Every Film I Watched in 2024

I have no idea how to judge this one. Overwhelmingly crazy hangout flick. Every scene they introduce a new concept where the stakes swing dramatically, and every 3rd scene is just blue.

The subtitles we had were very poor, but not sure on how much it harmed the experience. The practical effects are a lot of fun, and there's some great usage of heavily stylized lighting, outside of when the scene is just blue. I cannot stress how impenetrably blue a large chunk of this movie is.

Was interested in it after reading that it was a cyberpunk movie, but it really isn't? There's some slight cyberpunk tinges here and there, but this is absolutely in the "modern day sci-fi seinen anime adaptation" ballpark.

Was initially interested in watching the original anime this was adapted from, but on further research it seems to be a very dodgy hentai. Oh well.

It's absolutely fine. Nothing engaging or entertaining, but it's nothing awful.

Really nothing to talk about with this one, other than that the character arks are all weirdly under-cooked (the girl from School of Rock especially).

To start this off, I need to clarify that I have never and will never be a Doctor Who person. Watched the first few eps of the Eccleston reboot when it aired, thought it was okay, and never went any further with it.

So, watching this in a vacuum as the historical bio drama element appealed. It's passable, but held back by being a TV movie that needs to maintain the tone of a TV movie.

It really really really needed to explore the conflict it teases in it's premise of the difficulty of working in 60's TV as minorities. Outside a couple scenes with the woman producer, it doesn't really do anything at all with the British-Indian director outside of recreating that Paul Rudd "look at us" meme. Issue is - you can't really get away with more conflict in a TV movie. You need it to remain light and enjoyable, and it's very much at the expense of the film.

It also really really really shouldn't have opened on the first shot of one of our protagonists slut shaming another woman.

The ending scene where Matt Smith (the actor who played Doctor Who when this film aired) appears in a dramatic cameo is extremely funny, as it dates the film horrifically.

3rd time I've seen it now. My previous biggest issue was that I didn't think it was clear enough what the Ring does. This time I watched it with another mate who hadn't seen it before, and when asking them about it afterwards, they immediately got it. So maybe not that unclear.

I am still somewhat bothered about the scene of Cooper talking about the ring, though; like is he misunderstanding the mechanics? Why do this?

My second minor issue was the intro section being a little too long and disconnected, but on reflection I think it does a good job of both separating tone and introducing the background supernatural elements. The (singular) David Bowie scene also bothers me less - it does what it needs to do.

Very disappointed overall, but definitely crazier than I expected going in.

The plot never makes sense at any point, the B-movie acting is consistently fun, but the elephant in the room is it's an adaptation of an edgy comic book, meaning it hates women. Honest to god, I've not seen a film that hates women as much as this one does in quite a while.

Some fun practical effects here and there (hats off to Screaming Mad George, as always), but it's not fun or crazy enough even without all the awful edgelord rapey misogynist content.

Not worth watching, even for genre fans.

Pretty good! It shares some elements with his previous film Citizen Ruth (1996), though I think I overall preferred that one. There's much more complexity to the meat of the story here, and it's certainly easier to approach, but it's not as brave or out-there.

The biggest issue I had with it is it's tone is weirdly front-loaded. It opens (minor spoiler) with a grooming subplot, and then early on hint that the protagonist will mirror this, so I think "oh okay, this is a movie about grooming, got it; this is a dark movie like Citizen Ruth was". But they never really go back to this, which means you spend the whole film bracing for a dark turn it never takes.

Another David Decteau spin. Surprisingly passable B-horror sexploitation, though a little too by-the-numbers who-cares-get-that-money for it's own good, which unfortunately holds it back, giving it a lot less charm than something like Evil Toons (1991).

The romance beats pre-demon transformation of the loser geek nerds trying to connect with each other are weirdly wholesome, and honestly I could easily watch a whole film of just that.

No you should not watch this.

Solid kids fantasy adventure, but would've benefited from more world-building, set-up, and focus on character arcs. Wish this was a childhood movie. Not that much to say. I see weird little creatures and I clap.

Ehh. Started off liking it, but every 20 minutes it changes gears, going "okay we're doing this now", and it leaves the whole thing feeling really unfocused and self indulgent.

There was a whole bucket of age gap discourse when it came out, and while watching it, I didn't really see it. But that's because I was expecting the film to end a certain way - but it doesn't, it does a complete 180. And yeah, I see it now. That's weird. Don't write that.

This was my first Paul Thomas Anderson film, and it's left my eyebrow raised for any further.

Saw this as a kid when it released, and thought it was fine. Given it's legacy as a meme film, I was very worried on re-watching it, but I got much more enjoyment out of it than really what is on offer.

It's a cheapo Die Hard clone, and very few jokes land. Some best-in-class criminal goons, though - at any point you could just shoot the overweight man on the segway, but no, for no reason they just parkour jump around, riding skateboards and BMXs.

Early CGI comic book adaptation, which is (allegedly) the first British CGI film. As nightmare vomit films go, the script is surprisingly coherent, and all the voice actors being very English is always funny.

Can recommend this to B-movie fans, however "cursed CGI movies" are a lot less easy to watch than live action, so the potential audience for who'd like this is exceedingly slim.

Never thought I'd come away from a John Waters film thinking "that was dry and tame", but here we are. The meat of the story is fine, but it's delivered so dry. It's like only the girlfriend character was told they were in a John Waters movie?

It's one of those films where the synopsis I read was way more interesting than the actual movie. I'd read that he was just some pervet that accidentally stumbles into the high art world, but he isn't really a pervert. This just leaves you with a film about a boring artist stumbling into success, with very few John Waters-isms to entertain as it explores it's meat.

And for some reason features a straight-washed self-insert protag? There's gay elements in the movie with some of the side characters, but like, c'mon man, it's a John Waters movie starring a proto John Waters.

First time I've said this about a Waters film, but skip this one unless you're trying to watch everything by him.

As a childhood movie for my entirely generation, I only realise now on re-watch that this is an insane person movie. Geniunely a lot weirder than I thought it was going to be from what I remember. Formative weird creature film for me.

It's enjoyable but I can't say it doesn't dwindle a bit in the 3rd act. Unless you have nostalgia for it, I probably wouldn't recommend it unless you're a B-movie fan.

Why the fuck did I rewatch this? I disliked it on first viewing, and I hated it on re-watch.

It's like your conservative dad tried to make Supernatural, and the minuscule amount of vampire Laura Palmer could not offset the rest of the experience. The film violently hates both women and gays, to the point where it feels like it despises the very concept of vampires.

While I'm not familiar with all of Carpenter's films, AFAIK this is the only one to display such a violently hateful conservative standpoint. I know Carpenter has some stinkers in the filmography, but surely this has gotta be the worst offender, right? My only theory is that lead James Woods (known guy-who-sucks) managed to weasel his way into creative decisions.

Sheryl Lee is extremely underutilized. She gets to do a single trademark scream, but she barely gets any fucking lines. She seems to entirely be used for lecherous push-up bra shots.

Avoid at all costs.

The Joker for divorced upper-class moms, complete with girlboss fistbump moment with Ivana Trump. Found it really hard to empathize with the main characters, as for some reason they don't paint the ex husbands/new partners in nearly a negative enough light to offset the main characters actions, so they just come off overly petty and vindictive. Also, more importantly, they're all very very rich. Like yeah sure it's sad your husband left you for a younger woman, but you're also definitely a millionaire in Manhattan. You are fine.

Holy shit. Put this off as I was anxious about it's status as a meme film, but it definitely wasn't dissapointing. Frequently cried with laughter. He really is the best.

Would be a great entry level B-movie, and I'm greatly looking forward to watching the rest of Breen's filmography.

Another DeCotaeu joint. As sexploitation B-movies go, it's an absolutely adorable premise, but not enough character growth for the concept to shine. Also that beat were the male lead is raped definitely hurts the vibes a bit. Didn't really need that. None of the user reviews I read mentioned this somehow.

It's also borderline lost media as apparently the only copy in existence is a live TV recording where barely any of the dialogue is understandable and every 3 seconds it cuts to an ad break that plays in full. Despite harming the viewing experience, for some reason this makes it more interesting.

I say this with no exaggeration: this is one of the most confusing films I have ever seen. I never, at any point, knew where it was going, what it was doing, or who it was for.

Three single women living together (who do not know that that's how you become a witch) manifest a dream hunk, who of course is Jack Nicholson playing a horrid repulsive demon man who mind-control manipulates them? Was this a fetish thing? Like that's the only way this makes sense. By the end, I still don't think they even know that they're witches?

Why is ONLY Susan Sarandon changed by the demon man? Why does that one random other woman go crazy? What the fuck is going on?

My only theory re: what the film is going for is it's anti-immigrant, pro traditional monogamist family unit but in a new-wave-y "btw im a paganist" way and explicitly not a conservative christian way. It's probably not this, but for my own sanity I need some straws to grasp at.

Don't watch this.

Pretty good! It's basically an anti father-son bonding movie. No one grows, no one changes, just tertiary understanding. It's depressing, but in a very mundane and domestic way, that helps drive home the realness.

Didn't find it as funny as a lot of reviews claim, aside from some key lines here and there - the "steal the air compressor" section, mainly.

Not much else to say. He just believes stuff that people tell him.

Didn't like it the first time, and I liked it slightly less on re-watch, as I knew the only merits are a couple fun scenes with Cage/Dern singing/dancing.

It's big issue is there's just no meat? It's entirely just random Wizard of Oz references, with a tiny bit of "reckless youth" thrown in, but mostly just a sequence of scenes with random under-cooked ideas strewn about. Like, even with going with the Wizard of Oz theme, the witch equivalent doesn't really have any power, which is villain 101? Lynch literary adaptations really are cursed.

The tone is it's other big issue. For the first 2/3, it's goofy and light-hearted apart from the times when it suddenly gives you a sharp slap in the face with references to sexual assault before instantly resuming to goofy light-hearted scenes. The back 1/3 slams on the breaks and liposuction's all the fun away, which were it's only real merits t begin with.

Would've been better if you reigned in the ideas a little it in a little more and pushed it closer to the (very incorrect) synopsis of "Sailor and Luna fight off a series of weird hit-men while travelling the yellow brick road get it wizard of oz have you seen wizard of oz".

There's a lot of people who like this one, and I cannot understand why. This is the big Lynch miss - Dune (1984) is fine.

Don't watch this unless you're trying to fully clear Lynch's filmography, which I really do recommend; so fuck, I guess I do recommend it. Whatever.

Went in with an open mind, but it was boring and uncreative. Reduces "a world of imagination" to "a couple business owners have a fake ledger to keep him from opening his business and a CGI giraffe". Who cares. The movie starts with him already being a chocolate wizard and he makes everything off-screen with no fanfare in a film about a genius creator who makes amazing things.

Outside of the very first one, every song sucks. They're all spoken completely monotone with no emotion. Probably would've benefited from cutting most of them.

Also straddles a really awkward middle ground of wanting to skirt round the weird slavery stuff but also really wanting to include it because it's a thing you remember. This means in-cannon that Wonka sure changes his tune on workers rights at some point in time.

I got all my enjoyment from spotting English TV faces. Peep Show, Horrible Histories, …Taskmaster? Everyone is here.

My pitch for a Willy Wonka origin movie is a beat for beat remake of The Holy Mountain (1973) but replace "immortality" with "chocolatier".

Nothing really happens? Was promised a space adventure with weird little creatures, but it's just him driving down boring-ass American roads before doing a 180 at the end.

Definitely the high point was the brief scene with all the little creature puppets. Especially a fan of the cute marketable one having a voice like it smokes 20 packs a day. Would've been improved with more weird little creatures, but really that's a complaint I have with every film.

Also a little nonce-y? It's no Blank Check (1994), but weird that this is the 2nd Disney movie I've seen like this. First they have a little window in the room to watch the kid sleep, and then SJP calls him cute and starts winking at him. Stop writing this.

Going into this I had this completely confused with the 15 minutes I saw of The Last Starfighter (1984) as a kid on TV. If this was that, I would've at least gotten a space adventure.

Typical well-produced but completely forgettable and uninteresting 90s animated film. You had this on VHS as a kid and had no opinion on it even then.

Star studded cast, featuring Patrick Stewert flying so far under the radar that I had no idea it was him until I looked at the IMDB page after.

Macaulay Culkin keeps referencing statistics incorrectly and it was bothering me a lot more than it should've.

Don't watch this. I've already forgotten the whole thing.

I am too young to ever care about the Carry On films. While camp is close to my heart, 60s quick back-and-forth slide whistle jokes do not resonate. The line of intentional camp is a hard one to straddle, and this falls completely over the other side.

That said, there were a couple jokes I liked, and there some dummy violence at the end which always without fail lands for me.

Not quite sure why the reviews are as glowing as they are? This is not Galaxy Quest (1999), you just think the vampire woman is hot.

'ate the missis. Love Elvoira.

Idk. It's slow and dry with very little happening, but it does have that one scene where Tom Cruise snaps a rat and squeezes it into a wine glass. It's so funny going into this knowing that Cruise requested they "tone done the gay", because even in the final edit, this is shit is so gay. It is a borderline queer movie.

Now, the protagonist starts as an unapologetic slave owner, and I thought "right okay, this is a deliberate choice to show the hypocrisy/reluctance of a bad guy truly selling the last of his soul", but as it goes on it turns out no, he's the whiny brooding tragic guy we're meant to feel sorry for?

I also got my Kirsten Dunst timeline wrong when I watched this. I thought, "wow they found a kid who looks exactly like Kirsten Dunst before the character ages up in a timeskip", but then they introduce the "you can never age" beat and I realised that no that is just Kirsten Dunst.

When searching up how old she was in this (11), I then see a bunch of articles slamming a kiss scene between her and Pitt (30) but I don't remember this happening? Was this removed in later releases or something? Not hard to see why.

There's this whole plotline about Brad Pitt being this chosen one figure, and I don't get it at all? Like he's just some guy?

I will say I do like the idea of a vampire being really into film, but they only briefly mention the concept instead of that being a bigger part.

Too winy and unfun for me to get into, but the protypical kind of vampire fan will lap this up like nectar.

It's alright. Nowhere near as subversive as it's made out to be, like it's just a standard slasher (albeit high budget instead of cheapo) with horror film references strewn in. It makes sense why it would do well when it released, like it's essentially hoodwinking your cynical 90s audience who think they're too good for cheesy slashers into watching a cheesy slasher.

Wasn't too big on the killer reveal. Half of it was obvious with no motivation, then half of it was very undercooked motivation.

Idk if i'll watch any more any time soon - they all kinda look like the same movie.

Not shaking the contrarian allegations but I still think I prefer The People Under the Stairs (1991) over this and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), though in that ones case I think it's really just the ending that kills it.

Vile movie. Very early on, I thought "oh no, this film has a Stiffler" and it was all downhill from there.

Made for your loser dad who peaked in the 80s and now lives for nothing, stewing away in a respect-less marriage, if still married at all.

Has an outright villain ending. My jaw was on the floor. Like this is unironic villain premise material, born out of sheer entitlement.

Credit where due, good joke about once every 20 minutes, but even constant good jokes wouldn't be able to offset the awful messaging and outlook on the world.

Avoid.

Back for more DeCotaeu sleaze. Compared to the others I've seen it's not very fun, and it has an extremely dark tone.

The premise is pretty much just FLCL (2000) except set in a college (that has bullies and sex ed class, you know, like colleges do). Alien woman experiments on the protagonist (without his consent), who then periodically grows an erection-coded appendage out the top of his head.

Consent is really the name of the game here, in that the protagonist never consents to anything at any point. Like the film is just him being raped over and over again, and it's still in the cheesy B-movie tone, which leaves it feeling awful and uncomfortable. Half the time he is drugged and unconscious! It is horrific!

Also everyone has a much higher voice than you'd expect them to. "Sexy sultry teacher" character with a high pitched voice is very confusing. This is not how the world works.

It's compentent and watchable, but no fun in a genre that lives and dies on fun means this isn't worth anyone's time.

Passable, but very dull and overly by the numbers to the point where the conflict feels like it's materialises out of thin air purely because that's the point in a story where you're meant to have conflict. "Do I go out with the guy I like? Or do I get back together with my asshole ex that I don't like?"

From what I can tell from user reviews, the main draw of this is if you find 80s Nic Cage hot. I don't particularly, but I'll take Raising Arizona (1987).

Explicitly wanted to watch this before Cry-Baby (1990), as - from what I assume - that's just going to be a much more interesting version of this exact film.

It is my moral duty to inform you that these outfits do not appear in the movie. That painting looks nothing like Deborah Foreman, in fact.

Man, I thought this was gonna be a shoe-in, but I ended up not really liking it.

While I knew going in that there was a "life in wartime" setting, I expected this to just be a backdrop, instead of "actually just the whole movie". The balance is so off with the "little girl dark fairytail" that they feel like minor setpieces that don't fit right with the rest of the film. It is just misery porn where the main character doesn't really do anything or even get to do anything.

Genuinely one of the most misleading film posters I've seen in quite a while.

In fact, a lot of the time the main character actually seems like it's the capitan guy. Everything revolves around him. Every scene involves him.

Also important to add that I feel personally slighted by this, as there's only like, what, four creatures? If I wanted to watch a miserable war drama, I have to know that I'm going into a miserable war drama. This caught me off guard and just left me with a bad time.

Ol' eyes-in-hands is neat, though. You absolutely could take him in a fight by the way. Look at his legs. Just kick him.

While there's a couple elements I really like, overall I didn't enjoy this. Bisexual blueballing where nothing really happens despite the script being pretty repetitive (every plot thread is a red herring, which is not a good idea storytelling wise) and the ending comes out of nowhere and leaves an awful taste.

I assumed the title credit of "a heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki" was a joke, but no, it really is. Theres a few cases where the two male leads almost kiss, but they never do anything. It's also definitely not queerbaiting, as these characters are overwhelmingly coded to the point where it's very weird that they never do anything.

There is absolutely untapped meat in bisexual men being reluctant to engage in gay relationships (coincidentally also untapped meat), and the film feels weirdly close to almost touching on this without ever doing it.

