Killer pursues people around town who have secrets while a group of incredibly diverse social outcasts laments how horrible people are towards their particular demographic. The movie is about as much a horror as Sesame Street.
Reviews
20 Reviews
Where the Crawdads Sing
(2022)
Oscar nod? I hope so
23 July 2022
I hadn't read Where The Crawdads Sing so I wasn't sure what to expect going into it tonight, but wow - that's a really, really good film. It's a slow burn, almost as though Nicholas Sparks (minus all the horrible cheese) and John Grisham got together to make a movie. I highly recommend.0.
Thor: Love and Thunder
(2022)
Could have been great
11 July 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Love and Thunder tries way too hard to capture the same humorous vibe as Ragnarok (one of my top MCU films, btw) while telling a very dark story about Gorr the God-Butcher and it misses continually. Hemsworth is great as Thor and did the best he could with what he was given. Christian Bale was head and shoulders above the rest as Gorr, and I wish we'd seen him as a real threat in a serious movie. He could have been a good sympathetic villain like Thanos and I wish I could have seen him in that capacity.
Unfortunately, however, everything else falls flat. Waititi's insistence on putting a joke in every scene undercuts the times that he wants to convey emotion and just cheapens everything. The other cast are clearly just there for the payday, especially Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie. I've never been sold on her as the actress for the character and her wooden performance here just reinforces that.
All told, I wouldn't even watch this again on Disney+. I'm mad I spent money on it.
Unfortunately, however, everything else falls flat. Waititi's insistence on putting a joke in every scene undercuts the times that he wants to convey emotion and just cheapens everything. The other cast are clearly just there for the payday, especially Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie. I've never been sold on her as the actress for the character and her wooden performance here just reinforces that.
All told, I wouldn't even watch this again on Disney+. I'm mad I spent money on it.
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Mehness
7 May 2022
Writing this in the theater while waiting for post credits, so long story short: Sam Raimi swung for the fences and got a ground-rule double. This was unintentionally incoherent and the film style didn't really sync up to the story. It's not the worst (hey there Black Widow and Captain Marvel) but it's solidly in Iron Man 2 territory. Didn't really excite me for any more MCU stuff.
Metal Lords
(2022)
Unexpectedly feel good...metal?
15 April 2022
Warning: Spoilers
This is definitely in the "School of Rock" category - if this were twenty years ago it would definitely star Jack Black as Hunter. It's a feel-good teen movie about a pair of friends and the highschool drama associated with being kids in a band. The story is decent, nothing spectacular, but the soundtrack is a metal 10/10, with a killer cover of "War Pigs" thrown in. There are also some pretty great metal cameos including Scott Ian (Anthrax), Kirk Hammett (Metallica), Rob Halford (Judas Priest), and Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) who, incidentally, produced and wrote most of the original music.
The Matrix Resurrections
(I) (2021)
Just boring
25 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
I've started this movie three different times and I've never made it past the first forty-five minutes. It's such a self-parody, so much so that New Morpheus says something like "I wasn't sure if the callback would work or not." I've got zero interest in restarting for a fourth time.
Malignant
(I) (2021)
James Wan's least engaging movie
23 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Full disclosure: I just couldn't get into this and got so bored I left the theater about an hour in. It seemed like it tried too hard to make the main character sympathetic through scenes of abuse and a miscarriage but that seemed heavy handed. There was nothing to really keep me engaged.
Terminator Salvation
(2009)
I don't understand why people dislike this so much
20 January 2020
This movie has a...um...different ending? Yeah, it's different but despite all that I really don't get all the hate. It's an enjoyable action flick that builds on the Terminator franchise in a satisfying way. I dig it.
6 Underground
(2019)
Definitely Michael Bay, definitely Netflix
14 December 2019
If you take all of the worst camera angles and colors from Transformers and Bad Boys, add in some Go-Pro parkour scenes, and insert Muse into every blank space, you've got 6 Underground. There are redeeming factors: there are lots of other movie Easter eggs and references, and Ryan Reynolds saves some otherwise tough-sell scenes with his humor, but this was otherwise a parody and I can't tell if it meant to be or not.
