Subfolders
Latest "Movie Reviews" Articles
Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

The Last Amityville Movie

I call this the"Reuben Sandwich"of movies. I was at a deli once, and I looked at a Reuben Sandwich. It was corned beef, sauer kraut, russian dressing, and swiss cheese, on pumpernickel. I was like,"Oh my god, it's everything I hate in one sandwich. I must try this."And I liked it! This movie is like that. Found footage, perhaps the lowest budget movie I've ever seen—seriously I'd be surprised if they spent $150 on this, it seems like a guy shot out an email to a bunch of his friends saying,"You want to be in a movie? Here's your lines. You can do it from home, I'll just film us all on a zoom call", it's a"horror comedy"starring hipsters, no lighting design to speak of, features social media, looks like it was shot on a phone. Everything I hate in one movie! And you know what? I enjoyed it! It's sincere. It's like if"Paranormal Activity"wasn't so pretentious and had the good sense to just be a little silly and have some fun. Guy sits around the house, things go bump in the night, and the day. His friends explode during a zoom call. A ghost that looks like his wife in stage makeup makeup tries to lure him into a closet, which he deals with matter-of-factly:"I know you're not my wife, I just talked to her on the phone. And I wouldn't let my real wife lure me into a closet. Wait, yeah, I probably would. But that's besides the point."There's an unexplained monster. But, along the way, he has one good idea: what if there's a sinister reason why horror movies,"Amityville"in particular, spin off into endless ridiculous franchises? And: can he put a stop to it? I enjoyed this the way I'd enjoy a friend's jokey home movie if I was in on the joke. Don't expect any better than that, though.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9996  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Trash

The Devil’s Work

A couple is in a house and the woman's sister shows up soaked in blood and carrying a hammer, and walks around outside the house looking creepy. There might be more, but 50 minutes into it that's all that had happened so far, and I got bored and turned it off.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9991  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Canadian

Deadbolt

alright indie thriller. Young woman escaping a bad relationship moves into a supposedly haunted house in a bad neighborhood with an overly clingy roommate, and things get weird. Could have been terrible but a couple of above-average performances put it just a touch above complete mediocrity. Canadian, not so Canadian (in the usual good way) that I'd have guessed, but it does make sense. Kind of succeeds by not overreaching for more than it can accomplish, sometimes you have to admire something just for managing not to be bad, which this does manage. Better writing would have helped even more.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9989  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Trash

Ouija Clown

literally a horror movie written, and I assume mostly improvised in an evening, by an 11 year old girl. I assume this is a home movie that somehow got posted on Tubi. It even sounds like it was recorded on a phone, with a lot of the speech unintelligible. After about 15 minutes of watching them put on makeup and preen I turned it off.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9983  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Honorable Mention

Don’t Breathe

Sometimes I see a flick that should have been a tedious captivity flick but they actually pull it off. This one is one of those. Gang of kids go to rob a blind guy's house, thinking it will be easy.... they're very wrong. Definitely original, with good enough casting, acting, and production to pull it off. Not great by a long shot but for one of these movies to even stand out as not being garbage is impressive. It kind of held my attention, which is incredibly rare for these kinds of exercised. I would say if you're only going to watch one pursuit/captivity flick in your life, this might be a contender. It's got 88% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, and while I might not go that far on an absolute basis, it makes some sense, and grading on a curve with most of these kinds of movies, I definitely would give it at least that. (Note: closing credits say produced by Sam Raimi. A-ha. And, hold cow, I didn't even recognize Jane Levy with her hair bleached blonde as the lead.)
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9981  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Honorable Mention

The Thing (aka”The Thing From Another World”)

What can I say? It's a classic. Modern sci-fi/horror/action movie buffs will probably wonder why people once thought this was so great, and it's probably for me not even on par with"The Blob"(a surprisingly good movie for the era and subject matter) but still, for 1951, I can see the appeal, it was probably pretty unlike anything that had been seen at the time. I enjoyed it for sure.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9977  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

