Category: Reviews of Movies
The Invisible Maniac: Directed by Adam Rifkin. With Noel Peters, Savannah, Stephanie Blake, Melissa Moore. An invisible scientist escapes from an asylum and teaches high-school physics to nubile teens. Yet another trashy film with all sorts of trashy nudity, cheap sets, and a plot that works, but just barely. I’m actually reminded of Re-Animator when I think back to this film, there’s a lot of similarities, but they’re mostly on the surface. I think I have a 4k edition of this coming in the mail and it’s going to include some special features, so I look forward to any kind...
Fortress of Amerikkka: Directed by Eric Louzil. With Gene LeBrock, Kellee Bradley, David Crane, William J. Kulzer. A rebel is planing revenge against a corrupted sheriff. Meanwhile in the nearby woods, a crazy general is leading a secret militia called “Fortress of Amerikkka” who brutally kill anyone trespassing close to their campgrounds. I’m been on a trashy movie kick lately and this perfectly fits the bill. Released in 1989, there’s plenty of weird Regan-esque politics, heavy handed messages, open racism, exotic nude women, non-exotic nude women, nude women, and absolutely jacked guys delivering one liners that make only the barest...
Good Night Oppy: Directed by Ryan White. With Angela Bassett, Steve Squyres, Moogega Cooper, Abigail Fraeman. The film follows Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover affectionately dubbed Oppy by her creators and scientists at NASA. Oppy was originally expected to live for only 90 days but she ultimately explored Mars for nearly 15 years. Did I expect to cry about a couple of dumb rovers on some dumb planet? No. Did I? You bet your ass I did. This is an emotional tale, expertly scripted, shot, narrated, and with a musical score that might make me cry just by itself. Buy...
Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Directed by Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise. With Corey Burton, Claudia Christian, Michael J. Fox, James Garner. A young linguist named Milo Thatch joins an intrepid group of explorers to find the mysterious lost continent of Atlantis. I’m sure that I would have seen this when it came out, but I have no memory of it, and it would have been well before I was logging the movies as I watched them, so I’m considering this my first time. I’m aware of the reputation that the movie has with Disney fans, it’s one of the less well...
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special: Directed by James Gunn. With Luke Klein, Sean Gunn, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker. Star-Lord, Drax, Rocket, Mantis, and Groot engage in some spirited shenanigans in an all-new original special created for Disney+. Surprisingly better than I was expecting, but less than I was hoping for, if that makes any sort of sense. There’s plenty of time padding and the story is pretty light, but it’s a fun enough romp on the cosmic side of the MCU to be worth the hour of your time it’ll take to watch. Buy On Amazon!
Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch: Directed by Michael LaBash, Tony Leondis. With Chris Sanders, Dakota Fanning, Tia Carrere, David Ogden Stiers. A malfunction threatens to destroy Stitch and his friendship with Lilo! As cute as the first one, and just as fine as the second one, this is the third Stitch film, paradoxically named “Lilo & Stitch 2”. It follows the tv series, but makes absolutely no reference to it at all, which is good, because I’ve still not finished it. Buy On Amazon!
Venom: Let There Be Carnage: Directed by Andy Serkis. With Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris. Eddie Brock attempts to reignite his career by interviewing serial killer Cletus Kasady, who becomes the host of the symbiote Carnage and escapes prison after a failed execution. After watching VENOM with the wife, she suggested that she had never seen this and wanted to watch it, so we did. It’s still a perfectly fine movie that I don’t appreciate at all. Buy On Amazon!
Venom: Directed by Ruben Fleischer. With Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze. A failed reporter is bonded to an alien entity, one of many symbiotes who have invaded Earth. But the being takes a liking to Earth and decides to protect it. I bought this because it was only $10 and I needed the physical edition for a “Stan Lee” movie collection I’m slowly putting together. Buy On Amazon!
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum: Directed by Chad Stahelski. With Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne. John Wick is on the run after killing a member of the international assassins’ guild, and with a $14 million price tag on his head, he is the target of hit men and women everywhere. IMHO this is the weakest of the three films, with no one set piece that I look back on fondly, and about 3 of them that I look back on and just don’t like. The motorcycles, the dogs with Halle Berry, the 20 minute long glass...
