Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

The North Witch

Well-shot but otherwise pointless hodgepodge of horror tropes strung together with little explanation, as two women hikers stranded at a legendary "lost" cabin slowly lose their minds and see "scary" things, one after another, for an hour and a half, swing what is obviously a plastic axe at each other, and build up to plot twists that Stevie Wonder could spot from a mile away. Lousy editing, lousy writing, and the acting isn't good enough to pull off a convincing descent into madness.

Almost bad enough to be good, as it got so silly at one point in the middle that I nearly laughed aloud at something that was supposed to be "scary", but it couldn't even maintain that.

It's too bad. I wanted to like it. The cinematography isn't great, but it's slightly above average, which usually is a sign of something better than this.

Blog Posts » featured movie reviews

Paradise (TV series, 2025)

Somewhat derivative but reasonably watcable sci-fi thriller. In a world that is "The Walking Dead" with an ecological apocalypse instead of a zombie one, the remains of the government live in an artificial underground town somewhere between "Wayward Pines" and "The Truman Show", where everybody just loves crappy '80s Top 40 music.

The first season is a straight government/secret agent whodunnit thriller with a slight spritz of sci-fi, the second is a little more expansive, showing more of the world and the lead-up to the ecological disaster (refreshingly, a fairly well-done global tsunami and weather crisis caused by a volcanic eruption in Antarctica, not the result of human foolishness.) I enjoyed the second season a little bit more, although they're both decent at worst...

...except...

...for the '80s music. It's intrusive, and initially, very annoying, particularly that many episodes end with gratuitous, grating "slowcore", alt-folk, or dreary…

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Black Goat

Oddly charming zero-budget amateur folk horror. English film in which locals encounter supernatural occurrences and a horned apparition in the woods. New film but feels like it was filmed on 16mm in 1978. Not sure why I liked it, by all rights I shouldn't have, but sometimes these little zero-budget efforts are, as I said, oddly charming, even if they're really bad.

Movie Reviews » watchable

Predestination

Well-done time-travel sci-fi based closely on the Heinlein story "All You Zombies". Ethan Hawke as a "Temporal Agent" sent back to the 1970s to foil a bomber. Good enough that I'm not going to reveal my one minor disappointment with it because that involves spoilers. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's one of the greats, but it's well-made and well-acted.

Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

A44

Just terrible, home-made zombie movie, which I found weirdly kind of fun because the people (probably friends of the director) try so damn hard to pull it off, even though they clearly have no hope at all of this being a good movie. They really do try though.

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Portal In The Pines

Weirdly ok bad movie about a small town besieged by supernatural occurrences after a particle collider opens up a portal to hell or some such. Pretty terribly written and meandering, the story is a mess, but kind of weirdly ok in terms of production or something. It had that sort of "this is terrible, but it's kinda good" thing in a way that made me think maybe it was a H.P. Lovecraft story, as a lot of those seem to somehow turn out strangely a little bit kinda good in a weird way. Has a cameo by Jamie Kennedy, the patron saint of bad movies that are strangely a little bit kinda good in a weird way. Not that I'd recommend you watch it or anything. But, uh, I kinda didn't mind it?

Movie Reviews » watchable

Goodbye World

Reasonably decent postapocalyptic drama focusing on relationships among a group of people living in a remote cabin after martial law is declared in the US. Gaby Hoffman & friends. Nothing special, never would say go out of your way to see it, but not terrible, somewhat watchable if you have to kill 90 minutes.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Miami Vice (TV Series)

Surprisingly enough, the first few episodes of this show are pretty good, definitely a better cop show than I remembered.

Unfortunately, though, I suffer from OCD, and I know from experience that if I watch this long enough, one of these 80s songs is going to get stuck in my head for 4 months. It's not worth that.

So I turned it off.

Too bad though, if not for that I would have stuck it out.

Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

The Evil Inside Her

Absolutely pointless horror thriller in which Eric Roberts poisons a tourist's coffee to drive her insane so she stalks and kills her friends on a trip to a remote cabin, because, movie.

