Category: Blog

I Married a Witch: Directed by René Clair. With Fredric March, Veronica Lake, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward. A beautiful 17th-century witch returns to life to plague politician Wallace Wooley, descendant of her persecutor. Another nearly perfect clean up and release from the Criterion Collection, this is an entertainingly surprise to me, both that I hadn’t run into it on tv before and that I enjoyed it so much. She’s a truly evil witch, wanting to burn down entire hotels and kill everyone inside, then torture some poor sap that had the misfortune to be the descendant of a man responsible...

Zone 414: Directed by Andrew Baird. With Guy Pearce, Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Jonathan Aris, Colin Salmon. Set in the near future, private detective David Carmichael is hired by Marlon Veidt, an eccentric businessman, to track down his missing daughter. David teams up with Jane, a highly advanced A.I. to solve the mystery. There’s clear and obvious cinematic aspirations here that the movie is reaching for, and while I applaud it for what it’s able to do, I don’t think it actually reaches the goal that they set for themselves. Maybe the script needed some more work, or maybe it...

Halloween Kills: Directed by David Gordon Green. With Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, James Jude Courtney. The saga of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode continues in the next thrilling chapter of the Halloween series. Picking up immediately after 2018’s “Halloween”, we find Laurie Strode being transported from her death trap of a house to have emergency surgery for the stabbings she received during Michael’s assault on her fortress of death. Passing her on the way to her house? Fire trucks and first responders! The inevitable happens and there’s a ton of dead firefighters left behind as Michael is...

Vacation Friends: Directed by Clay Tarver. With Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena, Meredith Hagner. A couple meets up with another couple while on vacation in Mexico, but their friendship takes an awkward turn when they get back home. We’ve all see this story before and we’ll see it again 1,000 times, a stuffy couple falls in with a wild couple and shenanigans ensue and everyone learned to be better people by the end of the film. In this case, the casting is damn near perfect as the chemistry among the four leads is noticeable and the comedic delivery...

Lucky Boy: Directed by Norman Taurog, Charles C. Wilson. With George Jessel, Gwen Lee, Richard Tucker, Gayne Whitman. A young Jewish man works in his father’s jewelry business, but he doesn’t like it at all–he wants to be an entertainer, something he knows that his father would never approve of. He comes up with a scheme to put on his own show in a theater and show his father that he can be a success, but things don’t work out quite as well as he planned. I found a copy of this on a dvd store’s website, making the (incorrect)...

Don’t Say a Word: Directed by Gary Fleder. With Michael Douglas, Sean Bean, Brittany Murphy, Skye McCole Bartusiak. When the daughter of a psychiatrist is kidnapped, he’s horrified to discover that the abductors’ demand is that he break through to a post traumatic stress disorder suffering young woman who knows a secret… After watching the quasi documentary about her death, we decided it would be time to watch some of her films and this one was free on Tubi. It’s a well made psychological thriller, the type that Michael Douglas apparently enjoyed making for a large portion of his career....

Injustice: Directed by Matt Peters. With Justin Hartley, Anson Mount, Laura Bailey, Zach Callison. On an alternate Earth, the Joker tricks Superman into killing Lois Lane, which causes a rampage in the hero. Superman decides to take control of Earth, Batman and his allies will have to attempt to stop him. I’m pretty sure this is based on something other than the video game, maybe the comic book series? I haven’t had the opportunity to read that yet, so all my knowledge comes from just the first video game. This movie isn’t much like that game, but it’s still a...

Hellraiser: Hellworld: Directed by Rick Bota. With Stelian Urian, Katheryn Winnick, Anna Tolputt, Khary Payton. Gamers playing a MMORPG based on the “Hellraiser” films find their lives endangered after being invited to a rave, the host of which intends to show them the truth behind the Cenobite mythos. Another straight to VHS / DVD special that actually turned out to be a pretty ok horror / slasher film and somewhat ok addition to the Hellraiser franchise. Most surprising to me was seeing a very young Henry Cavil as one of group that’s destined to die. There’s some pretty lame attempts...

What Happened, Brittany Murphy?: With Paige Westbrook, Alex Hodgins, Kathy Najimy, Lisa Rieffel. Presents an in-depth, intimate character portrait exploring the life and career and mysterious circumstances surrounding the tragic death of 90’s actress and rising star, Brittany Murphy. This was less than what I hoped it would be, with all sorts of finger pointing and positing with youtubers that are pushing hoaxes and conspiracy theories. It’s only two episodes long, but it took the majority of their time to even point out that her husband had a previous relationship that nearly ended the same way. There’s a lot of...

Titans: Created by Greg Berlanti, Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns. With Brenton Thwaites, Anna Diop, Ryan Potter, Teagan Croft. A team of young superheroes combat evil and other perils. An extreme jump in story and cinematic quality, my one big complaint is that, as usual, the people with actual powers are sidelined for nearly the entire thing, or aren’t used in an effective manner, so it all devolves into admittedly cool martial arts, with rapid camera changes and frequent (reversible) deaths. I’m not kidding about the jump in quality from the prior seasons, there’s a couple episodes that are downright beautiful....