Serious but kind of dull ostensible horror about a young girl kidnapped and put to work in a brothel in a war-torn eastern European country. Plays more like a drama than horror, but I guess they spend a lot of the movie chasing her, so it's a pursuit/captivity flick. Seemed well-made but just didn't hold my attention.
Now, this is a uniquely weird movie. A bizarre and gory tale of unseen forces manipulating humans to commit acts of extreme violence is told entirely with human-sized puppets, which are detailed enough to go straight down the uncanny valley: they blink, they appear to have nearly-real-looking human skin with stray hairs and razor stubble, although the facial expressions are largely unchanging. It helps that it's filmed in real locations.
At first it seems like someone knew they had a fair-to-middling-at-best horror sci-fi on their hands so they decided to make the best of it and elevate it into something truly strange, making suspension of disbelief much easier with the puppet-only production. But, boy, the trick kinda worked.
One critic said, "too damn strange to completely ignore", and I agree with that.
To give an idea of what's going on here, turns out some of the characters are…
An assassin uses mind-transfer technology to carry out assassinations with other people's bodies. Decent enough outing from Brandon Cronenberg, who's still got his dad's high-concept pretensions (in a good way) but seems to be getting better at his own execution. A bit slow moving, but fans of his contrived-seeming but reasonably interesting other feature "Antiviral" will be familiar with the pacing. Might not be for everybody, but I found it watchable enough.
Overly amateur production about a recoving alcoholic stressing out during the pandemic, which apparently consists of seeing "artsy" video montages and effects, plus way too many real-life clips of Donald Trump being a dick during the pandemic. I guess they thought we needed to be told he's an asshole.
I lasted over an hour, but with 30 minutes left to go, I gave up.
Forgettable Hollywood B-movie pop horror flick featuring Mischa Barton. People trapped and hunted in a storage facility.
Well-made but irredeemably, genuinely horrible "Funny Games"*-type picture consisting of nothing but brutality as entertainment. Billed as a "black comedy", without a single bit of humor, unless you think violence is funny.
Two down-on-their-luck losers meet a rich couple in a bar who challenge them to an escalating series of repulsive, cruel, and brutally violent dares for massive sums of cash. And that's it, that's all there is. When someone finally wins the final dare, the movie ends with him returning home to his family with the money, and that's it. I supposed it's supposed to read as some sort of redemption that he's sicker than the other guy in how far he's willing to go to save his family's finances. I didn't really see it that way.
David Koechner in the role he was born to play—that's not a good thing—as the leering rich guy.
(*No…
Elijah Wood, whom I always seem to like, goes to visit the father he's never known (Canadian character actor Stephen McHattie from Pontypool and a whole lot more) at his remote coastal Oregon cabin, and after somewhat of a slow start, what seems like it's going to be a horror movie turns into a low-grade but somewhat fun, twisted neo-noir in the post-Tarantino tradition. I liked it fine, no regrets about watching it. I believe neither Wood nor McHattie have yet let me down at this point.
Found-footage crap about a gorgeous mortician who works on the body of serial killer and is possessed by the entity that made him kill and spends the rest of the movie killing whoever shows up, as seen exclusivey through the funeral home's security cameras and the odd number of body cams that everyone in this movie seems to wear for some reason. Actually has one notable gore scene where she slowly enbalms a living person. Might have been a decent exploitation flick, as exploitation flicks go... if they had just bothered to hire a cameraman.
I think this is a softcore porno that somehow wound up on Tubi. Some sort of horror-themed nonsense about a ouija board summoning a 300-year-old witch is a pretext for showing a lot of unnaturally large tits and trashy people talking about screwing, in the lowest-possible home-movie production quality.
I mean, yeah, if you resurrected a busty 300-year-old witch with a ouija board, I'm sure the first thing she would do is stand in the shower caressing her own body, right? That's the level this thing operates on.
I lasted about 45 minutes before turning it off, but truthfully that was only because I was distracted for a lot of that time by looking up naked photos of one of the actresses on the internet.
Hokey C-grade but fun flick that plays like a forgotten vampire TV show pilot. A gorgeous ex-con, down on her luck, gets hired as a chef for private club catering to a clan of vampires and has episodic adventures in between making steak tartare for everyone in the whole damn place every night.