Extremely good set design and use of colour, but I can't really recommend this. Look at random stills, maybe?

I am interested in exploring more of Araki's filmography, though.

Very fun concept of "two random airhead teens influence political events in 1972, before exposing Watergate", and great performance from the leads, but it's all executed very drily. A real Sunday afternoon movie you put on and then mostly ignore as it fades into the background.

Also much more of a political-focused period piece than it's marketing would have you believe. On first glance, I thought it was a random forgotten boner comedy, before reading the synopsis and being sold. Poster should probably be the Nixon pose with the two leads instead of "american flag bikini". Title of "Dick" is also a little too lowbrow and nondescript. "Teen Deep Throat"? Maybe not that one, actually.

The "bumbling journalist" characters they introduce towards the end are very annoying. Will Ferrell appearing in a movie is always a wildcard.

They introduce a "crush on Nixon" plotline, and I was very worried it could potentially get creepy. It doesn't, but the line is always in view.

…up until you get the credits sequence, which - while not overly explicit - is so creepy to depict minors doing that I straight up do not feel comfortable describing it for reference. If you ever find yourself writing minors performing codified sex acts for the purpose of being hot for the audience, please give up writing as a profession.

Didn't know what to expect going in, but I definitely wasn't expecting "plant guy Falling Down".

Truly wonderful art direction, sets, props, etc., but a crap script with juvenile messaging and a horribly unlikable protagonist.

Major spoilers to follow.

For a movie aiming to have an eco preservation focused message, it just does not understand the concept at all? In a world where food and living standards are not a concern at all without plants (don't worry about it), the entire argument for ecological preservation is "plants are pretty". Fuck, it doesn't even fully understand plants, as there is a genuine plot beat where the professional botanist who spent 8 years working on his ecosystems, and murdered his entire crew without a second thought to protect his work for no reason other than passion, DOES NOT FUCKING REALISE THAT HIS PLANTS NEED SUN TO GROW. HOW DOES SOMEONE WRITE THIS AS A MAJOR PLOT BEAT.

Also found it unexpectedly hard to follow. Like I wasn't sure at first if he did in fact murder all of his crew without a second thought (he did). Also had no idea where it was going or where it would end up, but given it's a 70s sci-fi movie, there's a 60% chance it would involve the protagonist committing suicide.

Breen's back, running around Vegas as God (sorry, an alien) removing people's eyes, and occasionally cosplaying as The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment for a reason I cannot fathom. What's not to love?

While it doesn't reach the heights of Double Down (2005) (and it's structure is a lot weaker), it's still constantly entertaining, and time flew by when watching it. It feels like I blinked once and 20 minutes had passed, then I blinked again and there were 15 minutes left.

There's a lot of directly saying themes and it is always extremely funny.

Greatly looking forward to more Breen in the near future.

This was an early childhood movie for me, and my memories of it were "this one song goes fucking hard" and "im baby im finding this hard to follow". On rewatch, I found it painfully generic with almost nothing of note outside of that one song that still goes fucking hard.

The conceit of the plot is that Anastasia forgets her previous life for literally no reason whatsoever. Like, she's at absolute minimum 10 when she goes into hiding, and then we timeskip and she's just entirely forgotten her past and her name? She remembers vague memories of being aristocracy in post revolution Russia and she doesn't put two and two together?

Frustratingly, the solution is right there in your magical villain (who doesn't really do anything in the film other than offer minor inconvenience): just have him give her amnesia with magic.

Honestly it feels like the other side of the coin of The Prince of Egypt (1998). Both films suffer from "celebrity VA" syndrome, but unlike PoE where everyone is killing it, you really feel Meg Ryan and John Cusack dryly reading the script in front of them.

Animation also feels very off here. I make no claim to be an authority, but there's such heavy use of rotoscoping here that it almost feels pointless to even be an animated film? Like outside of a couple bits with the villain that never really does anything, it doesn't really make good use of being animated, and it's at the cost of some very uncanny valley emotionless emoting.

Songs are all very forgettable, again, apart from that one song that still goes hard. Unfortunately this does mean the film commits the unforgivable sin of teasing weird little creatures that don't come back.

Also shout out to the poster for making me do a very sharp double take every time I see it, even though I know that's not what those are.

It's alright! Weaker script than the original (really feels like a long TV episode), and not as funny, but it also doesn't have a stretch towards the end where it putters about in circles.

Didn't laugh too often, but good jokes. Mostly chess nods.

It's okay - very middle of the road B-movie. Not much happens, and even 20 minutes from the end it still feels like it's in the setup phase, but it has some funny highlight moments - which is what you want as a genre fan.

Definitely plan on watching the 1957 original at some point.

It's mainly notable for this being the film debut of Traci Lords, who has a very interesting history and is someone I have to google the spelling of their name every single time. She's pretty good in the role, but you definitely get the impression that poor direction is holding back her acting chops.

Despite large amounts of nudity, it doesn't really come across overly exploitative or sleazy. That is, until you get to the, uhh, "killing sex workers" portion, which is played weirdly light? Like a worse Frankenhooker (1990).

It's alright! Really enjoyed the opening stretch at the school, but then as the film goes on, it mellows out into just fine.

Big issue I had with the script was the love interest isn't really a character; it needed to cut back to the friends at home more.

Another issue I had with the script, which I'll admit bothered me way more, was at some point the characters get Cujo'd with no way out, and then off-screen it just gets resolved? Like it's enough of a beat where it's not just a joke that you handwave the consequences of, you have to resolve obstacles you introduce.

There's also a point where Goofy says something outright genuinely racist? Like, I have no idea how that line made it in at all; even without context, it comes off dodgy and would probably get cut.

Thinking about it, for squeaky clean Disney, there's some dark edgy stuff in here. Can't think of another Disney animated film where a baby goes to stick a fork in a plug socket, and a teacher tells a parent his kid is destined for the electric chair.

It's alright! Early stretch is very good, then as it gets more into Parent Trap and the leads take a back seat, it's dries up a bit.

While I won't spoil the ending, I didn't think it landed. It was very close, but then it gets a little preachy, and you end up in this very awkward middle ground where it isn't commiting to the bit as hard as it needs to for the bit to land.

Apparently has a running thing where lesbians hate it, and for some reason that makes sense to me?

Can reccomend if you enjoy crude trashy weirdo musicals. Unless you're a lesbian, apparently.

It is fine. This is not the big Lynch miss. While very messy, it has a lot of neat creative choices - the visuals and soundtrack being the clear highlights.

We open on a cut of an important character who barely appears in the movie giving a brief background introduction, before fading out, and then fading back in saying "oh I forgot, one more thing". This is really emblematic to the whole thing.

While Dune (2021) is executed a lot cleaner, and does a much better job at explaining concepts, it's also a lot dryer and duller. Much less out there creatively. And at the end of the day, I'd much rather something sloppy and interesting than something uninteresting.

The portrayal of the Harkonnen is probably the biggest clearest comparison to make.

In Lynch's Dune (1984), they're a green nightmare torture world of Oingo Boingo clones, with the Baron portrayed like a hedonistic Greek emporer, revelling in torture as he oozes from his puss-filed boils, farting and flying around the room. He straight up eats a twink at one point. Sting gives a guy a cat to milk (it's been filled with anti-venom) and for no reason at all there is a rat taped to the cat. This does not happen in the book.

In Villeneuve's Dune (2021), they're a dark grey world where everyone is bald and they look at the ground. I don't remember if the Baron does anything remotely sexual, even. I tried to look it up and everything I read says "all elements of homosexuality were removed". Remember, erasure is progress.

While the 1984 film doesn't come across this way, I've read the book's portrayal is outright homophobic, though I've not read it yet so cannot comment.

The biggest issue the film has is it's pacing. As far as I'm aware, this was originally multiple movies that got squashed into one movie, and even if that's not true, boy does it feel it. Up until the point where the 2021 movie ends, I actually kind of prefer the pacing in the 1984 movie. After this point, however, we spend the last roughly 40 minutes speedrunning the entire back half of the book, jumping from major plot beat to major plot beat with almost no through line other than "idk i guess we include this bit?"

It's not all bad though; the film manages to avoid the white saviour criticisms of it's narrative by hiring only white people to play the Fremen (this is a joke, this is maybe the biggest negative).

I'm not sure what the different cut I saw first was exactly, but it had an extended intro that helps with some of the struggle in explaining concepts. Very importantly is the bit where they explain "at one point we smashed every computer and now we have dedicated guys who we meth up to do our math".

This version also features an additional scene with the pug showing up again way deeper into the plot than that pug has any right to be in, meaning it is the superior version, despite Lynch disavowing it. This is at the cost of a much bulkier, clunkier intro - but this is what you're gonna get out of the film anway, so might as well start early.

Most of the special effects shots are clunky and underwhelming, but at one point there's one singular REALLY good shot of a worm that I felt was important to mention.

It's a crying shame that Lynch's Dune Messiah fell through, as - from what I know of Dune Messiah - the meat of it is so much more up Lynch's alley than anything in Dune could ever be. I also think it would tie in the films different ending from the book in a better way, as it's more relevant to the themes of Messiah, and there's a line in the incomplete Lynch Messiah script that directly mentions it. If so, it's a very flashy and cinematic way to go about it, and it's neat! If not, it comically falls into the white saviour angle, and it sucks!

The big miss is Wild at Heart (1990) btw.

This one sucks! Jokes are all consistently weak, and it still suffers from the same issue that 2 does where it feels like a TV episode, but this time the stakes are even lower!

Just watch the first two!

The script straight up gives up at the end, having a villain just solve the current issue before we do an Ace Ventura level transphobic joke. For '94, it was something very close to being hand-wave-able, but then it commits too hard to get away with it, before missing the obvious misdirect 3rd beat and we just never see that character again?

"Missing follow-up beats" is a consistent issue I had with the jokes in this. There's none of that fun, back-and-forth, joke-a-line stuff here. It's honestly mostly just old man boner comedy. There's a segment where he keeps going back to jack off in a fertility clinic and I did not understand what was happening.

It's pretty good! One of the few films that have made me tear up!

Was worried going in how much I would get out of it as someone not really into drag culture, but that ended up being much less of an issue than I expected. Was also worried this could devolve into "laugh at the bumpkins", but it never does.

Only real negative that stucks out to me is that racist "laugh at the funny Asian accent" stretch. You could probably cut that character's scenes almost entirely. Is there artistic meat to the "firing ping pong balls" scene? It all depends on this.

It's alright? It's okay?

One of those book adaptation movies where every single review is from people who have read the book and are really just talking about the book. I've not read the book, but I watched this with someone who has just read it, so was able to get a good idea of main differences. His take was "just read the book".

There's only one example of events non-linearly crossing over, and all the alien stuff is extremely backloaded, which means the film is almost entirely just "guy remembers things", which very much betrays the premise and leaves the whole thing less interesting.

Additionally, the BIG FINAL EVENT THAT HAPPENS TO THE CHARACTER happens in the second to last scene in the movie, but it happens halfway through the book. Again, this is entirely antithetical to the concept of a non-linear story.

It's really hard to make a definitive judgement on this. It has some great elements, but it's so disorganised, messy and awfully paced that it genuinely feels like an unfinished, forgotten B-movie where they found the footage 30 years later and tried to cobble something together with what they had.

The soundtrack weirdly mirrors this, consisting of that heavy deep synth sound that is much more culturally aligned with faux 80s revival media. It's rare that the 80s sounds like this, but like it does on occasion.

Very different form the usual Troma output, trading the gross-out edgy comedy for exploitation revenge, and they don't do a bad job of it; surprising given their credentials. It's a shame there's so little of the son and the mom, because the mom is easily the best part of the movie, and it's an extremely rare depiction of "badass no-nonsense protagonist" being an older black woman.

The themed gangs are fun conceptually (very The Warriors (1979) at home), but the film is much too low budget to really get good use out of them.

I really can't recommend this outside of die-hard B-movie fans. And even then, the enjoyment is minimal.

It's okay. A little too "just okay" for it's own good, really.

First time watching an Elvira thing, and found it weirdly not very goth-y? Aesthetically the character is goth-y, and her car looks the part, but really it stops there.

Tonally it's bizarre. Everything from beats, to characters, to line delivery screams "kids movie", but every third line is "btw my boobs big 😏". Miraculously, it mostly steers clear from exploitation despite this. Now, I never really care about exploitation and rarely comment, but I do think the film's messaging probably would've been enhanced with a little less.

Speaking of elements that harm the messaging, the film has "conservative puritan community leader" villains who think Elvira is evil for nothing more than showing skin, but then Elvira does a couple of actual things that by all means are valid to take issue with. Drugging people so they sleep with other when they would otherwise not consent to is bad! That is a villain action! Also, sure, hold a (non-sleazy) B-movie night for the local teens because there's nothing to do in town, that's great! Then getting on stage to do the sexy Flashdance dance for the minors is crossing a line!

The romantic interest is painfully boring. He really needed to have some kind of arc, ideally one that relates to the narrative. Maybe have him start unconfident in themselves, who initially doesn't want to cause any trouble with the puritan community leaders by taking Elvira's side.

Despite issues, however, it succeeds in being a vehicle for the Elvira character, whose fun and likeable! Shame that sitcom never came to be!

I remembered enjoying this the first time I watched this, but I'm surprised at how much I didn't like it on re-watch.

It is worth noting that, for this watch, I watched the English dub (featuring Michael Keaton), which I found surprisingly poor and actively hurt the film. It reminded me of like a cheesy PS2 game; but there it adds, here it detracts. Keaton's performance is like they secretly recorded him privately reading his lines aloud so they had to pay him less.

While I always recommend trying to experience media as close to it's original language as you can get, in this case I would outright not bother with the English dub. I can't comment on the other Ghibli dubs, as I stray away from Miyazaki films for the same reasons I stray away from Kubrick films.

It's a very pretty film, but it's very dry with very little happening, and what is happening is almost exclusively very low stakes, and by the end very little has changed.

I say "almost exclusively", as this is allegedly an anti-facist movie, given it's background goings on of fascism in post WWI. I say "allegedly", because there really isn't anything overly anti-facist about the movie outside of the main character occasionally saying "not big on them facists". The facists are never portrayed to really do anything bad, and nothing bad happens to anyone. It wants to include something really dark and serious, but then shy away from anything dark or serious. It wants to have it's pig and eat it, too.

Also, I gotta mention this, but why does every god damn Miyazaki film have some scene with naked children. What the fuck is that about.

A very straight movie with no gay subtext whatsoever.

It's good! First two thirds are amazing, with some unexpectedly complex character work, but then in the last third we veer off in a different direction, and the energy and emotion we built up from that first plotline deflates, and we're never left with closure for it.

Remarkably paced for a 50s film. Not that it doesn't have some pacing issues, but I'm used to it being much rougher than it was here.

Not seen anyone mention this, but I'm almost certain the "you're tearing me apart, Lisa" line from The Room (2003) is just doing this, as Dean early on says the same line in the same way with the same arm motions.

First time watching a James Dean film, and I am definitely interested in watching more.

Very mediocre and doesn't really offer anything for anyone. It's main issue is it doesn't really revel in it's premise, and the whole entire conceit is the promise of revelling in it's premise.

The intro segment was REAL rough, to the point where it felt not far off like a 40s racist film, but luckily in (mostly) draws back in it's "hurr hurr at the yokels, look at them try to think thoughts".

None of the jokes ever really landed, but the one detail that got a big laugh throughout the film was them getting ONE BILLION for the land, like that is SO much money.

Experimental cyberpunk movie. That's cold, hard, gross cyberpunk ala Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) - though this predates it!

It's very hard to follow, but there's genuinely a lot of neat stuff in there. Some great shots, great visual effects, great atmosphere.

Features the single coolest scientist character ever put to screen, delivering exposition jargon while riffing on a guitar about how the robot will explode into cocaine.

Weirdly nowhere near as horny/fetish-y than it looks like it'd be from the outside? Like you don't NEED it, but it definitely feels like it's missing an axis without it. Imagine Videodrome (1983) without any of the weird sex stuff.

Easy recommend if it sounds neat, though be warned it is draining.

It's decent! Opening stretch after he gets to college is very strong, but overall it's missing a lot of connective tissue script wise that holds it back from that higher level. However, the one thing you want from "80s college hangout movie" is fun hangout bits, and at that it greatly succeeds!

It's wild to have a movie where every 80s college archetype is also a nerd archetype. Entire cast sub-classing dweeb.

Focus is a little uneven. It feels like they started out with Val Kilmer as the secondary character and then decided partway through production to just make him the main character in spite of the script. Kilmer's performance is very fun at first, but I'll admit by the end of the first half his shtick started to grate a little.

Was also surprised by a very sweet depiction of a neurodivergent love interest. The intent is never to laugh at them, and their traits are never depicted as something to hide or suppress - for 80s I was shocked. Wish she had a little more to do, but let's not fly too close to the sun here.

Also turns out I did the exact same thing I did with Tim Curry where for no reason whatsoever I thought Val Kilmer had died, and I spent the whole film going "man so sad he died recently".

Beloved childhood movie for me. First half is amazing, but then we get to the city and we slump down a bit, never to recover.

Also discovering aged "guy wears dress funny" jokes have now have new life as non-binary bits.

2 was also a childhood movie for me, and I remember having fonder memories of that, so excited to revisit it.

3rd Breen movie, and 1st in HD. Definitely a lot weaker than the first two, but is still a fun watch with some clear highlights.

Main issue is there's simply less crazy unhinged stuff in this one. It's intended more as a grounded drama and that is not where their strength lies.

Second issue is lack of set up for the big events. Like as clumsy and laughable as the protagonist in Double Down (2005) is, I wholeheartedly believe that this character could do all this crazy national-security-threatening schemes. The protagonist in Fateful Findings is literally just some random author. But oh wait he's also an epic hacker who has… ambiguous government secrets?

Though this does lead to the funniest ending sequence yet, in which all the random government officials each in turn go, "yep! all this is true! I'm killing myself now" before committing suicide in different ways.

