The Red Book Ritual: Gates of Hell
Terrible horror anthology, just total garbage. One or two of the shorts actually have their brief moments but it's not worth sitting through this.
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Black Goat
Oddly charming zero-budget amateur folk horror. English film in which locals encounter supernatural occurrences and a horned apparition in the woods. New film but feels like it was filmed on 16mm in 1978. Not sure why I liked it, by all rights I shouldn't have, but sometimes these little zero-budget efforts are, as I said, oddly charming, even if they're really bad.
Predestination
Well-done time-travel sci-fi based closely on the Heinlein story "All You Zombies". Ethan Hawke as a "Temporal Agent" sent back to the 1970s to foil a bomber. Good enough that I'm not going to reveal my one minor disappointment with it because that involves spoilers. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's one of the greats, but it's well-made and well-acted.
A44
Just terrible, home-made zombie movie, which I found weirdly kind of fun because the people (probably friends of the director) try so damn hard to pull it off, even though they clearly have no hope at all of this being a good movie. They really do try though.
Goodbye World
Reasonably decent postapocalyptic drama focusing on relationships among a group of people living in a remote cabin after martial law is declared in the US. Gaby Hoffman & friends. Nothing special, never would say go out of your way to see it, but not terrible, somewhat watchable if you have to kill 90 minutes.
Miami Vice (TV Series)
Surprisingly enough, the first few episodes of this show are pretty good, definitely a better cop show than I remembered.
Unfortunately, though, I suffer from OCD, and I know from experience that if I watch this long enough, one of these 80s songs is going to get stuck in my head for 4 months. It's not worth that.
So I turned it off.
Too bad though, if not for that I would have stuck it out.
The Evil Inside Her
Absolutely pointless horror thriller in which Eric Roberts poisons a tourist's coffee to drive her insane so she stalks and kills her friends on a trip to a remote cabin, because, movie.
The Maddening
Made-for-TV-movie-quality '90s direct-to-video. Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson ham it up as a deranged older couple who kidnap and imprison a young woman and hr daughter in their rural house because, movie.
Porno (2019)
Some horror movies are scary, some are just fun. Both are equally hard to pull off. This one is totally fun.
It plays like a comedy-horror but really is just straight horror. A group of christian teens in a small-town movie theater discover a porno flick in a walled-off lair in the basement that sets loose a succubus. And as silly as that sounds, it's hard to the good end of what such a silly conceit could have turned out to be.
No, it's good! Really! It doesn't aim any higher than it needs to—nobody will ever accuse this of being a great movie—but it aims to be a good, if slightly silly one, and succeeds far better than it has a right to. Good production values and acting, as well as a few deft touches and moments of well-done tension, save it from being a relentlessly silly endeavor. It…
The Conspiracy
"Eyes Wide Shut" filmed as "The Blair Witch Project", except less.
Not the worst first-person shooter I've ever seen, not absolutely execrable like many, but without much more justification for existing than most of those movies.
ZEF: The Story Of Die Antwoord
Pretty decent documentary about a rap band I've always found visually compelling and musically and personally detestable. If you've ever felt compelled to sit through their videos despite entirely disliking the songs, this is pretty watchable. Also, there's some bits where they actually drop the whole pretense and just talk about things like normal human beings, in odd moments here and there. Pretty good exploration of their background and what they're trying to do, not just fan service, although there's plenty of that too. Came away feeling like they're actually pretty decent showmen and visual artists, or at least, visual stylists, and personally maybe a hair less vacantly pretentious than I thought.
Bucky Larsen: Born To Be A Star
Typically stupid, over-broad Adam Sandler/Farrelly Brothers-type fare for people who find dick jokes, fart jokes, and people getting hit with semen funny, with unredeeming cameos from such comedy non-phenomenons as Kevin Nealon and Pauly Shore. If you think the idea of Nick Swardson as a adult-who-acts-like-a-child getting an Adult Video Awards award for "best taint" is hilarious, you are this movie's target audience. Just keep me out of it.
