Archives: Movie Reviews

Self-consciously bizarre, surreal, Gilliam-esque bit of fluff about a guy who builds a labyrinth our of a refrigerator box in his living room which is larger on the inside than the outside, takes on a life of its own and is full of peril and monsters. Seems like it is supposed to be a kids movie, but, has cursing and a vagina. Entertaining for what it is, though. (EDIT: Ah! Written and directed by Calvin and Hobbes's creator Bill Watterson. That makes perfect sense.)(EDIT 2: No. It's a different guy named Bill Watterson. Still, would have made perfect sense.)

(TV show) On the one hand, pretty realistic depiction of high school kids... every one of them is detestable. But, why didn't she just leave a note?

Ok, now we're talking. There's something distinctly Kubrickian about this quiet, low-budget indie flick about three people who sneak into a penthouse apartment only to become trapped over the winter and descend into a grisly struggle to survive. Supernatural forces may or may not be at work. I liked this one pretty well, in a quiet, low-budget indie flick kind of way. The incredible, apparently universal hatred for this film is the sort of thing that makes me feel like I was born on the wrong planet.

Dark Side Of The Moon: All-too-obviously-shot-on-DV B-grade sci/fi horror with too many guns that never lives up to its ultra-groovy space-rock sound track. Pointless nonsense about a gorgeous secret agent investigating a fallen satellite and a portal between a farm in serbia and the moon. I don't know who did that soundtrack, but I bet they're the most popular band in the province. Recurrent cross imagery that I guess is supposed to mean something. I hear Eastern Europeans really like the song "The Final Countdown", too.

Supernatural thriller crossed with hardbitten detective tale. Thre's some gobbledygook about a cursed book. Matt Frewer, which generally tells you about what to expect. Ok, I guess, it was kind of amusing.

Like a caricature of a "Best Picture Oscar Winner"... all the signifiers are here. A complete, pristinely-polished exercise in navel contemplation. Every performance screams, "ACTING!", every soliloquy screams "DRAMATIC WRITING!", the cinematography screams, "CINEMATOGRAPHY!" Despite some good feints in which it appears to be about to descend into complete cliche and then doesn't, nonetheless it's as pretentious as they come, wearing it's "great movie" aspirations on its sleeves, without ever actually saying anything that I could relate to or care about... as perhaps best exemplified by totally unnecessary "look what I can do!" technical exercise of making most of the movie look like one long continuous shot, as if "gee whiz" factor is a substitute for entertainment. All the pretense even renders the extremely cool solo-drumming-only soundtrack into complete contrived artifice, in this context. Granted, complete contrived artifice /can/ work, but it still has to say something. Here, it doesn't.…

teen scream ghost story. Misunderstood orphan girl goes to live with aunt and uncle, finds dead girl's ring in the woods. You know the drill. Erick Avari.

okay Aussie haunted house tale. Three researchers in an empty house tape recording things that go bump in the night. Pretty slow to get where it's going, doesn't aim high, but ultimately it's alright.

"Saw", but with over-the-top Hollywood excess rather than the British restraint that made it good. Very stylish, I'll give it that, like a music video.

Self-consciously quirky black-and-white "Indie" film starring huge megastars. Martin Starr actually acts in this. This guy keeps dumping women after 3 months by paying a friend of his to pretend to be his mother and not get along with them, and there's some sort of thing about babies who don't grow up, which must be a metaphor. It was vaguely ok, I guess, at least not cringeworthy like these things usually totally are.

Charming, amusing northern Irish neo-noir comedy about two laddish 15 year old bike thieves chasing after a rumored lost bale of cocaine and the odd cops, robbers, and local characters they're surrounded by. Quirky and fun... Trainspotting-type humor with much less degeneracy.

Another waste of what I'm assuming is an old Stephen King short story with some ideas that seem like they might have worked in writing, and could have worked with a movie production team that actually wanted them to. In this case, a couple driving through the heartland is lured into a field of tall grass by a crying child, and discovers they can't find their way back to the road. Also includes some time-looping paradox stuff that was really cool the first 5 or 10 times I saw movies use it, although in this case, with zero reason given for why people are moving through time at all, which I guess is kind of a first.

Intolerable YouTube star goes to participate in an Escape Room in Russia. I enjoyed this movie way more than I had any reason to. It had so many of the hallmarks of a terrible movie: overgorgeous cast of hipsters, obsession with social media including perspective of livestream with chat comments and "likes" scrolling by, entirely predictable "twists and turns" obvious derivatives of past movies ("The Game" and pick-your-Eli-Roth-movie.) And yet, it was a way more enjoyable view than it had any right to be. I dunno, the director just knows how to build suspense or something. I actually found it entertaining despite all those flaws.

effective cinematography and performances save what could have been pretty middling. A norwegian film with voiceovers that manage not to be as distrating as overdubs usually are, in which a postapocalyptic millionnaire invites the starving public to his hotel for a show where layer upon layer of deception unfold. Could have gone either way, but I liked it.