Bolt: Directed by Byron Howard, Chris Williams. With John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton. The canine star of a fictional sci-fi/action show that believes his powers are real embarks on a cross country trek to save his co-star from a threat he believes is just as real. I ran into a discussion about this film on reddit with a post about how this movie went from being a concept called “American Dog” to the eventual movie that it became. They mentioned someone was claiming this was one of the best Disney films released in 2008, which I found...
A Beautiful Mind: Directed by Ron Howard. With Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer. After John Nash, a brilliant but asocial mathematician, accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the nightmarish. I was surprised to recognize Anthony Rapp as one of the college fellows at the beginning of the film. He’s obviously much more known for his time on Star Trek than A Beautiful Mind, but it’s nice to see he’s been around doing his thing for a while longer than I realized. The movie still holds up just fine, but it was funny...
The School for Good and Evil: Directed by Paul Feig. With Kit Young, Sophia Anne Caruso, Cate Blanchett, Liam Woon. Best friends Sophie and Agatha find themselves on opposing sides of an epic battle when they’re swept away into an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect the balance between Good and Evil. I’m not sure how I missed it, but this isn’t a fairy tale story, it’s a story about fairy tale stories, and the titular school is to train the future fairy tales of the world. As a Netflix film, it’s done well enough...
Clerks III: Directed by Kevin Smith. With Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Vincent Pereira, Mike Zapcic. Dante, Elias, and Jay and Silent Bob are enlisted by Randal after a heart attack to make a movie about the convenience store that started it all. I’m a fan of Kevin Smith’s work and how he can captivate an audience with some of the most entertainingly weird stories during his Q&As sessions. Clerks 3 is much less of a work of a creative mind than it is the work of a man that nearly died from a massive heart attack and had to change...
Vesper: Directed by Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper. With Raffiella Chapman, Eddie Marsan, Rosy McEwen, Richard Brake. Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth’s ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future. A perfectly weird film with a weird plot and weird scene. The culmination of all that weirdness is a movie that works for me, if only just barely. Buy On Amazon!
Doom: Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. With Dwayne Johnson, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Deobia Oparei. Space Marines are sent to investigate strange events at a research facility on Mars but find themselves at the mercy of genetically enhanced killing machines. I received this as a reward for spending money with Universal and I was blessed with the “unrated” version. I can’t tell what’s different about it from the regular version and I’m definitely not going to watch the other version and try to compare them. It’s still a goofy movie that takes itself slightly too seriously and the first person shooter...
Signs: Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin. A widowed former reverend living with his children and brother on a Pennsylvania farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields, which suggests something more frightening to come. I was reminded that I own this on HD-DVD when I found it in a box in my closet during a clean out day and I fondly remember being freaked out by it, so when I saw it on itunes for just $5, I snagged a copy. It’s still a great film about family and choices and...
Captain America II: Death Too Soon: Directed by Ivan Nagy. With Reb Brown, Connie Sellecca, Len Birman, Christopher Lee. The star spangled hero must battle a villain’s plan to poison America with a chemical that horrifically accelerates the aging process. The second of two films, there’s a bit of re-used stuff at the beginning that had me worried for a moment, but after that first section, it’s all uniquely shot material. You’ll be happy to hear that the van that was destroyed in evil’s attempt to kill Captain America in the first film has been fully restored and Steve is...
Captain America: Directed by Rod Holcomb. With Reb Brown, Len Birman, Heather Menzies-Urich, Robin Mattson. A recipient of an experimental body enhancement chemical retaliates against his would be killers as a star spangled superhero. I bought this two movie dvd on a whim, it was only $6 and came from Shout Factory, so why not? The two movies were Captain American (1979) and Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1980), both of which were made for tv movies with the same solid feel that the Hulk show had during that same time period. This first movie sets up Cap as...
Everything Everywhere All at Once: Directed by Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert. With Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong. An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, in which she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led. I’ve heard good things about the film, most of them are true, so I can highly recommend the film. Maybe one day I’ll write a 1,000 word essay on a good film, but today’s not that day. Seems like I only write that long when someone’s rustled my...
Secret Headquarters: Directed by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman. With Owen Wilson, Michael Peña, Walker Scobell, Jesse Williams. While hanging out after school, Charlie and his friends discover the headquarters of the world’s most powerful superhero hidden beneath his home. When villains attack, they must team up to defend the headquarters and save the world. I feel like this is Michael Pena’s highlight reel for his acceptance as the next MCU superhero, he does a great job here as the less than heroic adversary to The Guard, as played by the goofy as always Owen Wilson. The cast of kids in...