I dunno, I kinda found it entertaining. Not in a way I'd recommend, though.
This is one of the best awful movies I've ever seen. A jilted college student summons a succubus to get revenge on her ex-boyfriend, and then can't stop her from rampaging. An absolutely amateur, zero budget, probably student-run production. But—I liked it! The actors really commit, and it had odd moments of cheeky humor that worked in much the same way as your friend saying something cheeky might work.
And it stayed in its lane: tt didn't get overambitious, it seemed to know it wasn't working with much and did what it could with what little it had. The sum total was that it was kind of charming how bad it was.
Not-as-bad-as-it-should be little indie horror with a fairly original premise: with no explanation, just a statement that it is so, a shapeshifting serial killer must repeatedly kill people and assuming their forms and memories, leaving their desiccated bodies hidden at a remote farm. He falls in love with a young woman and repeatedly tries to insinuate himself into her life, dealing the whole time with the rate at which the bodies he assumes decay.
Not terrible, for what it is. Not that good, but I'll call it "watchable" because it really should have been so much worse.
High-concept British zombie film takes a talky, philosophical approach with the idea that a "zombie virus" infeecting people is actually elevating them to "second generation" life forms, with a desire to eliminate the first generation, only with far less action and many more dark scenes full of quiet conversation than that concept might lead to expect.
It's a Marvel superhero movie.That generally says it all, in my experience.
Somehow these big Marvel superhero movies remind me of Michael Jackson's adult career: get a bunch of big-name luminaries together with a big budget to expertly craft something that screams "blockbuster", and yet still, somehow, manages to be less than the sum of its parts—the writing just isn't exceptional, it's formula dressed up with big names and glitzy production. . And everybody for some reason thinks it's great, except me.
Basically watchable, for a special-effects superhero action blockbuster. But for as much talent was involved in making this movie, that's a crime.
Paint-by-numbers horror flick about a couple raising a young boy who turns out to have horrible powers.
Nothing special, but a somewhat fun little indie sci-fi/horror flick about a gorgeous ranger stationed alone at a remote fire lookout tower for a month when otherworldly things start happening.
A gorgeous programmer living in a remote desert home with her husband begins to hallucinate creepy things. Then there's some sort of satanic ritual, and then we see her absolutely fine. And that's it. It's atmospheric, but just makes no sense.
This is not a very good movie, but, I will say, it's about ten times better than I expected it to be. I never like Kevin James nor the track record of Adam Sandler's production company, that made this, but rather than being the truly stupid pile of garbage I expected, it's actually—once it gets going, which takes quite a while—a moderately watchable B-grade action comedy, if you don't go into it expecting more than that.
I'm really surprised. Never imagined I'd think anywhere nearly that highly of it.
Decent drama about the politics behind a morning news show and the network that puts it on. It's not top-flight entertainment like "The Larry Sanders Show", nor is it a classic behind-the-scenes drama series with memorable characters like "Mad Men" or "The Sopranos"—and it sure isn't even anywhere near in the same league as "Network"—but the acting is good, and the writing is fairly gripping, every time a season ended I wanted it to go on.
Truly harrowing story about the buildup to and aftermath of a nuclear strike on Sheffield, England, following the intertwined lives of several people caught in the attack. This unflinchingly grim take on the short, medium, and eventual long-term personal and social toll of a nuclear strike was, incredibly, originally a TV movie. Like "Testament", another movie on a similar theme that I often mention in the same breath, it is absolutely unsparing. It's a very rough watch but an undeniable classic, and order of magnitude better movie than the contrived, soap-operatic pseudo-relevant "The Day After".
I'm writing this quite some time after last having seen it as I've just realized I somehow have never reviewed it. This movie is a pretty big favorite of mine. I'm not sure I can put it up with my very biggest favorites, but it's damn close.
Decent anthology film showing three stories about survivors after a nuclear strike in modern-day England. It ain't "Threads" (an amazing movie I have somehow, incomprehensibly, not reviewed) but it was watchable.
Tough-as-nails Liam Neeson Liam Neesons around, this time around the Alaskan wilderness as the tough-as-nails leader of a band of tough-as-nails Alaskan workers stranded after a plane crash. Hunted by wolves and bears, dealing with cold and exhaustion, and somehow they manage to take one of my favorite genres—the man-against-nature survival flick—and tough-as-nails it into being completely uninteresting.
