Movie Reviews

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.

I spent the first half of this movie convinced that Lars von Trier had finally descended into sheer pointless brutality. And, granted, even after it drastically changes character into a completely different film by the end, and has spent a lot of time on digressions about the meaning of art, I'm still not sure "Human Centipede 2" would have been any different, if it had had the scantest of art-house pretensions and a couple of philosophical digressions. But, damn, LvT is still an incredibly talented director, and by the end, Matt Dillon's repulsive, unsympathetic performance starts to look like the role of his career. Leave it to LvT to once again, as he did with the totally unenjoyable masterpiece Antichrist, show that cinematic greatness and entertainment are not necessarily related even in passing. I just hope he'll stop trying to prove that morality isn't necessarily related either—I feel like the…

Talk about a pleasant surprise. After all this time M Night Shaymalan actually kinda pulls one off again... he seemed like a guy who thought of a good twist ending or two when he was young, then spent the entire rest of his career trying to reproduce that success, mostly without coming close. This one comes close. Not great, but certainly not bad given his many failures, better than your average crap horror movie for sure. I enjoyed it. Vacationers in tropical paradise suddenly start aging at an incredible rate. A couple of neat twists and turns worthy of any horror movie, and among his better endings. Also, unlike, say "The Sixth Sense", doesn't telegraph its punches, which is a nice change for him.

Terrible horror movie. Like a teen scream, except stars adults. A doctor sees a deranged patient kill herself in front of her, inherits a curse that makes random jump scares happen to you for no clear reason before making you kill yourself in front of someone else to pass the curse along.

I am really surprised I liked this movie, it has all the hallmarks of things I don't like, being a single-camera handheld exploration of middle-class sexual mores. But, typical of seemingly anything the name "Duplass" appears in conjnunction with, it was at least interesting. It presents a realistic scenario in which two straight friends wind up deciding to do a gay porn film together, and avoids a lot of the cliches and self-absorption that make these kinds of films often hard to tolerate. (Note: same director as the series "Little Fires Everywhere", FWIW.)

Ok, bear with me... Small-town police and citizens in the autralian outback deal with an infection of alien parasites that turn the locals homicidal, in this hybrid of "30 Days Of Night" and "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers". Now, that could go a lot of ways, most of them not so good. But, this film wisely goes the low-key, low-special effects, acting-driven route that I tend to like so well. In the third act, it does begin to pile on the special effects and devolve into an action thriller, but, hey, it sustained my interest for long enough to count as likable, and it still manages to seem fresh in some ways straight through to the end.

Review of first 90%: It's a movie called "Pooka!". What do you expect? (If you are thinking something along the lines of an Outer Limits episode, you've set your expectations right.) The lead actor does a decently frenetic job, though. appropriately cartoonish to the silly premise of an improbably popular and murderous kid's toy taking over his life, and directed far better than it deserves, which actually makes it kind of moment-by-moment gripping despite how silly the entire affair is. Review of last 10%: This movie just doesn't make any sense.

Captivity/pursuit flick. Mother and son pursued through the woods by a silent, murderous Dave Grohl for no reason. I'd run too.

Hardbitten ex-cons out of Quentin Tarantino, the kind of guy Michael Madsen is never quite convincing playing, get stuck in a hotel in backwoods Romania with a bunch of maneating, machete-weilding savages. Tough guys, guns, monsters. Now you know. Not bad, if you don't go in with any expectations, although after the chase scene stretches into its second half hour it becomes a bit tedious.

Dark Side Of The Moon: All-too-obviously-shot-on-DV B-grade sci/fi horror with too many guns that never lives up to its ultra-groovy space-rock sound track. Pointless nonsense about a gorgeous secret agent investigating a fallen satellite and a portal between a farm in serbia and the moon. I don't know who did that soundtrack, but I bet they're the most popular band in the province. Recurrent cross imagery that I guess is supposed to mean something. I hear Eastern Europeans really like the song "The Final Countdown", too.