The Jokesters

Is it just me, or are first-person shooters getting even worse? Here, an intolerable"Jackass"-style YouTube film crew (great, another first-person shooter AND anpther horror movie about social media) goes to convince one of their members, who is on his honeymoon at, just because there aren't enough cliches, a cabin in the woods. Pranks appearing to go awry are revealed to be actually pranks themselves, until one decides to actually start murdering the others. Don't worry, I didn't spoil it, it's nowhere near as cool as the idea sounds. Add in the usual lousy improv acting, way too many scenes of boring daily life before the action begins, cameras that magically start and stop with the states of consciousness of the people being films, etc.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9975  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

A Stranger In The Woods

A first person shooter that falls into the common 1PS trap of way too much exposition before anything interesting happens, and stretches it out so that takes up 4/5 of the movie, as a film student goes out to interview a reclusive old man at his remote house, with long over-the-shoulder shots of the tediously uninteresting interview scenes in which nothing happens and the student's words are barely audible, and then, spends the last 1/5 just plain not making any sense at all.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9957  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

The Lurking Fear

Ok, couldn't have sounded less promising."When a TV crew shoots a reality show at an abandoned mental institution, they encounter a horde of demons, leading to a bloody fight for survival". But, then, I see Michael Madsen is in it. He has a glorified cameo as a smalltown sheriff for 15-20 minutes at the beginning. But, then, I notice something: for a movie that is basically what you'd expect from people wandering around a darkened abandoned building being attacked by actors in pancake makeup... it was actually alright. I don't really go for gore flicks, and it was super cheezy, but it was kind of good within those constraints. And then, instead of ending where most movies would, when the final girl escapes the asylum, it keeps going, and lets Michael Madsen come back to chew the scenery for a pretty brutal final act, elevating it to actually an alright Giallo-type flick. It's kind of weird and extreme and absolutely not subtle in any way, very much whatever the opposite of subtle is. I'm not a huge fan of Giallo, I mostly like it ok but don't love it, but if you're a Giallo fan, I might even say if you can put up with how long this takes to rise just a hair above the crowd, it might actually be worth seeking it out. I see it has a 2.5 out of 10 stars on IMDB, which makes sense, but, still. I might even watch it again someday, which is more than I can say for most of the crap horror films on Tubi.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9959  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Canadian

Invited

So, ok, weird. Young woman disappears, then suddenly invites her family to a zoom call of her wedding with her creepy new fiancee. But: First off, this entire movie is a zoom call. The acting is terrible. Major developments are telegraphed and predictable. So, overall all the ingredients of a terrible horror movie. But: the pacing is good. Somehow, despite the terrible acting and the utter lack of motion as the entire movie is a screenshot, tension is built kind of effectively. That, and only that, elevates it very slightly above what it looks like it's going to be. I still wouldn't, say, recommend it, but apparently found-footage horror fans (a phenomenon I don't understand; to me"found footage fan"is an oxymoron) really like this one, and I get it. Plus it's not really found footage. (Note: on subsequent research, this is a Canadian film. Ok, pretty poor showing for indie Canadian fare, it explains why it's a tiny above bottom of the barrel instead of wallowing at the very bottom.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9954  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Urge

Ha. Ha ha. Danny Masterson produced and starred in this, well, not exactly teen-scream flick, but mid-20s-scream flick? A group of gorgeous rich, callow friends get together on a luxury resort island and are introduced to a drug that removes all inhibitions, with the admonition"You can only do it once. In your life."From these predictable beginnings grows a film that actually has it's moments, in a cheap, Hollywood way... it reminded me of"Disturbing Behavior"in that way of basically being bad and predictable but was elevated by being rather consistent and having a few moments that went above and beyond what they needed to. It rises to some moments of surprising brutality for a flick full of Hollywood b-listers (Ashley Greene as the female lead, too.) The ending strives for some sort of greater significance and falls flat, but overall, again like"Disturbing Behavior", if you're going to watch a shitty movie, they come far shittier and slightly less clever than this. I could see watching it again sometime when I'm bored a few years from now if it comes up.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9949  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

