Charming, absurdist, somewhat slapstick BBC romantic comedy series about a young man's struggles with his job, immigrant family, and boyfriend. The second season leans harder into outright surreality, and it basically works. I wouldn't say it's a favorite but I enjoyed it, and would have happily watched another season of it.
I rewatched the entire series over a couple of weeks, maybe for the first time since I was a kid, and I was plesantly surprised. It has an old-school "Catskills comedian"-type repartee to it at times, and is definitely often a cut above what you normally think of as a sitcom... definitely fairly intelligent writing, aimed at adults. It has its weak, over-the-top sitcommy tropes, especially throughout the lackluster third season and the last, when every criminal they bring in is some sort of two-dimensional, ridiculous caricature (the guy who thinks he's a werewolf springs to mind as a representative third season example,) but by and large most of its 8 seasons justify why it was well thought of. It's not hilarious, but it's often witty and thoughtful. It's pretty amazing, actually, that they managed to make 8 largely-entertaining seasons set mostly in a single room. Not since "The Honeymooners"…
A grave disappointment that tackles a somewhat familiar theme very well until it suddenly doesn't.
A shy, socially awkward man unexplainedly wakes up in Sydney, Australia to find the rest of humanity has vanished. Over time he finds a few other "survivors", and both his story and their interactions are mostly handled intelligently and with realism, and the many scenes of a totally empty Sydney are effective... until the cliches start showing up, and finally, the movie abruptly ends with an totally unsatisfying "resolution" that tries to sound profound but just comes off inarticulate and never explains most of the narrative loose ends that have accumulated.
It's a shame, because for the first 1/2-2/3, the movie fell unexpectedly enjoyably into the watchable category. But disintegrating in the third act into a mass of never-explained "creepy" plot points and contrived conflicts and then ending with basically a shrug that…
A bunch of terrible, clichéd supposed horror shorts all set on the day of the apocalypse. Whether it's a zombie apocalypse, a nuclear apocalypse, some sort of pandemic of violence, or something else, it can't seem to decide, and a few of them don't even seem related to the theme. Totally amateurish, and terrible even by horror anthology standards. I think this might be just a bunch of youtube shorts collected together into a "movie". Although that may not be fair, as I've seen much better youtube horror shorts than these.
Ugh. Sub-TV-movie-level acting and production, a disjoined opening scene of small town people hunting down and brutally killing people in clown makeup, then 20 minutes of nothing happening as a carful of unrealistic kids discover an abandoned carnival in the desert, I'm not sitting through 90 minutes of this.
Not to be confused with Clown (2014), which I saw a long time ago but haven't reviewed yet, and was bad but reasonably amusing.
Reasonably well-made but tediously derivative and narratively meandering "tribute" to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, set in a desert ghost town instead of a Texas farm. Has a touch of The Wicker Man thrown in for good measure. Cool masks, I'll give it that, but that's just about all it's got. Although, one interesting point: it passes the Bechdel test, and in fact it has two named female BIPOC characters who have a conversation about something other than men, as both the last victim and the lead villain of this large ensemble cast are both women—they have a several-minute conversation about war and social issues, at the phantasmagorical climax of the film no less. So, I guess it's got that, too. I suppose that catapults it into "at least it's different" territory, despite how entirely derivative most of it is—albeit just barely.
I kinda feel like Rob…
Empty torture porn that makes "Funny Games" seem like Dostoevsky. "Based on a true story" slasher pic is just repeated scenes of an improbably handsome "cannibal necrophile psychopath" luring improbably gorgeous "homeless people" to his home and doing about what you'd expect, except sicker. Boring. I gave up about halfway through. Notable primarily for how much every single person in it seems like an actor, and for being oddly well-shot for such a piece of completely unwarranted garbage.
I bet Eli Roth loves this.
I don't know what this is. 20 minutes in, seems like a TV movie-of-the-week. It was labeled "comedy". Turned it off.
A one-note story that seems like a '90s horror anthology TV series episode expanded out to over 100 minutes. A disturbed hairstylist cuts the scalps off her customers and wears them around the house because, I dunno, movie, I guess.
You gotta give 'em points for trying. This is a pretty bad movie, but entertaining for being somewhat imaginative. Set in rural America, a father whose daughter was abducted by an otherworldly force is repeatedly attacked by hallucinatory visualization of himself, his daughter, his dead wife, and rubber suit monsters who reset time and memories every time he makes progress against them. Crossing paths with others who have experienced similar things results in a lot of shotguns being fired at people in rubber monster suits.
