Archives: Movie Reviews

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.)

Surprised to find out this was David Cronenberg. Seemed more like Robert Altman doing one of those "look how horrible film industry people are" films that's primarily entertaining only to film industry people. I did notice it was among the more engrossing of those, but, still. Even the likable cast (Robert Pattinson notwithstanding) couldn't really keep me interested. Julianne Moore won some sort of big award for her performance as a vapid aging star in this. It was almost as weird as seeing her as a porn star in "Boogie Nights", and she basically managed to make even that work somehow, so, ok.

Sort of like what you'd get if you hired David Lynch to do an afterschool special. Seemed like an ordinary teen drama, but got weird and mannered. There's a plot, but it doesn't matter. Also a bunch of musical numbers consisting of dirgelike choral versions of 80s pop crap, which I totally could have done without. "I'll Melt With You" is really totally fine as it is, thanks, you're not going to improve on it. Actually stayed just off-kilter enough for just long enough that it was mildly entertaining, despite seeming so try-hard.

One of those movies that look like someone with no experience and no budget said "Let's make a horror movie", and yet, somehow, they got it onto my streaming feed. One of the very worst-acted, worst-written, worst-paced, worst-edited movies I've ever seen. Basically, everybody who wasn't born on Feb 29 goes psycho, because, movie, and the few sane people have to escape from a hospital.

Another Duplass Brothers production of a passabloy watchable indie film that occasoinally veers into major creeponess and discomfort, imagine that. Family and brother's girlfriend deal with developmentally disabled man with a fixation on Fonzie, action movies, and female bodies, and an a little too much of a willingness to cross boundaries. Does an intresting job of occasoinally showing a realistic warts-and-all view of the ccomplexities of relaitonships, although not consistently and just as often comes across a little pat. But, still, watchable, I suppose.

Guy just released from an insane asylum under house arrest in his parent's mansion starts seeing things. Thriller, not a horror movie. Meh, okay I guess, not bad but didn't grab me.

I was loving this thriller for the first half. They set up one of the most despicable villains ever, and give her the ultimate hubris, as a woman who profits by taking stewardship of hapless old people, stowing them in homes, and selling their belongings, unwittingly takes what she thinks is a helpless victim with no family connections but turns out to be anything but, setting you up to see a real baddie get a delicious comeuppance.

And then, they treat her like a hero for the second half, have her go on to massive success and triumph, and have her undone not by her deeds throughout the movie, but by an almost literal "chekhov's gun" in the last 30 seconds of the movie, in what a third grader would probably think is profound poetic justice. Even the Big Baddie who she pissed off by imprisoning a woman he…

Another exercise in tinseltown omphaloskepsis. This one was ok, I guess. Kevin Spacey as a shrink with worse problems than his patients.

Kids camping on an island snort coke with a virus that temporarily turns them into zombies. Meanwhile, in an underground facility, the drug is tested by a mysterious sciencey guy. Ha, you know, this is a bad, derivative horror movie, and an utterly acceptable watch, in that USA Up All Night bad movie kinda way. Just over the top and original enough, and not so derivative as to be painful. One of the worst movies I've ever not minded.

Less-charismatic Ed Helms stand-in Nat Faxon and my former celebrity crush Judy Greer make marriage look absolutely unbearable and totally unrewarding, plus cure me of my celebrity crush on Judy Greer.

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.

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.

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.

Quiet post-apocalyptic zombie drama finds Martin Freeman carrying his baby through an australian wasteland full of carrion and infected people, with an aboriginal girl in tow. Not even really a horror movie or thriller, just a drama. Martin Freeman gives a quiet, intense performance that's a credit to him, having adventures and misadventures trying to find somewhere safe to bring his child. Worked for me. Wikipedia says it's a tribute to The Road and I can see it.

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.

Megan Fox in what starts off looking like a disturbingly brutal captivity pic, as her husband decides to punish her for infidelity by driving her out to their remote lakehouse under pretext of a romantic evening but then handcuffs her to himself and kills himself, turns into actually kind of decent neo noir as he apparently also called hitmen/jewel thieves to come rob the place and kill her.

