Movie Reviews

Overdubbed polish film with only its slightly odd, foreign tone and charming cast to set it apart from the usual psycho-picks-off-campers-in-the-woods flick.

Spike Lee does a horror movie, after a fashion, as well as his best impression of a European art filmmaker, in this remake of 1973's "Ganja and Hess". After a scuffle, a well-to-do doctor returns from the dead with a thirst for blood, plot gets tough to follow after that. Ok, I guess, considering I've never liked a Spike Lee movie. Definitely looks good visually without seeming too try-hard on that front. If this had been someone's first-time outing I'd have been impressed; from a very experienced director I say "meh". Great soundtrack, though.

Taylor Schilling's kid speaks Hungarian in his sleep. He's possessed by the soul of a psychopathic murderer out to claim the final victim who got away. That is all. Taylor Schilling makes it ok, actually.

I'm generally not a fan of "so bad it's good" films, but, my god. Except for the White Zombie-sounding tracks in the otherwise analog synth soundtrack, this 2017 film is a note-perfect simulation of gloriously over-the-top 1980s USA Up All Nite-style supernatural gorefest fare. Two gorgeous secret agents descend into a prison modeled after Dante's Inferno and full of psychotic and/or supernatural killers. Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Adrienne Barbeau, Dee Wallace, Michael Berryman, and every one of them chewing the scenery like they're loving every minute of it ... this one is kind of the exception that proves the rule. It's very, very hard to make a camp movie like this that I can sit through, but this one takes it so far, and takes itself so ridiculously seriously, that it accomplishes what few can. I would never recommend this as a movie for anyone else to watch, but for…

Just re-watched this movie, which I remembered as being pretty good, after many years. It's funny how different it plays in post-Trump America. It could almost be a parable. And the stereotypically smug, condescending, aloof liberal (to judge by their horror at someone owning — gulp — a gun!) city couple doesn't come off as innocent as they did the first time I watched it... to the extent that I was a little disappointed that, rather than make a controversial observation, aloofness simply wins in the end over brute physicality and living perhaps just a little too much in-the-moment, and apparently without even being really changed in any substantial way by the experience. But, after a slow start, the acting is every bit as good as I remember, and the movie actually raises a lot of interesting things to think about, all of which elevates it above the exploitation flick…

Fridge logic abounds as a sheepish yuppie gets convinced by a suddenly-reappeared-after-years old friend to spend a weekend at a mysterious self-improvement program in this rip off of "The Game" x "Fight Club". Mediocre film that might have worked if you have never seen those is ruined further by a nonsensical coda at the end.

Comic artist, just released from an insane asylum, kills those he feel ruined his life. Entertaining enough comedy-horror. First you need to know it stars Barry Bostwick and Karen Black, which tells you part of the story, and then that it stars Kevin Corrigan, which tips the film into the hoped-for one of the two places it could go given that first fact. Kevin Corrigan, who, yes, you do know who he is, has pretty much only ever been in watchable movies, near as I can tell.

You know, I kind of liked this movie. What should have been a standard C-grade teens-getting-picked-off-in-a-remote-location horror movie packs some genuine creepiness in there, as teens in the deserve inadvertently summon a... well, it never explains exactly what the "Hisji" evil entity really is, but it can fuck with electricity and confuse the hell out of its victims before offing them. More about building mood than jump scares or gore, and while it isn't a great film, or even a very good one, it definitely has that going for it, and I liked it for that. Way less crappy that, say, "Candyman". In fact, not really crappy at all, just kind of... only-moderately-unambitious, at worst. The AV club has a pretty good review at https://film.avclub.com/one-of-the-biggest-horror-movie-scares-of-the-year-happ-1835452053, saying all the scares happen in well-lit scenes, and that this is not "don't go in the basement" horror, which is a good way of…

Pedestrian, entirely forgettable police procedural/haunted house flick as the story of a film crew (natch) filming inside a haunted house was murdered is told in flashbacks as Maria Bello interviews the lone survivor.

Victorian-style seance story told exclusively through acting and sets. Dreadfully boring, dreadfully British. Nothing happens at all for the first hour.

Self-consciously bizarre, surreal, Gilliam-esque bit of fluff about a guy who builds a labyrinth our of a refrigerator box in his living room which is larger on the inside than the outside, takes on a life of its own and is full of peril and monsters. Seems like it is supposed to be a kids movie, but, has cursing and a vagina. Entertaining for what it is, though. (EDIT: Ah! Written and directed by Calvin and Hobbes's creator Bill Watterson. That makes perfect sense.)(EDIT 2: No. It's a different guy named Bill Watterson. Still, would have made perfect sense.)