3 from Hell
(2019)
Tired rehash of a fantastic movie
17 September 2019
Warning: Spoilers
I really enjoyed The Devil's Rejects, but this was just a tired rehash. It follows the obligatory formula: setup that establishes how crazy people are, a group of people taken hostage and murdered, the Firefly family running away and then getting betrayed by someone, then a lot of shooting. There's lots of naked women and the trademark kaleidoscope scene that has unfortunately become Rob Zombie's trademark. Sherri Moon Zombie tries to play crazy but comes of as ridiculously annoying, while the rest of the ensemble is lackluster. The script was atrocious; the lines that were supposed to convey the most gravitas were laughably bad, so much so that the person behind me asked her companion if this was supposed to be horror or a comedy. The sole high point was the soundtrack - it was really, really well-done and complimented the movie perfectly.
Final verdict: don't be in a hurry to pay to see this, even when it releases on digital. Wait a couple more years and catch it when it streams on Shudder.
Final verdict: don't be in a hurry to pay to see this, even when it releases on digital. Wait a couple more years and catch it when it streams on Shudder.
Spider-Man: Far from Home
(2019)
Could have been a solid 8 but...
4 July 2019
...JB Smoov cost it a star. His one-liners were supposed to be funny but fell absolutely flat and disrupted the pace of the dialogue. It happened enough that it was an active annoyance.
Otherwise, pretty solid movie. The two post-credits scenes were spot-on; I'm still baffled that 23 movies into the MCU people still leave.
Otherwise, pretty solid movie. The two post-credits scenes were spot-on; I'm still baffled that 23 movies into the MCU people still leave.
Avengers: Endgame
(2019)
Almost perfect
26 April 2019
Endgame wraps up the entire MCU in a nice little bow and allows you a decision: stop watching Marvel products and feel a sense of closure, or keep watching and use Endgame as a springboard for what's to come. Either way, this is an incredibly satisfying movie. The only reason I couldn't give it 10/10 is because this also, sadly, reinforced how much I hate Captain Marvel and Brie Larson; her five or six minutes of screen time were the only minutes that I didn't thoroughly enjoy.
Jupiter Ascending
(2015)
I put off studying for a final exam for this?
1 May 2015
Warning: Spoilers
I can't give a comprehensive review for this movie because I didn't bother to watch it all. I put off studying for a final exam (one of the last in my college career) in order to watch this.
Long story short: Mila Kunis gets attacked by aliens while she's donating her eggs for money. Channing Tatum shows up with plasma roller blades, a Halo-esque shield, and a gun that makes a really funny noise. He fights with Djimon Hounsou (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Rila Fukushima (The Wolverine) and saves the girl.
They run. They get in another really drawn-out fight.
Somewhere in here it gets explained that someone died and her kids want Earth as their inheritance. Really kinda vague on this part.
Back on Earth, the pair goes in the woods and finds Ned Stark, miraculously healed from his decapitation at the hands of King Joffery. Wait, no. They find Sean Bean, which is close enough.
(I think he actually survived this movie, which is why I gave it two starts instead of one).
Bean and Tatum fight, and suddenly Kunis is able to control bumblebees, which is where I walked out.
This movie is just utterly a waste of time. It is incomprehensible. There's no chemistry anywhere between any of the actors. It's a bunch of individuals playing individual roles and sucking at them all. The script is horrific, and Kunis needs to go back to The Black Swan, because she left her acting ability back there.
I decided to go back and study instead.
Long story short: Mila Kunis gets attacked by aliens while she's donating her eggs for money. Channing Tatum shows up with plasma roller blades, a Halo-esque shield, and a gun that makes a really funny noise. He fights with Djimon Hounsou (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Rila Fukushima (The Wolverine) and saves the girl.
They run. They get in another really drawn-out fight.
Somewhere in here it gets explained that someone died and her kids want Earth as their inheritance. Really kinda vague on this part.
Back on Earth, the pair goes in the woods and finds Ned Stark, miraculously healed from his decapitation at the hands of King Joffery. Wait, no. They find Sean Bean, which is close enough.
