Archives: Movie Reviews

Rather scattered supernatural tale about a father dealing with his severely autistic daughter, who is apparently channeling his dead wife, or something.

Reasonably watchable Canadian fantasy/drama series, probably aimed at teens or young adults. A young woman encounters a mysterious "therapist" who sends her back in time every episode to reconcile regrets from her life. It's fun enough, nothing great, but a little different and the cast is likeable, even when the later series tend towards the "we've run out of ideas" phase of making every story about relationships, who loves who, who's marrying who, who's having a baby, etc.

One nice thing, the series ended after 4 seasons, not because it was cancelled, but because they were at a good stopping point and felt the story had been told. That's the kind of slightly-above-average judgment that made it a slightly-above-average series.

Vaguely watchable southern gothic. Strange events surround two kids after they are rescued from playing in an abandoned mineshaft. Just on the good side of mediocre.

Decent if somewhat slow British supernatural drama about a doctor who becomes convinced a young boy she is treating can control reality.

Anthology of mostly British horror shorts. One terrible, a few alright, none great.

Reasonably well made but overlong and very slowly paced suspense thriller, something of a throwback to "When A Stranger Calls" or "The Serpent And The Rainbow"—two older, surprisingly talky ostensible 'horror' films that were marketed as being much more exciting than they actually were. And "When A Stranger Calls" had better character study, although this one tries.

I wouldn't mind movies like this if they didn't try to present them as horror films. Even so, this kind of moves along at a snail's pace, much more talk than plot.

I couldn't follow it. Amateur movie. Some guy who seems like he's from Brooklyn has grisly nightmares, not much happens.

Moderately amusing 1988 Eddie Murphy vehicle in which he plays an African prince who comes to America. He wins the girl in the end.

Almost-watchable but very cliche'd haunted house flick about a crime scene cleaning crew trapped in a hallucinatory haunted house by a vengeful Norse demon or something. "Oculus" did it the hallucinatory haunted house thing better.

I have a certain odd affection for this widely-panned cosmic fantasy riff on Stephen King's "The Dark Tower"... or, parts of it, anyway. It's got decent acting, with Idriss Elba and Matthew McConnaughey as the good and (very) bad guys, and a couple of passing scenes are decently well done. It sort of loses its way en route to wanting to be the beginning of a hugh, cosmic fantasy/action franchise, and the story gets a bit flabby, but still, it's got its moments. I don't understand why it was panned quite as badly as it was. McConnaughey doesn't play bad guys very often and he pulls it off here.

Slickly-produced but not terribly interesting sci-fi in which a gorgeous agoraphobic gamer gets a headset that allows her to control the computer with her mind and it turns her reality inside out, or something.

Slightly-better-than-TV-movie-quality sci-fi thriller about a college athlete sent to recover from drug addiction at a facility where the doctors are performing evil deeds on the patients. A likeable cast keeps it somewhat watchable but other than that, meh.

Zero-budget, zero-production-values indie supposedly sci-fi flick about a guy who gets some sort of visual implants that cause him to see things, which results in him and his friends spending an entire movie sitting around talking.

Another relationship movie in drag as sci-fi... Tubi must be lining these up on purpose. In this case, an autistic coder with severe social problems builds a girlfriend, teaches her to be real, then fails to keep her.

A relationship movie in sci-fi drag. In a future world where corporations and artificial technology have intruded into every facet of life, women have babies gestate in artificial "pods" owned by a greasy company. In this scenario, a woman decides to have a baby, the couple goes through couple tensions, and in a climactic moment: the baby is born!

Well made but I didn't find it compelling.

This technically well-made sequel to the astoundingly good "28 Days Later" is technically well made, but adding fairly respectable stars like Rose Byrne and Idriss Elba, and even the production assistance of the original movie's creative team Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, isn't sufficient to make up for the fact that it has very big shoes to fill, and for the most part, abdicates completely, attempting to substitute punchy direction and action sequences for punchy direction and a well-written, well-told story.

So, not bad, but it's kind of like seeing your favorite team come back from winning the World Series to play, you know, alright.