Christina Ricci is appealing in it, though. She can play a sunny disposition surprisingly well.
The Wave (2019)
Playing like a combination of After Hours, Office Space, Altered States, and just a touch of Donnie Darko, this movie has Justin Long in an unusually frenetic variation of his usual nebbishy character, as an amoral and mercenary low-level lawyer for a big insurance firm, who goes to the wrong party, meets the wrong guy, and gets fed a mysterious hallucinogen that abruptly unmoors him in time and space during the most important day of his adult life, sending him careening back and forth across the paths of comically disreputable characters and friends and loved ones who no longer trust him.
It could have gone so wrong, and ultimately fallen apart, relied on contrived strangeness instead of story. But, it doesn't! Even though the film eventually fails to keep from telegraphing where it's going, it manages to balance out what could have turned into self-indulgent weirdness for it's own…
I Saw The TV Glow
A really interesting failure for sure. A cinematically beautiful fantasy/horror film that seems like it's going to successfully hover just barely on the right side of the line between interesting and pretentious indie artsiness, as it follows the lives at several different people between adolescence on young adulthood of a pair of outcasts who are fans of a surreal children's show called "The Pink Opaque", which may or may not be leaving the screen and affecting their lives.
I say "may or may not" not to be mysterious, but because the plot unfortunately falls apart in the third act and just succumbs to overproduced indie pretentiousness, and I really don't know what happens. Which is a shame, because it's pretty well done before that, and visually very nice to watch throughout.
I would really like to put this under "Je Nais Se Quois" because it really seems for…
In Furs
Incomprehensible home-movie-quality attempt at some sort of horror. Guy does drugs and freaks out or hallucinates or something. No acting, lighting, or talent to be found anywhere near this endeavor. Thankfully only an hour long.
Sunset On The River Styx
Morose slackers in LA morosely slack around, until somewhere in the middle of a bunch of jump cuts and editing effects it turns out to be about a suicide cult or alternate realities or vampires or something?
Let’s Dream
Nicely atmospheric but pretentious and dreadfully slow film. I can't even tell you what it's about. It opens with a man saying he hasn't slept since he was 7 years old, but after that... so slow, I couldn't focus on it. I think maybe it's supposed to be artistic?
I lasted about an hour before I felt like watching a movie.
Spree
My favorite thing: a "horror movie" about a social media "influencer", shown entirely through phone screen views and security cameras. Psychotic influencer and rideshare driver (another thing we never need another horror movie about) kills passengers in hopes of views.
Weird one, though: a lot of famous faces, including that likeable guy from "Stranger Things" with the rectangular face, Mischa Barton, SNL's Sasheer Zamata and Mikey Day. Decently well-made for what it is. And rectangular-face-guy, as the psycho, does such a convincing job of being a shallow, annoying "influencer" that he's totally believable. The annoyingness is real!
This is like Hollywood's idea of "twisted enough to be cool"—hits all the numbers and hits them well, yet, is fake and shallow enough to fail to satisfy, and doesn't go far enough to actually be shocking. It's like the whole movie is in ironic scare quotes. Which may be the point.…
The Dead Guy
Weirdly charming zero-budget amateur "horror" in which an FBI agent with the power to talk to the dead spends the whole movie talking to the dead and literally doing nothing else. Seems like a likeable guy, though.
Chappie
Sci-fi-ish action/adventure supposedly starring Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, but actually, it's Die Antwoord steals "Robocop" and does about what you'd expect with him. No, really, it's actually them, playing themselves. It was kind of fun, better than I expected.
Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon
Sort of a fun horror/fantasy/crime thriller about an escaped mental patient with mind control powers on the run from the law among strippers and drug dealers in the seedy underbelly of New Orleans. Stars Craig Robinson as the lead cop, refreshingly actually playing a role, and not just himself. Nice to see that.