(I think he actually survived this movie, which is why I gave it two starts instead of one).
Bean and Tatum fight, and suddenly Kunis is able to control bumblebees, which is where I walked out.
This movie is just utterly a waste of time. It is incomprehensible. There's no chemistry anywhere between any of the actors. It's a bunch of individuals playing individual roles and sucking at them all. The script is horrific, and Kunis needs to go back to The Black Swan, because she left her acting ability back there.
I decided to go back and study instead.
The Babysitters
(2007)
Great idea, poor execution
13 April 2015
Warning: Spoilers
I can imagine some director sitting down and going "Hmm. I've got a great movie idea. Check this out: a high school girl recruits her friends to be call girls under the auspices of babysitting and turns into a ruthless pimp." Good idea for an edgy movie, right? Probably so, but the execution was pretty bad here. There were so many holes in logic and obvious plot devices that it made it very difficult for me to willingly suspend my disbelief. For instance:
What high school doesn't have security cameras in it? How many 16- year-olds are willing to sleep with 40 year old men in one high school? What high school keeps all sorts of paint and such around for kids to just grab? What man with a wife and two kids keeps three hundred bucks of totally disposable income in his wallet three to four nights per week? How dumb are these wives to not pick up on any of this? Kids break into a school and the cops don't come, but John Leguizamo stands near a train track and his wife freaks out that he might get arrested? How does a girl with OCD decide it's a good idea to destroy a school? For that matter, how does that same girl use the vandalism of the school to threaten her wayward hookers? "I threw paint on your lockers. Don't f*** anyone without my permission or next time it won't be paint." "Well, you smashed in the trophy case. That'll teach me to keep my legs closed." And on and on.
The idea was a pretty good one. This movie had a lot of potential in it for something gritty, chilling, and dark. As a finished product, however, it seemed to just be some indie schlock that was trying for profundity and wound up falling face-first into some dad's lap.
What high school doesn't have security cameras in it? How many 16- year-olds are willing to sleep with 40 year old men in one high school? What high school keeps all sorts of paint and such around for kids to just grab? What man with a wife and two kids keeps three hundred bucks of totally disposable income in his wallet three to four nights per week? How dumb are these wives to not pick up on any of this? Kids break into a school and the cops don't come, but John Leguizamo stands near a train track and his wife freaks out that he might get arrested? How does a girl with OCD decide it's a good idea to destroy a school? For that matter, how does that same girl use the vandalism of the school to threaten her wayward hookers? "I threw paint on your lockers. Don't f*** anyone without my permission or next time it won't be paint." "Well, you smashed in the trophy case. That'll teach me to keep my legs closed." And on and on.
The idea was a pretty good one. This movie had a lot of potential in it for something gritty, chilling, and dark. As a finished product, however, it seemed to just be some indie schlock that was trying for profundity and wound up falling face-first into some dad's lap.
3 Days to Kill
(2014)
I wasted time downloading this?
6 June 2014
Warning: Spoilers
What a horrible movie. I downloaded this, and it's just simply, laughably bad. I turned it off and deleted it about twenty minutes in and never looked back.
I endured squatters in a CIA agent's house (whom he threatens by opening his gun safe that's just sort of sitting there), and they're not your average squatters. Oh my, no. They're African squatters, and you've never seen a more clichéd bunch. All that's missing is the bones through the nose, and since I turned the movie off I can't swear that none appear.
I put up with a ridiculous scene with said agent and his high-school aged daughter, and all I could think of was Full House. Bob Sagat would be proud of Kevin Costner. For that matter, the Olsen twins would love the girl that plays his daughter.
I also made it through the introductory shoot-em-up at a hotel, a fact that is a testimony to my strong physical constitution. A lesser man would have died from a combination of empathetic shame for the poor people in this movie and from the pure embarrassment of sitting through the atrocious action sequence.
