Movie Reviews

This is kind of a masterpiece of crap television. First off, the cast is stellar, the acting is superb. Beyond that? Garbage. I expected a drama, but this is straight melodrama, just a soap opera. It's like Dynasty meets Glee's hip-hop kid sister. As glossy and expertly produced as it is empty and unbelievable. The Glee-style over-autotuned, overcompressed vocals in the frequent musical numbers sums it all up.

Another exercise in tinseltown omphaloskepsis. This one was ok, I guess. Kevin Spacey as a shrink with worse problems than his patients.

You can virtually hear someone watching "The Hunger Games" and thinking, "There's got to be a way I can come up with a franchise that is this same thing, except I get paid for it."

beautifully-shot move about women living in the wilderness as "wives" and "daughters" of a cult leader. Slow-moving. Didn't really follow it. Gorgeous cinematography, though, and spectacular natural locations. Can't imagine where this was shot. Alaska? (Turns out, Ireland.)

Ok, I'm about 15 minutes into this, and it looked like it was going to be a sci-fi thriller or teen scream about some teens d-bags on vacation out in the woods, but we learn in the first 5 minutes that Wesley Snipes is a stereotypical insane-seeming, camo-wearing tough-as-nails vet living in a remote cabin, we see him unloading his gun, and 15 minutes into it it's showing a meeting of tough-as-nails military officials, one of whom has a russian accent. Why do I have a feeling Chekov's rule is going to apply? "If you put Wesley Snipes as a troubled, tough-as-nails gun-toting military vet in act one, you must have him go off as a troubled, tough-as-nails gun-toting military vet in act three." Will check back in when it's done. [Much later note: apparently I never checked back in.]

Taken in yet again by Netflix's tendency to confuse "indie" for "comedy", and movies starring the likes of Amy Adams and Embeth Davidtz for "indie". In this case, acceptable enough entertainment that even the ordinarily-intolerable use of phony southern accents doesn't make it too unwatchable. City-slicker art dealer accompanies husband to visit his family in North Carolina while on a trip to secure the right to represent a possibly insane folk artist primarily characterized by obsessions with the Civil War and penises, and a totally implausible and possibly completely made-up accent.

All style, zero substance. Apparently based on a novel, but I don't see more than a very short story's worth of plot here. A psychopath hires a prostitute played by Mia Wasikowska to his hotel room with the intent of killing her, but it turns out she's crazier than he is. S&M hijinks ensue, she gets him tied up, and that's it. That's the movie. It looks great, though, excellent production.

What a weird movie. A pretty run-of-the-mill bad horror movie that aims far higher than it reaches, about a gorgeous young woman returning to her mother's island home after receiving a call that her mother's grave has been vandalized shortly before the close of the season, only to be stalked and trapped by some kind of supernatural claptrap. However, it looks like it was shot by Jonathan Demme, which elevates it somehow to almost Giallo-like atmospherics. If only the story made sense.

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 Blair Witch Project, but with Bigfoot, and less. BONUS TROPES! "No cell reception", unfriendly locals trying to run them off for unknown reasons, clueless city slickers lost in the woods, "Who messed with our campsite?", camera conspicuously running when it doens't need to be, "That's the same tree, we went in a circle!", all the cliches. Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, who apparently somehow, amazingly, didn't know better. Oh, also, the protagonists waste too much time talking about their relationship, which is always great cinematic entertainment. No, seriously, this is the worst-paced movie I've ever seen. Ok, they hear something outside in the woods, outside the tent. Does that require seeing them sit there listening in the dark for literally 20 straight minutes?

Incredibly handsome English guys go off-trail and get lost in the woods (England? Sweden? I missed it). Vacation gone wrong. stalked through the woods, captivity, scary house in the woods, besieged by rednecks, but also a monster movie (only partially-seen creature until the end), which is cool. Much more decent than it could have been. Also pretty inventive in its handling of flashback sequences. Well-acted and well made, and pretty cool monster. Ultimately kind of a bit of fluff, but slightly more original fluff than the enormously cliched setup would lead you to expect. I think somebody involved with this has watched some Svenkmayer films. (Turns out, this director has been responsible for shorts I've liked much more... from https://www.avclub.com/the-ritual-is-a-chore-1822765612 "Technically, The Signal (2007), his first effort, constitutes a single narrative; three different directors were in charge of the film’s three “transmissions” (read: acts), though, and it’s all downhill after…

Amusing horror spoof with unbelievably likeable cast: Matthew Gray Gubler, Kat Dennings, Ray Wise, and Mel Gonzales in one movie, even cameos by John Waters and by that funny Mexican actor from "Ash vs Evil Dead". Gubler plays a guy who basically nobody likes who returns home and is haunted by visions of CGI ghosts nobody but him and Kat Dennings can see. Ray Wise talks more about his penis in this than in any other movie, which if it was anybody other than Ray Wise, could have been a problem, but isn't.

Supernatural thriller crossed with hardbitten detective tale. Thre's some gobbledygook about a cursed book. Matt Frewer, which generally tells you about what to expect. Ok, I guess, it was kind of amusing.

Odd sort of, I dunno, drama? Two women at the opposite ends of motherhood deal with life after an astronomical event over Troy, NY. Low-key enough to be unpretentious in a way that arty films like this usually aren't, which makes it watchable, as do the likeable cast and performances. But don't come looking for sense, story, or resolution, there isn't any of any of those. I kind of enjoyed it because of how low-key it was and because it was set in Troy, near old stomping grounds of mine, but the lack of sense ultimately bothered me.

