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Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Not All Movies Are The Same: Dual

I will never understand why they give a movie an English-language description, English title, English introductory cards, English credits, and then, after a very long opening sequence with no dialogue, it turns out to be a foreign-language film.

I don't mind tucking in with a subtitled foreign film, but that's not what I skim the horror section of Tubi for.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Yet another movie based on the gruesome abuse and murder of Sylvia Likens by the family of a neighbor who was supposed to be looking after her for a few months in the mid-'60s (the other one film being the more biopic-like but equally horrifying "An American Crime".) This one, despite being well-made, is based on a novel that fictionalized the incident, and really amounts to an exploitation flick. It's well-acted enough that the characters succeed in being truly, viscerally loathsome, but it doesn't offer up anything besides that.

It is very rare that I will turn a movie off just for being foul—remember, I'm the guy who loved "Necropath"—but this is just gross. The thin pretense of social responsibility afforded by being very loosely based on a true story doesn't redeem it, despite the addition of a "good guy" neighbor boy character who…

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Clown (2019)

Ugh. Sub-TV-movie-level acting and production, a disjoined opening scene of small town people hunting down and brutally killing people in clown makeup, then 20 minutes of nothing happening as a carful of unrealistic kids discover an abandoned carnival in the desert, I'm not sitting through 90 minutes of this.

Not to be confused with Clown (2014), which I saw a long time ago but haven't reviewed yet, and was bad but reasonably amusing.

Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

No Tears In Hell

Empty torture porn that makes "Funny Games" seem like Dostoevsky. "Based on a true story" slasher pic is just repeated scenes of an improbably handsome "cannibal necrophile psychopath" luring improbably gorgeous "homeless people" to his home and doing about what you'd expect, except sicker. Boring. I gave up about halfway through. Notable primarily for how much every single person in it seems like an actor, and for being oddly well-shot for such a piece of completely unwarranted garbage.

I bet Eli Roth loves this.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Miami Vice (TV Series)

Surprisingly enough, the first few episodes of this show are pretty good, definitely a better cop show than I remembered.

Unfortunately, though, I suffer from OCD, and I know from experience that if I watch this long enough, one of these 80s songs is going to get stuck in my head for 4 months. It's not worth that.

So I turned it off.

Too bad though, if not for that I would have stuck it out.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Let’s Dream

Nicely atmospheric but pretentious and dreadfully slow film. I can't even tell you what it's about. It opens with a man saying he hasn't slept since he was 7 years old, but after that... so slow, I couldn't focus on it. I think maybe it's supposed to be artistic?

I lasted about an hour before I felt like watching a movie.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

After Yang

Visually gorgeous but perhaps the slowest, talkiest, least engaging nominal sci-fi I've ever seen. Something about a family whose child's AI companion breaks, so a lot of people talk and talk and talk about a lot of things.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Van Dyke And Company (TV series)

Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Mary Tyler Moore, Gabe Kaplan, and a bunch of other people who should have known better in a stereotypically cringeworthy, unfunny '70s variety show. I lasted one episode.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Van Wilder

Imagine a movie described as "National Lampoon's Van Wilder, a frat-house comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Tara Reid". Now picture that same movie, except more crass than you're imagining.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

The Dark Half

Stephen King adaptation directed by George Romero. Typical dull Stephen King adaption, only less happens. George Romero really should have hung it up after "Dawn Of The Dead", too.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

All Alone Together

Some sort of BS attempt at weak horror about a filmmaker. As amateurish as it gets. High-school-play-level acting, too talky, leaden pacing.

Decently lit, though, which is funny.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Altered Perception (2017)

Several couples take an experimental drug and argue about their relationships, and argue about their relationships, and argue about their relationships, and argue about their relationships, and argue about their relationships, and argue about their relationships...

Update: I came back a few days later and I had forgotten to close my browser, this was still queued to where I'd turned the TV off. So I watched the last half-hour. Spoiler alert: They spend the rest of the movie arguing about their relationships.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Anxiety (2024)

Overly amateur production about a recoving alcoholic stressing out during the pandemic, which apparently consists of seeing "artsy" video montages and effects, plus way too many real-life clips of Donald Trump being a dick during the pandemic. I guess they thought we needed to be told he's an asshole.