The Tangle

A pleasant surprise. This nominal speculative sci-fi indie is set in the near future when the internet has evolved into"the tangle", a global swarm of nanobots keeping everybody's brains connected all the time, as well as infecting their bodies to prevent them from being able to commit violence. But the pleasant surprise comes from a few solid acting performances, cinematography, and direction, and the fact this it's a fake-out: it's a solid updating of '40s-style film noir stle that only uses sci-fi as a plot device, and even has nods to '40s fashions along with the film noir cinematography. I wouldn't say it's great, not sure I'd watch it again, but it was way better most unknown Tubi fare. Definitely an interesting enough way to occupy 90 minutes. Perhaps even worth remembering.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9948  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Mystery Spot

What a weird movie. A motel with the ruins of a burned-down"Mystery Spot"tourist trap out back draws strange clientele: A man rents a room and spends all afternoon auditioning actors, asking them strange and probing questions. A writer, mourning her husbamd, checks into the next room. A policeman apparently lives in the parking lot, watching the filmmaker to try to figure out what he's doing. Now, make no mistake: this is a bad movie. It's poorly written. It's mostly poorly acted. It's a bad indie film. But, for that: it's pretty good. Most importantly, the leads, the filmmaker and the writer, are really good actors, far better than you usually see in this sort of thing. About halfway through the movie, they get a long scene just talking, getting to know each other—pure character development and, it seems to me the sort of thing two skilled actors might have asked the director to put in the movie and let them ad lib, just to give them some real acting to do. And, it kinda works, it elevates the film just a little bit. Plus, although it's really badly written, it's also not particularly derivative or anything I've seen before... maybe it reminds me a tiny bid of"The Lost Room", but it's not even terribly close to that. So: I kinda liked it! It's bad, for sure. But I liked it. If I had seen this on"Chiller Theater"when I was a kid, I probably would have remembered it fondly for decades.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9944  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Enter Nowhere

You know, I kind of liked this movie. It sort of plays, not like a great movie, but like, I dunno, a great episode of"The Outer Limits"(or a very long second- or third-tier episode of"The Twilight Zone".) Three strangers wind up coincidentally stuck at a cabin in the remote woods, and things from there go in a completely different direction than you expect. Basically a drama with fantastic elements as they figure out what's going on—far more"Outer Limits"than"Last House On The Left".
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9943  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Alien Code

Hah! I liked this. Thoroughly amateurish time thriller about a hipster playing a very improbably cryptographer who decodes a message for the NSA and begins to see giant Men In Black. Basically bad, strictly amateur hour, but somehow kind of fun, for being that. They really gave it the old college try.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9941  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Favorite

Yellowbrickroad [second viewing]

This is a movie that has lived on in my heart, and vividly the corners of my mind, ever since I first saw it—so much so that I had a little bit of trepidation about watching it again. Would it live up to my recollections? The answer: yes, absolutely. This is one of those movies I'm not sure I'd ever recommend to anyone else, but it plucks my strings just right... made with zero budget and very little by way of plot, in terms of story this entire movie is nothing but a group of hikers losing their grip on reality. And the ending is straight-up terrible, no way around it. But the journey there, just the walk in the woods slowly going incomprehensibly wrong, not even for any reason that's ever given, I find just gripping and disturbing. Worth noting, I usually multitask when I'm watching movies, and even on this second viewing this one sucked me in and distracted me from my laptop. Possibly the most disturbing horror movie set mostly in daytime. It's really a movie about losing control, to me a much scarier thing than any monster. This is one of those movies that, while nobody will ever call it a masterpiece—make no mistake, it's a low-budget indie flick from start to finish—but I find (and a lot of reviewers seem to agree with me) something about it is very affecting; it sticks in your mind. It's a quietly-building grotesquerie. I bet Lars von Trier likes it, or would. And I'm reminded of Roger Ebert's review of von Trier's"Antichrist", which essentially says,"I can't say I liked it; but I can't stop thinking about it."This one is the low-budget indie version of that. (EDIT: Googling around, I found this page of extremely polarized comments on Reddit that sum it up nicely: https://www.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/xq7okl/yellowbrickroad/ )
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9942  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Doors