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.

Seriously funny, geeky series about an alien abduction support group in Beacon, NY disappointingly ends after 2 seasons in a cliffhanger but is nonetheless well worth watching if you're into geeky sci-fi humor. Should be a cult favorite.

Charming pic based on a tale from the Decameron. Medeival nunnery with Aubrey Plaza, that little girl from Garfunkel & Oates, Alison Brie, John C. Reilly all dressed in medieval garb but acting like modern people. Better than hearing about that kind of cliched irony might lead you to believe. Could have gone either way, but, really pretty fun. I liked it.

Oddly reminiscent of "The Wicker Man" in superficial ways, but not in the good ways. Gorgeous vacationing couple in Thailand awakes with no memory of the night before and a video on his camera of him killing and burying her. Descends into unexplained weirdness, then explained with a bunch of unsatisfying exotic paganistic bullshit. Wouldn't watch it again but Maggie Q at least made it entertaining for what it was.

Ok, Netflix's description said only "Biologist, cop hunt deadly creature in museum". I said, ok! And it turned out to be a really enjoyable monster movie in the John Carpenter vein. Like, imagine John Carpenter had directed "The Poseidon Adventure", and instead of trying to escape a ship capsized by a huge wave, they were trying to escape a monster that was terrorizing a museum. Nice to see people still sometimes make good monster movies every once in a while. I liked it.

funny hybrid sci-fi/horror flick about a manly, tough-as-nails paranormal investigator, with a team of gorgeous researchers, who cures possessions by using scientific methods to enter the subconscious of the possessed, who are apparently trapped in a fantasy realm and must only be persuaded to leave voluntarily to cure the possession... by getting them to jump out a window. Very slick, "stylish" Hollywood-style production, full of tropes that seem learned in screenwriter's school, and everybody looks like a model. Seems like maybe it was an attempt to launch a franchise.

I found myself wondering after the first 15 minutes, "Who is this Cronenberg wannabe?" Turned out, it's Cronenberg, in "Crash"/"ExistenZ"-style disappearing-up-his-own-ass mode. It was beautiful but meh. I've been a lifelong Cronenberg fan, but sometimes it seems like he doesn't realize it takes more than a good idea and good cinematography to make a movie. Some sort of high-concept claptrap where in the future people prefer pain to sex and artists mutilate their bodies in front of audiences. I think if ExistenZ had been as well-shot and well-acted as this, people would have realized it's the better of the two movies. Which isn't saying all that much. Apparently this was very well received at Cannes, which makes me begin to suspect that Cannes is just as much of an empty circle jerk as Sundance.

This is kind of a masterpiece of crap television. First off, the cast is stellar, the acting is superb. Beyond that? Garbage. I expected a drama, but this is straight melodrama, just a soap opera. It's like Dynasty meets Glee's hip-hop kid sister. As glossy and expertly produced as it is empty and unbelievable. The Glee-style over-autotuned, overcompressed vocals in the frequent musical numbers sums it all up.

another "thriller" about a psycho stalking/imprisoning, and re-stalking a woman through the woods. This one started off seemng like it was going to be good, with well-done scenes of a woman being stalked on the road by an increasingly threatening other motorist, before he captures he and it becomes much more run-of-the-mill fare. Still probably among the better of these types of movies, with some actually inventive twists and a genuinely creepy and realistic psycho, but, did the world really need another movie about nothing more than a lone woman being captured and/or pursued and victimized by a lone man and then overcoming it? Is that really a story that needed telling yet again?

High-concept picture in which terminally ill people can, in the near future, clone themselves to ease their family's suffering—but, if they turn out not to be terminally ill, must duel their clone to the death. Enter Karen Gillan in that situation, who then spends the first half of the picture watching her clone steal her entire life and the second half training for the duel. Much better than that silly premise makes it sound... not great, but if it had been a Black Mirror episode, it would have been one of the better ones. I'm surprised I liked it but I kinda did. This kind of familiar ground is hard to get right but I could maybe see this become a low-key cult favorite.