Haunted winery turns out to be something more as gorgeous ghost hunters get picked off. Why did previous owners kill themselves by stabbing themselves in the stomach? Starts out as a standard ghost story and expands to something a little more freaky and maybe even sci-fi.
zombie road picture plays like a missing episode of Walking Dead, from one of the good seasons.
gorgeous English couple buys Scotland farmhouse, so locals put on pig masks and chase them around it with axes, because, obviously, movie.
you know, for a poorly acted, no budget, poorly written, completely amateurish zero budget effort, this winds up being a halfway decent ghost story. The leads are charming and give it their all, as well.
Captivity werewolf flick, but sort of a cut above, a little. People trapped on a derailed train in the English countryside in a new take on the werewolf tale from the creator of The Descent.
As might be suggested by that last bit, good direction makes it overall slightly better than it might have been... Actually very decent for what it is, fairly well-done and original for a monster movie, I liked it.
Not an A, definitely a 'B' picture, but kind of a 'B+' one. Pretty grisly, but a movie like this kind of needs to be.
Mexicans crossing illegally into the united states are abducted and subjected to the world's cheeziest brainwashing experiment, and the only one being conducted by Creed from "The Office".
Assassin takes over other people's bodies to kill her targets. Another small-but-satisfying Canadian sci fi thriller, well-cast with a bunch of no-name actors. David Cronenberg's son, and I called this one as Cronenberg-related without knowing I was right, although I wasn't sure, because this was a little better than Cronenberg Jr's last film. Still self-consciously strange, strangely retro, and with some brief unexpectedly gory scenes this time, but definitely showing some maturity and self-assurance that was missing last time. I liked it, and had one of those rare endings that I actually liked better after I thought about it for a minute... it wasn't a good enough film that a bad ending wouldn't have ruined the whole thing, but it was a good enough film that a good ending redeemed the whole thing. If Cronenberg Jr's next film is as much better than this as this was than his…
Another thoughtful Canadian thriller that starts off looking like it's going to be torture porn but in fact turns out to be low-key and, after some initial grisliness, largely nonviolent, more talk than action, and that's in a good way. A lunatic abducts a judge and subjects him to a trial for a bad verdict, in front of a jury of the entire internet. Plays like one of the better (if not necessarily one of the best) episodes of Black Mirror, with its examination of the role of technology and the media in justice and morality. Plus, Donald Sutherland as the staid judge, and an intense performance from an unrecognizable Vincent Kartheiser to boot, just to elevate things that much more. Those Canadians, I don't know how they do it. (Looked online afterwards and this movie seems to have been pretty broadly panned. I'm not sure why.)
Interesting. Mockumentary segments bookend a simulated but very authentic 1970s amateur home-made horror movie about a kid trying to dig a pit to hell in the woods. Actually, if you ignore the documentary segments, sets its sights so low, and is such a convincing "home movie", that it's kind of entertaining.
Ken Jeong, Jim Jefferies, Rhys Davies, a totally-unafraid-to-laugh-at-himself David Hasselhoff, and a host of thankfully not-too-overexposed familiar faces in the kind of pretty amusing slapstick movie the Farrelly brothers would make if their movies were a little bit smart instead of a little bit stupid. I laughed a couple of times and never once felt like my intelligence was being insulted.
very decent creature design, a few genuine momentary scares, and a focus on my personal phobia of the dark (yep, it's true) were not enough to keep my interest in this tale of a family pursued by a fiend that can only appear in the dark, and I spent the second half of the movie being much more entertained by googling pictures of unbelievably beautiful lead actress Teresa Palmer.
Hallmark Movie Of The Week-quality telling of radium workers suing for workers' rights. A great story reduced to nothing. The '40s fashions are the only good thing about it.
[Posted on IMDB] In this terrifying true life story, two inventive filmmakers make a cursed horror movie which, although pretty decent itself, casts a foul spell that forces every lazy, terrible wannabe horror director who see it in the next 25 years to say "Hey, I could do that too" and copy it with their own inferior, deathly dull, derivative "found footage" horror attempt. Millions of bored viewer hours are wasted not being scared, Netflix is overrun with dreadfully dull "horror" films, and, in the end, the entire horror genre is nearly destroyed. Will the horror genre survive this dreadful curse? Nobody knows the end of the story. Stay tuned.
Teenagers getting picked off in the woods by zombie-type people infected with a disease... but, that said, surprisingly good, fairly original. Felt like an early-80s classic, and an ok one, not a rip-off by someone raised on those movies who loves them a little too much and thinks that's enough, as these sorts of movies often are. A pleasant surprise.
Very decent realist postapocalyptic drama. A couple tries to cope quarantined in their home after dirty bombs are set off in LA. Unfortunately the last 10 minutes or so try for a weak "twist" that proves anticlimactic, but a pretty enjoyable film up until that.
This one was good enough that I didn't realize it was part of Hulu's "Into The Dark" series, although the weak ending betrays it. It was directed by the same guy that did "I'm Just Fucking With You", the only one of the series that I really liked. Grieving father and his daughters go out to the desert in their Airstream to spread his wife's ashes. What starts off seeming like a "locals torment visitors out in the sticks" story turns out to be something much different, and nowhere near as cliche. If they had come up with a satisfactory ending, the whole thing would have really worked.