There's also no extremely on the nose social messaging in this one, but it's to it's detriment as that was definitely the funniest part of I Am Here… Now (2009). We theorised that this was touching on the US opioid epidemic and also predicted Snowden.

We also theorised that David Lynch is a big Breen fan, with Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) being heavily inspired by Breen's films.

Includes a stretch where he shows what good guy he his by writing a teenager come onto him so he can not reciprocate. Bad Breen. Don't write that.

Also very funny was his childhood friend looking slightly older than him in the flashbacks being actually nearly half his age when we cut to them as adults. Not fooling anyone Breen!

Insane person movie. Honestly feels not that far removed from a John Waters movie, but without the thematic undercurrents to steer it.

Delinquent kids in a prison-orphanage, complete with electric fences, solitary confinement, blood pacts and full blown nazi graffiti. Like, a lot of nazi graffiti - like every wall is covered in swastikas. These are the worst darn kids you've ever seen.

Watched this for Kimmy Robertson (Lucy from Twin Peaks), and we ended up seeing more of her than we intended to, in what can only be described as a nudity jump scare. Also one point where she says the f-slur, which along with Laura Dern saying the n word in Focus (2001) marks another notch in "David Lynch-adjacent actress slur bingo". Fingers crossed for Naomi Watts saying something transphobic or something.

Alongside some brief light homophobia, there's a fair chunk of light racist content, but it's firmly in the camp of edgy jokes. At this point it's worth mentioning that the directors body of work includes multiple civil rights documentaries? Also a localised re-cut of Lone Wolf and Cub, which I'm interested in checking out.

It's a maybe recommend for B-movie fans, but I couldn't see anyone else getting anything out of it.

It's okay. Great premise, but execution is more than a little sloppy, which holds it back from meeting it's potential.

Two college flunkers desperate for grades learn that if a dorm-mate commits suicide, then you pass with highest grades, so they scout for the student most likely to kill themselves to take advantage.

Not that many thoughts, other than it's weird that a 90's bro-y college movie ends up not being homophobic when the opportunity presents itself. You have the classic "mates mishear dialogue between the two male leads" beat, but then everyone tries to be supportive and offer advice, which is the opposite of how you'd expect this to be played, but not unappreciated.

Also weird watching a movie where Jason Segel dates Linda Cardellini immediately after finishing Freaks and Geeks.

It's not my favourite Lynch, but there's a lot here to love. Also a little less sure on specific specifics with this watch, but as we're firmly in the experimental space, that's less important than ever.

Biggest thing to mention is just how different this is to every other Lynch film; his style didn't really take form until Blue Velvet (1986), so here you get a much more "standard" visual-focused surrealism, that is very lite on dialogue. It's not really a negative, but it means it's a lot harder to recommend as an early Lynch film, because of just how different it is.

As experimental films go, it's very accessible. It's only 90 minutes, the narrative is extremely clear, and it's surprisingly riff-able, meaning it can function as a fun hangout movie. Compare this to Inland Empire (2006), which is 2h48, comprised almost entirely of unintelligible scenes and requires you to sit silently in a dark room uninterrupted to not break the magic.

Ehh. Nothing really too wrong with it, just got nothing out of it. Found it a bit dull, didn't really care about the stakes, and what the fuck how is this over two hours.

Now, my only context for this going in was Dicks: The Musical (2023) where the Dad is gay. Early on in this the mom refers the Dad as "the F-word", and I didn't know yet that the dad is not gay in this, and I thought "what the fuck? Is this where they're going?" Turns out "the F-word" is "father".

I thought initially they were going with a "prince and the pauper" angle with how prissy the English Lohan is, but no, they're both extremely wealthy (a fatal blow in me caring about their plight). Makes it less weird that they'd be at the same summer camp, but it's still weird - like why is she flying to the states just to go to some random summer camp? Would make more sense then if it was set up as like an ultra elite prestigious summer camp. But then it doesn't make sense, as summer camps are very much not a concept in the UK.

Rare B-movie from my own soil. It's alright! Very messy script that's vitally lacking in set-up, but there's some neat stuff in it - especially effects-wise.

Funniest example of lack of setup is when we cut to back home and there's just a french woman living in the flat with the family? It's not clear at this point if they're wealthy, and it's a small flat, so what is this? Is this some 80s British polycule? No, turns out she is a live-in maid. For the small flat of a middle class family. I mean I guess we need more characters to do weird alien shit to?

Ending feels underwhelming. Nothing wrong with the idea, it's just how it's executed. Needed to play up the emotion and have a bigger climax.

It's biggest claim to fame is a legitimately extremely creepy quick shot that has been used in several internet creature hoaxes over the years. Got a jolt out of me when watching even though I knew it was about to happen and I knew what it looked like.

Right. First of all: this poster is a fucking lie. It's what sold me (instantly) on the film the millisecond I saw it. This is never in the movie. This is "B-movie VHS/DVD home release" levels of misrepresentation.

What this actually is, is a movie that has no idea what tone take, as it whips between horror-comedy, 90s cool slick action, horny vampire content, and racism? It takes a bizarre turn towards the end where suddenly both sides hate black people, and there's One Specific Scene that would take too long to explain.

Features a Dracula portrayal so weak that the first few times someone called him Dracula I thought they were making a joke.

It's at least a little queer? It's almost all your textbook "girl on girl while men watch", but it's redeemed by a passable bisexual male character. Features some fun "vampire club" segments, too, but like fuck it man just watch Blade (1998).

Surprisingly holds up? Has pacing issues like all pre-70s films do, but they're different this time. Instead of long dull stretches, the whole thing feels stretched thin; like there's 2h of movie for 90m.

Despite comedy sensibilities ageing like milk, basically every joke here still works, which is really fucking weird? Change up the presentation a bit and it genuinely feels like an 80s movie, which is WILD for 59.

The only standout poorly aged bit is there's zero concept of a person not being straight. Obviously not expecting this, but it's weird in a modern context with the content here.

Definitely the second most watchable pre-60s movie I've seen behind Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

Ends up being kind of a worse version of Frankenhooker (1990) with a bit of Short Circuit (1986) mixed in, except the robot speaks like a gremlin from Gremlins (1984)? Couple scenes in and I thought "yes this is the kind of bomb that was made for me".

The narrative put forward is that it was a movie destroyed by studio interference that forced a bunch of gory slasher beats, but these parts are easily the best parts of the movie, so I don't know if that's true. It's one of those cases where it really needed to play it's hand more like a trashy B-movie. Like Frankenhooker (1990)!

It's real issues are the tone being all over the place, and not much going on, to the point where it often feels like a TV movie. Not enough set up or milking of the protagonist's traits for how much disbelief it's wanting us to suspend. Aye sure, this very normal coded teen is an AI/robotics/brain surgeon. While I thought the first third of Frankenhooker (1990) where it was going through the setup was easily the weakest part. I absolutely believed that little weirdo could both do all that stuff and was willing to do ethically bad things.

There's definitely a good remake in here. Make the main guy weirder and more obsessive. Play up the "girl-next-door dream girl" angle. Maybe don't have them in a relationship. Maybe don't have her know him at all, and play it in a one-sided creeper way. I realise this is a much darker movie I'm describing, but hey there's meat in them caves.

Probably my least favourite Craven so far, but I definitely got enjoyment from it.

What a nice movie. Even the light homophobia is warm-hearted.

Watched this while I had the first aura migraine I've had in years (full vision had returned), and it was like chicken soup for the brain.

Plot does not make sense, though. Never bothered me the first two times I saw it, but it bothers me a bit more now. The premise is "we need to go back in time to ensure that this thing happens so that our society turns out the way it does", but that means that thing already happened because you've had the effects of it, so what is there to do?

Don't mind any of the other wishy-washy time jumping bits towards the end - like, those are jokes in a comedy movie. That's fine. Your plot premise needs to check out, though.

Still not seen the other two. I'll get round to them at some point.

Very decent, but definitely has more flaws than you'd think given the reception.

Happy to say it fixes the issue I had with Part One in that it's much more willing to be weird. It is missing the demon baby, though. Unforgivable.

Was especially interested in seeing how it compared to the later part of Dune (1984), as this takes part entirely while that film falls apart as it slams on the gas. And surprisingly there's quite a few key parts that I found much better there, though this is easily more watchable, less messy, and isn't uhh entirely white-washed. There's two big issues I have that aren't present in the 80s film, and I was only expecting minor arguable tings.

The biggest of these are there's no Weirding Way equivalent, meaning Paul doesn't give the Fremen anything that helps them fight the Harkonnen. Like, I get the key focus is the "messiah fervour", but without a Weirding Way equivalent, it portrays the Fremen as just not attempting to reclaim their land for some reason? We see a couple deaths, but we never see the Fremen lose or even remotely struggle against the Harkonnen at any point, so then when Paul rises to power nothing changes at all, outside of that one shot with atomics.

I will never understand the curmudgeons who hate the Weirding Modules in the 80s film. "Psychic explosion guns" are rad as fuck, and it's a much more flashy visual way of conveying "tide-turning war technology" than "what if they did kung fu really fast". And despite it not really doing any of the holy war stuff, the "my name is a killing word" part of it ties into those themes really well. I was honestly surprised when I learnt this was an original addition that everyone hates for some reason.

Character growth is also an area I unexpectedly found weaker than the 80s movie. Despite it being a nightmarish montage of explosions and assorted plot beats, you absolutely get a sense of growth by the end of it. In this one it felt like we jumped straight from water of life to the ending.

This one does do a much better job at setting up Feyd, though. He still doesn't do anything, but we at least establish he is guy who knife fight. Not even someone who is particularly great at it, either - which is a weird choice. Ends up compounding weirdly at the end with Paul not feeling like he has much growth, where everything comes down to a knife fight with this guy who's just shown up. In the 80s movie this has the opposite problem, where Sting just stands around for a couple of scenes, and Paul goes through so much growth that when they introduce the fight I'm left thinking "why are we even bothering with this?"

Don't have much to say on it, but I knew deep in my heart that there was no way they were going to do the "drinking the water of life" scene better than the 80s movie. And I was right!

Soundtrack is another area I found way better in the 80s film. While it doesn't suck here, it's just a little generic and forgettable. 80s soundtrack is fantastic with it's atmospheric mystical synths one scene and roaring rock operas the next.

Tone of the ending I found a bit muddled. While it flies much close to the source material than Agent Cooper making it rain, we sit in a really awkward in-between of simultaneously wanting to play it dark and triumphant. Paul's characterisation in general around the darker areas I found felt a little inconsistent and unintentionally very two-faced? Pre water of life, he keeps flip-flopping between "guys exploitation is wrong" and "YES I MUST USE THE PAWNS FOR MY REVENGE". Post water of life, he's evil but it also still wants us to root for him?

I'm not sure what the best way to play this actually is. I've not yet read the book, but given it's reputation of coming off very white-saviour-y, the answer probably isn't there. Maybe keep the Chiani characterisation in this (I'm assuming that it's original for this, apologies if not) of how she's critical of the messiah prophecy and play Paul well-meaning but naive, and have him accidentally fall into it? Extra props to this movie if the detail of "there are seperate reglious sects from different regions who have conflicting views on the messiah prophecies" was an original touch. Idk how to google that shit, so I'm leaving that there.

Also fantastically paced for an almost three hour movie. Not sure where else to put this.

womrs

Now, I don't normally give hyper edgelord SOV trash like this the time of day, but would you have it it has a Lynch link in the form of one of the victims appearing in an uncredited role in Lost Highway (1997). This was a sign from above.

Though it was indeed hyper edgelord SOV trash, it's surprisingly okay? Kind of reminds me of a much edgier Braindead (1992). It's definitely the most competent and coherent SOV film I've seen thus far.

There's a lot of fun stuff (fake penis violence, flying zombie baby, great line reads). And a lot of not fun stuff (violent sexual assault!!!). It's hard to say if it'd be better without that stuff, purely because that stuff is so core to what this is. Also doesn't pass the Bechdel test.

I mean, it's not like I could recommend this to anyone anyway. B-movies already have an accessibility barrier when it comes to appreciating their qualities, but you gotta be deep in the sauce for SOV.

The very very end sucks. It'd be perfectly fine to end on a dark note, but man don't give the character a cool thing at the end. Literally just end it on "and he got off on no charges :)", and it's golden.

Maybe I should give more SOV a spin? Maybe that's the single worst film watching idea I've ever had? Only time will tell.

A wincing collision of George of the Jungle (1997) and a Mel Brooks movie. Some good ideas/jokes in there, and every actor is doing a great job, but it is unfortunately consumed in the tragic inferno; taken from us sadly long before it's time.

Children's cartoon comedy that continually rams into the speed bump of "deeply insensitive racial jokes". Also there is a straight up slur at one point? And these aren't the blend of one-off cultural insensitivities where you react "oof that aged poorly" and then things even out, they're the kind where you're worried you've damaged the undercarriage. The tone never recovers, and you're left wondering if you can hear something different.

It's a shame really, because without this the film would be absolutely fine. Would still have the issue of "love interest has nothing to do or any role at all outside of functioning as a trophy", but that's at least of-it's-time background problematic content. This film drops a racial slur.

Also features an intro animated short that is so disconnected that even the Universal logo doesn't play until after. Why is that in the movie?

Pale skeleton of a by-the-numbers fish-out-of-water kids film with a unfitting Fat Albert skin loosely draped over.

Doesn't do a good job of communicating the gist of Fat Albert; and there's no way kids in 2004 cared about Fat Albert. It also doesn't remotely work as a fish-out-of-water vehicle, as it's just "teen(?)s from the 70s who have a couple minor culture shocks".

Very solid puppet fantasy adventure/wage gap allegory.

Have explicit memories of watching a scene of this on TV as a kid, getting scared and immediately turning it off. I'm not sure what scene that was on finally watching it, as I seem to remember the evil chickens in a white crystalline environment, but there's nothing like this in the film.

Despite being an overly timid child who was frequently scared by media I shouldn't have been, I absolutely 100% understand with this. Like there's so much stuff in here that would terrify children that I have no clue how this got a PG rating. Fuck, even as a full grown adult, the scene where the dog jumps out and starts screaming genuinely got me. Every time the dog barks it's intensity is cranked up several notches too high.

There are countless grade A weird little creatures here. So many, in fact, that sadly not all of them get a moment to shine. All they need is a single moment.

Also realising that a lot of 2000s Magic: The Gathering art is just this movie.

It's Scream (1996) meets The Breakfast Club (1985) meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and - for the most part - it's very good! Unfortunately, there's one main character who is such an insanely unlikable cunt that he kind of single-handedly ruins the movie. A smug gary stu with an outright repulsive haircut.

Despite being an unapologetic Scream copycat, I honestly thought it does a better job of the Scream concept than Scream itself. I found Scream to kind of just be a regular slasher, except they say slasher references throughout. In the context of sci-fi, however - where there's rules and mechanics the characters have to figure out - the characters trying to use knowledge of sci-fi stories as a basis to try and work out what's going on works well!

I hear a lot of folk say it has "bad CG", but I don't see it? It's lit awkwardly because it's '98 and unless you're Jurassic Park you can't, but apart from the bugs running around it's all animated pretty well. You try doing floaty thin tendrils practically.

Early on it gets so very close to a non-gazey sapphic sunny femme/moody goth relationship, but then instantly goes HARD 180 and straightens out the both of them. Straight Clea DuVall is scary and disorientating. And much like The Breakfast club, we have a horrifying de-gothening at the end.

Also Elijah Wood emanates more little guy energy here than when was actually a hobbit. Every line is delivered with brow harshly furrowed, facing the ground and on the verge of tears. It's great.

A little more mixed on it than I wanted to be, but definitely got a lot more out of this than Predator (1987).

I knew going in that there was more going on with this than just cool action shoot guy movie, but I was surprised at just how different it was, to the point where I wasn't sure why this was a go-to cool action shoot guy movie. But then we get to the second half, and no yeah this is exactly what I expected this to be.

I do think it's an incredibly strong first half, delving into both the trauma and post-war mistreatment of the Vietnam war vets through the vehicle of Rambo.

If we kept at this smaller scale and carried on presenting these themes in this way, it would've been great! Unfortunately, here we veer off in a different direction, as Rambo becomes a much more villainized cool action shoot guy, the antagonistic sheriff is a lot less villainized, and we subtly wash the hands of the military's treatment of vets. We end up in a place that kinda just goes "damn it was messed up what happened to vets in Vietnam, anyway lets not reflect on what caused this, glory be to the United States".

Reading up on book differences, it does make sense why it veers off in the second half in the way it does, but I do think it's to the detriment of the story.

Unlike Predator, however, I don't think I'm interested in any of the sequels.

Back down the DeCoteau mines with something atypically non-sleazy. Had a lot more fun with this than I absolutely should've.

Despite being very low energy as far as B-movies go, there's a couple of extreme high points, and it's chock full of great line reads.

It mostly feels like a cheesy TV drama, but not in a particularly bad way. The drama doesn't not work, and it's a little sad that it mostly goes way after the start.

I will say I found it very hard to follow, but I'm not sure if it's the films fault, as the only copy we could find was in an only just about watchable quality.

Will be down the mines again soon.

Extremely nice set design, but is boringly mediocre outside of this. There are way too many characters and none of them really get a chance to shine.

Ben Stiller never really does anything at any point except for start dating a woman who has absolutely zero characterisation whatsoever. Fuck, I'm 99% sure she's never given a name.

Full of weird culturally insensitive bits, also. One of the main characters is based on the British colonial rule of India? I mean as cultural in-sensitivities go I can't say I've seen that one before.

Spoilers to follow but really who gives a shit, it's Ben Stiller Mystery Men.

They set up the Superman function freeing the villain from prison, and you think "ah alright, this is a Superman in cahoots w/ the villain story", but no, he just gets defeated and captured very easily. And then our heroes actually just fucking kill Superman? Like they kill him in this truly horrific body horror manner. And there's never any comeuppance or consequences for this??? What the fuck??

Expected this to bomb given it's reputation, but honestly it's absolutely fine? Utter trite script, but early on it's unexpectedly very funny. Nearly every physical comedy bit with big robot Eddie Murphy sticks the landing hard and I was not expecting that.

