Archives: Movie Reviews

Just re-watched this movie, which I remembered as being pretty good, after many years. It's funny how different it plays in post-Trump America. It could almost be a parable. And the stereotypically smug, condescending, aloof liberal (to judge by their horror at someone owning — gulp — a gun!) city couple doesn't come off as innocent as they did the first time I watched it... to the extent that I was a little disappointed that, rather than make a controversial observation, aloofness simply wins in the end over brute physicality and living perhaps just a little too much in-the-moment, and apparently without even being really changed in any substantial way by the experience. But, after a slow start, the acting is every bit as good as I remember, and the movie actually raises a lot of interesting things to think about, all of which elevates it above the exploitation flick…

contrived set piece in which a young, insecure couple agrees to stay in an empty white room for 50 days for $5,000,000. Guess whether they last or not. Hint: in act 1, they wake up and suddenly a gun is in there, which they kick under the bed. Actually, I kinda liked it for the frenetic performances. Reminded me a little bit of Jim Henson's psychedelic pre-Muppets "Room", except, instead of a psychedelia, it has Ashley Greene's boobs.

Madeline Brewer, who always seems to pick at least faintly interesting projects, in what could easily have been a slightly titillating Black Mirror episode, as a cam girl who finds her account, and identity, have been usurped by an impostor. Ultimately a little unsatisfying, as it leaves questions unanswered, but entertaining enough, in that "pretty good Black Mirror episode" way.

"The Lost Boys" was better.

"Superbad" as a TV movie with girls instead of guys. The two leads are genuinely likable and have real chemistry, and the humor is good, but the try-hard over-quirkiness, contrived situations, and inclusion of too many familiar teen movie tropes and stereotypes wears a little bit thin.

Terrible horror movie. Like a teen scream, except stars adults. A doctor sees a deranged patient kill herself in front of her, inherits a curse that makes random jump scares happen to you for no clear reason before making you kill yourself in front of someone else to pass the curse along.

All style, zero substance. Apparently based on a novel, but I don't see more than a very short story's worth of plot here. A psychopath hires a prostitute played by Mia Wasikowska to his hotel room with the intent of killing her, but it turns out she's crazier than he is. S&M hijinks ensue, she gets him tied up, and that's it. That's the movie. It looks great, though, excellent production.

Ok movie with Lily Collins as an anorexic in a group home. Not much to say.

So, I'm watching this movie, which stars Robert Pattinson's teeny, tiny nose as the nose of a billionaire riding around New York taking meetings and having sex in his limo all day, and I'm a little put off by how strange, stiff, and mannered the performances are, and how overall pretentious it seems. And as it wears on, I have to admit, there's something well done about it. By the end, which features a soliloquy by a madman of a lengthy that would have been incredibly tedious if anyone but Paul Giamatti had attempted it, but instead works incredibly well and is one of his shining moments as an actor as well as an all-around cinematically impressive scene, I had to admit I liked it in spite of myself. And then the credits roll, and: directed by David Cronenberg. A-ha! That's my boy, sneaking one past me by creating what…

Mom tries to cross zombie-infested Los Angeles to find her daughter. The Walking Dead, except with fast zombies instead of slow zombies, and any plot considerations totally replaced by people shooting each other. I can't even figure out how everybody got a gun — everybody has one, but I never heard anybody say, "Here, have a gun" or "Hey, I found some guns!" They're all assault rifles, too. UPDATE: I don't know if I'm watching a remake or an expanded cut or a new season or whatever, but it's much better than this original review. Maybe I missed a couple of episodes on the first view? Worst episodes are still like halfway decent walking dead episodes, but some of them are quieter, almost black mirror-style (in terms of mood) vingettes, more realism than a lot of zombie fare, and everybody definitely doesn't have a gun now. There's a weird "Lord…

Joe Dante in "workmanlike mainstream director" mode. A woman with psychic powers is drawn in to a murder trial and followup investigation in this dirtbag rural whodunit. I find it hard to buy a town full of "rednecks" played almost entirely by recognizable A-list celebrities: Keanu Reeves, Hillary Swank, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, Blake Lively, JK Simmons. I could buy maybe one or two of these people as rednecks talking with fake southern accents, but, all of them?

As Kat Dennings's likeability is to Jay Baruchel's, and Los Angeles is to Vancouver, so is Dollface to Man Seeking Woman. Which is to say, it's pretty good, entertaining enough.

A pleasant enough way to kill an hour and a half, with Charlize Theron as a gorgeous prom queen returned to her small home town to reclaim her gorgeous prom king, now happily married and with a new child, in a fairly pitch-perfect and nuanced performance s a clueless narcissist who remains steadfastly oblivious to what's really happening around her. Also stars Patton Oswalt as, surprisingly, a pointedly non-gorgeous Star Wars-loving nerd, which you may consider a plus or a minus according to your own tastes at this point.