Joe Dante in "workmanlike mainstream director" mode. A woman with psychic powers is drawn in to a murder trial and followup investigation in this dirtbag rural whodunit. I find it hard to buy a town full of "rednecks" played almost entirely by recognizable A-list celebrities: Keanu Reeves, Hillary Swank, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, Blake Lively, JK Simmons. I could buy maybe one or two of these people as rednecks talking with fake southern accents, but, all of them?
godawful "indie"-flick-starring-major stars I got tricked into watching by Hulu billing it as a "comedy". This movie seems to desperately want to say something, but I have no idea what that is. Kristine Froseth stars as a gorgeous childcare worker, and a virgin who had a medical hysterectomy at 15, who has a crush on the father of the boy she watches, seduces him, has an affair before getting caught, writes a fan letter to a porn star she likes, anonymously fucks a lot of guys, catches an unspecified STD, and at the end gets a video back from the porn star giving her advice to stand up for herself and avoid bad people, end of movie. Except for the "written by Lena Dunham" credit that finally explains why this well-acted-but-otherwise-completely-hollow exercise even exists.
Decent enough haunted plane movie. Takes forever to get going. Guy dies mysteriously on a plane, and haunted hell brakes loose. Lots of fridge logic but creepy enough in the moment. Last 2 minutes make no sense at all but fortunatly it's pretty much wrapped up by then. Amy Smart and Leslie Bibb.
Daniel Radcliffe is as redeeming as possible in this based-on-a-true-story lost-in-the-jungle survival flick. Friends set off, slowly get separated, winds up being protagonist alone walking back through the wilderness towards civilization, encountering every possible obstacle along the way, including quicksand, a snake, hallucinations, you name it, in the slow-moving third act. Was a pretty good movie until it started to sag... one guy grimacing in pain, hallucinating, and talking to animals doesn't really feel like much of a plot. You gotta admit Radcliffe always gives his all to everything he does, though. And also, that aside, he somehow manages to be strikingly handsome-looking when covered with mud, which strikes me as something of an accomplishment, I guess. I couldn't do it.
Ok, no great shakes. Kind of turgid. Strange young man tries to end his own life, keeps bumping into suicidal women and in two cases takes their bodies home for a short while before burying them in his garden and moving on to the next one. Completely unengaging leading man with virtually no personality and not much drama or buildup to the story kind of leadens the whole endeavor. Also not clear why some suicidal women would be so damn chipper and engaging. It does have that woman who played the strange junkyard woman in Walking Dead, who I've always kind of liked for some reason.
Incredibly beautiful lead actress is the only conspicuous feature of this rote, by-the-numbers kids-on-vacation-in-a-haunted-house story. Oh, yeah, also, one cheap scare with what turns out to be the world’s scariest pizza delivery guy. I forgot this movie almost immediately after watching it.
It's starting to feel like you can kind of rely on Kevin Hart. Anything he's in is going to be at least reasonably good. This is a fairly forgettable action/adventure buddy comedy involving Hart going to the wrong cabin and being mistaken for a hit man, excepting one extremely memorable, well-choreographed, well-shot fight scene near the end, where they fend off a handful of assassins in the gym, which rightfully should go down in action movie history as a classic. That aside, this was entertaining enough. One of his lesser efforts, but Hart keeps his reputation for picking good projects.
"Saw", but with over-the-top Hollywood excess rather than the British restraint that made it good. Very stylish, I'll give it that, like a music video.
Somewhere in the same fictional Los Angeles as "Psych" and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" (and across a fictional continent from the fictional New York of "Ugly Betty") is "Drop Dead Diva" , perhaps the perfect stupid TV program. A gorgeous model dies but refuses to go to heaven and wakes up in the body of an obese lawyer. Every episode features courtroom drama in which gorgeous legal clients pursue only-on-tv type
Spring Fever: Now, this is more like it. This is to horror movies what “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” was to comedies.This is that rare beast, the platonic ideal that every movie that ever tried to be a good bad horror movie was aspiring to be but failed at. Plus, perhaps the most realistic depiction of high school and high school students I’ve ever seen in any movie. Any fan of great cheapo vintage ’70s horror a la Tobe Hooper or David Cronenberg should like this. Also that rare sequel that far outdoes the first film. I loved it. Many people would not appreciate it, I am sure. (NOTE: According to wikipedia, the director requested to have his name removed from the film, and the final film is more a product of the executives and producers. I am floored. Let’s all be glad, for once, that that happened.) (UPDATE: Turns…
Kind of a personal favorite, despite how much of a stretch it is at points. Another one of those small, unique, strangely good films Canadians seem so good at. DJs stuck inside a radio station as society goes insane en masse outside. Some novel ideas, but does require a bit of suspension of belief at points — but in this case it's forgivable. I've heard a few other people say they particularly like this one, too.
A not-bad entry in the psycho-picking-off-teenagers-in-a-remote-location genre. but snow fields instead of woods this time, which is refreshing. Set in the norwegian outback, in an abandoned lodge. Goes on a bit long, but if you're gonna watch something in this genre, this is a decently creepy, non-annoying one.
after a team of gorgeous researchers discovered a cure for death, one of them is killed and resurrected, and gains random psychic powers, randomly turns evil, and kills her gorgeous teammates one by one for no reason.
dear Hollywood, at certain point we figured out that if the bad guy doesn't talk to anybody but the protagonist for the entire movie, they're going to turn out to be either the protagonist's other personality, or someone's already dead. Neither are very surprising twist anymore. This one is the split personality one.
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