I liked this movie, I bet a lot of people won't though. It's an anthology film, although it doesn't play that way, a few stories around the theme of the sentient black CGI portals appearing around the world. People can enter and leave them but staying too long drives them insane. The portals speak telepathically sometimes. The CGI was actually kind of good for CGI black goo, and the cinematography was really nice, someone is an avid and skilled Kubrick fan.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9940  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

The Taking Of Deborah Logan

Documentary crew filming a woman's decline due to alzheimers discovers supernatural elements and things get worse from there. Soon becomes as tedious to watch as any first-person-shooter, which is a shame, because due to strong acting performances it's a little better than most.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9930  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Honorable Mention

Come Out And Play

Hey, look! It's a good old-fashioned horror movie! If this had come out in the 70s, it'd be a minor classic. It even has the old-school analog synth soundtrack. Vacationing couple gets stuck in an island in Mexico where it turns out the night before all the kids suddenly woke up in the middle of the night and killed all the adults. It's kind of the opposite of"Mom & Dad", or"The Birds"but with children instead of birds. In fact, I'd be surprised if"The Birds"wasn't a conscious influence. But the nice thing is, that's as close as it gets to cliches, excepting the title. Very far from a Hollywood horror movie, that's for sure. Light on gore in terms of screentime devoted to it, but extremely gory in the few brief moments it's shown. Not great by a long stretch, but good, in a way that they don't really make horror movies anymore... definitely only for horror fans, though. Gets pretty brutal by the end, seriously doesn't pull its punches, which, when you consider the bad guys are a bunch of children, is even more brutal. Honorable mention, I think. Looks like the kids probably had a mess of fun making it, too. Amusingly, Wikipedia says this film made a total of about $2500 in theaters. Also, turns out, it's an almost shot-for-shot remake of a 1976 Spanish horror film called"Who Can Kill a Child?"which, really, would be a much better title for what it is. It's funny, because something about it reminded me of Long Weekend, another '70s film which I got turned on to by liking a remake that nobody else cared for.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9928  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Artifice Girl

Not a bad little sci-fi movie. Not great, but definitely not bad. Very talky and geeky but I kind of like that. A man invents an AI 11 year old girl to lure predators online, and then it follows him and the development of the AI over the course of his life, along the way with a lot of very familiar-seeming exposition inquiring into the nature of consciousness and where the line between simulated life and actual life is. Not the most original story, but pretty well told in that talky way that I like my sci-fi. Kind of like a little younger cousin to my big fave"Ex Machina". Bonus: The inventor is played as an old man by Lance Hendriksen, who is the last character to die in the movie, thus finally proving that, while Lance Hendriksen is always the last to die in horror movies, him being the last to die in a movie does not necessarily make it a horror movie.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9929  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Honorable Mention

Time Lapse

A houseful of twentysomethings discovers that their recently deceased neighbor across the street was a scientist who invented a camera that takes polaroids of 24 hours into the future. I've always been fond of this movie. I can't say it's a great movie but it's an ok movie, would have been kind of the sci-fi equivalent of a"teen scream"horror movie, but—despite some serious flaws, such as some flabbiness to the plot involving a bad guy whose performance just screams"miscast hipster actor trying hard to play bad guy"—it's saved by mostly above-average clever ideas and execution, most especially some careful and creative plotting right when it's needed, which gets better as the movie goes on... kind of the reverse of the usual"started good but ran out of steam"problem. I spent the first half of a much later second viewing saying,"This is good, but I'm not sure it's really much better than average"but by the time it was done, it was like, oh, yeah, I did like this for a reason.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9926  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

