Decent drama/thriller starring Bradley Cooper as a down-on-his-luck writer who gets access to a drug that allows him to use 100% of his brain capacity, and his subsequent business and political ascent. Between him and De Niro in a supporting role, pretty watchable.
Ok, no great shakes. Kind of turgid. Strange young man tries to end his own life, keeps bumping into suicidal women and in two cases takes their bodies home for a short while before burying them in his garden and moving on to the next one. Completely unengaging leading man with virtually no personality and not much drama or buildup to the story kind of leadens the whole endeavor. Also not clear why some suicidal women would be so damn chipper and engaging. It does have that woman who played the strange junkyard woman in Walking Dead, who I've always kind of liked for some reason.
Wow, talk about a flawed gem. I really like this neo-noir, which features the two most realistic 10-year-old boys I've ever seen in a movie finding an apparently abandoned cop car and going for a joy ride, attracting the attention of the corrupt sheriff whose car it is and the man he's got in the trunk. Really appealing, set deep in the windswept prairie, kind of a snowless "fargo" at least in terms of setting. The only problem: the too-recognizable-to-suspend-disbelief Kevin Bacon as the sheriff, who is, additionally, repeatedly clever enough to creatively think his way out of jams in a split second, but not clever enough to leave his cop car where two 10 year olds won't find it, or to not leave the keys sitting on the seat in plain view. But overall, despite the flaws, this picture is kind of a fave, I'm glad I caught it.…
First-time director Bob Odenkirk loads this calculatedly "relatable" movie with shaky, out-of-focus handheld camerawork; "artistic" effects like illustrating a character telling an anecdote with a flashback consisting only of still photos or shot a different film stock; and, star cameos in every bit part—all with the end goal of recreating the experience of a bunch of unbearable people making overly earnest, "revealing" conversation much too loudly at the next restaurant table, right in the comfort of your own living room. By the time some sort "plot twists" revealing the surprise illicit relationships between the characters came around, I had long since stopped caring. I like Bob Odenkirk, hopefully he's gotten this out of his system and will get back to something entertaining.
Terribly miscast Jason Bateman—who doesn't have the range to be believable as a bully when he's just been acting like relatable Michael Bluth for the first half of the movie—in an otherwise ok thriller carried mostly by the strong performanmce of Rebecca Hall, as appealing as if Jenny Agutter was brought forward in a time machine from 1978, as his wife. Couple moves back to LA, reconnects with disturbingly eccentric childhood acquaintance (and writer/director) Joel Edgerton, who seems to have some sort of unhealthy interest in them. Secrets are revealed. Blah blah blah. Like I said, Rebecca Hall carries it. Does build well to a much more twisted revenge thriller ending than it ever lets on it's going to be.
It's getting tough to do a fresh take on the zombie outbreak picture, but this Korean film does an alright job. The slightly low, non-Netflix-TV-episode-quality production values are really the only thing marring this tale of people trapped in their apartments during a zombie apocalypse. I liked it.
Ripped from today's headlines! A virtual assistant begins acting like a (non-diegetically) weird-looking girl's mother, soon convincing to kill everyone who's done her wrong. Basically, this is like an after-school movie, except with lower production values, and a bloodier ending.
Comic artist, just released from an insane asylum, kills those he feel ruined his life. Entertaining enough comedy-horror. First you need to know it stars Barry Bostwick and Karen Black, which tells you part of the story, and then that it stars Kevin Corrigan, which tips the film into the hoped-for one of the two places it could go given that first fact. Kevin Corrigan, who, yes, you do know who he is, has pretty much only ever been in watchable movies, near as I can tell.
Archaeologist looks for the Philosopher's Stone in forbidden parts of the Paris catacombs, finds something much worse than expected, in this rare non-execrable "found footage" film.. 10% Raiders Or The Lost Ark, 5% The Descent, 50% Blair Witch Project, but about 35% its own thing, which is pretty good for a movie like this. This had all the makings of a bad movie, first off by being a first-person shooter, but it's someone somewhere along the way knew a little too much about how to actually make a movie, and managed to fill it with enough cool style to make up for the thin substance... might be a good date movie. For a piece of trifle with almost no plot they actually managed to make it fairly gripping. Ending is sort of an anticlimax though... they go through their travails, then when the movie is long enough, the travails come…
Am I the only one who thinks the most recent couple of seasons of thhis are nothing but oppression porn? It's like, "Last episode, women were treated very very badly. In this episode, women are treated very very badly. Be sure to tune in next week, when women will be treated very very badly." The vast real-life importance of gender equality doesn't make that entertainment.
