Gut
I couldn't follow it. Amateur movie. Some guy who seems like he's from Brooklyn has grisly nightmares, not much happens.
In Furs
Incomprehensible home-movie-quality attempt at some sort of horror. Guy does drugs and freaks out or hallucinates or something. No acting, lighting, or talent to be found anywhere near this endeavor. Thankfully only an hour long.
Sunset On The River Styx
Morose slackers in LA morosely slack around, until somewhere in the middle of a bunch of jump cuts and editing effects it turns out to be about a suicide cult or alternate realities or vampires or something?
Let’s Dream
Nicely atmospheric but pretentious and dreadfully slow film. I can't even tell you what it's about. It opens with a man saying he hasn't slept since he was 7 years old, but after that... so slow, I couldn't focus on it. I think maybe it's supposed to be artistic?
I lasted about an hour before I felt like watching a movie.
Coming To America
Moderately amusing 1988 Eddie Murphy vehicle in which he plays an African prince who comes to America. He wins the girl in the end.
Spree
My favorite thing: a "horror movie" about a social media "influencer", shown entirely through phone screen views and security cameras. Psychotic influencer and rideshare driver (another thing we never need another horror movie about) kills passengers in hopes of views.
Weird one, though: a lot of famous faces, including that likeable guy from "Stranger Things" with the rectangular face, Mischa Barton, SNL's Sasheer Zamata and Mikey Day. Decently well-made for what it is. And rectangular-face-guy, as the psycho, does such a convincing job of being a shallow, annoying "influencer" that he's totally believable. The annoyingness is real!
This is like Hollywood's idea of "twisted enough to be cool"—hits all the numbers and hits them well, yet, is fake and shallow enough to fail to satisfy, and doesn't go far enough to actually be shocking. It's like the whole movie is in ironic scare quotes. Which may be the point.…
11th Hour Cleaning
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.
The Dead Guy
Weirdly charming zero-budget amateur "horror" in which an FBI agent with the power to talk to the dead spends the whole movie talking to the dead and literally doing nothing else. Seems like a likeable guy, though.
The Dark Tower
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.
Chappie
Sci-fi-ish action/adventure supposedly starring Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, but actually, it's Die Antwoord steals "Robocop" and does about what you'd expect with him. No, really, it's actually them, playing themselves. It was kind of fun, better than I expected.
Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon
Sort of a fun horror/fantasy/crime thriller about an escaped mental patient with mind control powers on the run from the law among strippers and drug dealers in the seedy underbelly of New Orleans. Stars Craig Robinson as the lead cop, refreshingly actually playing a role, and not just himself. Nice to see that.
Dead Like Me (TV series)
Fun magical-realist series about an 18-year-old girl struck down by satellite debris falling from space who joins a team of "reapers", undead people tasked with helping doomed souls depart their bodies painlessly before death. Oh, she also works at a temp agency by day. And the "reapers" hang out at a restaurant called "Der Waffle Haus". It's kinda fun. Created by Bryan Fuller, who also made similar short-lived but fun magical-realist shows "Pushing Daisies" and "Wonderfalls". Plus has Mandy Patinkin, who I always like, as the boss of the reaper team.
Latency
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.
Rejuvenation
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.
Envision
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.
Boy Makes Girl
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.
The Pod Generation
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.
28 Weeks Later
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.
Inmate Zero
Surprisingly solid zombie action thriller about a zombie outbreak in a prison. With this clichéd title and that plot synopsis I expected total crap, but, surprise, it's a well-made, atmospheric, tense, fairly tightly made—if not particularly inventive—little splatterfest, more like "28 Days Later" in tone and production than "Return of The Living Dead". Completely lacks 28DL's epic scope and grand storytelling, but definitely feels like they took some cinematography lessons from Danny Boyle and learned well. Watchable if you're in the mood for this sort of thing. Might be a good date movie, if perhaps a little violent and explicitly gory for some.
Warning: panned badly on IMDB, 4.3 stars. I'm not sure why. It's not great by a long shot but it deserves better than that.
