Movie Reviews

Darkness descends on the world in the form of an unexplained momentary global black out, during and after which everybody standing in a dark enough area spontaneously disappears from their clothes, rapture style, for unexplained reasons. Random voices are heard in the darkness, fresh batteries randomly start dying in minutes, and the sun stops rising, also for unexplained reason, until a couple of children survive for unexplained reasons until the sun starts coming up again for unexplained reasons. Occasional vaguely creepy SFX as people turn into shadows, darkness assumes vague, half-seen human forms, and random voices, possibly of dead people, echo in the darkness — which are all diminished by the rest of the time, when the creeping darkness and "shadow people" just look totally like fake animation effects. Starts Not Mark Wahlberg (Hayden Christensen) as Mark Wahlberg's character, and Not Halle Berry (the uncharacteristically disappointing, over-histrionic Thandie Newton) as…

gorgeous, square jawed mercenaries be macho, occasionally face-off against zombies. More testosterone than any other zombie flick.

Australian woman survives intrigue and lust on abandoned farm in post-zombie-apocalyptic drama with even fewer zombies than Here Alone. Drama, not a horror film.

This post-Tarantino crime drama-to-zombie alien horror flick-to-crime drama is as amateurish and crappy as it gets, total grade-Z, but miraculously is saved by the raw charisma of pretty much *everybody* in it. It's like they got the most charismatic Z-grade actors in the entire country all together for one shitty film. Surprised Linnea Quigley isn’t in it, if that gives you any idea.

Pretty effective thriller. Two couples (including Alison Brie and that weird looking kid from Shameless with the sort of bulbous face that proves there's a "handsome uncanny valley" halfway between normal-looking and The Elephant Man) rent an oceanside airbnb from a vaguely threatening, racist dude. There's an affair going on between two of the couples, and someone finds a camera in a showerhead, and yet somehow it manages to build suspense slowly, and turns out to be be much better and less formulaic than it initially seems like it's going to be. Only problem is it finally turns from a suspense film into a slasher film. But that's only at the end, and until then it's pretty good, and after the carnage it then continues on to a decent ending where a slightly less less ambitious movie would have just stopped. One does wonder, though, if it was necessary to…

Remake of an 80s horror flick I'm sure I saw and would probably remember if it was worth it. Remake was entertaining enough, about as much of a horror movie as "Odd Thomas" was. But a fun-enough supernatural horror/comedy/action movie, with some good special effects, and decent actors like Colin Farrell and David Tennant. Apparently Spielberg helped with the editing, which makes sense, and it probably helped to have Buffy The Vampire Slayer producer Marti Noxon involved too, bringing forward a few things she already knew how to do very well.

Once you know the movie description starts with "A pregnant couple's car breaks down in the woods so they seek help at a nearby farmhouse" you know what you're in for. All the quaint English charm and gorgeous shots of the rural English countryside in the world can't save this sadistic, wholly unnecessary captivity flick.

Had no idea what this was going into it. Listed as a 'documentary', what starts off seeming like one of the best one-man shows I've ever seen basically turns into a pretty good magic show. Less than the sum of its parts, and leans a little hard on trying to be poetic and hit emotional beats when it's really just magic tricks, but I did enjoy most of those parts a whole lot, and the tricks are definitely somewhere between good and, at their best, great.

Amateurish film somehow turns into kinda decent low key thriller. Over-energetic hipster girl moves in with eccentric sound-recordist and possible pervert, and get involved in the case of a neighborhood girl gone missing. It was alright, in its way.

I didn't know what drew Katie Asleton or Lake Bell to this very standard captivity/stalking-through-the-woods fare (directed by Aselton) but it's only that casting that makes it slightly watchable.

Apparently this series got roasted by critics, and for the first few episodes it's easy to understand why. Josh Gad and Billy Crystal as themselves in this behind-the-scenes look at the production of a comedy show — well-trodden ground, for sure, and firmly in the very long shadow of the "Larry Sanders" show. But as the season goes on, Gad and Crystal's relationship is given some extra depth beyond the "mismatched partners" trope, and their obvious chemistry carries things well enough that I enjoyed it, and was sorry there wasn't a second season. Strong credit for watchability also goes to the comic performance of Stephnie Weir as their neurotic, confused producer.

I watched this for the first time in years recently. It's funny how well this movie aged. Steven Spielberg often strikes me as the film equivalent of music producer Trevor Horn: things he makes are often marked by a certain glossy artificiality and obvious studiocraft, dusted down with stardust and childlike wonder, engrossing but as inauthentic and unconvincing, in their way, as Mr. Rogers's studio set. There's always a sense of effort, usually at "spectacle" (in scare quotes, just like that) and in Spielberg's case, usually some cloying emotional content, which there are traces of here although it's manageable.
So it's always been funny to me to call this a "horror" movie, which almost requires grit rather than gloss and authenticity to generate scares. But, Tobe Hooper directed, and if nothing else just about anything Tobe Hooper touches is going to have a few brilliantly scary scenes. I will…

A pleasant enough way to kill an hour and a half, with Charlize Theron as a gorgeous prom queen returned to her small home town to reclaim her gorgeous prom king, now happily married and with a new child, in a fairly pitch-perfect and nuanced performance s a clueless narcissist who remains steadfastly oblivious to what's really happening around her. Also stars Patton Oswalt as, surprisingly, a pointedly non-gorgeous Star Wars-loving nerd, which you may consider a plus or a minus according to your own tastes at this point.