Three Thousand Years of Longing: Directed by George Miller. With Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Erdil Yasaroglu, Sarah Houbolt. A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did, the trailer was pretty vague about what I was getting myself into, but that might have worked in my favor, as I didn’t expect it to go in the direction that it ultimately went in. There’s a good story here, some great visual effects, and I highly suggest it. Buy...
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Directed by Ryan Coogler. With Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke. The people of Wakanda fight to protect their home from intervening world powers as they mourn the death of King T’Challa. There is nearly nothing about this film that I enjoyed. I hate to say that, as Chadwick Boseman was damn near perfect as the Black Panther, but he was really only great in movies that didn’t have Black Panther in the title, that first one completely lost me in the plot and lack of logic in its science fiction. Director Ryan Coogler...
Don’t Worry Darling: Directed by Olivia Wilde. With Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde. A 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets. A rather fantastic look into what we get when we ask for too much from the people we love. I love where they went with the movie and could see this being either something that gets dismissed, but I think it deserves more than that. Buy On Amazon!
Fathers’ Day: Directed by Ivan Reitman. With Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nastassja Kinski. A woman cons two old boyfriends into searching for her runaway son by convincing both that they are the boy’s father. A funny film that didn’t land the way I was hoping it would, both Robin and Billy are near the top of their game, but there wasn’t much of a plot to really work with and what was there was mostly nonsensical fun. Buy On Amazon!
Director by Night: Directed by Anthony Giacchino. With Mike Bryson, Anthony Giacchino, Josephine Giacchino, Michael Giacchino. “DIRECTOR BY NIGHT” follows film composer Michael Giacchino’s first foray into directing. I thought this was going to be another one of the interesting but low effort ‘behind the scenes’ that they do for every new Star Wars or Marvel series, but it ended up being a heartfelt look at the director’s life and how he came to be in the movie business. If you haven’t checked out “Werewolf by Night” yet, it’s pretty good, and this director documentary is about as long and...
Starship Troopers: Directed by Paul Verhoeven. With Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey. Humans in a fascist, militaristic future wage war with giant alien bugs. This is for the 4k transfer that was recently released in a classy looking Steelbook case, which I found on the Amazon. The case is worth the premium for physical collectors, the inside and outside have eye catching artwork and the discs have some cool visuals too. It’s a rarity to see these for sale anywhere other than Best Buy these days, so I was super happy to see it on Jeffery’s...
Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday: Directed by George Kirby, Harry Kirby. With Scott Adkins, Ray Stevenson, Perry Benson, Sarah Chang. The Accident Man, is back and this time he must beat the top assassins in the world, to protect the ungrateful son of a mafia boss, save the life of his only friend and rekindle his relationship with his maniacal father figure. Not as bad as I was thinking it was going to be, in fact I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this, a film about an assassin that makes all his hits look like accidents. This is the...
Hocus Pocus 2: Directed by Anne Fletcher. With Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Whitney Peak. Two young women accidentally bring back the Sanderson Sisters to modern day Salem and must figure out how to stop the child-hungry witches from wreaking havoc on the world. I think I stayed awake for most of this, but honestly go watch the first one again, it’s on Disney+ and it’s in 4k/hdr and you’ll get to see all the same jokes, just done better. Buy On Amazon!
Terrifier 2: Directed by Damien Leone. With Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Jenna Kanell, Catherine Corcoran. After being resurrected by a sinister entity, Art the Clown returns to the timid town of Miles County where he targets a teenage girl and her younger brother on Halloween night. I haven’t a clue why I watched this with, but boy howdy was it a good time. There’s some real stupidity going on with the limits of what this new horror icon can get up to, but Lauren LaVera more than makes up for anything that I could complain about. The camp is...
X: Directed by Ti West. With Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Kid Cudi. In 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in rural Texas, but when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the cast find themselves fighting for their lives. A horror film done right, but no big surprise, it’s A24 after all! There’s a ton of foreshadowing, but not all of it is very obvious that there’s a set up happening, but other times it’s as obvious as a gator coming right at you! Buy On Amazon!
Slayers: Directed by K. Asher Levin. With Thomas Jane, Kara Hayward, Jack Donnelly, Lydia Hearst. A group of superstar influencers are drawn to a reclusive billionaire’s mansion only to find themselves trapped in the lair of an evil vampire. The only way out is to be saved by a famous online gamer and an old school vampire hunter. Low budget, but still fun, Jane’s fake beard is truly the highlight of the entire endeavor. Buy On Amazon!