Probably don't watch this, though.

Welcome to Old Navy.

Right. Definitely the most interesting TV movie experience I've had - most importantly for worst, but don't worry I'll get to that. And it's worth leading with the poster saying this is a comedy is not true? There's a couple purposefully goofy moments, but that does not a comedy make.

For the good, it sets up an interesting world conceptually (though never really does enough with it outside of having characters make things float for no reason), and there's some great creature puppets for a cheapo TV movie.

Now, the first warning signs are when we're introduced to our protagonist who's named Lovecraft. This is definitely a bad look, but fuck it, maybe folk tuning into HBO in the 90s aren't that aware of Lovecraft.

And then, because of course we do, we get into some real questionable racial content with where we take magic. Magic in general is used an overly abstract allegory for "general progress", which I'm only now realising as I write this means it's promoting a curmudgeonly world view, but the film is so committed to never really taking a stance or commenting on anything means most of this just falls through the gaps.

But then we get a sizeable amount of immigrant zombies used as exploitative cheap labour. And I initially just filled in the blanks of this being used a vehicle to criticise these practices, as that's usually where this kind of setup goes, because usually you have things in your story to do things with. But again - it never really comments or says anything in relation to it.

It almost comes very close to having a fine depiction of a queer character, but purely the protagonists actions betray this, as he violently assaults them and hurls slurs. You were so close, movie.

And now the wildest part of all is something that for some reason I don't see mentioned in any user reviews ever.

Early on, we're introduced to a lolita-y 16 year old character, which is a flag equivalent of an air raid siren. We're then introduced to main plot of "demon summoning ritual that requires a virgin sacrifice", and instantly you know entirely were this goes and is exactly as bad as you think it is. They also don't communicate that either them know about the plan? Like it might just be pure coincidence? And then they play it off as "oh, you scamp, sleeping with that minor; you rascal, you".

Like fucking hell man this is Faust: Love of the Damned (2000) levels of awful "here's how we stop the demon ritual to sacrifice the woman".

To close out, it turns out there is a sequel by fucking Paul Schrader of all people; with Dennis Hopper as the lead, and Angelo Badalamenti as composer. I am very interested in checking that out, as provided you cut out all the awful content this concept could work very well. I've heard they clean up the racial messaging, and there's probably not gonna be any nonce shit. Fingers crossed for no hate crimes.

Haven't seen this since childhood, and I don't remember having any thoughts on it whatsoever back then.

On re-watch, it's decent! Animation is great, backgrounds are great, soundtrack's great. Everything you're after in an animated film. There's also a chunk of CGI in this, and very surprisingly for 1999 CGI, it all looks very good?

Start is unintentionally extremely funny. The film opens on a gorilla baby being mauled to death by a leopard as it's parents watch on in horror, all while this fucking wistful Phil Collins song plays. Also leopards in this world are The Predator.

Not big on the ending. It suddenly decide to go 180°, and it kinda robs Tarzan of his arc.

AKA "Kung-Fu Cannibals", which is an infinitely better title. This one was something special.

Perfectly fine little B-movie, but then has a random 80s party scene so crazy it manages to upstage zombie samurai and maybe Hitler (they're never really clear on if it's Hitler).

I don't have much to say on it other than holy shit that party scene. It might be the hardest I've ever laughed at a film. It comes out nowhere for literally no reason, then goes on for like 10 straight minutes, every shot adding a new extremely funny angle. It's honestly worth watching for this scene alone.

Every review seems to make out that's way sleazier than it actually is, but I might just be completely numb to this now.

Pretty good! A little surprised it's not more well known, but I guess folk weren't ready for a stoner comedy that's not aimed at dude-bros in 2007.

Your enjoyment entirely hinges on if you find Farris' performance annoying or not, as it's a Napoleon Dynamite (2004) level full-on comedic performance. In my case, I found it extremely funny, but can very easily see it getting on someone's nerves.

Script has a lot of neat touches that really help push the stoner comedy angle that you don't really get in comedy scripts. Tasks are introduced and are completely forgotten by the character as she staggers from situation to situation. There's a running Marxism bit that's brought up from the character's background, and repeatedly referred back to without the character herself making the link. Interactions with antagonistic figures are heightened ever so slightly as to line up with weed induced paranoia in a realistic way.

Highly recommended. Definitely liked this a lot more than The Doom Generation (1995).

Finally, finally got around to watching this. I don't think I could recommend this to anyone, but I'm glad I finally watched it.

This is an alternate universe in which Nintendo games form the basis of culture. They are the dominant religion and their secrets are passed down as holy texts. Praise be to the 97.

For a video game movie, it doesn't do too great a job of working video games in? Video games do appear very frequently, but the main kid isn't even shown to be interested in video games - he's just thrown them by other people now and again and he wins at them. You could take video games out of the movie entirely and it doesn't impact the narrative whatsoever. I'm convinced this was a script that had nothing to do with videogames whatsoever, and then they were added in as some financing move.

It's also overwhelmingly mean spirited towards the autistic lead. Like, it's one thing to have the villains be mean in this way, but even our main characters are awful towards him - the girl especially (100% a terf now). It's the main thing that makes this hard to watch, and there really aren't any redeeming fun things outside of "that one scene with the gimmick controller".

Across the board it's not very good at establishing context for things. Conflicts and relationships are very hard to follow, and people will just say a video game thing with no set up or impact on anything.

Quirked-up proto-incel cushy indie slop.

Felt on edge watching this more than any horror. Most lines caused me to dig my nails into my arms.

Also weird view of gay culture, but not a good enough queer to really put my finger on how. Something feels off.

Like it's not outright hateful, but it feels like there's a lack of respect. Has no idea how to frame gay culture outside of endlessly shouting "they have sex with other men".

There is a plot beat where Michael Cera makes a woman cum.

4th Breen movie, and we're back to DVD quality, because sure.

Probably the hardest to follow - despite having the least amount of abstract experimental content of all the post Double Down (2005) Breen movies - but I enjoyed it a lot more than Fateful Findings (2013). It's basically just I Am Here… Now (2009) again, but swap "god but alien but god" with "AI but actually Doctor Manhattan".

I'm almost certain Breen is now on a government watch-list for this movie. While this isn't the first film of his to feature anti-establishment assassinations of politicians/bankers/etc bragging directly about the evil things they do, this is the first one to feature a direct call to arms for violent revolution like it's the end of The Holy Mountain (1973). And also, ends on a straight up mass grave of all the people he has "cleansed" (direct quote) as part of this revolution while triumphant music plays. While yes, that is a major spoiler, it's also directly on the poster?

Was a little worried after Fateful Findings (2013), but I'm now very excited for Twisted Pair (2018).

HAVING A GIRLFRIEND IS ILLEGAL IN THE CRIME ZONE.

IF THE POLICE SUSPECT YOU'RE HAVING ILLEGAL SEX (OUTSIDE OF SANCTIONED PROSTITUTION), THEY BUST DOWN YOUR DOOR AND INSPECT YOUR PENIS (I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE LOOKING FOR).

NONE OF THIS IS ELABORATED ON. ALSO AUDREY FROM TWIN PEAKS IS HERE.

It's a very passable, albeit very sleepy B-movie. It's hard to recommend to genre-fans for that reason, as outside of the aforementioned craziness (alongside a guy with a big neon sign selling condoms), there aren't really any fun bits, but there's some nuggets of good here. A lot of genuinely pretty nice moody lighting and set design.

Plot makes absolutely no sense, though. You'd think a movie called "Crime Zone" would understand the concept of crime, but you'd be wrong!

Given I didn't really get anything out of Predator (1987), I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this one. Also surprised at just how different it was - like there's frequent comedy beats here; almost Verhoeven-esque, but without the satire.

From word go, Glover is a much more likeable and charismatic protagonist than Schwarzenegger ever was. We even introduce a little arc for him to get over! It's great stuff!

Unlike the first one, however, it doesn't really flow well into the last fight. There it makes sense because Schwarznegger was the last guy there. Here the Predator just keeps flirting around with Glover and then running away for the whole movie instead of just fighting him like he does with everyone else possible. He rips an old womans head off without a second thought, but no this one person the Predator needs to wait for.

Some of the best movie goons around - these guys are so good. The first 10 or so minutes are completely unhinged. War on drugs turned up to 12. They're straight up shooting down fucking helicopters.

I really like the heatwave angle. Not much to say on it, but it adds some nice continuous flavour.

I cannot convey how hard I cheered when the predator ripped that old woman's head off.

Finally got around to this one. It's a fun time, but to be honest I'm a little let down, and it's entirely because there isn't any commentary/satire going on. Not that it requires it to work - you can absolutely just be a pile of fun visuals, narrative be damned - but it really holds it back from reaching that higher level. And it's not helped that every similar example to this includes it.

It frequently gets compared to both Eraserhead (1977) and David Cronenberg's output, but it really doesn't share much of anything with either? Definitely closer to Cronenberg, but like, this isn't "man melding with machine", it's "man melding with literal small bits of metal", but I guess we can't all be Videodrome (1983).

It's understandable at how it would garner Eraserhead comparisons, though - both are of the genre of "experimental black and white indie films with striking visuals", and if you've seen any film like that, it's very likely to be Eraserhead.

Plot is actually pretty straightforward to follow, though it's often a scene or two afterwards where it snaps into place. This is apart from first woman, where I have no idea why she was affected by the spirit of the metal fetishist, but the girlfriend who was there wasn't? There's also nothing like this in the rest of the movie?

Given I got into trash cinema through Tokyo Gore Police (2008), I've surprisingly watched very little Japanese cyberpunk. I think I will start exploring the genre further now. Probably 964 Pinocchio or Burst City next. Fuck it, maybe Meatball Machine.

pegging TK

drill penis TK

After Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), I wanted something very very easy. Over-sweetened porridge, slightly overdone, and rapidly becoming cold.

Passable example of an 80s teen movie, but entirely unremarkable outside of a couple insane hats Helen Hunt wears. I also mistook Hunt for Jodie Foster for the whole movie - still not convinced they're separate people, honestly.

Hunt's in it a surprisingly little amount, though - it's mostly just SJP and the blandest crust piece of budget sandwich bread boyfriend character you could think of.

The main thing I got out of this was discovering Q-FEEL - Dancing In Heaven, which stood out for being British synthpop that goes way too hard for an otherwise bland venture.

A very very confusing mess. Most of this is in very bright light, and folk are rarely ever alone. Christian Slater pulls his best Christian Slater impression as most plot beats are never followed up on, before having one of the most confusing film endings I've ever seen. It's probably some game thing, but it is not communicated well in the slightest, if so.

One of those films where people who have only seen like 3 movies claim it's the worst thing ever, but it's really not. There's a couple fun moments (the clear highlight being the most 2005 fight scene of all time jumping out of nowhere), but nothing really worth watching for.

First Uwe Boll film, and very apprehensive of watching more. Maybe BloodRayne (2005)? Maybe?

Another 80s slasher. Almost tricks you into thinking it's not going to be generic, with a post-WW2 opening stretch. But nope, cut to present - and you guessed it - it's early 80s teens embodying the spectre of the 70s; throwing a doomed party where no one really has any character - especially the killer. Also first time seeing a final girl with such big Mormon energy.

However, the one thing you want out of a generic slasher is good kills, and my word the kills are top notch here. No exaggeration when I say these are consistently the best slasher kills I've seen. Fantastic practical effect work where we get real close and personal and just hold quietly as the kill fully plays out. It might be the only real reason to watch it, but boy does it nail it.

It's well paced on the macro scale (final girl is interacting with the killer like 30m in), but scene-to-scene will often go on far too long with nothing happening.

Having seen a chunk now, I think my real issue with the slasher genre is just lack of characterisation. "Big guy going around killing people" can be a good vehicle for fun practical effect set-pieces, but it doesn't lead to interesting stories. And I wouldn't bring it up if I didn't think it was solvable, like all you gotta do is build on your big main character more. We get aggravatingly close with the set up in the post-war section, but then we just never really bring things up again, and the killer reveal just ends up as an anti-climactic obligation the film needs to uphold.

If you're going to watch any generic 80s slasher, watch this one. Don't even bother with Friday the 13th (1980).

Revenge movie featuring Linda Blair (The Exorcist girl) and pre-scream queen Linnea Quigley.

It starts on decent footing, but ends up just meandering about too much to it's own demise. It takes WAY too long to get to the revengeining (last 30m!), spending the entire middle third dicking around until we get a second revenge inciting moment - which the protagonist doesn't even find out about until she already starts revengeining, making it feel a little pointless.

The inciting incidents themselves are slightly too disconnected from the protagonist to really work

Every user review makes out the whole thing is Blair running around cracking one-liners and firing crossbows, but it just ends up a 15m segment at the end, before the film realises it let a woman do something cool and have agency. So then it turns into Blair running around scared from a guy who now can't walk properly, despite this being confusingly conflicting with the rest of everything?

Blair is absolutely a poor casting choice for "cool street delinquent", but it's at least funny.

Also at one point a character wears a The Specials shirt, which is very weird as AFAIK they were completely unknown in the states? Being blindsided by two-tone might be the last thing I'd expect in an 80s american film.

First act is very rough, but then like a Simpsons episode we jump into the main plot, never to return to where we started. From here, it's pretty good!

Maybe the earliest example of a vampire nightclub? Not the earliest example of a vampire IN a nightclub, of course, AFAIK that honour goes to Blacula (1972).

Features of lot of beautifully done stylized lighting, where every scene is bathed in green and pink - often accompanied with harsh dutch angles.

Also features a black woman as head vampire, which I don't think I have another example of? Everyone always brings up Grace Jones when talking about this, but she's like the main one - and she's great! They don't do enough with her character, and for some reason she doesn't have lines, but it's a great silent performance, with her presence dominating whatever scene she's in.

Couldn't figure out where to put this but also features a Madonna pixie dream girl, who I only bring up because I'm proud of that line.

Used the word "features" a lot in this one.

Ehhhh.

Hard to follow for the first 30 minutes, has some great scenes splattered about, but doesn't set up a goal or meat to sink it's teeth into, so you end up just waiting through plot beats until it ends, which is always what you want from a movie.

While everyone else gives a fantastic performance, things are also really hampered by the protagonist being an absolute unlikable charisma void. I do not care for his plight. He is not interesting or entertaining to follow. Half the fucking drama revolves around Steve Buscemi, who appears, what - once?

Not big on the moral message/theme of "you should never trust your friends ever". While this could instead be read as "the image of 'honourable gangster' is a farce, these people are all opportunistic backstabbers", we don't have a counterbalance to contrast with normal folk, and the film very much wants us to think the irish void is a cool guy who does honour. He's so irish and cool fuck play oh danny boy again.

Pro-union pervert slasher B-movie.

Now, "digital-age 80s throwback B-movie" is usually completely unwatchable even for B-movie fans, but all the user reviews I saw said "you know what? It's alright." And you know what? It's alright!

All the kills suck apart from the last one which was very good! Caught me off guard given the rest were so poor, but you cannot go wrong with chainsawing a big rubber head. It's like a cheat code.

The 80s throwback elements are mostly all handled well. Lots of coloured lighting and garish neon outfits. We do have too many tattoos and piercings, but like this is a tiny indie film, there's literally nothing you can do at that budget. Music also leans a little too "dark synthwave that isn't lo-fi enough for 80s", but again, tiny budget.

Character arc also kinda just doesn't work? Unless you get real high concept you can't really have an 80s throwback slasher but have your final girl coded protagonist also be the slasher for most of the movie until we just stop doing that.

Interested in checking out the crew's other projects. I hear good things about Streets of Vengeance (2016) and the upcoming OnlyFangs seems fun if it hits the same tone this one does.

Right I got duped into watching a 2h40 film instead of 2h film and I am rightly fuming. Films should only be allowed to have one release man fuck directors uncut bloat.

Not sure what to make of it, honestly, it's so fucking long, and it just keeps minnowing about the place, never really sinking it's teeth into anything and mostly just saying themes directly instead of actively exploring them, also it's so fucking long.

Complaints about length are half a joke, btw - these kinds of "big adventure self discovery movies" actively benefit from going past the 2h mark. Like Inland Empire (2006). Almost Famous (2000) is exactly like Inland Empire (2006).

Film opens on an Alvin and the Chipmunks song while featuring Jason Lee in a large role, establishing the prophecy.

Hoffman's character is a good example of things staying a bit too surface level. I read this character as like a dark future version of the character, cynical and alone, feeling burnt by his career path. To match, even has some incel-y dialogue in a monologue towards the end (which gets sourced as a Tumblr quote, very funnily), but we never delve deep into anything enough to pay off.

Initially I thought this was going to be like Licorice Pizza (2021) after the timeskip, but it goes in a different direction and never gets creepy with these two, although there is a scene where he's statutory raped anyway so fuck it; nevermind, fuck it.

Annoyed it wasn't a little more like Licorice Pizza for the sole reason of it ruining all the jokes I had written. Had stuff on messianic figures, blood sacrifice - all in the bin now.

Wasn't expecting it to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl film also, but then turns out this director also did Elizabethtown (2005), which means at some pivotal age some quirky blonde girl got embedded into his psyche like the embryo in Dark Seed, and honestly all power to him.

The mom's characterisation is very confusing. In the intro they set up that she's an extreme weirdo, but then post time-skip at pretty much every point in the film she's very supportive.

This was a childhood film that I didn't think that much of at the time, and while I can definitely appreciate it's strengths a lot more now… yeah I still don't really think that much of it.

Produced the same company as Dune (1984), and at times this kinda feels like Dune (1984) if Dune (1984) was not an adaptation of Dune.

I really like the costumes throughout, and I like the first third or so, but then the pacing turns into a slog, and start to lean into really unsavoury "we must educate the savages as we are a superior race" territory. This mostly remains as an undercurrent, but then we get a human (white) flat out say "no yeah obviously we are superior to you". Not a fan of that! I don't get the impression that this was done consciously, though, rather just a dark cultural holdover.

Probably the biggest issue I have though is that Flash Gordon doesn't fucking do anything in the movie. The only thing he really does is accidentally kill the villain at the end like fucking Big Trouble in Little China (1986), except he's not a joke in this.