Improbably hunky ex-cop guards a building in Bulgaria with a mysterious room in the basement he's not supposed to enter, while he's not hooking up with an improbably gorgeous barista from across the street who's 1/3 his age. Robert Englund chews the scenery as blind old guy who knows what's going on, but still manages to drop the keys in the dark at a critical moment.

Missi Pyle tricks a bunch of really unlikeable good-looking people into coming hiking with her in what seems like an attempt at a "Big Chill" for millenials but doesn't even come close. They spend the time arguing before a big huggy ending, without ever succeeding at making you care about what they're arguing about. (Not a horror movie, BTW, even though it sounds like it.)

One of those small but special films I really like. Horror meets wilderness survival flick. Well done, solid, understated, original, starkly beautiful horror/suspense film set at oil drilling office in the remote arctic. Ron Perelman. Things slowly go wrong, climate change is implicated but no more is said than absolutely needs to be. Gorgeous, stark cinematography benefits the film in the same manner as "Open Water".

like The Mothman Prophesies, except with the Jersey Devil.

Monster found in an iceberg slowly picks off crew of Bering Sea ship. Once again proves that if you find yourself in a horror movie scenario, the key to survival is outliving Lance Hendriksen.

you knew somebody was eventually going to make a movie that justified the use of the first person camera perspective. This is the one. Evil kids destroy their family, As seen through the family's home movies. Not exactly what I'd call a "serious" horror film, but entertaining.

God save us from hipsters making indie movies about themselves. You see a movie has Aubrey Plaza and Sarah Gadon, you're gonna think, "What's not to like?" Well, plenty. Another painfully "indie" movie that seems to be in love with itself, and what's worse, a movie nominally about hipsters making an indie movie, which, being a painfully indie hipster movie, is mostly a setting for them to do nothing but argue with each other and be dysfunctional, because apparently that's some sort of statement or supposed to be entertaining. The only way this movie could be less interesting is if they cut out all the irritating characters, which would leave us with a shot of an empty cabin for 90 minutes. (NB it was long after this that I discovered Plaza's also catastrophically pretentious and irritating "A Night With Beverly Luff-Linn", and began to realize she may be a warning…

Talk about an interesting failure. Starring Vincent Kartheiser, who has more charisma than Milla Jovovich, in a very slow-paced, low-budget movie where nothing is as it seems, and it's supposed to be "a mindfuck" instead of just "incoherent" and "confusing". Really well made, with some truly interesting ideas, and what would have probably been some excellent twists, if the plot hadn't been full of holes wide enough to drive a truck through and central questions hadn't been left completely unanswered. It's too bad. So close, and yet so very, very, very far. Well, it was much more interesting than "Inception", at any rate, if less sensical in terms of plot.

The kind of movie-Of-The-Week "thriller" fare that is entirely suitable as background noise, this time about a yuppie couple in debt that has their sights set on their foster kids' trust fund after offing their parents. Worth watching only to rest your eyes the incredibly beautiful Diane Lane until she dies about 2/3 through, and an incredible beautiful glass-block-and-steel house, which survives. Leelee Sobiewski plays a pretty effective mopey teen, somehow.

I found myself wondering after the first 15 minutes, "Who is this Cronenberg wannabe?" Turned out, it's Cronenberg, in "Crash"/"ExistenZ"-style disappearing-up-his-own-ass mode. It was beautiful but meh. I've been a lifelong Cronenberg fan, but sometimes it seems like he doesn't realize it takes more than a good idea and good cinematography to make a movie. Some sort of high-concept claptrap where in the future people prefer pain to sex and artists mutilate their bodies in front of audiences. I think if ExistenZ had been as well-shot and well-acted as this, people would have realized it's the better of the two movies. Which isn't saying all that much. Apparently this was very well received at Cannes, which makes me begin to suspect that Cannes is just as much of an empty circle jerk as Sundance.

I was loving this thriller for the first half. They set up one of the most despicable villains ever, and give her the ultimate hubris, as a woman who profits by taking stewardship of hapless old people, stowing them in homes, and selling their belongings, unwittingly takes what she thinks is a helpless victim with no family connections but turns out to be anything but, setting you up to see a real baddie get a delicious comeuppance.

And then, they treat her like a hero for the second half, have her go on to massive success and triumph, and have her undone not by her deeds throughout the movie, but by an almost literal "chekhov's gun" in the last 30 seconds of the movie, in what a third grader would probably think is profound poetic justice. Even the Big Baddie who she pissed off by imprisoning a woman he…

Ok, bonus points for inventing a new genre. Instead of the Rom-Com, this is a Rom-Hor (Rom-Zom?). Requiring tremendous suspension of disbelief and chock full of fridge logic and tropes made up for the sole purpose of driving the plot along, this horror-romance has a zombie regaining consciousness for no stated reason, and falling in love with a live human after absorbing memories of her by eating her boyfriend's brain. You know, it's utterly ridiculous, and I kinda enjoyed it, because it commits so hard to being what it is. Somehow they got John Malkovich for this, too, as the hard-nosed general who refuses to believe, until, in the climax, he comes to understand that a zombie can learn to love.