Black Adam: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. With Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Pierce Brosnan, Noah Centineo. Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the Egyptian gods – and imprisoned just as quickly – Black Adam is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world. Surprisingly, this is likely the very best that DC has done in recent memory. Nothing about this film is really worthy of complaint, other than the use of noted racist and general POS Kanye’s music about half way through, something that I’m sure...
Bodies Bodies Bodies: Directed by Halina Reijn. With Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui Wonders. When a group of rich 20-somethings plan a hurricane party at a remote family mansion, a party game turns deadly in this fresh and funny look at backstabbing, fake friends, and one party gone very, very wrong. One of the rare misses for me from the A24 movie production machine. There’s a lot of the elements that I like from their other work, but in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” the silly and vapid characters are so unbelievably ridiculous that I found it hard to...
Spirit Halloween: Directed by David Poag. With Donovan Colan, Jaiden J. Smith, Dylan Martin Frankel, Marissa Reyes. When a Halloween store opens in a deserted strip-mall, three friends, thinking they’ve outgrown trick or treating, decide to spend the night locked inside. But their night of spook-filled fun soon turns to outlandish survival. A good family friendly horror film of a man cursed to inhabit a curse building that was curse long ago by a curse giving curse giver. This cursed film doesn’t feature any actual cursing, so there’s plenty of fun for anyone over the age of say…5. that’s the...
One Hour Photo: Directed by Mark Romanek. With Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Dylan Smith. A mentally unstable photo developer targets an upper middle-class family after his obsession with them becomes more sick and disturbing than any of them could imagine. We skipped a couple films from Robin to get to this creepy one in which a man has made connections to a family, only the family doesn’t know that he’s so engrained in their lives. The photo processing itself is a concept that works for this film, but the industry has nearly completely moved over to digital photography...
Halloween Ends: Directed by David Gordon Green. With Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, James Jude Courtney, Rohan Campbell. The saga of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode comes to a spine-chilling climax in the final installment of this trilogy. I’ve read a few headlines from reviews before I got the time to watch “the final” halloween movie, so maybe it was the low expectations, but this was a good bookend to the franchise. It’s obviously not the end for the franchise completely, we’ve seen various endings in the past, but maybe this time Jamie Lee Curtis is done with them? I...
Hellraiser: Directed by David Bruckner. With Odessa A’zion, Jamie Clayton, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey. A take on Clive Barker’s 1987 horror classic where a young woman struggling with addiction comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites. Not as good as the best Hellraiser (the first one), nor no where near as bad as the worst one (anything after the second), this 2022 Hulu exclusive release is eminently watchable. Odessa A’zion as the POV character does a fantastic job, the soundtrack is on point, and the cinematography is suitable for the...
Jack: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. With Robin Williams, Diane Lane, Brian Kerwin, Jennifer Lopez. Because of an unusual disorder that has aged him four times faster than a typical human being, a boy looks like a 40-year-old man as he starts fifth grade at public school after being homeschooled. If you were to tell me that Robin Williams really was a kid stuck in a full grown man’s body, it’d be easy to believe. The casting of this film is something else entirely with people like Bill Cosby, Jennifer Lopez, and Diane Lane filling out the on screen talent,...
Mrs. Doubtfire: Directed by Chris Columbus. With Robin Williams, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Fierstein. After a bitter divorce, an actor disguises himself as a female housekeeper to spend time with his children held in custody by his former wife. Watching this as a child, it was a hilarious film with some weird consequences at the end. Watching it as an adult, whew, Doubtfire is lucky she didn’t end up in prison for the rest of her life. One of Williams greatest roles, with a fantastic performance by Sally Field as the stick in the mud single mom. Buy On...
Diary of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Todd Schroeder, Laura de Carteret, Amy Lalonde, Martin Roach. A group of young film students run into real-life zombies while filming a horror movie of their own. A huge step down from the prior movie, everything is too well lit, the script is too unpolished, and the money spread way too thin. It also shows it’s age with some references to myspace, which is still a thing, but it’s not the thing that they reference in the movie. There’s some fun parts, like the Amish guy with the sickle, but...