Very confused at why there wasn't any further Flash Gordon media? Maybe I'm confusing how successful this was, because it was specifically very popular in the UK; but like surely this was big enough to have some guff Netflix CG animated series you hear about 4 years after it aired, no?

A lot of neat stuff in it, but a rare case where I watch an experimental plot-lite film and think "this actually would've benefited from more plot". Too lite on character development for a slice of life, and while it by technical definition has a plot, in that there are scenes in which characters do things that impact characters doing things in other scenes, it is borderline incomprehensible. Also, 2h is WAY too long for "frenetically shot experimental plot-lite movie" - it ends up as draining as like a 3h film.

Not entirely sure if this is meant to be a post-apocalyptic setting or not. It's never said directly, there's regular ol' employment, building plans, broadcast TV, and also gutter mutants with creature prosthetics?

While this isn't cyberpunk in any way (just dystopian punk), the influence on Japanese cyberpunk is very clear, with a lot of frenetic camera work, extreme characters, and also mutants sometimes. Still think "Japanese cyberpunk" is a bad genre name, as it sounds like it would include things like Ghost in the Shell, etc, but it really doesn't. I've heard "Extreme Japanese Cyberpunk" which is better, but the "cyber" is usually very subdued, and it's a lot more focused on "vomit gore body splatter" elements, and is a lot more rooted in punk music. This one doesn't have any of the extreme elements, but it's the most punk, and the sprouts that would bloom into Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) are more than visible here - the zoomies especially.

Beavis and Butthead are real in this world. There is a scene where they phone up and talk to them, and it is absolutely baffling. Also baffling is the decision to have Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler be brothers. They are nothing alike in terms of looks or character, and it only comes up a couple times. Like you could just not say that they're brothers.

Film itself is an entertaining little mess. It's a fun hang movie, but jokes are mostly too light, there are way too many characters (so no one really does anything), and we end up in a disgustingly entitled place that kinda the ruins the story. The characters are given everything they want on a silver platter, nothing bad happens to them, and everyone claps.

AKA 4.

Right. Hated 1. Disliked 2. Didn't even bother with 3. This one? Pretty good actually! The characters are all distinct and enjoyable to follow, we have different groups of characters with different things going on, Friday the 13th 2009and some of the kills are pretty good! Not The Prowler (1981) good, despite the shared director, but they're a hell of a lot better than anything in 1 or 2.

Still has the classic genre issues of the killer not really having any motivation, and characters not knowing anything is up until they're all dead (just have someone discover a body and raise tension!), but fuck it, it's very solid overall.

Crispin Glover is bringing Some Kind Of Energy and it's great. With how these films work, we were actively rooting for him not to fuck.

The hunter character is a very interesting concept, but uhhh he doesn't do anything. No impact on the plot.

Not sure I entirely get what professional practical creature artist little Cory Feldman's plan was at the end, but I guess it's on model for what happened in 2, and it sets up a concept for the sequel that almost tricked me into wanting to watch 5. Every review I see of 5 screams "do not watch this one, it is entirely pointless", though. Almost caught me slippin'.

Previously claimed that if you wanted to watch a generic 80s slasher, you should watch The Prowler (1981), but honestly I think I'd recommend this much sooner. The kills aren't as good, but this one is much more well rounded, and well, the script in The Prowler kinda sucks.

Next up, Part 6. Then maybe 7, before closing out on Jason X.

Do Americans know this movie? Wikipedia says it was released there, but like this feels like something only British people know. It is a monolithic cultural touchstone here.

Was expecting this to be a slog, but for a 140m movie, this feels like a 90m movie.

Liked the pre-fantastical bits a lot more than I expected to, but then halfway through we flat out say "right none of the upcoming stuff is real", and ending on "yep! none of that happened".

There's no character development during this stretch, so HALF of the movie is just entirely pointless? Why the fuck would you do this? Like, you're a film, you're allowed to be fantastical. Why would you include all this fantastical stuff while telling the audience "none of this real or matters btw".

Back at it again. Double the Breens, double the fun. I feel like this one is the closest to an actual normal movie, but I have no argument as to how.

There's a LOT of green screen in this one, and while that's usually a death knell for digital-age B-movies, it's used in a way that's always extremely funny. Lot's of standing in front of and interacting with the footage.

Biggest issue with it is it almost all takes places in the one location, that's both not concealed at all and also almost every different building is supposed to be this one building. It is disorientating and makes it very hard to know where we're meant to be in any given scene.

Did you know that this is the same guy as those Lord of the Rings movies? Also when Aragorn kicked that helmet he actually broke his foot? Also in Japan it was actually a licensed anime game called "Doki Doki Panic".

Film is okay. Actually really liked it at the start, but then we stop following the plot we set up and just turn into a serious of scenes in the day of the life of the Muppets except they have boobies and do drugs and. And as a cartoon-y comedy, we aren't in the realm where you can actually have slice-of-life character work, so yeah.

It's a tad racist and homophobic at points, but very lightly so for '89 - there's a lot worse deep into the 2000s even. And speaking of lite, despite countless reviews claiming "woah it's so edgy not for the easily offended!", it's mostly very tame as "crazy comedy" goes - though would've been a lot crazier to audiences on release.

2nd early Peter Jackson after Braindead (1992), and well, this is no Braindead.

No clue what to make of this one. The first like third of this is xXx (2002) levels of off-the-wall unintentionally funny action schlock. After this, we slow down a little, chugging along at a leisurely pace.

"Nic Cage stealing the one piece of american history entirely on a hunch that there's a secret treasure map on it and just cuts about the street with it in a bright red case" is a premise only 2004 could bring you.

Every now again Cage just stops in his tracks and goes on about how wonderful america is, it is so fucking funny.

Maybe the biggest issue it has is lack of variety. Normally in big adventure movies, you get to keep things fresh by injecting wildly different settings and set-pieces every so often. Here, every new setting after the intro is just another fucking boring ass american city that looks the exact same as the last one. You could've filmed all these in the exact same place. They might have, I don't care enough to look that up.

The other big issue is that treasure hunting premises on their own are just not interesting or exciting. I don't care about a big pile of gold. Normally, this is solved by injecting supernatural elements, but this just uhh doesn't.

ftm crossdressing disguise movie. Did not expect this to be as crazy as it was.

Some of the most awful men that an 80s comedy has to offer. At first, I thought "okay film I get what you're going for, amplify men being horrible to women to show contrast when we boy mode", but then we don't get any of that contrast. And then there's a scene where Audrey Twin Peaks goes to ignore consent as our protagonist literally screams "no", so fuck it, man is evil.

And the brother character. Good lord the brother character. He is GRABBING women at every given opportunity. He is a malevolent force. The proto-Stiffler. And of course, this is an 80s film, so he never faces any repercussions at any point and he gets what he wants at the end.

Gets unexpectedly close to queer territory, but it's a mainstream 80s comedy so would be unthinkable to actually commit to that. In both look and character the lead and the love interest feel like 50s gays, where it's illegal to say gay so they speak in crosswords.

Biggest issue it has is that it doesn't set up any reason for the character to be doing this? Like normally you give an urgent reason for "fuck okay gotta crossdress and assume a different identity for a bit". Some Like It Hot (1959). White Chicks (2004). All the cinematic greats.

I guess it can be recommended as queer-adjacent cinema? I guess? Fuck it. Man is evil.

Major spoilers to follow

Right, so we set up, "hrm I think my paper would get accepted if a GUY submitted it", and then after it doesn't (it was just boring and had nothing to do with gender, which yes does harm the films messaging), we don't go "wait I can write a much more interesting paper by writing about my experience living as the other sex for a bit". Instead, for no reason whatsoever, she just carries on? Despite constant difficulty and no enjoyment?

She does write that paper at the end, but it's in the last 5 minutes after the plot has ended. We get a shot of her writing something, and then it cuts to her having already achieved the characters goal off-screen.

Utterly and absolutely middle of the road, but with a couple neat touches in the script. Completely unremarkable outside of the Shyamalanian twist of Laura Dern NOT being the ex-wife.

Wouldn't recommend seeking it out, but like it's fine. A little sleepy maybe.

Now, both this and the previous movie were watched out of a random list of 350 movies. Just One of the Guys (1985) featured Sherilyn Fenn as part of the cast, and in an insane coincidence, there's a scene in this where a character picks up a stack of Playboys, and one of them just happened to be the Sherilyn Fenn one.

We theorised this maybe (maybe) was intended as a David Lynch link given the Twin Peaks name mention and Laura Dern being in the cast, but this is probably too much of a reach.

Hmmm…

While it's definitely very entertaining to watch the baby (who's name is Baby) in action, I found it a little tame and overhyped. Nowhere near as complex or gross than reviews made out.

Probably my biggest issue is it's really not clear on how the baby became the baby. Without getting into spoilers, what I think the movie is going for doesn't fit with other things in the movie. One of the alt cover images I didn't use has the box quote of "pray you don't learn the secret of the baby" but we literally never do?

Look, I get I watch a lot of old gross exploitation films, but reviews compare this to John Waters films? Really? Have you seen a John Waters film? The only comparison is "gross 70s", but there they're a roaring celebration of misfit weirdos - here it's supposed to be a shocking horror. If The Baby was a John Waters film, Baby would be a fetishist and he beats a cop with a rattle or something.

Was not big on the ending. 180-ing on constant red herrings you drop isn't interesting, and also it's a 70s film: I'm expecting as a default for it to end with every character killing themselves, so suddenly going dark at the end isn't shocking.

Pretty neat! Japanese folk horror comedy by the Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) guy.

Very much feels like a AA PS2 survival horror game, with it's limited cast and single location setting that the characters loop in and around on.

I think "goblin" is probably the wrong localisation choice. While it's probably only recent that "yokai" has entered weeb lexicon, "demon" would be more appropriate. Also you're probably not dissuading potential fans by using "Yokai" directly. Also the subs kept using the phrase "old mound", which, yeah.

I will say there was a couple of plot beats I didn't understand, and it's impossible for me to say whether this is due to issues in the script, or deep cultural context my British ass could never have.

I always feel like a bit of a contrarian when I watch an alleged "one of the greatest films of all time" and come off lukewarm, but here I do not get the appeal at all. Like, at all, at all. Not even as an "influence over impact" piece.

We never really set up a goal for the character to achieve, we spend too long flirting with unconvincing supernatural elements that end up getting completely ignored, and the ending is so baffingly shit that I had to check that that was actually how it was intended to end, and wasn't some awkward studio interference.

It's been a long while since an ending has caused the room to sit speechless, jaws agape. This is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made, and I struggled to even see how it's considered decent.

I'd seen a lot of gushing about the films use of colour, and yeah there's that bit where he sees the girl and it goes red that you saw in film class, but also every 2nd shot is very dark and hard to see.

Not sure if the film's intent is for me to view the protagonist negatively by the end? It's like one step away from being evil, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it's intending for you to go "aw it's sad that this guy feels this way". It goes to straddle the line, where you absolutely want to either go past the line, or not even approach it, unless you're dedicating your entire story to exploring this. This doesn't - it's only in the last 20 minutes do we actually get to the meat of the film. No, there's still not any goals established.

This was my first Hitchcock, and given this is considered his magnum opus, I, uh, guess it's only downhill from here?

Started with this specifically because of the influence on David Lynch, and yeah I see it 100%. Focus on dreams, supernatural elements, contrasting blonde vs brunette women, [redacted for spoilers], men being evil. It's all there, albeit less extreme.

Despite everything, can probably recommend this to true crime girlies. If I can see anyone getting something out of this, it's them.

Did not expect this to bomb as hard as it did. Racist pedo movie that should be left to rot in the 80s. I hope everyone who worked on this is in jail for different reasons.

Also why do the girl chipmunks look entirely different to the boy chipmunks? Also why do the girl chipmunks just look like humans? If I had zero context and you showed me those designs, asking "what animal are these characters meant to be" I'd think you were trying to trick me.

This shit fucking rules man. Bathed in Giallo lighting, green ooze dripping, scraping cocaine off a breast with a razor blade, wielding a katana while riding a motorbike indoors while Mötley Crüe blares. Holy shit.

Despite being called Demons, this is out and out a zombie movie, except the zombies are a lot more visually interesting, and the small cast in an enclosed space means every zombie recognisable from earlier. Neat! I'm sorry but zombies are boring!

Weird lack of worldbuilding, though. Feels like it's missing a couple of exposition scenes to fully round things out.

It actually shares a lot with what would otherwise be a mid 2000s misery porn splatter fare, but it's 80s so we can be as fun and pulpy as we like. And boy are we fun and pulpy!

Almost every kill is very very good. Puts most slashers to shame, in fact.

Early stretch kinda sucks, with awful dialogue that feels more at home in a B-movie, but it picks up when the kills start. In typical Italo fashion no matter what language track you go with, it's all awkwardly overdubbed, which is where the film stumbles at first. Once things pick up however, the dialogue is mostly shouty and emotive, and it ends up being fine! Watched this one in English, for reference.

My only real issue with it is the title kinda sucks. Like we have a dedicated gimmick setting of "haunted movie theatre where the cast is walled in", and it's called Demons?

I guess we also don't really make great use of the "film inside the film" gimmick, but having a cute little gimmick for a brief moment is more interesting than not having a cute gimmick at all. The Evil Toons (1991) theory.

Instant must-watch recommendation if pulp 80s horror is your jam. Was hesitant when I saw there was a following-year sequel, but reviews for that also seem decent, so will be checking that out!

Right, so as a B-movie fan, comparisons to The Room (2003) are absolute hack shit and are also never true. This is one of the rare exceptions, and definitely lives up to it's reputation as "the gay The Room".

I actually don't have that much to say on it, to be honest. It's a lot of fun, but it's by no means a beginner B-movie.

Ends a little too suddenly, like it's missing an epilogue.

Pretty decent! For horror comedy, there's a surprising amount of neat ideas in here. Most importantly, a lot of elements that fix my usual issue with zombies being boring.

The zombies here are conscious, talking, scheming, and we even explore a little bit of what the experience is like of being a zombie. Cool stuff!

While the black goopy zombie might be one of my favourite zombie designs I've seen, the art direction is very inconsistent between the zombies, and makes the movie feel a hell of a lot cheaper than it should.

B-movie heads will know this as The big role of scream queen Linnea Quigley, but ehhh it's not one of her best roles. She gets one genuinely very good line read - and then just spends the rest of the movie nude with nothing to do. Sexploitation normally doesn't phase me in the slightest, but idk it felt very reductive here.

Also very small aside, the black character does not die early, which for 80s felt like a plot twist.

Not sure how I feel on the ending. Nothing about it's content, it's just that it feels like it ends very suddenly out of nowhere, when we still had things to explore.

Will be checking out exactly the next two films in the series and nothing more!

AKA "the other good one".

Weaker on all slasher axes (bar one!) than P4, but it's decent. Kills are worse, characters are worse, but we do address the lack-of-tension issue where no one knows what's happening by having the plot revolve around a guy actively trying to warn and stop Jason be held back by shitty cops. Reaches unexpected outright horror-comedy highs early on, but we eventually temper down.

Weirdly, despite this one adding a supernatural angle with Jason being a zombie man, basically nothing changes? Like, shit, it's not like guns ever did anything other than temporarily stun him before. At the very least, it's cooler conceptually, and helps to make it more believable when he gets up again in the next one. Placing my bets now that he is never given any characterisation at any point in the series.

Might watch P7 as the concept sounds interesting and the user reviews are not all dire warnings to avoid at all costs. Absolutely watching Jason X (2001), though.

First half is great, then we commit the major script sin of solving your primary character conflict around the half point, so we only have the secondary exposition glue conflict left - which is much less interesting.

Boy, that first half, though. Hits that Drive (2011) sweet spot of minimalist tension, chock-full of artistic shots and great cinematic use of sound. At only 90m, I can honestly recommend it on this alone.

Plot also reminded me a lot of the first Yakuza game, in that the setup is the stoic protagonist being double crossed by his weaselly friend who he trusted, and when he finally manages to return to society the friend is now a bigshot. Tried to look this up and couldn't find any mention of a link. Completely unfamiliar with yakuza cinema, though - maybe that's a common plot device there.

Did hear that there was a remake in Payback (1999), but that's a Mel Gibson movie where he apparently had sizeable creative input, so not going anywhere near that.

Btw I don't know why that poster tag line infers he hits women - there is nothing like that in the movie.

noooooo psycho sisters don't strangle me and cut my dick off haha

Weren't sure if we wanted to watch this SOV one, or the DTV 1998 remake, but I could only find a copy of the 1998 one, which turned out to be this one anyway.

It's not not fun at points, and I really wanted to like it, but ehhhhhhh idk.

The tone is not where you want it to be. It starts off with a surprisingly horrific intro segment, and then the rest of the film is just played very non-chalont, as we leisurely wander from repetitive scene to scene, killing boring normal guys, and never meeting any conflict or tension in your serial killer slasher movie.

You want to play something like this a lot more camp and trashy, with consistently awful men you cheer when they kill. All of the men here are really boring and don't do anything, outside of the villain trio who just apparate in at the start and end with no introduction.

Also a weirdly high number of lecherous shots. They're not entirely inappropriate here, but again, it works better if this more camp and trashy. Early on we realised "fuck, this is just a please step on me movie isn't it" when we expected more of a splatter fare.

Now what IS inappropriate is the use of music. Soundtrack doesn't really fit, and the mixing is so off that whenever there's a track with lyrics, dialogue is completely inaudible.

Will be watching the 1998 as soon as I can find a decent copy.

Cinematic white noise. I could not tell you, at any point, what the plot of the movie is. There's like, a gemstone? And they the FBI sends Mr Magoo - a blind elderly man - to go get the gemstone? I think?

You'd think this would be a complete one-joke movie, and you'd be right up until they just stop doing that and he can see things? It's just geriatric Naked Gun at that point. We couldn't tell if he had prosthetic makeup on to look older even.

This end screen at the end was maybe the only laugh in the movie, and I have no idea if this was intended to be as funny as it was.