Have you ever seen a Stephen King TV adaptation before? This is actually one of the better ones, which isn't saying much, since every King TV adaptation except for the few great outliers is terrible. Harry Anderson with a cheezy mustache, John Ritter with a full beard, Richard Masur's disembodied head talking, that should tell you all you need to know. Oh, also, it's 3 hours long.

If you're going to watch a slasher movie, it's going to be a slasher movie, no matter what. Given that, it might as well be "Maniac". Character-driven, for one thing, and told from an unusual first-person perspective of the villain, played by the always-strangely-likable-even-at-his-most-degenerate Elijah Wood. Plus a really authentic-sounding '70s-style analog synth soundtrack.

Ok, now I get why Eli Roth's name is known. His first film, a surprisingly good entry in the vacation-gone-wrong/gorgeous-teenagers-menaced-on-a-trip-to-the-woods gore flick, because the primary villain is not a monster but a flesh-eating disease. There's some unfortunate stereotypical murderous rednecks, and while they threaten to overpower it, they never do. Some predictability keeps this from being a great picture but it's definitely a cut or two above the ilk I expected it to be just like. Much better than Hostel, which I thought was more the work of a hack than most other people seemed to. I see why Eli Roth might have been considered a promising horror director at the time.

Ghost of a little girl holds the gorgeous members of a film production company captive in their office and kills them one by one in cartoonishly horrible ways. sub-mediocre, formulaic with occasional bits of humor. A charismatically bloviating Billy Zane as the director. Probably not quite "USA Up All Night" quality.

A brother and sister go to check up on their increasingly unhinged army vet brother, living up at their lakehouse, to find him having sealed himself inside, acting irrational and claiming he has a killed "pod" trapped in the basement. Increasing creepiness is negated by a sort of insensible final act.

Gaby Hoffman in a lesbian retelling of Rosemary's baby, except nowhere near as good.

Comedy. Hilarious satire of the "evil rednecks massacre gorgeous kids in the woods" genre, told from the actually good-hearted rednecks' point of view.

The cloyingly overcute Rebecca Rittenhouse, far less effective playing a nice character than she was playing an intimidating gorgeous snob in The Mindy Project, as a convoluted, forced sitcom idea of a "psychic" who has to constantly deal (and force her friends to constantly deal) with "visions" which seem less like glimpses of the future and more like plot devices to drive dramatic developments. Never has such a good cast (Kerri Kenney Silver, Chris Elliot, Nichole Sakura nee Bloom) been so wasted on vacuous rom-com piffle.

That charismatic guy who played Nick in "New Girl" stars pretty much by himself as a guy who has to complete a list of trivial tasks to inherit his mom's cabin (leave a nasty note for her boyfriend, call "the one who got away" and apologize, hike to her favorite spot). Which, if you find Nick from New Girl entertaining, is basically enough to justify a movie. Or, 2/3 of one, apparently, because finally they fall back on a boring, sentimental ending that seems to be there mostly because the movie did have to end at some point.

I'm halfway through this laughably implausible piece of shit. This movie takes itself sooooo seriously, all somber score and intense acting performances, as if it doesn't realize that a thriller about an evil mastermind high school student who apparently has the whole world cowering in terror before his evil mechinations to get straight A's would be totally absurd even if every scene didn't seem so thoroughly contrived and unrealistic. Like sure, a nice girl would act like a slut and try to come on to her teacher just because she was told by an evil genius classmate that the teacher was into her, and then, when the teacher absolutely rejects her, let the classmate dictate a love letter for her to give him that will change his mind which, just coincidentally, also happens to read exactly like a suicide note. Or, sure, a teachers wife would never, ever question why…

1994: Imagine a slasher movie based on a series of popular teen novels. Ok, you've got it. Not bad for what it is, just _is_ what it is.

The USA-Up-All-Night-iest slasher flick ever. The rare movie that is so trashy I kinda liked it for being so bad. That doesn't happen to me much. (edit: apparently this is some sort of cult favorite that I've never heard of because I generally have no interest in trashy movies.)

Anarchy: "Escape From New York" with less charisma.

Milla Jovovich, who must be Hollywood's least charismatic leading lady, fronts a correspondingly leaden take on ufo abductions or some such nonsense, made worse by half the movie being pretend "documentary" footage, followed or often even split-screened with "dramatic recreations" of the same scene for no adequately explained reason.

Ridiculous, hamfisted, but a charismatic cast kind of save this ridiculous attempt at making a "Get Out" for Latinos. An emergency order results in the arrest of all children of illegal immigrants, with an offer to drop all charges if they help out for three months at a creepy senior center. It only gets more ridiculous and unbelievable from there.