Eli Roth, once again showing his ability to waste his more than adequate filmmaking skills on torture porn the sake of nothing but torture porn, technically well-done but with nothing to actually redeem it beyond the extent to which you enjoy obscenely unflinching brutality, and no originality, only novelty in persuit of the same, just a masterful abilty at repeating the exact sort of think he's seen before, tweaked just enough to be a different movie. Even the name is ripped off from a device used in the genuine gore classic "Cannibal Holocaust". Plus, despite showing the most graphic violence imaginable, he studiosly avoids showing so much as a nipple during this films more than an hour of showing "amazonian natives" running wild. I have to imagine there's an x-rated cut of this floating around somewhere, and honestly, I'd respect that more than this. You want to be genuinely transgressive,…

I'm generally not a fan of "so bad it's good" films, but, my god. Except for the White Zombie-sounding tracks in the otherwise analog synth soundtrack, this 2017 film is a note-perfect simulation of gloriously over-the-top 1980s USA Up All Nite-style supernatural gorefest fare. Two gorgeous secret agents descend into a prison modeled after Dante's Inferno and full of psychotic and/or supernatural killers. Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Adrienne Barbeau, Dee Wallace, Michael Berryman, and every one of them chewing the scenery like they're loving every minute of it ... this one is kind of the exception that proves the rule. It's very, very hard to make a camp movie like this that I can sit through, but this one takes it so far, and takes itself so ridiculously seriously, that it accomplishes what few can. I would never recommend this as a movie for anyone else to watch, but for…

What promises to be a total crap thriller about a young girl being pursued by a supernatural force after a "Bloody Mary"-type teenagers-foolishly-test-a-superstition-that-turns-out-to-be-true incident actually turns out to be a pretty decent, well-made supernatural thriller. Maybe it has something to do with being a British film. I'm starting to get the impression that Katee Sakhoff has some basic standards as to what she'll appear in... I don't believe I've ever seen her in something that wasn't at least alright.

Robin Wright in a 1/3-live action, 2/3-animated film about, um, I'm not really sure. Something about actors being digitized, and then about people taking chemicals made by the movie studios that let them live in a cartoon world. The animation is a stupendous take on vintage Paramount style but this might be the most tendentious film I've ever seen. It desperately wants to mean something, I'm probably supposed to conclude something from the nonstop over-the-top sentimentality about Wright wanting to see her disabled son, but either it misses the mark or I just don't get it. The "From the story by Stanislaw Lem" end credit makes head-smackingly perfect sense.

In the genre of "family moves into a home without knowing there's someone living inside the walls" thrillers, this one is easily forgettable. The problem isn't that it's bad, but that it's thoroughly mediocre.

Taken in yet again by Netflix's tendency to confuse "indie" for "comedy", and movies starring the likes of Amy Adams and Embeth Davidtz for "indie". In this case, acceptable enough entertainment that even the ordinarily-intolerable use of phony southern accents doesn't make it too unwatchable. City-slicker art dealer accompanies husband to visit his family in North Carolina while on a trip to secure the right to represent a possibly insane folk artist primarily characterized by obsessions with the Civil War and penises, and a totally implausible and possibly completely made-up accent.

Hardly worth dignifying with a review, except I don't want to someday accidentally think I didn't watch it and start it again. Family invites "Pilgrim Reenactors" to throw their thanksgiving dinner, who wind up inviting "friends" and eventually turn out to be murderous, because, movie. This would be a torture porn gore flick if it was gross instead of silly, or a horror comedy if it was funny. Man, these Hulu "Into The Dark" things could not be more scattershot in terms of quality.

Continuing the tradition of pretty good thrillers set in elevators, two young professionals are the last to leave the building before a long weekend when the elevator breaks down. Alright, entertaning enough... starts slow but builds pretty effectively. Plays out well as a drama, and some unexpected poetic moments in the third act. ... Ok, wow, turns out this, too, is part of "Into The Dark". Definitely the best one of the series, by far. Much better activing, production values, pacing, everything. Like a real movie. (Edit: in a recurring theme for things I think are slightly better installments of ongoing franchises, turns out this was widely panned. I have no idea why.)

Uh-oh. Another of those kinds of movie that I like but I bet most people didn't: the entire film is a group of people having a conversation. It takes place almost entirely in one room. A college professor, reluctantly attending his own going-away party before moving on to his next job, confesses to a group of colleagues that he is immortal and has lived for 14,000. Cue 90 minutes of cerebral and, to me, well-done and interesting conversation among academic types of varying degrees of skepticism (and one unfortunate cliched religious zealot, my sole gripe with the film, only because, as here, they're all too often a cheap way of perfunctorily adding conflict), exploring all the different angles of this. For a completely unrealistic premise, I think the conversation, and the main character's takes on things, are very realistic and well thought-out along the lines of what an actual, realistic…

This one was good enough that I didn't realize it was part of Hulu's "Into The Dark" series, although the weak ending betrays it. It was directed by the same guy that did "I'm Just Fucking With You", the only one of the series that I really liked. Grieving father and his daughters go out to the desert in their Airstream to spread his wife's ashes. What starts off seeming like a "locals torment visitors out in the sticks" story turns out to be something much different, and nowhere near as cliche. If they had come up with a satisfactory ending, the whole thing would have really worked.

Turgid pacing in the first half nearly kills this sci-fi outing. An acceptable second half, with truly beautiful visuals, is still not quite strong enough to be worth waiting for. An alcoholic who resembles my long-lost friend Greg Van Ness is selected by a scientist to save the world from an incoming gamma ray burst by first having mind control devices implanted into him, and goading him (much too slowly) into an accident that gives him god-like powers. I googled afterwards, turns out this is the first directorial outing from a guy who did visual effects on a bunch of big, cosmic superhero movies. Makes sense. The VFX are great. He should do music videos.