Double-dipping on "one-joke comedies" with the other Elvira movie. The good news is, it actually isn't as one note as the 1st! The bad news is, this is really really dull! If you've been looking for a movie to fall asleep to, this would be a great choice.

It's a shame, as on paper the concept is great - Elvira making quips as part of the campy hammer horror-style movie that would be in the show. The thing about those hammer horror-style movies, however, is that a lot of them a very fucking boring. Elvira is inside of the movie, but it's a boring episode. Also I've not watched the show. I am Gen Z and it is weirdly hard to find for a such a well known show.

It really needed to camp it up a bit more, and push things more a little extreme. This is not a budget thing. Elvira herself, Richard O'Brien, and the overdubbed stable-hand are all great, but everyone else is running on fumes.

Also weirdly not that horny at all, which is very unexpected given the title. Less horny than the 1st one, even.

For some reason I watched this all the time as a kid. If you've never seen CGI before, this will blow your god damn mind; otherwise, don't bother.

Genius with severe ADHD is not supported by his fiance, as his toxic robot with a humansona gaslights him.

He just sprays liquid that makes things bounce! That's it! The little creatures bounce around like twice, it's mostly just fucking basketballs! This should have been a little creatures running around causing chaos movie!

Like, fuck, we even have the beat of letting the creatures out after saying to not let the creatures out, and they dance around the house, and then they just go back in with no friction. What.

The fiance has such little character that I thought she was just meant to be the one he loses before we introduce the actual love interest, but no, she's in the whole movie.

Ending is also baffling. You don't care about Flubber spoilers. Instead of doing a fake out of "oh he forgor the wedding again… oh wait he didn't! character development!" he just has a wedding over face-cam? Can someone be there to support him with time keeping? He is forgetting about major life events. This shit is on you.

Pretty good! Falls exactly on the line of B-movie and regular movie.

Surprising amount of neat camera work. We got Evil Dead cam, Hitchcock zooms, the works.

Moreso than The Return of the Living Dead (1985), this is probably the big Linnea Quigley role. She's great in it!

That lipstick scene is rad as hell. Sexploitation surrealism.

Probably could do with a little more closure at the end, but that's a minor issue.

Easy recommend to genre fans. Apparently 2 is pretty good, too!

THE SUPER IRA TOOK HIS DAUGHTER'S SPLEEN. THIS YA PROTAGONIST WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO STOP THE EVIL IRISH (ALL IRISH ARE EVIL BTW).

Watched as a B-movie, and it didn't not work for that purpose. Couple of very funny highlights, but like, nothing really happens? The Super IRA (of which there are like 6?) never succeed at anything they do ever, also every Irish person is depicted as evil, which is, uh, yeah.

No familiarity (or interest) in Tom Clancy novels, but if this is how they're written, then wow is it embarrassing. Full-blown YA protag where he's great at everything always and everyone claps.

It's not a constant throughout, but there's some extremely funny music direction going on. Ominous Irish folk motifs whenever one of those dastardly evil Irish is on screen so you can identify them.

Don't watch this, though. Highlights are too few and far between.

I hear the sequel is actually good but ehh idk if I care. Also those reviews might have been written by fans of this one.

Sleepy indie character drama with a sapphic angle. Really scraping that barrel for more Sheryl Lee.

There's absolutely a dough here that could be kneaded into something special, but it's not here.

Sheryl Lee is, of course, great, but basically everyone else can barely deliver lines. This is a positive in campy B-movies, but certainly not dramas.

Some neat small town stuff, but doesn't do enough with it.

It doesn't do enough with the sapphic angle to make the most out of it, but it's not not there. It's like mostly just flirting, and never fully dives into it, which is what it needed to do to really shine. It actually does pass the representation test of not being gazey, and one of them is even butch-coded. I really liked the possessive bitchy angle to it, but much like the small-town stuff, really needed to focus in.

Mostly too sleepy to really showcase it, but my word is this blisteringly late 90s at points. Hard cut to nior shots when guns are shot. The fucking soundtrack.

Ending sucks. Zero reason for the character to do that.

Yeah probably don't watch this.

Alleged sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). It features Brad and Janet back in name only, but a lot of actors return, and stylistically very much feels in line.

Manages to be even more of a mess than Rocky Horror. The structure of this is very confusing, it takes place over a weirdly small amount of time for the scope of the narrative, and it's very repetitive.

I really liked a lot of the early stuff it put on the table, but it's all quickly shelved, never to be picked up again.

None of the songs are duds (aside from maybe Looking For Trade), but none of them are particularly hits, and they're also all pretty forgettable.

Read a couple reviews comparing this to Twin Peaks, but it's really nothing like it at all in any way? Though a lot of the early stuff reminded me of True Stories (1986).

This is a hard one to recommend. There's some neat ideas in there, but it's all a little shallow, and nowhere near as fun as Rocky Horror.

Ehhh idk. A hell of a lot goofier and funnier than I thought it was going to be, but in a very rare case where I thought it hurt the movie, rather than elevated it. This is just a D&D game, complete with dungeons, celebrating in pubs, doing bits. Except all of the party bar the one guy could only make session 2 and 4.

I thought Conan was meant to be a big stoic badass type of character, but he's really just like the comedy dumb friend character. There's one point where he bumps into a camel, gets mad, and punches it in the face. He's also supposed to be 25?

As in every god damn Schwarzenegger role, he cannot deliver lines and it is actively to the detriment of the film. Fantasy hinges on your immersion in the world, and every time he opens his mouth it sucks you out.

There's also a scene early on where just casually rapes a woman? Why is that there? I can't wrap my head around why you would write your hero doing this? There also isn't any sexual assault outside of this, which makes it especially bizarre that the one instance of it is your hero protagonist?

James Earl Jones' fucking hair in this movie man, who did that to him.

Do not get how the resurrection works. Is dying in this world like taking quaaludes?

More big dumb movies should open on Nietzsche quotes.

It's okay. Not much going on. He sees something, goes "I think that's what that was", and he's right, with very little twists or turns outside of very minor speed-bumps. Also he's very annoying and unlikable. Whiny weasel of a man.

That tension scene at the end is pretty good though.

Unlike Vertigo (1958), I didn't hate this. Given it's extreme influence, can definitely recommend as an influence piece, but not really outside of that.

Currently 0 for 2 on Hitchcock.

Pretty good! Very simple and straightforward "fight an alien" movie, tied together with consistent themes, and - hear me out, because this is borderline experimental for an action movie - a character arc. Really not that much to say on it, honestly.

Ideally would've watched this with the Comanche language track, but sat down to watch it and the copy only had English available, so we just watched that. Watched this with my Dad and he didn't know it was a Predator film going in - thought it was an adaptation of the 2007 game.

Not quite sure if the comedy scenes where the Predator fights the French fit the tone of the film, but they're fun scenes at least.

Definitely liked this a lot more than Predator (1987). I think I still like Predator 2 (1990) a little more, but that's also a very different kind of film. This is way easier to enjoy.

Wow. Did not expect this to be as big of a hit as it was. Absolutely brought the house down. Near constant stream of laughs.

Slasher where, for some reason, a safety pin is used as the murder weapon. This thing is treated like a hatchet. It's penetrating skulls at points. This is a GMod cheat weapon. More like unsafety pin. Danger pin. Fuck.

The sexploitation scenes are also extremely funny. With no warning, every so often we cut to like a minute straight of "sexy workout footage", filmed and scored like a music video. Eventually it turns into a game of guessing when they're going to happen, and we started full on cheering for them by the end.

It's way less explicit than the usual camp nudity scenes, but I can see how it could bother folk more than normal, as it's a lot of voyeuristic leering of un-named characters.

Also, it is so god damn hard to tell these whites apart that. For most of the movie, we thought there was a plot point where a character is killed and replaced by their twin.

Takes the award for least sensical killer motivation I've seen in a slasher so far, and that's no easy feat.

Despite being a little bit down on the iceberg, I could easily recommend this as an entry-level B-movie. There's enough laughs to keep the mood high, and there aren't really any dry dull stretches.

Andrew McCarthy and the Real Girl.

A mannequin fetishist creates elaborate shop window displays (which I guess is exciting?) with the help of his muse; who's allegedly real, but only when you're not looking! "Egytian curse", yeah right buddy. He's fucking that wood.

Grade A 80s coke script. Did people care about shop window displays? Honest to god, it feels like the start of Little Shop of Horrors. WHAT A STRANGE AND INTERESTING SHOP DISPLAY.

Films is actually pretty good, though? I don't know why all the reviews are so negative. Critically and user-ly, this thing is constantly slated, and I have no idea why?

Initially I wrote this off as I got the same sort of vibes as I get from "Weird Science" (which I haven't seen, btw - this is no comment on Weird Science), but in practice it's actually pretty sweet! It's honestly not that far off of Lars and the Real Girl (2007), but in an 80s comedy shell.

Thought I'd have more to say on Hollywood Montrose, but I don't. He's great! Wish he was in it a little more!

Ending does not make sense, but fuck it, films over. Go home.

Will watch the sequel at some point.

Really wanted to like it, but boy this script feels unfinished. It's like rough draft with most of the plot beats sketched in and then they jumped straight to filming.

I expected this to be "the weird girl reanimates a boyfriend", but really it's "zombie gets reanimated off-screen for no reason and then we do diet mini Heathers (1989)".

We also jump straight into killing people with no deliberation and no feelings of guilt or remorse or any resulting emotion whatsoever. It's weird? Like this is outright psychopathic, but we're not trying to explore this? We hint at one point of the character having killed someone in the past, but hinting at something in the background is not the same as plot. Can we fucking show something on screen please?

It doesn't do enough with the zombie, and given that he doesn't speak, the whole thing just turns into her rambling. Needed a friend character she talks to or something.

The 80s throwback elements are handled pretty well, though! Everything is real gaudy and cheap looking! It's great!

I am very interested in watching a "weird girl reanimates a boyfriend" movie now. I don't know any, so shout at me if you do.

Ehhh. Unlike Yellow Submarine (1968) I didn't hate this (mainly because it actually has the fucking Beatles in it), but there's not much too it. Just a series of bits.

As a Beatlemania vehicle, it's pretty good! I don't really give a shit about the Beatles, however. Watched this to see if it had anything to offer to non-Beatles fans, and it does a little, but only a little little.

Might be the first DCOM I've done? They're all slightly after my generation (and outside of my country), but I remember some of them airing on TV sometimes.

I'm not sure if I've seen Even Stevens. Maybe saw an ep TV while eating breakfast as a kid, but that would've been late 2000s and on British first-five-channels TV, so not sure if it would've aired there. As DCOMs go, this is actually fine, but there's no interesting (funny) hook to actually watch this.

Was a lot weirder and more extreme than I was expecting though. Choosing to end your show on a Lord of the Flies descent into madness where all your characters brutally kill one another is one hell of a creative choice. That scene where they rip Beans apart like Bone Tomahawk will stay with me.

This reaches Goodfellas (1990) levels of comical age differences between characters and actors. You're telling me this tall-ass woman is max 14 years old? This late 20s man guy is just finishing high school and is off to college? Really?

First half of this is pretty neat! Back half of this sucks!

It's a very different kind of horror comedy; instead of camp, it's dreamy pulp horror, similar to Creepshow (1982), sans stylized colour. Mix that with some Videodrome (1983)/TerrorVision (1986) style analogue broadcast TV shenanigans, and some pretty unique handling of zombies (who are moreso demons, making this the opposite of Demons (1985)), and you have something pretty special!

Unfortunately, we hit the halfway mark and it just turns into walking around the woods during the day, with a guy who walks in from offscreen who has all the answers. I did like that scene where she invites all the zombies in and makes them chili, though.

If this had more money behind it, stuck with the Videodrome and avoid the woods, I'm almost certain this would've ended up as a beloved cult movie. Well deserving of a remake. As-is, however, it's really hard to recommend as a whole.

Borderline unwatchable. People say it's because of the the greenscreen, but that's really not the issue. Mainly, it's that there's simply just not enough high moments, and B-movies live (and often die) on not having enough of these.

Plot is borderline incomprehensible. Definitely the hardest to follow Breen film for no other reason than this isn't trying to be experimental. Fuck, flow of plot is so hard to follow that I genuinely could not tell if the film was non-linear for most of the runtime. Scenes are also very repetitive, and barely anything happens in general.

The greenscreen is the elephant in the room, and while it isn't as funny as it's usage in Twisted Pair (2018), it's probably the only real interesting draw of the movie. Every shot being on a static background, and people often being very small in the frame to fit the image makes everything genuinely feel like an FMV point & click game.

I will give it props for being a very different kind of movie than every other Breen film, though I'll remove props for being almost entirely unrelated to it's prequel.

As this was the most recent Breen film, this means I've fully completed his filmography, joining David Lynch. As I made an accessibility iceberg for Lynch, I might as well do it for Breen.

1. Double Down (2005)
2. I Am Here… Now (2009), Pass Thru (2016)
3. Fateful Findings (2013), Twisted Pair (2018)
4. Cade: The Tortured Crossing (2023)

Astute Breen-heads will notice this is more-or-less release order, and… yeah? Honestly Double Down is the main recommend. If you're gonna watch anything, watch that. You can stop after; they're basically all the exact same film apart from Twisted Pair and Cade.

While "tradwife home automation powered by AI" sounds like a concept the worst person on Earth could come up with right now, at the turn of the millennium this was the height of made-for-TV science fiction.

I had a lot of fun with this! I see why this is one of the more beloved DCOMs. If you don't have nostalgia for them (I don't, I was not conscious yet), it's only really a recommend to B-movie fans (of which I am).

Real disgusting scene in this that spawned a conversation about whether you kissed your parents on the mouth as a kid. I didn't - that's weird - but my mate said he did, and he has a much better relationship with his parents; so fuck it, maybe kissing your parents on the mouth is good?

RIP Shelley Duval.

Really liked the first 75%, but then it 720's into a different movie, going from a plot-light character study to suddenly having confusing plot elements. And then, uhh, the ending sucks. Robs the whole thing of any conclusion or closure.

"3 Women" also feels very misleading. Like I mean I guess there's a 3rd main woman, but we're only focused on the two. Kept waiting for them to do more with the 3rd, and they never really do.

That first 75% is pretty solid plot-light character study, though! Shelley Duval is very good in it! If you're going to watch a film with her in memoriam, maybe give this one a shot instead of glorifying abuse!

Wow! A Hitchcock film I actually (mostly) really liked!

I could see the play-like taking-place-in-two-rooms aspect bothering me a lot more if it didn't have the very neat, and very well utilised "one continuous shot" gimmick. Helps it to make the most out of the minimal, and stops it feeling anywhere near as repetitive as it really ought to.

While the main lead is great, the bit I didn't like is - as is the case in every Hitchcock film I've seen so far - James Stuart. Why would you make the cool smart guy who solves the mystery because he's so smart and cool espouse views of genetic superiority? Like, what? By all means, have your gay villain do this - it adds a lot of depth and complexity. Do not under any circumstances have your hero waffle on about the existence of superior/inferior people, and how the superiors should be free to murder the inferiors at their will. I don't care that at the end he goes "um actually I changed my mind", he was talking it's praise through the whole thing!

I cannot fathom how he was one of the biggest names of his day; he's horrifically unlikable in everything I've seen him in. I do not like this man.

Script definitely has issues, but this is a very fun hangout movie. I see why people like this so much!

Very very little conflict is the main issue it has. I shit you not we go to have the "lie exposed in front of everyone beat", and then no one cares and everyone dances as we cut to ending montage. What.

While Pauly Shore was insufferable at first, I eventually aclimated to him, and then Sean Astin's character started to seem a lot worse. If your protagonists reaction to "the girl I like likes my friend more" is "go to abandon my friend who cannot care for himself in the desert", maybe punish them!

Was a real treat for freaks like me who get a kick out of pointing out semi-obscure actors who appeared in cult media. Rose McGowan! Robin Tunney! Fuckin, Ke Huy Quan shows up for a scene!

Also turns out this was released in the UK as "California Man", which makes sense, as there is obviously no context for random sub-areas of US states, but really demonstrates that the title kind of doesn't work? Like I always thought "Encino" was like a type of caveman or something. Why would you not play up the caveman angle?

Gross, mean, gritty 90s alcoholic clown movie. A little too low energy for what looks like a hangout movie, but there's some neat stuff in here.

I have very little to say on it, other than it feels like it's missing a couple beats, and I wish they'd do a little more with the heightened clown reality. This is a world where there are multiple clown bars, and there is violent beef with mimes. This lead to a discussion about whether clown bars are opened with the intent of being clown bars, or if it's a more of a "Nazi bar" situation. We landed firmly on "Nazi bar" situation.

There's a couple scenes where this functioning alcoholic starts doing flying leaps like the fucking Star Wars prequels, and they're great! Best scenes in the movie! Do more of this!

Forgotten footage for an unfinished movie shot in 1984, recovered with no audio or script, and then hacked together into a full movie.

It's a lot of fun! It is noticeably a little rough and disjointed with how some of it's plot beats flow, but this is by no means out of character for ninja films; if anything, this is well above average.

Very interested in watching the documentary on the making of this.

Watched this as the concept sounded like it could be neat or at least comfy, thinking it was a John Hughes movie, which so far have been an absolute wildcard of beloved to horrific, and baby you know I love to spin that wheel. Turns out he only wrote this one, so it's a True Romance (1993) situation.

And speaking of True Romance situations, this is also a "hot girl hangs out with annoying loser dweeb" movie. Unlike True Romance, however, this was not the most embarrassing script I've ever come across. So it has that.

Was also curious as like 99% of every user review is just "JENIFFER CONNELLY HOT MECHANICAL HORSE", and wanted to see if this was just "oggle vehicle without character to be a trophy for the entitled lead", or if this was a B-movie scream queen situation where "yes hot girl but also there's more to this but the straights can't parse it".

This was one of the longer intros for one of these that I've done, just to reach the conclusion that… it's okay. There's some neat ideas in there, but not all of them work; mixing fun hangout bit scenes with repeated reference to domestic abuse doesn't fit - despite it adding depth to the character.