An incomprehensible, and incomprehensibly amateurish, Southern Gothic with abysmally lousy acting and editing, every single consumer video editing app special effect except for a star wipe, and, weirdly, noticeably slick visual composition and lighting. Odd.
An entertaining zombie comedy that plays something like "Pleasantville" if it was directed by Tim Burton, or "Lassie" if it was written by George Romero, or just the most twisted Disney picture ever. Small-town politics and "boys life"-type adventures play out in an alternate 1950s where a zombie apocalypse has been overcome with technology that prevents them from wanting to eat living people, resulting in them becoming docile and being adopted as servants or pets. And we all know how reliable technology is...
It's fun, pretty well done, the usual Canadian slight cut above average, and keeps just enough of both the stock zombie film tropes and stock wholesome, saccharine '50s family picture tropes to create amusing irony while it charts its own path.
"Paranormal Activity", except, even less happens.
I didn't think that was possible.
I finally turned it off after an hour.
An odd, slightly above-average slasher flick with a ridiculous premise (and a terrible name). A college student moves into a house full of women where they are always on camera for a porn site, until one unhappy fan discovers the location of the house and massacres them.
I will say this. This movie opens with a well-enough done scene, setting the stage for the later carnage, that I noticed it... it was a little intense and well-made, and unusually dark and disturbing in its violence, for what I expected to be a run-of-the-mill third-rate slasher pic (as most slasher pics are, and the name of this one certainly could lead one to believe it would be.)
This movie continued in that fashion... just a hair better than these movies usually are. There was a little more character development that they usually bother with, and the violence was, at…
A strange and oddly intense little film I just don't know what to make of. A hyperintense psychiatrist comes in to a "wayward girls" school to break down the girls there, and spends 68 minutes getting real close and talking to them in intense tones until their defenses are broken down.
But that's it. You think it's going to be some sort of exploitation flick but it's not. The acting is weird, and it seems like a few times they repeat lines to get multiple takes but just left all the takes in as one take, and everybody is super-arch and intense. They seem to be playing with some fourth-wall stuff, and the shrink (who is also the director) even breaks character and mugs directly for the camera at the end. And there's no plot, really, just intense, getting-in-each-other's-faces talking.
Strange.
The USA-Up-All-Nite-iest movie of all time. Basically a softcore porn, minus the sex scenes, the entire plot of which is: a lonely guy gets an incredibly gorgeous robot maid that he's told will cost "no more or less than you can afford", wears the tiniest french maid outfit ever invented—when she's not peeling it off and just walking around completely naked—and has been programmed to "feel everything a woman does", except, apparently, shame, because as she very obligingly demonstrates whenever she can how capable she is of love and orgasms, it's always accompanied be her falling all over herself to fawningly thank him for how wonderful every little thing he does is. 100% nerdy male fantasy fulfillment. (Until, I guess, the part where it goes haywire and kills him in the end, but I guess they realized they had to include *some* sort of conventional cinematic…
This is one of the worst movies I've ever liked. A group of 20-somethings go on a trip to a cabin in the woods by a lake which is occupied by a monster that makes them want to have sex with each other and then with it. This movie feels like it was written by someone on a drunken bender and then made a bunch of lousy special effects out of papier-mache, and got together a bunch of friends who couldn't act together to film them doing this with a home movie camera.
And yet... there's flashes of talent here. I almost feel like this is the sort of thing where you go back and look at the terrible first amateur movie from a director who went on to great things, and say, "Yeah, you could kind of see the potential, even in this." It reminds me of very…
Straight-up softcore porn. Some bullshit about a woman watching AI-generated porn, when a sleazy male figure appears in them, staring at her, which makes her want to have sex. I have no idea what this was doing on Tubi.
This is a top-notch coming-of-age road trip drama disguised as a horror movie about cannibals. Yep. I don't even know where to begin.
Talk about punching above your weight. This incredibly thoughtful, well-made movie is original, leans poetic, and is much more about character and human interactions than blood and guts, although it has its share of that... it is about cannibals, after all.
The direction, the acting, even the editing, everything about this production is the cut above (no pun intended) that it needed to be in order to pull off a movie on this topic and make it excellent instead of lurid.