A hitman transporting a body on Halloween is mistaken for a partygoer in a Halloween costume. 20somethings wind up with the body and he wants it back. Truthfully, this movie was background noise while I was working on other things, and every time I looked up, it appeared to be fairly entertaining, until the third act, which appeared to be mostly a gory chase scene with the hitman pursuing the kids across the city to retreive the body.
The definition of "torture porn". Literally no plot except for: a bunch of people are held prisoner and promised to be released if they torture each other, so they do. 90 minutes of people inflicting pain on each other, bookended by Maria Olsen telling them she needs to collect a chemical produced by their brains during pain, and literally nothing else.
Review of first 90%: It's a movie called "Pooka!". What do you expect? (If you are thinking something along the lines of an Outer Limits episode, you've set your expectations right.) The lead actor does a decently frenetic job, though. appropriately cartoonish to the silly premise of an improbably popular and murderous kid's toy taking over his life, and directed far better than it deserves, which actually makes it kind of moment-by-moment gripping despite how silly the entire affair is. Review of last 10%: This movie just doesn't make any sense.
I once went to the deli with my grandparents and on the menu was the reuben sandwich. This is corned beef, on rye bread, with swiss cheese, sauer kraut and russian dressing. "My god," I thought, "It's everything I hate on one sandwich." So I had to try it. So it was when I saw this movie was produced by Eli Roth, uber-trendy untalented maker of "Hostel" and similar derivative, terrible gore films, and then, saw it was directed by Ti West, director of "House Of The Devil", a stylized, paper-thin genre-exercise echo of actual good horror movies. I had to find out.
For those who found the merely derivative "House Of The Devil" to be too original, or whose complaint about the Jonestown tragedy is that they weren't there to be entertained by seeing it, this creativity-free paint-by-numbers retelling of the Jonestown story should satisfy.
My guess…
Paint-by-numbers suspense thriller. Mother and son movie to the mountains. There's someone in the house with them! And, that's all there is to this movie. They don't even ever tell you who the killer is. This is like one of those terrible French "thrillers" where people being terrorized is supposed to be enough to be considered a plot.
Well-made but very cliched "The Lady Vanishes" plot-twisty thriller. Gorgeous man takes gorgeous wife and injured daughter to hospital during a road trip, returns to pick them up later and is told he was there alone earlier. Predictable all the way through, and with hefty doses of before-you-even-get-to-the-fridge logic. But, mildly entertaining, on the better end of mediocre.
This starts with a premise that could go either way: a group of teens go to find a teacher who disappeared into a cave, to discover time flows differently inside the cave than out. In this case, it goes the right way, and instead of becoming a predictable thriller, it keeps bringing in new ideas, ending up unexpectedly far afield from where it started, and in an enjoyable & engaging way. Worked for me. Would watch again, eventually.
If you pretend this is the best student film you've ever seen, it's actually not that bad. Definitely more a product of ambition than experience (as evidenced by that 'arty' title that has little to do with the story's subject and even less with its tone). Long-estranged junkie friend turns up at a couple's door insisting the cops are trying to kill him. The problem is the filming conceit: even worse than a 1st-person-shooter, this film shows the action through all the lead characters' first-person viewpoints, often meaning you see the same scene three times in a row, a device that gets old within the first two minutes. Eventually, despite some weak acting performances, it shapes up into an ok enough neo-noir thriller that I don't regret sitting through it, and actually eventually kind of enjoyed that amateurish "let's make a 'great' movie!" energy. I wouldn't watch it again, though.…
Daniel Radcliffe is as redeeming as possible in this based-on-a-true-story lost-in-the-jungle survival flick. Friends set off, slowly get separated, winds up being protagonist alone walking back through the wilderness towards civilization, encountering every possible obstacle along the way, including quicksand, a snake, hallucinations, you name it, in the slow-moving third act. Was a pretty good movie until it started to sag... one guy grimacing in pain, hallucinating, and talking to animals doesn't really feel like much of a plot. You gotta admit Radcliffe always gives his all to everything he does, though. And also, that aside, he somehow manages to be strikingly handsome-looking when covered with mud, which strikes me as something of an accomplishment, I guess. I couldn't do it.
