Archives: Movie Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ok, bear with me... Small-town police and citizens in the autralian outback deal with an infection of alien parasites that turn the locals homicidal, in this hybrid of "30 Days Of Night" and "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers". Now, that could go a lot of ways, most of them not so good. But, this film wisely goes the low-key, low-special effects, acting-driven route that I tend to like so well. In the third act, it does begin to pile on the special effects and devolve into an action thriller, but, hey, it sustained my interest for long enough to count as likable, and it still manages to seem fresh in some ways straight through to the end.

Surprisingly not terrible thriller about a gorgeous autistic kid who secretly films gorgeous guests in the hotel he works at in order to learn to mimic ordinary social cues, when he witnesses a murder. Better, and better-done, than that setup suggested to me, although somehow the entire cast looks like they've had botched plastic surgery, which bothered me from start to finish.

"The Prophecy", or some similar horseshit. Plot, just so I remember not to watch this again, is: God decides to wipe out mankind and sends the heavenly host to wipe out the Messiah, currently gestating in the belly of a waitress in a greasy spoon in the Arizona desert. Actually the first half or so wasn't bad, kind of similar to a less-cheezy "From Dusk Till Dawn" kind of aesthetic. But then you get buff dudes with wings swordfighting or some shit, and I get bored. You know, you'd expect an epic supernatural battle over the fate of mankind to involve something less mundane than fists, bullets, and teeth.

Ok... college kids in bikinis, weekend waterskiing vacation at the lake, mean redneck locals, sharks. That's all you need to know, except that it distinguishes itself by incorporating the nuttiest revenge plan ever, and also, by netting Donal Logue to play the sheriff. He must've liked the script. The digital sharks are pretty well-done, too, that sort of thing is getting better.

Kyle McLachlan actually turns in a kind of intense performance in the most contrived drama I've ever seen. In a town where everybody is apparently always as big a dick as possible to everybody they meet — apparently solely as a means to create dramatic tension — society cinematically falls completely apart when there's an ordinary blackout, as gun store owners raise prices 300%, people start looting, threatening, and shooting at each other. Strong performances make this enjoyable despite the ridiculous premise (and strange saturated color palette for what wants desperately to be a very bleak drama.)

Early Chris Pratt and some other goofy handsome guy with a bunch of minor celebrity cameos. Two guys get stuck in a magic porn booth that transports them to an alternate universe where real life is like a porn film. They actually stretch the joke for an admirably long time, and really nail some of the "porn film" acting and dialogue, including a stereotypical cop who speaks in nothing but cliches. It could have been way worse.

Decent enough haunted plane movie. Takes forever to get going. Guy dies mysteriously on a plane, and haunted hell brakes loose. Lots of fridge logic but creepy enough in the moment. Last 2 minutes make no sense at all but fortunatly it's pretty much wrapped up by then. Amy Smart and Leslie Bibb.

Chris Pine and Piper Perabo in an alright post-viral-apocalyptic road pic where everybody who's not in hazmat suits is gorgeous, if you like post-viral-apocalyptic road pics or Chris Pine or Piper Perabo or films where everybody who's not in hazmat suits is gorgeous.

Maybe the stupidest movie I've ever seen. A truly terrible, derivative slasher movie about a gorgeous cam girl staying at a cabin who keeps getting startled by unexpected gorgeous neighbors and handyman, spliced together for no reason at all except maybe to lengthen this to feature length with a fake reality show starring an unfortunately real Paris Hilton about a bunch of reality show dbags living in a house together. Then the end it suddenly tries to get meta, tying both stories together in the stupidest and least believable way imaginable, followed by a rap song about "hoes at the party". Also guest stars one of those plastic, hyperinflated '80s bimbettes as an ostensibly gorgeous sheriff.

TV-movie-quality throwaway flick about a woman whose daughter gets bit by a rattlesnake out in the desert, and is helped by a strange old woman in a nearby trailer which vanishes afterwards. Later, mysterious strangers tell her she must take a soul for the one that has been saved, otherwise the kid's fatal injury will revert, and she must do it before sunset, because, movie, obviously. Eventually she kills someone and her kid is safe. Who was that old woman? What strange power is behind this ordeal? It doesn't matter, and it'd better not, because we never find out.