Archives: Movie Reviews

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.

Family that films every moment of their lives in POV for no apparent reason, when "scary" things start happening for no apparent reason.

very decent creature design, a few genuine momentary scares, and a focus on my personal phobia of the dark (yep, it's true) were not enough to keep my interest in this tale of a family pursued by a fiend that can only appear in the dark, and I spent the second half of the movie being much more entertained by googling pictures of unbelievably beautiful lead actress Teresa Palmer.

A good film which emphatically does not seem at all like it's going to be a good film. What starts out seeming like a run-of-the-mill b-movie cheap shit thriller about disappearing kids and an urban legend about "the tall man" who abducts children in a Pacific Northwest town turns out to be something quite a bit better than that. I wouldn't give it an A, but it's a solid B+, an actual story with a genuine plot, and definitely winds up original rather than the derivative, cliched rehash it really, really seems initially like it's going to turn out to be. I'm probably a little more enamored with how it fooled me into lowering my expectations than I ought to be, but, I am. It doesn't happen that often.

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.

A girl's car breaks down on a rural backroad, and gets menaced by the locals, who chase her through the woods and hide her car... from there, though, instead of turning into a run-of-the mill pursuit/captivity flick, it turns out to be a very decent backwoods neo-noir thriller, somewhere between "Breaking Bad" and "Ozark". I liked it, much to my surprise, given the setup. I wondered what an apparent "woman gets victmized by the backwoods locals" flick was doing in Netflix's "Hidden Gems" section, but, turns out, even if it's not what I would necessarily call a "must see", it does belong there.

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…

OK, the setup is, a silent cowboy is essentially trapped in a Chuck E Cheese, battling sentient, murderous animatronic characters. Oh, wait, also: the cowboy is Nicholas Cage, which changes everything. This film knows exactly what it is, and remains unapologetically true to itself all the way through. Such a ludicrous idea doesn't need to be excessively overdone, and so it mostly isn't, it's just done and the natural excess of the whole idea is let speak for itself. I really kinda love this movie. Plus, you've got a movie in which Nicholas Cage has to be Nicholas Cage without uttering a single word of dialogue, which, ok, I can take or leave Nicholas Cage, but he's the man for the job in this case.

Well, I wondered what a horror movie with Jeff Goldblum and Alicia Silverstone might be like. This seems like a TV movie. A near-death experience psychically links Goldblum with teen serial killer played by a young Jeremy Sisto. Silverstone sulks and does not much else. Eventually a supernatural element is introduced involving what probably looked like hella cool CGI effects in 1995, but I'd long lost interest by then.

ok supernatural horror thriller about a wealthy city guy imprisoned in a farmhouse by a elderly farm couple dabbling in the occult when his private plane goes down on their property. Notably primarily because I think this is the first time I've seen a horror movie with a 100% all-black cast where race wasn't a central theme of the plot (or mentioned at all, really). Definitely ok acting, and a couple of good moments, such as a visual of a blind man using voodoo to see by placing goat's eyes on his face.

A contender for the most boring movie I've ever watched. Religious girl works as a hospice nurse, mostly just wanders around. Sometimes wanders around hallucinating, sometimes wanders around picking up guys. Kills her patient and sets herself on fire. The end.

what seems like it's going to be a thoroughly dull captivity/pursuit pic turns into a pretty good monster movie as a busload of English schoolkids are first lured into a trap and hijacked by an escaped lunatic and then trapped by a monster in a subterranean labyrinth that I could swear I have dreamed about before. No, really, it's better than it sounds. Also, decent '70s style analog synth score.

The kind of movie-Of-The-Week "thriller" fare that is entirely suitable as background noise, this time about a yuppie couple in debt that has their sights set on their foster kids' trust fund after offing their parents. Worth watching only to rest your eyes the incredibly beautiful Diane Lane until she dies about 2/3 through, and an incredible beautiful glass-block-and-steel house, which survives. Leelee Sobiewski plays a pretty effective mopey teen, somehow.

Halfway decent Spanish haunted house flick (with overdubs). Family moves into isolated house, son dies, EVPs, spectral visitations, ghost hunters with electronics, labyrinth discovered in basement. But, actually pretty good for such well-trodden subject matter, at least it's well-made and well-acted all the way through. Probably would be an ok date movie.

Picture, in your mind, a movie about Ashley Greene and her husband moving into a haunted house, which at one point contains the lines "It wants US. It feeds on life. We opened a window into our world, and now it wants to come through." This is exactly the movie you're thinking of... except, this movie's ending makes less sense than the movie you're imagining.

what neo-noir is when made by people who don't realize that neo-noir is about relationships, not just torture porn with some obligatory criminal double-crosses and complications to serve as background for the torture scenes.

