Archives: Movie Reviews

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.

It's starting to feel like you can kind of rely on Kevin Hart. Anything he's in is going to be at least reasonably good. This is a fairly forgettable action/adventure buddy comedy involving Hart going to the wrong cabin and being mistaken for a hit man, excepting one extremely memorable, well-choreographed, well-shot fight scene near the end, where they fend off a handful of assassins in the gym, which rightfully should go down in action movie history as a classic. That aside, this was entertaining enough. One of his lesser efforts, but Hart keeps his reputation for picking good projects.

Pale, hoodie-wearing outcast friend-requests Alicia Debnam-Carey, who I really would have hoped had brighter prospects than this, then kills herself, after which gorgeous teens die one by one for the slimmest of reasons. As slick and terrible as you imagine a teen horror movie about Facebook would be, especially once I've told you it contains the line "Unfriend that dead BITCH!" So, you know what you're getting into. (Not to be confused with the similar Unfriended, a prior horror movie about Facebook.)

For a shitty, poorly-written, poorly-acted "to-dimensional he-man hunters besieged by rednecks and/or monsters at a cabin in the remote woods" flick, actually, not that bad. It's paced and shot like a 70s slasher flick, it kind of seems like maybe a lousy writer and actors somehow got a good director to try to fix things. So, a terrible movie, but, has its moments.

maybe the lowest-budget, worst-lit and worst-recorded film I've ever seen. Looks like a student film... that's high-school student, not film school. How did they get Ice-T and Big Pussy from the Sopranos to make cameos in this piece of garbage? Something about trying to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared on the titular road, plus a little girl and biker dude running around in pancake makeup to indicate that they look scary. Nothing is really explained and it doesn't matter.

Lance Hendriksen takes his family icefishing, unaware that a "creature from the black lagoon"-type obvious-and-clearly-shown-man-in-a-costume monster lurks below the surface, waiting to kill everyone up to and including Lance Hendriksen, once again proving that outliving LK is the key to survival.

Terribly edited movie in which a dead ringer for Prince invites a bunch of gorgeous 20somethings to his mansion to smugly torture them psychologically into killing each other with his investigative knowledge of their pasts and incredible insight into their character flaws, driving them to murder, interspliced with clips of Prince's ensuing interrogation by gorgeous police detectives.

Pedestrian, entirely forgettable police procedural/haunted house flick as the story of a film crew (natch) filming inside a haunted house was murdered is told in flashbacks as Maria Bello interviews the lone survivor.

Three douchebags sneak into a closed state park to go hunting, where they are terrorized and hunted down by what turns out to be a couple of suburban kids who are in a closed state park terrorizing and hunting down people because, without them doing that, there wouldn't be any movie, now, would there.

Swedish TV series, with English overdubs. The Walking Dead, but with a rain that kills you instead of zombies. Pretty good, actually.

Comedy based on real-life armored car heist caper. Zack Galiafinakis, Owen Wilson, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Jason Sudeikis, Sharon Jones, Joe Lo Truglio, and many more. With that many big comedy names in one movie, how could it be funny? Answer: it can't. It's mildly amusing, yeah. At moments. But that's the best I can say for it.

[Not to be confused with Amelie] A decent distraction that ends kind of unsatisfyingly by giving too much away. A thriller about a gorgeous babysitter who turns out to be very disturbed, mounting some fairly distressing psychological horror in the first half by way of her increasingly disturbing treatment of the children she's supposed to be caring for, but as is sometimes the case, ratching things up too high, and shifting from a sort of dogme 95 realism to just physical violence and a theatrically darkened house breaks the tension, rather than heightening it. Decent performances, though.

Captivity/pursuit flick. Mother and son pursued through the woods by a silent, murderous Dave Grohl for no reason. I'd run too.

Incredibly handsome English guys go off-trail and get lost in the woods (England? Sweden? I missed it). Vacation gone wrong. stalked through the woods, captivity, scary house in the woods, besieged by rednecks, but also a monster movie (only partially-seen creature until the end), which is cool. Much more decent than it could have been. Also pretty inventive in its handling of flashback sequences. Well-acted and well made, and pretty cool monster. Ultimately kind of a bit of fluff, but slightly more original fluff than the enormously cliched setup would lead you to expect. I think somebody involved with this has watched some Svenkmayer films. (Turns out, this director has been responsible for shorts I've liked much more... from https://www.avclub.com/the-ritual-is-a-chore-1822765612 "Technically, The Signal (2007), his first effort, constitutes a single narrative; three different directors were in charge of the film’s three “transmissions” (read: acts), though, and it’s all downhill after…