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Junkyard Dog

Unremarkable, fairly color-by-numbers captivity flick as redneck junkyard owner holds women captive in an underground cell. Ends with everything blowing up. Yawn. Weirdly, has some familiar faces like Brad Dourif, Vivica A. Fox, and John Kapelos (yes, you do know him, he was the janitor in "The Breakfast Club") Not like this is terrible, but in a world where we have "Silence of The Lambs" this doesn't even qualify as sub-mediocre. I wonder how they got name actors to appear in something so unremarkable.

Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

The Maddening

Made-for-TV-movie-quality '90s direct-to-video. Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson ham it up as a deranged older couple who kidnap and imprison a young woman and hr daughter in their rural house because, movie.

Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Porno (2019)

Some horror movies are scary, some are just fun. Both are equally hard to pull off. This one is totally fun.

It plays like a comedy-horror but really is just straight horror. A group of christian teens in a small-town movie theater discover a porno flick in a walled-off lair in the basement that sets loose a succubus. And as silly as that sounds, it's hard to the good end of what such a silly conceit could have turned out to be.

No, it's good! Really! It doesn't aim any higher than it needs to—nobody will ever accuse this of being a great movie—but it aims to be a good, if slightly silly one, and succeeds far better than it has a right to. Good production values and acting, as well as a few deft touches and moments of well-done tension, save it from being a relentlessly silly endeavor. It…

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Being Erica (TV series)

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.

Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

The Conspiracy

"Eyes Wide Shut" filmed as "The Blair Witch Project", except less.

Not the worst first-person shooter I've ever seen, not absolutely execrable like many, but without much more justification for existing than most of those movies.

Movie Reviews » watchable

ZEF: The Story Of Die Antwoord

Pretty decent documentary about a rap band I've always found visually compelling and musically and personally detestable. If you've ever felt compelled to sit through their videos despite entirely disliking the songs, this is pretty watchable. Also, there's some bits where they actually drop the whole pretense and just talk about things like normal human beings, in odd moments here and there. Pretty good exploration of their background and what they're trying to do, not just fan service, although there's plenty of that too. Came away feeling like they're actually pretty decent showmen and visual artists, or at least, visual stylists, and personally maybe a hair less vacantly pretentious than I thought.

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The Girl Who Got Away

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.

Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

Bucky Larsen: Born To Be A Star

Typically stupid, over-broad Adam Sandler/Farrelly Brothers-type fare for people who find dick jokes, fart jokes, and people getting hit with semen funny, with unredeeming cameos from such comedy non-phenomenons as Kevin Nealon and Pauly Shore. If you think the idea of Nick Swardson as a adult-who-acts-like-a-child getting an Adult Video Awards award for "best taint" is hilarious, you are this movie's target audience. Just keep me out of it.

Christina Ricci is appealing in it, though. She can play a sunny disposition surprisingly well.

Movie Reviews » Honorable Mention

The Wave (2019)

Playing like a combination of After Hours, Office Space, Altered States, and just a touch of Donnie Darko, this movie has Justin Long in an unusually frenetic variation of his usual nebbishy character, as an amoral and mercenary low-level lawyer for a big insurance firm, who goes to the wrong party, meets the wrong guy, and gets fed a mysterious hallucinogen that abruptly unmoors him in time and space during the most important day of his adult life, sending him careening back and forth across the paths of comically disreputable characters and friends and loved ones who no longer trust him.

It could have gone so wrong, and ultimately fallen apart, relied on contrived strangeness instead of story. But, it doesn't! Even though the film eventually fails to keep from telegraphing where it's going, it manages to balance out what could have turned into self-indulgent weirdness for it's own…

Movie Reviews » Different, At Least

I Saw The TV Glow

A really interesting failure for sure. A cinematically beautiful fantasy/horror film that seems like it's going to successfully hover just barely on the right side of the line between interesting and pretentious indie artsiness, as it follows the lives at several different people between adolescence on young adulthood of a pair of outcasts who are fans of a surreal children's show called "The Pink Opaque", which may or may not be leaving the screen and affecting their lives.

I say "may or may not" not to be mysterious, but because the plot unfortunately falls apart in the third act and just succumbs to overproduced indie pretentiousness, and I really don't know what happens. Which is a shame, because it's pretty well done before that, and visually very nice to watch throughout.

I would really like to put this under "Je Nais Se Quois" because it really seems for…

Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

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.

Movie Reviews » WAY too indie

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?

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

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.