Paranormal Activity 4
Family that films every moment of their lives in POV for no apparent reason, when "scary" things start happening for no apparent reason.
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Case 39
I have no idea how they got renee zellwger, ian mcshane, and that guy bradley who I guess is good-looking to star in this crap horror thriller about a social worker who adopts a little girl who is evil or demonic or something and kills people because, movie. Maybe they all had a contractual obligation to discharge or something.
Dude Where’s My Car
I thought this might be faintly entertaining but it was just embarrassing. This recycled pile of whatever Bill & Ted, Repo Man, and Harold & Kumar flush away when they go to the bathroom seems primarily aimed at the set who will someday mature into Farrelly Brothers or Adam Sandler fans. By the time Andy Dick shows up in a cameo, I wasn't even surprised.
Martyrs
Like seeing pretty girls be tortured? Then you'll probably like this film. Don't like seeing pretty girls be tortured? Then you won't. There's some religious or supernatural claptrap it's wrapped in, but it's not important. I wasn't at all suprised to discover this is a remake of a French horror movie, the surest sign of a terrible horror movie. The french culture seems to have an immaculate grasp of so many art forms, and they compensate for it with a complete, total inability to figure out how to write a good horror movie plot.
Hail Caesar
Apparently this is a Coen Brothers film. And visually, it looks as good as any. Doesn't appear to have a plot, other than "The Coen Brothers love 1940s Hollywood" and "There are star cameos in this movie". Maybe other film industry folks liked this.
The Man From Earth
Uh-oh. Another of those kinds of movie that I like but I bet most people didn't: the entire film is a group of people having a conversation. It takes place almost entirely in one room. A college professor, reluctantly attending his own going-away party before moving on to his next job, confesses to a group of colleagues that he is immortal and has lived for 14,000. Cue 90 minutes of cerebral and, to me, well-done and interesting conversation among academic types of varying degrees of skepticism (and one unfortunate cliched religious zealot, my sole gripe with the film, only because, as here, they're all too often a cheap way of perfunctorily adding conflict), exploring all the different angles of this. For a completely unrealistic premise, I think the conversation, and the main character's takes on things, are very realistic and well thought-out along the lines of what an actual, realistic…
Black Summer [series]
Mom tries to cross zombie-infested Los Angeles to find her daughter. The Walking Dead, except with fast zombies instead of slow zombies, and any plot considerations totally replaced by people shooting each other. I can't even figure out how everybody got a gun — everybody has one, but I never heard anybody say, "Here, have a gun" or "Hey, I found some guns!" They're all assault rifles, too. UPDATE: I don't know if I'm watching a remake or an expanded cut or a new season or whatever, but it's much better than this original review. Maybe I missed a couple of episodes on the first view? Worst episodes are still like halfway decent walking dead episodes, but some of them are quieter, almost black mirror-style (in terms of mood) vingettes, more realism than a lot of zombie fare, and everybody definitely doesn't have a gun now. There's a weird "Lord…
Barbarians
Did we really need another movie like this? Uncomfortable dinner in the English countryside between two young couples with an obvious uncomfortable history gets increasingly uncomfortable until, in a stunningly original piece of plotting, masked guys unexpectedly break in and start brutalizing them. Iwan Rheon is better than this. The tables turn repeatedly as the victims and the intruders repeatedly manage to overpower one another, the movie ends as soon as the violence does just in case you though anything besides the violence was the point, and the whole thing is rendered terribly English by pretentious title cards dividing it up needlessly into "chapters" and saving the title card for the end of the movie with a sudden "bam" sound to underscore that it's supposed to have some sort of impact. I suppose if you've never seen a gratiutous bloodbath before it might, but really, what moviegoer hasn't at this…
Deep In The Valley
Early Chris Pratt and some other goofy handsome guy with a bunch of minor celebrity cameos. Two guys get stuck in a magic porn booth that transports them to an alternate universe where real life is like a porn film. They actually stretch the joke for an admirably long time, and really nail some of the "porn film" acting and dialogue, including a stereotypical cop who speaks in nothing but cliches. It could have been way worse.
Jungle
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.
Love Eternal
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.
The Hatred
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.
The Man From Toronto
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.
The Collection
"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.
Drop Dead Diva (TV Show)
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
Cabin Fever 2
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…
Pontypool
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.
Cold Prey
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.
The Lazarus Effect
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.
Don’t Look Back
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.
Darling
pretentious, nonsensical, overstylized black and white crap. Hipster girl watches haunted house in Brooklyn, bring a guy home, inexplicably kills her then goes insane. Dull. (Much later note: Yes, I realize on re-read that this review doesn’t entirely make sense. Trust me, it doesn’t matter.)
Chained
Strangely underappreciated, moody film focusing on the human elements, rather than the violent ones, of the relationship between a child and the serial killer abductor raising him as his own in captivity in a remove farmhouse. Directed by the same woman as Jennifer's Body, another film I thought, while not great, was a cut above the usual fare.
Possessor
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…
Incantation
Well-shot but impossible-to-follow Korean horror from the "the more horror cliches we stuff into it, the scarier it will be" school. And, a first-person shooter, to make it worse, which halfway through abandons any pretense of a reason for people to always be carrying cameras. Actually seems well-shot and well-acted, with intense cinematography and scary individual scenes, so maybe in Korean it's good despite all that. But with corny English overdubs and a narrative style somewhere between nonlinear and nonexistent, it's just a mess.
Otherlife
almost a Cronenberg film. Not bad for a fairly predictable, piece of shit sci-fi thriller. A "bioprogram" drug that causes you to experience years of virtual reality life goes haywire when the inventor agrees to spent 1 yr in a virtual solitary prison cell for the accidental death of a friend who used it.
The Curse
Sub-USA-Up-All-Night fare about a farm family that develops boils and goes insane after a meteor lands on their farm. Starring a pre-"Wil" Will Wheaton and a post-"Dukes" John Schneider, unrecognizable in late 80s fashions instead of late 70s.
Ratchet [series]
Well, I guess if they had called it "American Horror Story season 10: Ratchet" nobody would have watched it, because they would have known to expect this.
Shot Caller
extremely decent, gritty prison noir. Tall, square-jawed, hypermasculine accountant kills a friend in a DUI, hypermasculine tough-as-nails prison gangmembers turn him into a hardened criminal and he climbs the ranks to run the gang, along the way turning a 4-year sentence into life without parole. That kind of thing could easily be very cliched but this is actually a very good, adult film, not cheap exploitation. Acting is good even if the actors are typecast, and it's well-made.
The Haunted
English film. Girl hired to be caretaker for invalid at dark, scary haunted house runs around dark, scary house being scared of ghosts. Not bad for that.
Still
Madeline Brewer (OITNB, Handmaid's Tale, Cam) seems to only pick somehow above-average, if not great, projects. This movie about a hiker stumbling on a couple of rednecks living in the wilds off the Appalachian trail was much more decent than I expected. Rather than being a run-of-the-mill thriller, it actually had a story to tell. Not a great story, but a good one, and more of one than a lot of movies nowadays.