Eh, this is all getting a bit Harry Potter for me. The first season was cool. By season 4, they actually do a decent job of retconning an overarching narrative for everything they've ever should (helped along by a disturbing digitally age-regressed heroine for new scenes of "her" as she looked as an 11 year old in season 1). I mean, it wasn't bad, I don't regret watching it, but there's a lot of good stuff on Netflix nowadays, and a lot of very grandiose high-concept fare, and I dunno, this isn't bad but it's comparably nothing to write home about, either, like it was 5 years ago. Also, as an IT guy then and now, I'm a little annoyed at the presence of laptop computers and the use of IP geolocation as a plot device in a show set in 1986.

Maybe the stupidest movie I've ever seen. A truly terrible, derivative slasher movie about a gorgeous cam girl staying at a cabin who keeps getting startled by unexpected gorgeous neighbors and handyman, spliced together for no reason at all except maybe to lengthen this to feature length with a fake reality show starring an unfortunately real Paris Hilton about a bunch of reality show dbags living in a house together. Then the end it suddenly tries to get meta, tying both stories together in the stupidest and least believable way imaginable, followed by a rap song about "hoes at the party". Also guest stars one of those plastic, hyperinflated '80s bimbettes as an ostensibly gorgeous sheriff.

Bartender in New Orleans finds a cell phone left at a bar, and supernatural things start happening. Well enough done, and builds creepiness effectively for the first half, but eventually goes off the rails, becoming hard to follow and seeming to just end rather than come to a climax. Too much weirdness with too little explanation. Cool weirdness, but ultimately, without understanding what's happening, it's completely unsatisfying.

Terribly miscast Jason Bateman—who doesn't have the range to be believable as a bully when he's just been acting like relatable Michael Bluth for the first half of the movie—in an otherwise ok thriller carried mostly by the strong performanmce of Rebecca Hall, as appealing as if Jenny Agutter was brought forward in a time machine from 1978, as his wife. Couple moves back to LA, reconnects with disturbingly eccentric childhood acquaintance (and writer/director) Joel Edgerton, who seems to have some sort of unhealthy interest in them. Secrets are revealed. Blah blah blah. Like I said, Rebecca Hall carries it. Does build well to a much more twisted revenge thriller ending than it ever lets on it's going to be.

About 2/3 of the way through this one as I write this and about ready to turn it off. So far the movie consists of Tilda Swinton looking like she's barely keeping together while being taunted first by random strangers, and then by a young son with a Hannibal Lecter-like ability to devise cruel ways to psychologically torture her. No sign of a plot yet, though. [Sat through it all. Kid to a teenager, gets more cruel and violent. This movie has nothing to say, it's more an impressionist piece, but so unpleasant that that doesn't redeem it. Spotted Steven Soderbergh's name in the closing producing credits, not surprised at all. I don't think I've ever liked one of his movies.]

maybe the lowest-budget, worst-lit and worst-recorded film I've ever seen. Looks like a student film... that's high-school student, not film school. How did they get Ice-T and Big Pussy from the Sopranos to make cameos in this piece of garbage? Something about trying to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared on the titular road, plus a little girl and biker dude running around in pancake makeup to indicate that they look scary. Nothing is really explained and it doesn't matter.

Another waste of what I'm assuming is an old Stephen King short story with some ideas that seem like they might have worked in writing, and could have worked with a movie production team that actually wanted them to. In this case, a couple driving through the heartland is lured into a field of tall grass by a crying child, and discovers they can't find their way back to the road. Also includes some time-looping paradox stuff that was really cool the first 5 or 10 times I saw movies use it, although in this case, with zero reason given for why people are moving through time at all, which I guess is kind of a first.

Abducted child torture porn. Two girls are girls, then they are abducted, tortured, killed. The end. Notable for 3 scarily realistic, intense, gory shots of first girl (2 alive, one dead), and what must be a laborious 10 minute scene of nothing but watching a shovel dig a shallow grave while a girl pleads offscreen. Does someone actually consider this entertainment?

Not so bad. Small movie with a primary cast of just two people (three if you include the corpse) consisting mostly of an increasingly creepy autopsy in a small-town morgue. Unfortunately, after two acts of nicely increasing creepiness, goes a little too far over the top in the third act. But still an okay view. Very well-executed for what it is.

The Blair Witch Project in Ireland, with ghosts instead of a witch. Not bad actually, kind of creepy for a cheapo shitty first-person-filmed movie.

She's a ghost. She wanders around a house. Doesn't sound like much but actually kind of a pretty cool movie. Kind of leans towards being an arthouse flick, but in a good way, without overbearing pretense. Poetic, slightly dreamy, original and self-assured. A spirit goes through the motions of her life before being contacted with by a medium trying to help release her spirit.

English future dystopian zombie flick. Either the best home movie ever, or the lowest budget BBC production ever. Nothing but intense (seemingly shakespearian??) actors being intense in the woods or narrating intensely. Impressive, in that solid, low key BBC drama sort oF way- more dialogue and character than action.

All the cringeworthy, painful embarrassment* of 90210 and sheer greasy self-involved repugnance of Sex And The City. Halfway through the first episode I was gripped by a paralyzing fear that outside my life and your life, the world actually is really like this. (*until you add Chris O'Dowd. And then it actually exceeds the cringeworthy, painful embarrassment of 90210.)