But yeah, I turned it off. It took all that was bad about The Bourne Identity (and the plethora of knockoffs there) and Taken (not that there was a lot bad to take from that one), mixed it with a hefty dose of 80s sitcom/soap opera divorced-and-estranged-parent/abandoned-and-resentful- child drama, and wrapped it all up with every horrible spy cliché in the book. And, I mean, this wouldn't have been bad in and of itself. Stallone did the same thing with the Expendables franchise and I enjoyed every satirical minute of it. Why? Because Stallone was making a film that was intended to be satirical. This film, on the other hand, was meant to be taken seriously.
3 Days to Die? Three minutes to delete, is more like it.
I endured squatters in a CIA agent's house (whom he threatens by opening his gun safe that's just sort of sitting there), and they're not your average squatters. Oh my, no. They're African squatters, and you've never seen a more clichéd bunch. All that's missing is the bones through the nose, and since I turned the movie off I can't swear that none appear.
I put up with a ridiculous scene with said agent and his high-school aged daughter, and all I could think of was Full House. Bob Sagat would be proud of Kevin Costner. For that matter, the Olsen twins would love the girl that plays his daughter.
I also made it through the introductory shoot-em-up at a hotel, a fact that is a testimony to my strong physical constitution. A lesser man would have died from a combination of empathetic shame for the poor people in this movie and from the pure embarrassment of sitting through the atrocious action sequence.
But yeah, I turned it off. It took all that was bad about The Bourne Identity (and the plethora of knockoffs there) and Taken (not that there was a lot bad to take from that one), mixed it with a hefty dose of 80s sitcom/soap opera divorced-and-estranged-parent/abandoned-and-resentful- child drama, and wrapped it all up with every horrible spy cliché in the book. And, I mean, this wouldn't have been bad in and of itself. Stallone did the same thing with the Expendables franchise and I enjoyed every satirical minute of it. Why? Because Stallone was making a film that was intended to be satirical. This film, on the other hand, was meant to be taken seriously.
3 Days to Die? Three minutes to delete, is more like it.
The Lords of Salem
(2012)
Zombie Shuffles Along
20 May 2013
Warning: Spoilers
This review may contain spoilers. Well, not really. There's really not a whole lot in this movie that could be spoiled that hasn't already been. There was supposedly a $2.5 million dollar budget for this movie - I'm curious to see the line-item audit of that. IMDb notes that there were no digital special effects, and I have no problems believing that whatsoever. The plot for this movie was remarkably weak: the original Salem witches curse all the women of the town, some rock DJ named Heidi (played by Sherri Moon Zombie) plays a record backwards and manages to waken all of the witches who still currently exist in the town and somehow manages to ride a goat, have sex with someone in corpse paint, and bears Satan's child. This looked less like a movie and more like an excuse to put Zombie's wife in yet another movie that he's directed. (Note to Zombie: she's getting a little old to be eye-candy!) While I respect Zombie as a musician, he's very hit-or-miss as a director and this one is definitely a miss. His fascination with psychedelic imagery and strange coloration was edgy fifteen years ago; now it's just passé. I would be hard pressed to even call this a horror movie. It strikes me as an artsy attempt to recollect a bad dream that Zombie had while passed out on his couch some Sunday afternoon. Give this one a miss. I wish I had.
Season of the Witch
(2011)
That's two hours I'm never getting back
6 April 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Thankfully I waited until this came out on DVD, borrowed it from a friend, and then watched it. This is one of the most atrocious movies that I've had the opportunity to view in the last decade. Where can I possibly begin?
Let's start with the basic premise. A girl is accused of being a witch and spreading the Black Plague across Europe. She's held in a dungeon in some random European locale and needs to be transported "four hundred leagues, which is about a six days journey" to a monastery in an even more remote random European locale by a batch of relapsed Catholics held together by a suspicious-looking priest. Of course she's in a prison wagon, and of course all sorts of bad things happen. And, I might add, not just any old bad things. Clichéd bad things. Wolves attacking at night in a forest. Your quintessential rope bridge spanning a thousand- foot gorge in the mountains. Ooh, and guess what? The planks are old and rotted and the ropes are unraveling and about to give way. Stop me if you've heard this one.