Okay-enough dubbed-over flick about a kid getting possessed by her witchy grandma in a coma. Didn't hold my attention so well, but well-made, well acted.
Basically, "Open Water" but on the ocean floor instead of the surface, and without Open Water's hints of artistry, but it's still well done enough to pass muster if this sort of thing is your cup of tea, which it is mine. If you enjoy these kinds of bare-bones survival thrillers, you'll enjoy this alright. I did.
Bartender in New Orleans finds a cell phone left at a bar, and supernatural things start happening. Well enough done, and builds creepiness effectively for the first half, but eventually goes off the rails, becoming hard to follow and seeming to just end rather than come to a climax. Too much weirdness with too little explanation. Cool weirdness, but ultimately, without understanding what's happening, it's completely unsatisfying.
You know, this one wasn't bad. Like, you have some time to kill, you wanna watch a horror movie, there's nothing good on, this one is alright. Young "boy in a bubble"'s parents take him to a doctor's creepy old clinic in the woods for a gene therapy cure. Haunted house story with lots of familiar tropes, until you discover they found a fairly original way to put a million familiar pieces together. Don't think I'd watch it a second time, but don't mind having watched it a first. (Oh, I gotta add: It has one special effect that is like my favorite horror special effect I've ever seen. It's very quick, but it's something I genuinely have never seen before. So, no spoilers, but there's one quick thing in there I had to stop the video, roll it back, and watch again.)
Give it points for originality... the Duplass brothers have managed to put out another unique film. A couple heads to a rural estate for what seems like it's going to be an excruciating (for the viewer) weekend of relationship dynamics, until they discover that, each time one of them enters the backyard guesthouse, they find it occupied by an idealized doppelganger of the other, and things continue to get pleasantly weird from there. Some unfortunate fridge logic and a few predictable turns and narrative lapses don't ruin it from being somewhat entertaining, and it certainly goes a few new places. I've got a thing for clone stories, having dated a few myslf, which probably helped give this one a leg up for me.
Ok, what starts off as "Fatal Attraction" for millennials takes a cruel twist into a little more of a descent into madness than you'd expect at the outset. Far from perfect, and still kind of predictable, but ultimately a genuinely nasty little movie in its way, which redeems it from being totally derivative, totally predictable crap. I'll say it just makes the cut.
Ensemble "comedy" (in only the loosest sense of the word) in which a family gathers for an intervention on the belief that a son is smoking crystal meth. Proves that even a remarkable assemblage of modern comedy royalty can't save an effort that doesn't bother to ever aspire to rise above "nutty" cliches and trite, predictable emotional touch points. Strictly formulaic and never funny. Seems to have been written by marketers, or maybe by an AI. Not a hint of inspiration anywhere in here.
Johnny Galecki and Anna Friel, whom I failed to recognize from "Pushing Daisies", in something that qualifies as a horror movie about as much as "Gremlins" does. Better creature FX than gremlins, nowhere near the plot and amusement. Participants at a wellness retreat have their "cleansed" toxins come to life as monstrous creatures. Entertaining enough until it turns entirely predictable and by-the-numbers. Which is disappointing, because it initially goes so far beyond the pale so fast that it suckers you right into a totally unbelievable premise from very early on.
Starts out as a documentary about a complicated performer, and turns into a documentary about the complications of making a documentary about a complicated performer. Good, and the events that unfolded in trying to make the documentary are amusing, but lump this in with "Catfish" in the "documentaries that must've sounded really good on paper, but never get somewhere quite as interesting as they promise to" category.
well-made but incredibly cliched and derivative flim starring Gillian Jacobs and an autistic kid who might as well have been Danny from "The Shining", who is haunted by a mysterious and poorly-explained monster that lives in electronic devices (including the goofily misguided device of showing a "creature's-eye view" from behind the screens while the kid uses them) and wants to abduct the kid to be his friend, because he comes from a world where all the monsters are lost in the iPads and don't talk anymore, or something.
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