The Belko Experiment

In this cinematic anti-masterpiece, a corporate headquarters goes on lockdown, and it turns out all the employees have remotely-triggered explosives implanted in their heads, when a voice comes over the loudspeaker and gives them challenges that require them to kill each other or be killed themselves, apparently because, movie. An exceptionally violent, bloody, pointless movie, just violence as entertainment, but, for one of those, actually kind of good cheezy fun. John C. McGinley plays a slightly different character than he usually does, which is fun.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9922  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

Underground [2023]

AVOID. Dreadful first-person shooter spends the from 30 minutes showing girls partying. By 35 minutes they've taken a shortcut through a tunnel and one fell in a hole, but 45 minutes is way too late for the plot to start.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9921  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Nightmare City 2035

Activists try to defeat government-implanted chips that prevent the citizens from seeing that their gorgeous futuristic city is actually a slum. What a funny movie. A 2017 sci-fi B movie that looks for all the world like it's from about 1980 at the latest. Hammy acting, lots of practical and optical effects, sets that look big-budget and actors that look for all the world like Hollywood actors but aren't anybody you've ever heard of. Absolutely crap, derivative, but a little charming in that late-70s-bad-scifi way, and amusing that someone made something like this 10 years into the post-Matrix era.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9915  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

Island Zero

Crusty maine island fishermen, plus a local novelist and a local biologist, confront an unseen monster emerging from the sea. I liked it well enough that I remembered it, can't say much more than that.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9908  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

C.O.R.N.: The Field Of Screams

You know, weirdly, I liked this strictly B-movie. It was sort of a bad movie that's saved by good direction and kind of a weirdly original approach. Brother and sister get trapped in a farm town taken over by rogue artists who do taxidermy on people. I, you know, kind of enjoyed it, which surprised me. Definitely not one I'd go out of my way to see, but kind of fun for a 2nd rate"teen scream"flick.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9906  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Trash

Anna: Scream Queen Killer

Scream Queen Killer: A"scream queen"actress auditioning for a role by doing about 15 minutes of 30 secone takes on various situations, because, I guess, if you only saw her"act like there's an invisible presence in the room for 30 seconds...act like you're turning into a vampire for 30 seconds"for 12 or 13 minutes, the point wouldn't have been made. Fellas, there's editing now. You should use it.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9903  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Bad but I liked it

Alien Weekend

Fun little flick. Sci-fi comedy about a couple of 20-something friends who stumble into some intrigue involving a crashed ufo and a missing alien egg. Reminiscent of quirky indie sci-fi comedies like Buckaroo Bonzai, Repo Man, Bill & Ted, that sort of thing, although it doesn't really rise to anywhere near that level—it's still too much of a teen film for that—but nonetheless, a likable cast and fairly consistently successful comic elements make it a fun view. Definitely doesn't suck. Could maybe be a minor cult favorite, I bet, to people who haven't seen this sort of thing before.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9899  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » Je nais se quois

LX 2048

Takes a while to get going, but sort of fun future technodystopia where a company sells"insurance"where if a spouse dies, you get a clone within 48 hours... with the ability to request small custom improvements, of course. What could go wrong? (Hint: everything.) Not quite the movie it wants to be, padded out with unnecessary secondary ideas that are explored then just dropped, and so takes a little while to get going ... would have been a very good Black Mirror episode, with tighter plotting. At twice that length feels a little long for the idea, but still, I'd give it a 'B'. Reasonably well done, not great but definitely not crap.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9900  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

Nyctophobia

another dreadful first-person shooter that looks like someone had a spare weekend so they decided to make a movie on their iphone with their friends. Nothing happens for 25 minutes, and then all the lights go out, and it's like an hour and a half of people running around a darkened house shouting at each other. That's it. Monsters are heard outside and never seen. Nonstop nauseatingly shaky cellphone-shot video never sits still long enough to see what's going on. Seems like they made it up as they went along. What Hath The Blair Witch Project Wrought?
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9897  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off