I lasted over an hour, but with 30 minutes left to go, I gave up.

Movie Reviews » Just, Don't

Debbie Does Demons

I think this is a softcore porno that somehow wound up on Tubi. Some sort of horror-themed nonsense about a ouija board summoning a 300-year-old witch is a pretext for showing a lot of unnaturally large tits and trashy people talking about screwing, in the lowest-possible home-movie production quality.

I mean, yeah, if you resurrected a busty 300-year-old witch with a ouija board, I'm sure the first thing she would do is stand in the shower caressing her own body, right? That's the level this thing operates on.

I lasted about 45 minutes before turning it off, but truthfully that was only because I was distracted for a lot of that time by looking up naked photos of one of the actresses on the internet.

Movie Reviews » Trash

Undateable (series)

As hackneyed and unfunny as a sitcom can be. Chris D'Elia, who, despite whatever else may be said about him, is at least often a funny actor, is absolutely wasted in this. Turned it off during the third episode. I'm not sitting through 9 more episodes of this.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Saw II

I thought the first Saw was interesting, not great but good. I lasted maybe 20 minutes of this. It's just violence as entertainment... like, essentially gladiator games, except, it's supposed to be cool because its twisted. Great. Never done it for me.

Movie Reviews » Trash

Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge

I'm 40 minutes into this completely amateur pile of shit and I have no idea what it's about. It appears to be a bunch of scenes of various English people hamming up the daily lives of English people. And, geez, it's 2:07 long. There's another 90 minutes of this crap! Turned it off.

And here I thought America had a lock on movies this bad.

Movie Reviews » "Found Footage" crap

Hangman (2015)

Pointlessly "found footage" account of a gorgeous family being harangued by intruders in their house after returning from a vacation to find it broken into.

At this point these lazy directors have given up on even having a narrative reason to use first-person-shooter perspective... this one is shown entirely through cutting between the house's security cameras and webcams, of which there appear to be an unusual number, for absolutely no explicable reason, except that they didn't want to pay a cameraman or use any cinematography.

The few outdoor scenes are shown from the stalker's cell phone camera, which he helpfully keeps running and trained on the action, even while he's stabbing someone.

I'm ready to coin a new hashtag: #FFFU. Found Footage, Fuck You.

Turned it off, except to fast-forward through it twice looking for the scene with Amy Smart.

Stars Jeremy Sisto.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Holistay

An AirBnB in San Diego is accidentally double-booked by an Irish couple and a couple from New York who are actually criminals on the run. Billed as a supernatural thriller, by an hour into this 90-minute zero-budget amateur movie it had consisted entirely of the couples hanging out around the house (apparently they booked an AirBnB all the way around the world and across the country, respectively, to sit around the house), bickering amongst themselves, plus two fleeting shots of figures in costume-shop satanic robes lurking outside the house. And that's it. I turned it off.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

The God Inside My Ear

Painfully indie, poorly acted movie that I bet was filmed in Brooklyn. A girl... I don't know. She bleeds from the ears, she goes on blind dates with the worst men ever, she goes to the doctor, she deals with customers at the department store she works at who demand her help in choosing between perfumes that they say smell like spoiled bananas and rancid meat.

Weirdly, the visual production values are pretty professional and well-done, while the attempted acting—really, just people clearly reciting lines and trying ineptly to seem ingenuous about it—is just absolutely awful, incredibly bad. Like, porn-movie-bad. The contradiction between that and decent productions values is jarring.

And the weird pastiche of video production effects, jumpy visual montages to jazz drumming, and special-effects interludes in "artsy" styles don't help at all.

I turned it off halfway though.

Movie Reviews » Turned it off

Let’s Dream

Everybody ... stares ... looking ... concerned. And ... talks ... very ... slowly. What ... are ... they ... saying? I ... don't ... know ... because ... this ... movie ... has ... the ... most ... muffled ... and ... indistinct ... sound ... recording ... I've ... ever ... heard. Turned it off halfway through, which was long after it got annoying.

Movie Reviews » Trash

Indiscretions

This "thriller" is in every way like a porn flick without any sex. These people are obviously not actors, and are as stiff as if they're reading lines off cue cards. It's shot on VHS, not even always in focus. I lasted about 20 minutes. Seriously: why would anybody watch something like this if there's no sex?