Strange, zero-budget gore film with all the gore edited out. A gorgeous woman threatens to blackmail three gorgeous former friends who had her committed, they accidentally push her down a flight of stairs during the ensuing fight, then cut up the body with all the actual cutting offscreen, and distribute the pieces in remote parks and off cliffs, tidily in black plastic bags so you can't see them. And that's pretty much it, that's the whole movie.

A methed-up pot grower massacres some gorgeous teens camped on his land thinking that they're aliens, except, even less interesting than it sounds. (Note for Culkin-watchers: contains a Culkin.)

boring as hell drama about an unlikeable gorgeous couple doing nothing interesting in Iceland after everyone else in the world inexplicably disappears.

pretty original serial killer flick. A gorgeous investigator goes to the deep woods of England in sreach of a cryptid, only to discover she's been led there to film the attempted capture of a serial killer at his remote backwoods dumping ground. A fair handfful of really original elements to this as well as a super intense and dramatic third act. Very british in the way it concerns itself withg telling a story rather than just falling back on convention. I always dig that.

run-of-the-mill captivity and torture by a psycho in an abandoned slaughterhouse, pretty pedestrian, but, I dunno, something about it is kind of engaging. I enjoyed it an iota more than I'd ordinarily enjoy this sort of cliched pic. Maybe it's slightly better made than most. The bad guy is Buffalo Bill rehashed, but done well. Some sudden moments of extraordinary brutality. Apparently it's a prequel, I found out later. (Sheer coincidence... the first one came on as I was writing this. It was totally forgettable.)

I like it. A very decent captivity/desperation film about a schizophrenic teenager keeping his siblings and babysitter captive in the bathroom while their parents are away.

In this movie, Eric Andre plays Sacha Baron Cohen in "Borat". Probably the least funny thing Eric Andre has ever done, which means, still a little funny. I did laugh out loud like twice, so, funnier than not watching anything at all, and in fact funnier than many things I have watched. Still, there's plenty of better things to get your Eric Andre fix from. Although having the outtakes and reveals where they tip off the unwitting victims under the closing credits is a nice idea.

What lulls you in by pretending it's going to be a raunchy sex comedy featuring a hooker with a heart of gold (and, refreshingly, a brain, played by unbelievably beautiful German actress Bella Dayne, who could be confused with a foul-mouthed Sutton Foster, definitely a good thing in my book) is actually a rom-com featuring a smart girl pretending to be a hooker with a heart of gold. A goddamn rom-com. Beware. I have to admit I liked her much better in the evening dress and talking filth. (Sue me. Look, without much of the promised raunch, I gotta find what I can in this movie to hold my attention.) Does have egg fighting though, and a great score of New Orleans blues, jazz, & funk.

what seems like it's going to be a thoroughly dull captivity/pursuit pic turns into a pretty good monster movie as a busload of English schoolkids are first lured into a trap and hijacked by an escaped lunatic and then trapped by a monster in a subterranean labyrinth that I could swear I have dreamed about before. No, really, it's better than it sounds. Also, decent '70s style analog synth score.

funny hybrid sci-fi/horror flick about a manly, tough-as-nails paranormal investigator, with a team of gorgeous researchers, who cures possessions by using scientific methods to enter the subconscious of the possessed, who are apparently trapped in a fantasy realm and must only be persuaded to leave voluntarily to cure the possession... by getting them to jump out a window. Very slick, "stylish" Hollywood-style production, full of tropes that seem learned in screenwriter's school, and everybody looks like a model. Seems like maybe it was an attempt to launch a franchise.

Guy just released from an insane asylum under house arrest in his parent's mansion starts seeing things. Thriller, not a horror movie. Meh, okay I guess, not bad but didn't grab me.

I was in the mood for some light fare so I tried this Keanu Reeves thriller. Had I known it was an Eli Roth film I wouldn't have bothered, there's "light" and there's "tissue-paper thin". Typically shallow and pointless Eli Roth torture porn fare, this time without even gore, and even more fridge logic than usual. Basically, the Small Faces to "Funny Games"'s Rolling Stones. Two teen girls take Keanu Reeves hostage in his home, seduce then torture him, for no reason other than it's an Eli Roth movie and someone out there thinks that's entertaining enough that they got name actors to participate. I wish Eli Roth would find another line of work.