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.

By all rights, I should hate this movie. One of those sort of "heartfelt" "indie" movies starring major stars (and once again Tim Heidekker in a non-comedy role. Why?) Zoey Deutch, who has somehow raised likability to an art form, plays the manic pixie dream girl this time (hands up, everyone who's ever met a real-life pretty girl who gives impulsive blowjobs to homely guys because she feels like it), but manages not to be too overbearing beyond the basic standards of the type. She hunts for adult men to give blow jobs to, which her friends film and then use to extort money from. When her new stepdad's son gets out of rehab and moves in, she they decide to entrap a teacher he made a molestation claim against a few years earlier. From there, though, despite some predictability, the film manages to avoid cliches and sets out on…

Ken Jeong, Jim Jefferies, Rhys Davies, a totally-unafraid-to-laugh-at-himself David Hasselhoff, and a host of thankfully not-too-overexposed familiar faces in the kind of pretty amusing slapstick movie the Farrelly brothers would make if their movies were a little bit smart instead of a little bit stupid. I laughed a couple of times and never once felt like my intelligence was being insulted.

Vacationing couple is held captive in a high-tech vacation house where a mysterious booming voice forces them to learn etiquette. Vaguely tries to do for gender politics what "Get Out" did for race politics, and fails pretty badly.

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.

surprisingly not-actually-that-bad thriller about a thoroughly unlikeable woman committed against her will in an institution where one of the attendants may be her former stalker... or she may be insane. Decent acting saves a script full of fridge logic. Turns out, this was Steven Soderbergh, slumming it I guess.

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.

There's two kinds of horror movies. There's the ones that start with "a kill" and the ones that don't. This one does. That's how you know it ain't literature. That said, I really want to like this movie, not least because so many people do. And, it does have a few things going for it: really good early John Carpenter-like cinematography, a really good 70s analogue synth early John Carpenter-like score, and in Maika Monroe the most likable heroine since Jamie Lee Curtis. I get why people like it. However, it also lacks, er, just about anything else. The "plot" is as thin as it gets, thinner than "Final Destination" which was thinner than an onion skin. Basically, a curse is passed along where if you are a gorgeous teen who has sex with another gorgeous teen who is cursed, you get followed by a creature bent on killing you…

Totally improbable family takes refuge in a bathroom during a thunderstorm and improbably becomes trapped, as more and more improbable things happen. I don't think I've ever seen a movie that wanted more badly to be a great movie, or that required a greater suspension of disbelief. Dad acts like a psycho, because, movie. Son gets bit by a snake, because, movie. Daughter reaches her hand outside bathroom door (somehow blocked by a tree) and is assaulted, manages to grab her assailant's tongue and rip it out with her bare hands, family improbably decides to eat the improbably still-squirming tongue, then does so as if it's no big deal. I don't usually go for camp but this is so perfectly bad, with such hammy overacting, and overwrought, nonsensical reactions and character decisions, that it almost is entertaining to watch. A really spectacular car crash.

[submitted to IMDB] I don't know if I've ever given a movie just a single star before. But this is easily the single worst movie I've ever seen. I wish I could give it the 0 it deserves. Somebody must have bought votes because I cannot believe a film with literally no plot beside people torturing each other got 5.7 stars organically.
For no reason that is ever explained, a millionaire with a very annoying cackle invites financially desperate people over for a "Game" that might solve their financial problems, only to discover the "game" is he gives them choices of two horrible, sadistic things to do to themselves or each other, and they must either pick one and do it, or his butlers kill them. (Apparently there is some sort of employment agency where you can hire an entire household staff who have no problem with killing for…

I gave it a shot because I was feeling braindead and it stars Owen Wilson (who I'm somehow not quite tired of yet) and Jason Sudeikis (who I still like, which we can probably credit to lingering afterglow from "Son Of Zorn"), rather than the usual never-once-have-made-me-laugh suspects (Sandler, etc.) And for maybe the first half of the movie it feel list maybe the Farrelly brothers have maybe matured just a tiny bit, from trying to appeal to 4th graders' sense of humor to maybe even 9th graders'. But by the time the "humor" degenerates to "black men have huge dicks, and, that makes other men uncomfortable" you realize things have gotten worse, if anything, and it's not a matter of maturity, but just plain stupidity. And, I wonder, what audience both: 1.) demands a brainless, cliched redemptive ending; and, also, 2.) thinks a person sneezing so hard they shit…