Someone decided that it would be a sneaky move to cast doubt and suspicion on the priest. After all, priests are great bad guys, right? So you have this innocent-looking "waif" (their word, not mine) who keeps screaming that she doesn't want to be alone with the priest (Really? How subliminally anti-Catholic is this?). The priest does his part by keeping his cowl up and looking suitably creepy and everyone else looks at him with a marked lack of trust. Now, about halfway through this, loyalties shift and the people who wanted to provide this girl with a fair trial are now suddenly hellbent on killing her and the priest is the good guy again. Whew! Crisis averted.
Speaking of anti-Catholic, Nicholas Cage's character, who is so memorable that I've already forgotten his name less than twenty minutes after watching the movie, is a Crusader. He decides that he's had enough of crusading after he and his trusty sidekick (played by Ron Perlman, who should have stuck with Hellboy) arrive at an epiphany about the evils of killing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. They make absolutely no bones about this fact to anyone, and their heart-stirring rebellion culminates in Cage's guy saying (very dramatically), "I serve God. I no longer serve the church!" *gasp!* It's farcical.
Speaking of farcical...have you heard the one about the bunch of actors who are portraying Europeans but all speak with Midwestern accents? There's not a bad British accent anywhere in here. You know, I've never yearned for a bad British accent until this movie.
Long story short, the girl's not a witch, she's a demon. The demon's revealed to be a horrible CGI, people get burned, everyone dies, the young kid and the girl ride off into the sunset, Black Plague avoided.
Best part of the movie? Watching Ron Perlman trying to keep a straight face while he delivers his lines. Or is it Nicholas Cage trying to rediscover his inner Sorcerer's Apprentice?
I'll never get these two hours back.
Let's start with the basic premise. A girl is accused of being a witch and spreading the Black Plague across Europe. She's held in a dungeon in some random European locale and needs to be transported "four hundred leagues, which is about a six days journey" to a monastery in an even more remote random European locale by a batch of relapsed Catholics held together by a suspicious-looking priest. Of course she's in a prison wagon, and of course all sorts of bad things happen. And, I might add, not just any old bad things. Clichéd bad things. Wolves attacking at night in a forest. Your quintessential rope bridge spanning a thousand- foot gorge in the mountains. Ooh, and guess what? The planks are old and rotted and the ropes are unraveling and about to give way. Stop me if you've heard this one.
Someone decided that it would be a sneaky move to cast doubt and suspicion on the priest. After all, priests are great bad guys, right? So you have this innocent-looking "waif" (their word, not mine) who keeps screaming that she doesn't want to be alone with the priest (Really? How subliminally anti-Catholic is this?). The priest does his part by keeping his cowl up and looking suitably creepy and everyone else looks at him with a marked lack of trust. Now, about halfway through this, loyalties shift and the people who wanted to provide this girl with a fair trial are now suddenly hellbent on killing her and the priest is the good guy again. Whew! Crisis averted.
Speaking of anti-Catholic, Nicholas Cage's character, who is so memorable that I've already forgotten his name less than twenty minutes after watching the movie, is a Crusader. He decides that he's had enough of crusading after he and his trusty sidekick (played by Ron Perlman, who should have stuck with Hellboy) arrive at an epiphany about the evils of killing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. They make absolutely no bones about this fact to anyone, and their heart-stirring rebellion culminates in Cage's guy saying (very dramatically), "I serve God. I no longer serve the church!" *gasp!* It's farcical.
Speaking of farcical...have you heard the one about the bunch of actors who are portraying Europeans but all speak with Midwestern accents? There's not a bad British accent anywhere in here. You know, I've never yearned for a bad British accent until this movie.
Long story short, the girl's not a witch, she's a demon. The demon's revealed to be a horrible CGI, people get burned, everyone dies, the young kid and the girl ride off into the sunset, Black Plague avoided.
Best part of the movie? Watching Ron Perlman trying to keep a straight face while he delivers his lines. Or is it Nicholas Cage trying to rediscover his inner Sorcerer's Apprentice?
I'll never get these two hours back.
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