It doesn't really do anything with it's concept outside of "make Connelly look hot", so yeah I fully get how this films legacy is just "JENIFFER CONNELLY HOT MECHANICAL HORSE". It's a little sleepy and shallow (ending also just falls apart like we're trying to clock out early), so I do see why people don't like it, but it's hard to hate.

For fans of Northern Exposure, Maurice is here! Weird seeing him accompying the rich crusty evil white ghoul instead of being it!

Script definitely has issues, but it's a very fun hangout film. I see why it's a beloved cult movie.

It feels like we're missing a lot of scenes? Several key character relationships are handled just off-screen? Why were all those monsters in the same place? Do all these monsters know each other? What are the monsters goals? Frankenstein was just chill the whole time? Is only Dracula bad? What's the fish guy's take on all this?

It definitely has some trademark problematic 80s happenings that go unpunished, but it also doesn't reward it's male leads out of entitlements. Maybe it would've if it didn't just hard cut to credits after the threat is resolved, but can't fault it on maybes.

At one point we go to "old scary german guy" for help, who's turns out to actually be chill. In the background of the scene, you can see a menorah, and I thought "wow that's a neat background detail, he must've emigrated around WW2 or something".

Towards the end of the scene, the character known as "Fat Kid" comments "hey you sure know a lot about monsters!" to which he responds "boy do I!" as the camera pans down to reveal a holocaust camp tattoo on his arm, which might be a little too extreme for your light-hearted "goonies fight the universal monsters" movie.

Wolfman's got nards.

It's good! Had a gut feeling this might've been one of those that you revisit and don't understand the hype, but no, it is real good! Watched this as a kid, but not counting as a rewatch.

Way less fighting than I remember there being. And of what little fighting there is, the choreography kind of sucks, being almost entirely comprised of person A running at person B, who then just punches them in the chest and we hard cut to next scene.

What the fighting does do well, however, is effectively communicate the emotion of the characters, which is arguably more important - as well as being something that films with great fight choreography usually trip up on. Also: fuck that "you're the best around" montage is good.

So what the movie actually is is just about the surrogate father relationship between Daniel and Mr Miyagi, and it's good stuff! And it's not in the usual boomer "BOY'LL GROW UP FUNNY W/O A NUCLEAR FAMILY" way you'd expect from an 80s movie, it's treated way more as Miyagi finding purpose and closure.

Also did not pick up on how dark Miyagi's backstory was as a kid! "Relocation camp" tends to go over your head when you're young!

This borders on nitpick, but the training is missing that in-between link of going from chore meme to sparring, to the point where he shows to the tournament at the end having never fought anyone. Even Miyagi is like "idk pal i think you're fucked". Does actually help make the end stretch more tense, but it definitely feels odd.

Don't tell me to watch Cobra Kai. I see you about to type it. Don't do it.

Maddening viewing experience, but not entirely the fault of the film.

For some reason, we decided to watch this as part of a bit where we wouldn't re-watch the first film (I've not seen it since I was a kid). This ended up not being that impactful on keeping up on things, but what did was we managed to miss the main conflict plot beat because we were arguing about how many continents there are (we were both wrong, btw).

Also, this cast's credit includes Jayma Mays, which lead to 30 minutes of clue baiting for me to remember what I recognised her from. It was Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009), which might be the best possible thing it could've been.

To the films credit, I like the concept of "oh shit it's a disney fairytale and my stepdaughter is now protagonist age, I'm gonna morph into a villain now". To the films discredit, fucking hell is it bloated. This has no right being two fucking hours long.

There's also two villains for really no reason? Maya Rudolf doesn't do anything at any point, why is she here? The dad also doesn't really have anything to do? Thought it would've been funny to have the film start with them having separated off-screen like Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997).

I don't understand the ending beat, but again, might not be the movies fault.

Don't watch this unless you're a Disney adult (derogatory).

2017s equivalent to Morbius (2022). Watched this as a B-movie, and it is consistently extremely funny. Can't say that's a particularly fun B-movie, as a lot of it's strengths is in it's clumsy editing choices and wincingly cringey "teen speak" dialogue, but there's a good amount of high points.

"Hold up, you dig on multiverses?" is a line they say on two separate occasions in the movie. This is the level of dialogue we're dealing with.

The plot is frustrating, as once the protagonist discovers that the wish box kills someone you know when used, there is no reasoning to keep use it. She just does. Very simply, she is an awful person from start to finish.

I'm very negative on jumpscares but this one features a rat-based jumpscare where the audio sting is extremely bass-boosted, so maybe there are some good jumpscares.

Now, I don't like to speak objectively on films, but this features one of the worst soundtracks I've ever come across. It's never appropriate, and sounds more like stock royalty free music than most uses of stock royalty free music. Also lots of extremely generic late 2010s pop.

The most important aspect of any movie is the David Lynch link, and in this case we have Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn! Wish she was in it a little more! She dies kinda early!

Ehhh. Boring Exorcist sequel where extremely little happens. There is next to no tension, nor build-up, nor stakes. Every now and again Patricia Arquette will have a Jesus wound freakout for a minute and then she goes back to normal for 20 minutes.

Maybe of interest to people who're really into catholic lore, but they don't really dive into anything. Like, there's even less here than Prince of Darkness (1987), and there it's only used as a vehicle for demon shenanigans.

Made me appreciate Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) a lot more, since they share themes, and that film does a lot with them, and this film does fucking nothing with anything.

The possession only happens 85 minutes into a 100 minute movie, and still fucking nothing happens. Stigmatas are boring. "Oh, I had this twin wound that Jesus had". Have a ghost going around cutting people. I don't ask for much.

Sequel to Mannequin (1987) - from the director of the ever close to my heart Mac and Me (1988) - that switches things up by asking "what if the mannequin was a MAGA Trump freak". Swanson's actually very good in this, though! Shame about those, uh, values and beliefs.

While in a lot of ways this is just a lower-budget retread of the first, there's a lot of smaller things it does that honestly somewhat elevate it over the first.

I really like the idea to have her entirely human after the meet cute, and then having her be stuck in mannequin form. While it's less interesting conceptually, it helps afford much more believable and relatable character bonding while setting up an issue to solve in the second act. Also means we get the ever-fun fish-out-of-water interactions with random normals. The things you get from giving characters agency!

Hollywood Montrose also actually has a little more to do in this one, which is a minor complaint I had about the first. There's definitely things this one does better!

Big fan of three big dumb STRAIGHT german guys; they're STRAIGHT - look at them check out women. They're STRAIGHT.

This was definitely me not paying enough attention, but I don't understand what the villains plan was? Like, he's clearly the villain - doing villain shit - but I have no idea what he was trying to achieve? He's trying to move to Bermuda so he's putting on a dance performance at an up-scale mall in the US? Huh?

Because it's less unique than the first, it's a harder sell, but it's definitely a decent time if you enjoy fantasy romcoms.

noooo, don't bite me, vampire milf! that would be bad! i don't want this to happen!

Goth Jim Carrey cuckquean movie.

Overall, idk. There's a lot of fun things to like, and a lot to dislike. The vampire stuff is fun (even though the rest of the vampires don't do anything)! The soundtrack & dance number are fun! That 80s attitude towards sex, male virginity and cheating, not so fun!

Has the rare combination of having a decent gay character while also having homophobic joke scenes? They're never directed at the gay character or anything, but it's bizarre having both of these in the same film. They're also slightly worse than usual compared to contemporaries.

At one point they unveil the "virgin draining chair", which makes it even more unbelievable that this isn't a fetish movie.

By no means a B-movie, but I definitely feel that you need to be some form of trash fan to get something out of this.

You can skip this; It's not as fun as it's concept would lead you to believe.

A lot of fun!

Mixed-media live-action cartoon, with cartoon framing of faked geometry, a lot of animated elements, but with filmed actors as all the characters - all the creatures being actors wearing costumes.

The filmed actors actually add a hell of lot of charm to the whole thing. They add a fun contrast to the goofier animated elements while keeping things grounded and readable.

Only real criticism I have is it's a little too long for what it is. Gag-based comedy films have harshly diminishing returns past 90 minutes, and this clocks in at around 105. Maybe some of the early stretch pre meeting the fur trader could've been trimmed down?

If the concept sounds fun, you are very unlikely to be disappointed.

Ehhh. Discount Ferris Bueller with all the issues I have with that film, but also none of the charm!

Early on I realised "oh fuck this an entitled brat movie isn't it", and crossed my fingers for repercussions that never came.

Was somewhat interested in this as a Heather Graham vehicle, but forgot that this was a mainstream 80s movie, so women aren't treated as people. Silly me.

Was apparently released in some territories as "Daddy's Cadillac" which is an infinitely funnier title (though doesn't work with the plot). No I'm not going to listen to the song this is in reference to.

Skip this.

While it definitely has some good highlight scenes, sadly this was a bit of a dud. Rare case for a B-movie where the script issues negatively impact the potential fun on offer.

It's a creature movie where the creature is actually kinda just chill, and kills too few of our already small cast infrequently and unsatsifyingly. People get inner-cat poisoned and their wounds start to pulsate and bulge… and then nothing happens and they just die. Teasing exploding heads and never actually doing them is such an underwhelming tease.

Cast features Toni Hudson, who appeared alongside Sherilyn Fenn in Just One of the Guys (1985), meaning that the cat-inside-a-cat movie is only four degrees of separation from a David Lynch movie.

While I don't think it works overall, a lot of the connective tissue is very strong. Like it doesn't really end up going anywhere by the end, but it really nails a lot of the little things.

The only part I thought outright didn't work was the end stretch. It felt goofy and unbelievable. Like a Family Guy character. Not a comparison you want.

It does almost stray into the dreaded "hmmmm is it real or is it not real" territory, but again, because it never ends up anywhere by the end, it doesn't end up harming the movie more than it otherwise would've.

It's worth noting that this a lot more of a feel-bad movie than the zoomer-lighting self-discovery surface appears.

I guess I can recommend this as a feel-bad indirectly queer movie, just don't expect an ending.

Neat little slasher parody!

Despite the film joking that it's a cynical slasher-boom cash-in, it's very much a send-up of passion, and even does a couple neat things with the formula. Hell, with nothing more than the killer's comedy monologues during the giallo-inspired sequences, it has a lot more charm and character than most slasher-boom slashers.

Plays off the final girl trope in a refreshingly not sex-negative way, by painting them as the primary suspect. It's interesting angle, and importantly, gives characters things to do and talk about, which if you're not familiar with slasher-boom films, is, well, frequently an issue.

I also quite like the idea of a text overlay to track the body count. It's very stylish and adds charm. While stylistically this would feel very out of place to do this earnestly in the 80s, I reckon nowadays it would feel right at home. Someone do this.

Again, despite being a goofy comedy, the lead is really good! It's really weird that this was the only thing she was ever in! Apparently just got frustrated with trying to get further roles and peaced out to be a music teacher! Good for her!

Now there are some problematic 80s happenings that drag it down, but almost all of them would not be out of place in a 2000s film. This isn't to excuse them, but I'd heard bad things about that aspect going in, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.

It does have a very shit ending, but this is also not out of character for slasher-boom slashers.

Check this out maybe.

Was entirely expecting to be let down given my experience with Hitchcock thus far, but no, this is pretty neat! Shame it is basically impossible to watch as intended, because how are you not seeing spoilers for Psycho! Maybe future gen alpha film buffs will be fine? Who knows!

While Anthony Perkins is obviously great, even better is there's no fucking James Stewart in this one! I think I just need to watch Hitchcock films without him, maybe?

The "50 mins into a 109 minute film" lead-switch didn't bother me as much I expected it to, as we have a very graceful "passing the torch" stretch, and the plot still does revolve around that character.

The end monologue in the prison where that one guy explains the movie sucks. Not much to say on it other than I wonder if that allegedly shot-for-shot 1998 remake keeps it.

Now, in 99% of cases I really do not give a shit about plot-holes, but how'd that 1st girl hear the mom? Is he just really good at doing that voice? I'd fine with it if it was a recurring thing and more people heard the mom, but it sticks out weirdly when only one person heard it.

Assumed the sequels were guff and to be avoided, but looking into it at least 2 is very good, so guess I'm watching more?

Put this on in the background expecting a comfy 90s TV-movie crime drama. Despite the amazing poster, this is very dull! Barely paid attention to it! It is not worth your (background) time! I could not tell you what happens in the plot!

Only part remotely worth talking about is the extremely funny sex scene that keeps rapidly hard cutting to a little kid making breakfast on his own. Like, I get what the film's going for here, it's Kuleshov effect to show the neglect of the kid, but that doesn't stop it from being as funny as it is.

Nonsense incel film. I've said previously that I got "a vibe" from this, and it's refreshing to not be surprised by a film for once.

Completely devoid of any character arcs or just general reasoning, tossing around what is functionally magic everywhere to do and solve everything. I thought they made her by mixing shit in a tube or something, but no they press a couple buttons on the computer and then reality breaks and we just have British Woman out of nowhere, who can also just break reality and do anything and.

It's it not a one-off accident thing either. They fucking do it at will again later on in the movie. You don't get to double dip on something like that.

Very much in that area where it would feel less dodgy if it was presented as like a sleazy fetish piece, but when you present it as mainstream mass culture it feels very bad.

While I do actually quite like a lot of the stylish flourishes (along with the soundtrack), it's hard to really appreciate them when you watch the whole thing with a partially scrunched face.

Expected this to be underwhelming and disappointing, but miraculously it's almost good? Almost - makes a couple major stumbles, but there's some neat things here.

It hits the nail on the head with the parents, but overall needed to lean into the bizarre horror-comedy aspect a lot more. Got the impression that this was held back by being a Touchstone Pictures film aimed at teens. You aim this at adults and go a little more extreme and you'd have something real special. And I realised after that this was the same director as Parents (1989), so the weirdo horror comedy potential was definitely there!

The revival is treated as so non-chalont that it wraps back round to being interesting, like this a world where this just happens occasionally. His parents and friends are briefly shocked, but then quickly don't mind.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a textbook 90s bully in this and it's so good. Mathew McConaughy also briefly appears for like one shot and never again.

Title sucks. Makes it sound like the girl is the lead, but no it's the shitty entitled guy, and they don't even date until after he revives.

Speaking of, while she had no interest in him while living, she is weirdly horny for the zombie? Better version of this would've played into it with the girlfriend as an outright necrophile. Like even as is, it's to the point where it's weird that we don't have necrophilia jokes. He's grey and decaying. His ear falls off in your mouth. This is doing stuff for you? And we're not gonna mention it?

Ending's shit. Doesn't make sense at the time with the scene before it, either. Stinks of producers going "it needs a happy ending". You're a horror film. Don't 180 last second.

If you like campy horror comedy, I think I can maybe recommend this? There's enough neat stuff in there to be worth watching for genre fans - but only dedicated fans.

Apart from the last act + ending, nowhere remotely near as bad as it's reputation proceeds it, but like you still shouldn't watch this.

Drake Bell is definitely the elephant in the room, but I honestly don't think he's bad casting. It starts getting extremely funny later though if you have Drake Bell context.

I did watch the cartoon as a kid, and I remember really liking it, but I ended up watching a little bit of it again a few years back and I did not like it at all, so I have no attachment.

So the plot is set out as a character arc where he's 23 and needs to grow up and leave the fairies behind, as he still uses the faries for everything - including keeping him in school. And not high school, even: little kid school.

We set up a couple different breakpoints for having "grown up" and needing to relinquish the faries: finish school, move out and get a job, or fall in love. We go with the latter one and yassify a legacy character to the point where it's basically not the same character anymore. I really think this movie should've been him stacking shelves at big Tesco.

Fucking Jason Alexander is in this for some reason? It's only for a scene, where he plays the humansona of the green fairy - which is apparently a big deal that they went humansona mode, as for some reason this didn't come up ever in the cartoon - and he does not fit as that character at all?

Speaking of the green fairy, I forgot that he's constantly going "aw my nagging bitch wife over here", which is extremely funny that it's here, but like why is this in kids media? From the mid 2000s no less, I thought "'ate the missus" humour died with Married With Children.

Completely fizzles out in the last act, with the climax just being 3 people in a big empty room, and then ends in way that completely disregards the entire fucking arc of the story. There is no growing up. Should've been stacking shelves in big Tesco.

Pleasantly surprised with this! While it really struggles to build tension in the kind of film that lives and dies on tension, it does a lot really well with the characters, and there's a couple of very high points, to boot.

Given that the premise involves "teen girl develops a crush on an adult male", I was shit scared that this might fall into detestable lolita-y writers-wish-fulfilment territory, but thankfully it never does at any point! This was honestly the biggest source of tension in the film! He's never even aware that he's talking to a kid, and he's also never interested outside of "hey here's another woman to kill".

For some reason serial killer starts weird then gets more normal throughout the movie? Like, when we first have them meet and the crush starts I thought "hey that's a neat touch, shows childish naivety as this guy is very clearly a mega creep". And while he's never not a creep, but it's not in it's favour that it steps it down.

First few scenes with the killer are great, though. Real hazy and stylish, almost like a giallo film. Really needed more of this.

Ultimately, it is a somewhat sleepy thriller where there's very little tension, so it's a very hard sell, but there's some neat stuff in there.

Expected this to be an absolutely miserably boring watch. Was correct for the first half, but got a lot crazier (and clumsier) in the second half.

Was worried about politics being closer to the book, but my fears weren't realised. It still kept "federation bad", though it doesn't really drive it home, and more or less completely abandons the "bugs are the victims" aspect of the first.

Miraculously, it does actually build on the themes of the first. Where the first film is about mouldable youth being indoctrinated into a fascist society, the sequel attempts to tell a story a jaded "war hero" who has grown cynical to the society. Expectedly, however, it doesn't really stick the landing, falling over and hurting it's ankle.

Speaking of the first, we open by repeating the "would you like to know more" bit, despite not repeating the context of being a web browser? Like we just have a montage of scenes while repeating "WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE" in-between each.

Because of course it does, features a Twin Peaks link in Brenda Strong.

Very 2000s in the most unappealing way possible. Even though there's some enjoyment to be had for B-movie fans in the back 3rd, I can't recommend this to people.