Blade Runner 2049: Directed by Denis Villeneuve. With Ryan Gosling, Dave Bautista, Robin Wright, Mark Arnold. Young Blade Runner K’s discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former Blade Runner Rick Deckard, who’s been missing for thirty years. I watched this again on a whim (aka reddit marketing got to me) and it still holds up, I still love damn near everything about it, and as a bonus, I realized that the female replicant that does a fair bit of murdering is Sylvia Hoeks, which I now love to hate her on “See” where she plays the...
Land of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento. The living dead have taken over the world, and the last humans live in a walled city to protect themselves as they come to grips with the situation. There’s a Tuba zombie, a gas station zombie, and other zombies that have started to remember their lives before they were zombies and they’re starting to live out their lives again. It’s about as weird and silly as you’d expect. The highlight of how silly the movie takes itself is the soldier that uses...
Dawn of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross. Following an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia S.W.A.T. team members, a traffic reporter, and his television executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall. This is my favorite of the Romero zombie films, I like the idea of settings up a fortress and riding the whole thing out, and what better place than a late 70’s mall? This was near the absolute height of mall culture. The ending gets silly in the way...
The Munsters: Directed by Rob Zombie. With Richard Brake, Jorge Garcia, Sylvester McCoy, Catherine Schell. Reboot of “The Munsters”, that followed a family of monsters who moves from Transylvania to an American suburb. “This is a bunch of cornball hooey!” That’s an actual quote from the movie, and it’s completely accurate. This is a movie filled with cornball hooey, which if you’ve seen the original tv or any of the half dozen made for tv movies that were either sequels or reboots, you knew to expect this. The lights are garish, the special makeup is way over the top, the...
Spin Me Round: Directed by Jeff Baena. With Alison Brie, Jake Picking, Stella Chestnut, Lil Rel Howery. A woman wins an all-expenses-paid trip to a company’s gorgeous “institute” outside of Florence, and also the chance to meet the restaurant chain’s wealthy and charismatic owner. She finds a different adventure than the one she imagined. A nice low budget film with big impacts, but it’ll take a bit of talking through the entire thing with buddies to get the full effect. Jeff Baena (LIfe After Beth, The Little Hours, Horse Girl) is no stranger to quality films and working with Alison...
Werewolf by Night: Directed by Michael Giacchino. With Gael García Bernal, Laura Donnelly, Harriet Sansom Harris, Kirk R. Thatcher. Follows a lycanthrope superhero who fights evil using the abilities given to him by a curse brought on by his bloodline. So much better than I thought it was going to be, and so much shorter! The story didn’t break the one hour mark and I think it’s made all that much better because of it. There’s some fun appearances, some great foreshadowing and the use of black and white with color is among the best out there. Buy On Amazon!
Dawn of the Dead: Directed by Zack Snyder. With Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer. A nurse, a policeman, a young married couple, a salesman and other survivors of a worldwide plague that is producing aggressive, flesh-eating zombies, take refuge in a mega Midwestern shopping mall. Better than the original, but only just barely. There’s different focuses, with the og more interested in how the survivers survive in the building and this remake being focused on cool visuals and shooting zeeks, but considering the director and writers, it’s remarkably conservative with the explosions and bloodlust. Buy On Amazon!
Night of the Living Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman. A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls that are ravaging the East Coast of the United States. The movie opens with a couple going out to a cemetery 200 miles away from home to put a wreath on a grave. Maybe it’s a brother and sister? Maybe! But my main focus is that this is a surprisingly fantastic transfer, I had heard the copyright on the film had...
Day of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato, Jarlath Conroy. As the world is overrun by zombies, a small group of scientists and military personnel dwelling in an underground bunker in Florida must determine whether they should educate, eliminate or escape the undead horde. Some casual racism that’s hard to get past, but this movie (and the franchise) came up in a discussion about zombie films in which the various characters had the RIGHT idea about what to do. In this case, at the beginning of the film one of the helicoptor...
Confess, Fletch: Directed by Greg Mottola. With Lorenza Izzo, Jon Hamm, Anna Osceola, Marcia Gay Harden. After becoming the prime suspect in multiple murders, Fletch strives to prove his innocence while simultaneously searching for his fiancé’s stolen art collection. I had some minor misgivings of this movie about the same character that Chevy Chase played nearly 30 years ago, which is based on a series of books, which means it’s a different story and Jon Hamm can do whatever he wants with the character without really being beholden to what Chase did with him. In many ways it’s a situation...