Dead Like Me (TV series)
Fun magical-realist series about an 18-year-old girl struck down by satellite debris falling from space who joins a team of "reapers", undead people tasked with helping doomed souls depart their bodies painlessly before death. Oh, she also works at a temp agency by day. And the "reapers" hang out at a restaurant called "Der Waffle Haus". It's kinda fun. Created by Bryan Fuller, who also made similar short-lived but fun magical-realist shows "Pushing Daisies" and "Wonderfalls". Plus has Mandy Patinkin, who I always like, as the boss of the reaper team.
Inmate Zero
Surprisingly solid zombie action thriller about a zombie outbreak in a prison. With this clichéd title and that plot synopsis I expected total crap, but, surprise, it's a well-made, atmospheric, tense, fairly tightly made—if not particularly inventive—little splatterfest, more like "28 Days Later" in tone and production than "Return of The Living Dead". Completely lacks 28DL's epic scope and grand storytelling, but definitely feels like they took some cinematography lessons from Danny Boyle and learned well. Watchable if you're in the mood for this sort of thing. Might be a good date movie, if perhaps a little violent and explicitly gory for some.
Warning: panned badly on IMDB, 4.3 stars. I'm not sure why. It's not great by a long shot but it deserves better than that.
Devil’s Pass
Starts off like "The Blair Witch Project" meets the Dyatlov Pass Incident, before taking a hard sci-fi turn in the last act, after it's too late. Not terrible, but, meh. Also briefly mentions the Philadelphia Experiment, which, eh, not as creative is the writer probably thought it was, two cool conspiracy theories somehow add up to less than just one. Directed by Renny Harlin, known for such B fare as "Nightmare On Elm Street 4: Dream Warriors", "Die Hard 2: Die Harder", and "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane", but who's been at this long enough that he ought to aim higher. Actually probably on the better end of "found footage" stuff in that it's not total crap, but, dunno. Wouldn't go out of my way to see it, for sure.
Man Vs
Unremarkable but reasonably entertaining younger cousin to "Predator" benefits from that little touch of Canadian production quality, which, as usual, means it's ever-so-slightly better than it should have been.
Mostly a one man show, as a host of a survival show gets dropped off for 5 days in the northern Ontario wilderness to survive on his own, filming it for his show, as it becomes apparent he's not alone.
Not a great movie by any stretch, and slightly predictable, but benefits a little bit from what it's not: it's not an annoying first-person shooter, they didn't show the monster too early or for too long. Both good decisions that too many filmmakers wouldn't have made that keep it a little more watchable than it would have been otherwise.
Saturday Night Fever
A better movie than you might think considering the best known thing about it is the genre-defining disco soundtrack. John Travolta as a Brooklyn teenager in the '70s who loves going to the disco. More of a character-driven, slice-of-life movie than it gets credit for being. Most strangely, for example, the dancing, featured heavily in the first two acts, doesn't go on to be the film's emotional center, and, refreshingly for the modern viewer, it doesn't end with him winning a big dance contest.
I'm not saying I'd go out of my way to see it, but a lot of critics liked it, and I get that. It's two hours long, and it passes quickly, it's a pretty tight piece of filmmaking.
It probably helps that it's been long enough that we're all thoroughly calloused to how bad disco sucks.
After Yang
Visually gorgeous but perhaps the slowest, talkiest, least engaging nominal sci-fi I've ever seen. Something about a family whose child's AI companion breaks, so a lot of people talk and talk and talk about a lot of things.
Death Becomes Her
Faintly-better-than-it-should be comedy about two viciously competitive women who ingest an immortality potion, allowing them to do greater and greater damage to each other. Primarily saved by nice film-noir type production and good casting: Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, all playing against type, please a cameo role from an effectively creepy Isabella Rossellini.
Van Dyke And Company (TV series)
Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Mary Tyler Moore, Gabe Kaplan, and a bunch of other people who should have known better in a stereotypically cringeworthy, unfunny '70s variety show. I lasted one episode.