Victorian-style seance story told exclusively through acting and sets. Dreadfully boring, dreadfully British. Nothing happens at all for the first hour.

Give these guys an 'A' for effort in this messy tale centering on two independently sick gorgeous women who meet through a support group for grieving parents. A strong director and good acting fail to save yet another "crime drama" that seems to present sickness, in and of itself, as entertainment, relying primarily on "plot twists" rather than "plot", including lead characters suddenly changing personality in what I assume is supposed to be a shocking "reveal" but instead just seems overly contrived. This one deserves credit for making the opposite mistake of most films like it: it spares the violence, and takes over 2 hours to tell a fairly thin wisp of a story, trying to draw it out as a drama rather than relying on shock as most movies of this sort do. And scene-by-scene, it's far better made than many films like it. It doesn't drag that much.…

Sub-"USA Up All Nite" D-grade captivity flick in which a gorgeous girl is held by the owner of a rural motel and her son. Pretty much a home movie, with acting and production values that seem like they just rounded up whoever was around and made this thing. And yet, for what it is, actually kind of good, just because it's unflinchingly nasty in the few moments when it gets down to business. Kind of like a really, really good home movie. Plus it has a totally derivative Goblin-style synth soundtrack which should seem trite but in this context helps (except when it's directly mimicking Halloween instead, which is annoying). I think if this came out in 1972 it would have been almost a camp classic. Almost. Wes Craven got pretty famous doing stuff of not much above this caliber. Either way, a suprisingly pleasant enough diversion if you're in…

Unknowning damned souls board a tourist bus in Holland that strands them by a windmill where the spirit of an ancient miller drags them to hell. 2010's version of the kind of forgettable B movie that Vincent Price could have saved nicely, had he been in it. But he's not. Nice twist on convention at the very end, though, as Final Girl doesn't make it. Don't worry, that's not spoiling anything—you don't need to see this.

Campers find a baby and wind up pursued by psycho rednecks in the woods. But Australian, so with no American over-the-topness, just sick realism, preceded a dreadfully slow 45 minute buildup in which nothing happens. Pure brutality-as-supposed-entertainment, nothing redeeming about this one at all. One of the easiest Netflix thumbs-downs I've ever given to a film that was technically well made.

Hardbitten ex-cons out of Quentin Tarantino, the kind of guy Michael Madsen is never quite convincing playing, get stuck in a hotel in backwoods Romania with a bunch of maneating, machete-weilding savages. Tough guys, guns, monsters. Now you know. Not bad, if you don't go in with any expectations, although after the chase scene stretches into its second half hour it becomes a bit tedious.

Amusing horror spoof with unbelievably likeable cast: Matthew Gray Gubler, Kat Dennings, Ray Wise, and Mel Gonzales in one movie, even cameos by John Waters and by that funny Mexican actor from "Ash vs Evil Dead". Gubler plays a guy who basically nobody likes who returns home and is haunted by visions of CGI ghosts nobody but him and Kat Dennings can see. Ray Wise talks more about his penis in this than in any other movie, which if it was anybody other than Ray Wise, could have been a problem, but isn't.

Technically well-made enough, I suppose, but this is the kind of movie that I hear made Sundance and wonder what the standards really are at that festival. Sunil Mani and her real-life boyfriend, playing exactly the sort of unbearable hipsters you don't live in Brooklyn because you're afraid you'd meet, spend like a half hour arguing about their relationship (because that's the sort of escapism you want in a movie, sitting through arguing about a relationship for 30 minutes) before heading up to a friend's cabin, as the world is invaded by alien poofballs who drink all the alcohol and kill everybody, because, movie, apparently. The couple tries to escape, a woman they could have just given a ride to steals their car and leaves them behind for no reason, they find a baby, stumble around in a hallucinogenic stupor because of a gas the poofballs decide to emit instead…

An interesting setup, as two gorgeous high school girls obsessed with social media fame trap a serial killer in hopes of learning to commit murders so they can cover them online. Contains good laughs, especially how they become frustrated as repeated initial murders keep getting believed to be accidents, and an amusing gym battle scene with Craig Robinson, but soon sputters and stumbles, descending entirely into predictable, hackneyed writing, deus ex machina plot devices, and wrapping up tidily with some serious fridge logic. Still, it's mostly entertaining, but it fails hard enough at living up to the promise of its first half that I can't really recommend it.

Surprisingly entertaining spoof retelling of Watergate scandal, based around the supposition that "Deep Throat" was two 15-year-old girls.