An attempt at a poetic ending falls flat as it ends with an anticlimax of Neeson about to fight a wolf one-on-one, and reciting Shakespeare: "Once more into the fray"... and, roll credits without showing the fight or how the story ends. What kind of a viewer they think wants to watch a whole movie of Liam Neeson Liam Neesoning, but then would rather see him quote Shakespeare in the end than fight a wolf, is beyond me. Especiale as he'd just gone to the trouble of duct-taping broken airplane liquor…
Quirky conspiracy-style sci-fi thriller about employees of a company who are psychologically "severed" so their lives outside of and at work have no knowledge of each other. The first season of Severance was plotted so nicely, I was surprised when it ended on a cliffhanger to discover it was a series and not a miniseries drawing to an ending in 8 episodes.
The second season unfortunately tries to be grander in scope, by moving much more of the action out of the office and to a wide-ranging variety of other locations, but succeeds only in being flabbier in terms of storytelling, talkier, slower-moving, and harder to follow, seemingly less interested in worldbuilding and than in contrived "intrigue".
They also start to show the first sign of tired storytelling: bringing in romantic relationships for "drama", as, for instance, the company inexplicably lets an "innie" (an employee's at-work personality) meet…
Kind of an offbeat British/American comedy about an eclectic assortment of characters who become involved with each other in the days before humanity is due to be wiped out by a comet. Jenne Fischer, Rob Lowe, Diana Rigg. I enjoyed it, it was more clever and entertaining than it should have been, and I was disappointed when the first season ended on a cliffhanger and it wasn't picked up for a second.
Alright sci-fi action thriller about a spectacularly gorgeous model (Grace Van Dien, great-granddaughter of Robert Mitchum) who ingests an experimental drug, intended to protect humanity from the increasingly toxic atmosphere, that causes her to undergo strange mutations. Soon the scientists are after her. There's guys with guns, lots of running and jumping.
Surprisingly not bad. Visually well-done, high production values without going too far over the top, and adequate acting to pull it off. Deserves better than the 4.7 stars it has on IMDB, at any rate.
A programmer living in isolation invents an artificially intelligent and thoroughly fake-looking but oddly expressive (thanks to some skilled puppetry) head, and charges it to learn to humanize itself. It then spends the movie slowly going insane. Was actually kind of decent for the first half given the conceit, with some decent takes on familiar "What is human, anyway" tropes—the head wakes him up thinking it saw a face in the closet, which he explains is due to its having successfully inherited the human cognitive ability to recognize faces, even when there isn't really one, a neat idea—although by the second half it kind of runs out of steam and feels kind of perfunctory by the conclusion. Ultimately I can't say I liked it it, which is disappointing, because for a while it was definitely heading that way (no pun intended).
Weirdly OK sci fi flick. In pandemic times, a scientist wakes up imprisoned in a life support unit, and spends the movie wandering a medical-facility-cum-military-installation, uncovering the truth about what's happening to her. Little dialogue and almost no plot, but, visually well done enough to be sort of interesting, I guess, and with touches of fairly disturbing body horror. I didn't hate it, and might actually watch it again at some point to pay a little closer attention.
I really wanted to like this movie. This was recommended to me by a few people in Indieweb when it was October '25 movie of the month for their Indieweb Movie Club blog carnival, hosted by the estimable Benji.
So, it is with some degree of disappointment that I found, not being a child of the '90s and having no sentimental attachment to the excesses of that era (I have the '70s for that, thank you, although I generally don't steer unwitting friends of other generations towards it with any promise that the cheese I happen to love is going to hold any reward for them) that I found this to be an vapid and unredeemable pile of glossy Hollywood garbage.
This movie appears to have been written by a screenwriter who read an article about "hacking" in Newsweek…
Scientist invents a machine that lets him see extradimensional creatures, and it turns out, let them see him. Another cheezy attempt at Lovecraft, this time with way more '80s fashions than any other I've seen, and the requisite over-the-top latex monster applicances. I always feel affection for these because these low-budget Lovecraft efforts always seem to try harder than anybody else to rise to the material, even if they fail. At least they're aiming high.
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