Bad Education (TV series)
Faintly entertaining British series about an immature teacher leading a classroom full of misfits. Starts slow, gets a little better as it goes along.
Gehenna: Where Death Lives
People trapped in a subterranean Japanese WWII bunker in the Philippines become embroiled in supernatural drama as corpse-like people and the spirits of deceased loved ones start to appear. As mediocre as it gets, and with a twist that you can see coming from 20 minutes into the movie.
Devil’s Pass
Starts off like "The Blair Witch Project" meets the Dyatlov Pass Incident, before taking a hard sci-fi turn in the last act, after it's too late. Not terrible, but, meh. Also briefly mentions the Philadelphia Experiment, which, eh, not as creative is the writer probably thought it was, two cool conspiracy theories somehow add up to less than just one. Directed by Renny Harlin, known for such B fare as "Nightmare On Elm Street 4: Dream Warriors", "Die Hard 2: Die Harder", and "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane", but who's been at this long enough that he ought to aim higher. Actually probably on the better end of "found footage" stuff in that it's not total crap, but, dunno. Wouldn't go out of my way to see it, for sure.
Man Vs
Unremarkable but reasonably entertaining younger cousin to "Predator" benefits from that little touch of Canadian production quality, which, as usual, means it's ever-so-slightly better than it should have been.
Mostly a one man show, as a host of a survival show gets dropped off for 5 days in the northern Ontario wilderness to survive on his own, filming it for his show, as it becomes apparent he's not alone.
Not a great movie by any stretch, and slightly predictable, but benefits a little bit from what it's not: it's not an annoying first-person shooter, they didn't show the monster too early or for too long. Both good decisions that too many filmmakers wouldn't have made that keep it a little more watchable than it would have been otherwise.
Saturday Night Fever
A better movie than you might think considering the best known thing about it is the genre-defining disco soundtrack. John Travolta as a Brooklyn teenager in the '70s who loves going to the disco. More of a character-driven, slice-of-life movie than it gets credit for being. Most strangely, for example, the dancing, featured heavily in the first two acts, doesn't go on to be the film's emotional center, and, refreshingly for the modern viewer, it doesn't end with him winning a big dance contest.
I'm not saying I'd go out of my way to see it, but a lot of critics liked it, and I get that. It's two hours long, and it passes quickly, it's a pretty tight piece of filmmaking.
It probably helps that it's been long enough that we're all thoroughly calloused to how bad disco sucks.
The IT Crowd (TV series)
Reasonably humorous Britcom about geeks in a corporate IT department. First season kind of slow but eventually it gets a little funnier. Ok if you need some occasionally entertaining background noise.
After Yang
Visually gorgeous but perhaps the slowest, talkiest, least engaging nominal sci-fi I've ever seen. Something about a family whose child's AI companion breaks, so a lot of people talk and talk and talk about a lot of things.
Death Becomes Her
Faintly-better-than-it-should be comedy about two viciously competitive women who ingest an immortality potion, allowing them to do greater and greater damage to each other. Primarily saved by nice film-noir type production and good casting: Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, all playing against type, please a cameo role from an effectively creepy Isabella Rossellini.
Van Dyke And Company (TV series)
Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Mary Tyler Moore, Gabe Kaplan, and a bunch of other people who should have known better in a stereotypically cringeworthy, unfunny '70s variety show. I lasted one episode.
Dog Day Afternoon
A fictionalization of a real-life 1972 bank robbery and hostage situation in Brooklyn that goes awry almost from the moment it begins. Masterful direction from Sidney Lumet and stellar acting performances from a young Al Pacino from back in the days before he became a ham and an ice-cold John Cazale, as well as a talented supporting cast of colorful characters, ensured this film's place in movie history. Not a picture with a big message, no deep meaning, not a lot of emotional punch, just a goddamn great yarn, incredibly well made. One of my favorites.
Perceptarium
100% amateur crap. Some sort of attempt at Lynchian surrealism executed with apparently no knowledge of cinematography, lighting, sound, or acting.