and Hallmark movies with mostly Christmas flicks to his name. It stars Brenda Song, whom I've never seen, in the lead role. Mike Vogel who you might recognize from Cloverfield plays her husband. A woman named Ashley Scott who looks hella familiar plays the nurse helping the amnisiac recover. Her biggest credits include the show Jericho, a sex robot in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (one of the worst Steven Spielberg movies), Into the Blue, and some show I've never heard of called Birds of Prey. The only person I really recognized is Dennis Haysbert. He is the black guy that played President David Palmer on 24 and Pedro Cerrano in Major League. However, you probably most know him as the "you're in good hands with Allstate" guy. He goes about investigating the accident in an uninteresting way, motivated by his dead daughter somehow? 

This is a film that asks, can two injured people take on one able-bodied man? Also, how many scrambled eggs can a woman eat in one sitting? This came recommended from someone with dubious taste. I feel this is the most basic movie I've ever seen. Easy, generic plot that a high school kid could have come up with. Acting is mostly screaming and limping around or looking like an asshole. Did not like. 

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is the worst movie of all time

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. "Shut up, John Big-booty, you coward. You are the weakest individual I ever know." What a weird movie. This was one of an ex-girlfriend's favorite movies. Here, 15 years after we broke up, I've finally got around to watching it. 

Gist is that a world-famous crime-fighting brain surgeon, rock star, adventurer test pilot and his team  must stop evil inter-dimensional aliens called the Red Lectroids (basically lizard people) set on infiltrating American society to conquer the world. 

Released in 1984 the flick was produced and directed by W. D. Richter, who directed one other movie, Late for Dinner, which I have seen. It's about two young men running from the law who get accidentally cryogenically frozen in the early 1960s before waking in the 1990s. Drama ensues. It is fucking terrible. He also wrote the screenplay for Big Trouble in Little China, the John Carpenter flick. Anyway, back to Buckaroo Banzai. It stars Peter Weller (the robocop in Robocop) in the title role. Also in the film are Ellen Barkin (This Boy's Life), Jeff Goldblum, John Lithgow (who looks like the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow), and Christopher Lloyd also playing major parts. 

Lot of that guy actors, most notably John Lacey who plays the POTUS. He was Toht, the disgusting Nazi guy whose face melted in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. He is completely unrecognizable. Others include Clancy Brown (most people think of him as the asshole guard in The Shawshank Redemption), Dan Hedaya (Nick Tortelli from Cheers), and Vincent Schiavelli (who was famous for being weird-looking), among others.

I know the movie sounds fun, but it's all over the goddamn place. However, there is some charm in that and it has a crazy cult following. It has its moments, but its not my cup of tea. Perhaps if I was more into sci-fi.