I feel like the coming-of-age narrative is not necessarily revelatory, it didn't grip me, which is generally what it takes to make me want to watch something again soon, but that's probably the only flaw that keeps me from putting this in my "honorable…
A surprisingly more-watchable-than-you'd-think teen scream. A busload of jocks stuck in the desert are attacked by the creature from the first Jeepers Creepers. But, by teen scream standards, it's not bad. The confinement to the bus for most of the movie works as a conceit and ads a certain paranoia. Unfortunately, towards the end, it devolves into an action movie—there are lots of guns in this—but for most of it it's better than I expected, and overall, I kind of enjoyed it... for a teen scream.
Should be said, his cameo is so short I actually missed it entirely, but has a brief appearance by Ray Wise, which somehow makes sense. The guy's never been in anything that wasn't in some minor way interesting, except for "The Blue Rose".
This entry in the "something's wrong with the children" horror subgenre is demented. It seems in terms of story and production like a scary movie aimed solidly at children, and yet, it's far too scary for any child. And it's strange enough, and likable enough just for so thoroughly being what it is, that I'm reluctant to give away any spoilers.
It gets undeniable points for originality—if nothing else, what's wrong with the children in this one being different from what's wrong with them in any other film like this. I don't know who looked at a children's playground and saw, in their mind, the idea for this movie, but to them I say, bravo for being so weird... weird enough that I don't even want to give away any more details of the conceit than I have.
Truly, the whole endeavor is just a little bizarre, and it's…
One of the worst-written movies I've ever seen. A couple rents a cabin where there is a locked door they've been told not to open. From there, they spend half the movie arguing amidst a completely unexplained growing obsession with what's behind the door, then completely unexplained "scary" tropes occur, then they are found dead by they handyman, end of movie. Some of the worst attempts at dialogue and plotting I've ever seen... it's like these people didn't just have no idea what they were doing, you can't even say they failed, because unlike most bad movies, it seemed like they didn't even any idea how to try. I have no idea what they were shooting for other than "creepy unexplained stuff happens".
Billed as a "horror" take on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, but it's just not. It's more like an episode of Fantasy Island without da plane or Mr Roarke or Tattoo. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what it's like.
But, I dunno, I sorta like that it exists? I mean, who makes a movie like this?
More of an action movie than a horror film. Supernatural thrills as two tough-as-nails brothers shoot off a whole lot of guns while trapped at a remote ranch with some sort of tough-as-nails Nazi demon who has trapped a German family and prevented them from aging since WWII. It's a supernatural horror film like "Predator" is a sci-fi film... not really, but, close enough for some people.
It was fun, though. Good special effects at points. It's overwrought in a positive manner reminiscent of some of Clive Barker's more fun films, and production quality was alright, they obviously spent some money on this and hired some talented people to get it done.
Not a great movie, I wouldn't say go out of your way to see it, but I enjoyed it well enough for 90 minutes of escapism. I wouldn't call it watchable for people who aren't up…
Well-shot but otherwise pointless hodgepodge of horror tropes strung together with little explanation, as two women hikers stranded at a legendary "lost" cabin slowly lose their minds and see "scary" things, one after another, for an hour and a half, swing what is obviously a plastic axe at each other, and build up to plot twists that Stevie Wonder could spot from a mile away. Lousy editing, lousy writing, and the acting isn't good enough to pull off a convincing descent into madness.
Almost bad enough to be good, as it got so silly at one point in the middle that I nearly laughed aloud at something that was supposed to be "scary", but it couldn't even maintain that.
It's too bad. I wanted to like it. The cinematography isn't great, but it's slightly above average, which usually is a sign of something better than this.
Somewhat derivative but reasonably watcable sci-fi thriller. In a world that is "The Walking Dead" with an ecological apocalypse instead of a zombie one, the remains of the government live in an artificial underground town somewhere between "Wayward Pines" and "The Truman Show", where everybody just loves crappy '80s Top 40 music.
The first season is a straight government/secret agent whodunnit thriller with a slight spritz of sci-fi, the second is a little more expansive, showing more of the world and the lead-up to the ecological disaster (refreshingly, a fairly well-done global tsunami and weather crisis caused by a volcanic eruption in Antarctica, not the result of human foolishness.) I enjoyed the second season a little bit more, although they're both decent at worst...
...except...
...for the '80s music. It's intrusive, and initially, very annoying, particularly that many episodes end with gratuitous, grating "slowcore", alt-folk, or dreary…
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.
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.
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