Might watch 3.

Expected this to be such an open-goal of a pick that I actually put off watching this, but continuing the streak of being surprised by films, I kind of didn't like this? I know, I'm as shocked as you are.

Given that I've already seen Nightbreed (1990), I was reminded me a lot of my experience with The Fly (1986), where I'd already seen something way crazier and creative by the director, so this just felt a little tame and tepid in comparison.

I thought this was meant to be the film with the guys with the needles in their head, but the cenobites are really barely in it. Like maybe 2 minutes runtime max? Also the poster boy is the least interesting one. Apparently he becomes a Freddy Kreuger type figure as the series goes on but I'm not watching that shit.

Character motivations across the board aren't justified enough. Why did he want to open the death box that kills you instantly? It keeps saying "pain AND pleasure" but like we never at any point see any pleasure? Like on anyone?

It's an extremely rare case where I actually think this would've been better as a longer movie so we can explore the characters more, as that's clearly the core focus, and as-is it just feels under-cooked.

Also as-is, the leads are honestly just uninteresting and unlikable - though i do like how it follows the wife as the central character and gives her space and agency to be evil. Until we just stop focusing on her in the last act, I guess.

End stretch is very confusing? She fights them by walking up to them one by one and then opening and closing the box in front of them? Like it's not just once to leave s&m world?

Also what the fuck is up with the homeless guy? I read a thing explaining who he is, but like you definitely don't need this character.

Favourite part of the movie is hands down when the zombie is reanimating, and we just keep cutting to reaction shots of rats in the room. They are freaking out, man.

Didn't realise that this was based on a book until after. Thought maybe a book would do a better job at the things I thought this struggled with, but keep reading folk say the movie is better, so who knows.

Not sure if I'll watch more. Not anytime soon, at any rate - I get very scared off by horror movies with a ton of sequels. Unbelievably tempted by Hellworld, though. Will probably just watch 2.

I've never seen an 80s movie feel this much like a 60s movie. Big Gorgo (1961) energy. If I didn't see the date attached, I genuinely would never have guessed that this was 80s.

Somehow manages to be very dull and very crazy at the same time. While David Carradine (who nothing embarrassing ever happened to) is very sleepy, Michael Moriarty brings such an intensely unlikable annoying loser guy energy that he almost saves the film, up until he drops a racial slur towards the end. Though nowhere near as extreme, it honestly reminded me of Freddy Got Fingered (2001).

There's a great stretch of creature sequences at the end, but really only at the end, and outside of that it's fairly weak (though occasionally very funny).

Doesn't really do anything with the Aztec cult, which is strange as every review is singing praises about the Aztec cult.

Ending sucks. Creature death was so weak that we thought it hadn't died yet, and the protagonist's character arc is just left incomplete. Either kill him or redeem him, don't have him just shrug and wander off.

Apparently the girlfriend is in Twin Peaks: The Return, but I've still not watched that, so my input is limited here.

Maybe watch a highlight real of the creature on YT if one exists, otherwise don't watch this.

Ehhh.

While Warwick Davis is having the time of his life, it doesn't have enough fun with what it is, and sadly ends up being a sleepy pass. Despite not feeling as cheap as it should, I couldn't help shake the feeling that this was kept too much in check by production, and not let to run as wild as something like this really needs to.

Though I knew Jennifer Aniston was in this, I didn't know she was the main character. She's good in this! Pretty much all the characters bar hot Bill Paxton are good! Shame the film is too sleepy to make good use of them!

One of the characters includes a "Simple Jack" type character, so given this was an edgy 90s comedy I was on the edge of my fucking seat with how they piloted that. Though the performance is very mild, characters bring it up a lot, though it's never that mean. The whole experience watching this felt like Matrix dodging the R-word.

Despite being relatively pretty well put together, there aren't any high points to make it worth watching over even much clumsier lower budget horror comedies. Skip this.

Would otherwise be completely uninterested in watching any more of the series, but 2 includes Twin Peaks alum, so gotta watch that. Was initially interested in Leprechaun In the Hood (2000), but all the reviews seem to say it's pretty boring, so will probably pass.

Mostly quite liked it!

Kids-on-the-run movie starring Helen Slater/Christian Slater (not related)/Lisa Simpson.

I really like the focus on public perception here. Once we get past the inciting incident and get on the road, it really becomes the focus of the movie, and ends up feeling pretty unique for it.

The soundtrack is insanely good. Struggling to think of what to say about it, though.

Now, fair warning, there is a LOT of parents hitting kids in this movie. It's always presented as a horribly abusive thing, but like geez there is a lot.

Ending feels kinda unfinished and underwhelming, but it does involve Christian Slater in drag, so hard to say if it's bad or not.

As all films worth their salt, we have a Lynch link, in the form of Dean Stockwell, of Blue Velvet (1986) and Dune (1984) fame.

The bit that I really didn't like however, was - and it's not constant throughout - but the film is occasionally kinda lecherous towards it's underaged protagonist. Actor was not underaged, but it's still very gross whenever it happens. Play that same content slightly differently, however, and you have more thematic meat by way of social commentary; so shame that it played it this way.

2nd time watching this, and while I didn't enjoy it to the same degree as on first watch, it's an extremely solid B-movie.

Whether you're familiar with the movie or not, you know this from the "they're eating her… and then they're going to eat me… OH MY GOOOD!" line. And despite that being the most well known scene, consistently throughout there's high points just as high as that. It's a constant barrage of funny and weird and confusing. Some genuinely neat shots, to boot!

Extremely easy recommend for a beginner B-movie. Watch this before any of the other well known ones.

Despite having many major issues, I found this a weirdly comfy and enjoyable watch. Also very happy to report that that hair does not appear in the movie.

At any given point I always felt like I was missing context. It felt like I was watching this while drifting in and out of sleep, even though I was fully conscious for the whole thing.

The gimmick is cute, but does make the whole thing feel a bit pointless.

Kills are the weakest I've ever seen in a slasher. Everything is off-screen, and sometimes you aren't even aware a given person died! We are given reasons, but it doesn't excuse it; would be like if an action movie cut away before any action scene started.

But again, despite all the negatives, I found it weirdly comfy, and I'm not even sure why?

Developing a theory that, if you enjoy slashers, you can get the same kind of enjoyment from them as rom-com fans get from rom-coms - which sounds fucked up, but like they're both comfy and predictable. You know exactly what you're getting, and that's what you want when you watch them. Also both have a focus on practical gore effects.

Maybe watch this lying on the couch on a lazy weekend.

Not sure what to make of it. Was liking it at first, but sort of lost interest over time.

Now, given this is early Peter Jackson, I had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect it to remind me so much of those James Gunn Scooby-Doo movies. A slightly more adult version, but nowhere near as horny. Apart from that one scene where the cowboy ghost humps the mummified corpse. Yeah, maybe cut that scene.

I actually went into this not knowing it's gimmick of "con-man using ghosts to create fake hauntings", and I think I would've watched this sooner had I known, instead of it sitting on the shelf for a couple months. One of those cases where the synopsis I read just misrepresented the plot, which is always fun.

Not really sure who this is for? Everyone has that 2000s kids movie shouty annoying performance, and it's nowhere near as extreme as earlier early Jackson. Maybe was kept in check too much by studio?

Has Jake Busey ever played like a normal guy? Every time I see him in something he's always the most insane guy in whatever he's in. The one time he seemed kinda normal was in Mr Robot, but thankfully he revealed he was a pedophile before the end of the one ep he was in before I think he died? Season 4 of Mr Robot sucked. Anyway the Full Metal Jacket Seargeant is also here as a ghost version of the exact same character.

Felt like the longer it went on the more I was missing context. At one point, with no context, Michael J Fox goes "gotta go ghost mode for this one" and goes to shoot himself in the head?

Sadly the bottom line is it's nowhere near as fun as it sounds like it might be. Probably don't watch this. Or do; doesn't affect me.

It's alright, until it trips over itself and somewhat falls apart at the end.

It's not used enough to ruin the movie, but they do bring up Prometheus goo and I could feel all energy instantly leave my body. Not sure if it's the same goo, as I never finished Prometheus, but they call it "Prometheus fire" so fuck it, Prometheus series is here once again to suck all the life out of Alien.

Not sure how I feel on making the robot so explicitly autistic, but he is a likeable tragic character. Very sad movie in general, but gets less sad the longer it goes on.

Quite liked the early stretch in the mining colony, a little sad there wasn't more of that. Maybe I should finally watch Alien 3.

Not enough spatial context is given in scenes towards the end, so it starts to feel like we're teleporting around a bunch. Maybe we actually were, but given I watched this at the cinema I couldn't exactly scrub back to check.

Been some years since I watched Alien, but was there a cocussy stage inbetween chest-burster and full Xenomoporh? I don't remember. That new? edit: turns out it was new

Funniest new Xenomorph variant they've ever done btw, I was cracking up man.

Okay B-movie, good amount of high points, but they're really not that high, and it's very low on the iceberg.

Feels like it takes place 20 mins down the road from that house Laura Dern hangs out at in that middle bit of Inland Empire (2006).

Has a very extreme approach to editing, with a lot of aspect ratio changes and digital zooms thrown out there. While the mate I watched this with found it annoying, I didn't mind it, and it makes it more interesting than if it didn't have it.

Has a very odd mix of "villain mad scientist who creates the creatures and rules over them" and "creatures being made by the scientist accidentally dropping something". Probably would've worked more to have the scientist be the hero trying to stop the creatures he accidentally created. Would also give him something to actually do, as as-is he's just tied up and laughing for the whole thing.

Very interested in watching more from the director. Suburban Sasquatch (2004) is his most well known, but I'd heard this has more charm to it (and it is charming!), so wanted to start with this one.

This is otherwise very hard to acquire, but weirdly it's just free on the Plex website? Like you don't even need an account? Unless you're already deep in the sauce, probably don't watch this, though.

https://watch.plex.tv/movie/fungicide

Went into this with high hopes, as a lot of user reviews were hyping up it's look and atmosphere, but ended up so sleepy and uneventful that I'm shocked this was not a TV movie who's sole purpose was to fill air time.

Fucking nothing happens whatsoever until the last 15 minutes when a corpse puppet levitates other corpse puppets towards people. That's it. That's the only thing that happens. And it's lame as hell. Also Tommy Pickles is here.

Don't watch this.

Liked it at first, where it was taking it slow and exploring it's protagonist, but kinda lost me towards the end.

Too online for it's own good in general, really. "I was listening to this podcast where they said 'all memes will become dreams'" is the most painful line I've heard this year.

Cage's performance is by far the best thing here. He's not exactly an asshole but always on the cusp. Also looks almost identical to one of my uncles.

Cage specifically works really well in the role as he helps the character remain likeable, and it would ruin the film from word go if he was unlikable. Honestly not that dissimilar to his performance in Adaptation (2002) if he got ahead of himself and started being cheeky.

Unfortunately gets very boomer-y in the last third, diving into "omg cancel culture" territory. There's points where it pretends that it isn't, but the thesis of the film is basically "heavens, this man has been CANCELLED and he hasn't done anything! isn't cancel culture real and bad?"

Also I don't think people would react that way to dreams? Needed to focus more on public perception in this movie about public perception. Maybe take some queues from The Legend of Billie Jean (1985). Have Christian Slater in drag; maybe Lisa Simpson? idk I'm spitballing here.

The dreams also needed more ramp up. Like there's only one dream that isn't at either extreme. Needs to curve out like a good aggro deck.

Ending suffers from straight up just skipping the resolution of the conflict? Why would you do this? That tends to be an important part of a story?

cums and farts

Comfy ouijasploitation (not to be confused with weegiesploitation; horror films set in Glasgow). It's kinda sleepy, kinda made-for-TV-y, and trips up on a very uninteresting plot twist that retroactively makes the whole thing less interesting; but, it's an enjoyable thing to put on in the background, if low budget 80s horror appeals.

Watched entirely for this hair, and it did not disappoint, though it only appears in like the final scene.

We have our Twin Peaks link in the form of Kathleen Wilhoite (AKA Lucy's Sister from that one episode AKA my favourite minor character) playing "goth valley girl medium", a character almost as good as that hair. I should watch Road House (1989).

Genuinely better than I remember it; remember there being a bunch of dead air in the middle but there really isn't. It's probably just that I'm much more used to B-movies now, so from experience maybe this isn't suited for beginners? That being said, this is the fifth time I've seen this (yes, really), and I've had a blast every single time, so maybe it is fine for beginners. Not counting stuff I watched as a kid, this is my most watched movie. Yes, really.

How the fuck did Macdonalds look at this and say "yes, release it". Every alien is disgusting. Especially the adult ones.

I won't spoil the ending, but it is unbelievably funny. The most American way possible you could end an alien movie.

edit: turns out Macdonalds alleges that they had no financial involvement in the movie where they constantly eat at Macdonalds and have a choreographed dance number at a Macdonalds, with famed clown Ronald Macdonald present

IT'S BIRD MONTH (SQWAAAH). EVERY FRIDAY A NEW BIRD RELATED MOVIE. NO I'M NOT DOING BIRDEMIC (2010).

Yeah, went into this with zero expectations based on my experience with Hitchcock so far, and yeah this thing dull as hell. Any bit where there's birds attacking people is a blast, but it's a little few and far between.

It general it kinda feels like if you had a time machine, and you wanted to be the first person to make like an A24 horror, but it's still the 60s so it turns out like this.

If the start wasn't painfully slow enough, why have all these scenes of characters asking for directions that are just correct with no issue? Why ever have a scene of a character asking for directions unless they're either wrong, or you're using the interaction to explore the character.

Ending sucks. We just hard end without resolving anything, missing an entire act. At least Vertigo (1958)'s ending was funny.

Also, right, not to be a "erm why did person not do optimal thing in an emotional moment that shows humanity" andy, but for fuck sake why is everyone just outside instead of seeking shelter inside? You'd think cold-war Americans would be on top of hunkering down in an apocalyptic event.

Honestly skip this. Really not getting the Hitchcock hype. Currently 2 for 5.

What an adorable little movie. Surprise treat that, as you might guess form the poster, got absolutely buried after they had no idea how to market it.

Like it looks like it might a sort of a boner comedy (a semi), but it absolutely isn't anything like that on screen ever.

It's a real who's who of people you click your finger at trying to remember. Lara Flynn Boyle! Tom Kenny! Anthony Edwards! Diane Franklin! Phil Hartman! Tichina Arnold! Phill Lewis! Even a Dan Schneider jump scare! All the stars are here!

The Twin Peaks links don't stop there, either. We have an essay titled "secret confessions of a high-school prom queen", and there's even a scene where Lara Flynn Boyle has a crying monologue while the melodramatic score swells. This is what we're here for.

Miraculously, the love interest is an actual person with emotions, aspirations and vulnerabilities. You would absolutely not guess that from the poster; and while that scene is present, it's nowhere as exploitative as it looks - the poster is more explicit, even.

Every now and again we cut to this rich white kid like we're supposed to know who he is, but there's never any context. I can only assume he was in a bunch of cut scenes and they forgot to cut all of them? Like who is this kid?

Easy comfy recommend.

Expected this to be a lot more dull than it was, but fuck me WHY is this a 2h30 movie. Despite it feeling like nothing happens, it also doesn't feel that slow. Weird.

I've actually only seen part of Amazing Spiderman 1. Andrew Garfield is a charisma vacuum in the role, and I gave up entirely in that scene where he's sad skateboarding on a rooftop.

It's main issue is it doesn't pace it's encounters. We fight at the start, then we fight at the end, with a void of nothing in the centre. This made me appreciate Spider-Man 3 (2007) a lot more.

Someone definitely had dirt on Jamie Foxx. There is no other explanation for this character. His battle theme is one of the most embarrasing soundtrack choices I've ever seen, and I'm honestly dissapoined the film didn't do more things like that. HE LIED TO ME. HE SHOT AT ME.

Honestly feels like Dane DeHaan's plotline is a prototype for Morbius (2022). Also you could cut this character entirely.

While laughs were pretty consistent, it's very hard to recommend this as a B-movie as it's simply way too long, and doesn't have that camp/cringe factor you want.

Watched this as part of building up a resistance in preparation for an eventual Revenge of the Nerds (1984) watch. Man, "consent" in 80s comedies really was just a light suggestion, wasn't it?

Even worse than having shitty lack of consent it's inconsistent. Sometimes it's actually sort of fine (mainly the steal-yo-man villain), which leads to you being always on edge, before being whipped with another really bad moment out of nowhere.

Early on we have a song so on the nose with being awful that it reminded me of the purposefully on the nose joke song in Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995).

We also have a Killer Workout (1987) esque "extended sexy exercise(?) montage", that is a lot less funnier (and feels a lot more gross) here in a semi-sleazy studio boner comedy - compared to an unabashedly sleazy B-movie slasher.

Don't watch this.

However, do need to include that WE HAVE TWO TWIN PEAKS LINKS, BABY - THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT. We got Kathleen Wilhoite (aka Lucy's sister from that one ep) as well as Frances Bay (aka has the grandson who teleports the creamed corn). Every cloud has a silver lining.

THE THRILLING SECOND ENTRY IN BIRD MONTH (SQWAAAH).

Not what I thought it would be, and a little disappointed because of that, but it is a fun time.

Main issue I had with it was, given it's reputation as like the Pet Sounds of Goth movies, I mainly expected it to be a little more brooding and melancholic, and a little less "edgelord power fantasy starring detox Joker". Absolutely checks out that it's the latter given it's a comic adaptation - didn't know this until after.

Other issue I had was, for a supernatural revenge story, it's really light on the supernatural. While you absolutely should not explain in detail how the revival happens, you absolutely should do a a little more playing around with it instead of just taking it for granted.

Also kind of has the Dragonball Z problem of "it's hard to create tension when you introduce that your hero(es) cannot be killed". They do rectify this towards the end, but it's a little too late by that point.

Now, the elephant in the room with this movie is that, tragically, a cast member was accidentally killed on set. I knew going in that this happened, but I couldn't remember exactly who it was that died. I do think not knowing led to a better viewing, as it would've weighed really heavily on the experience, which is backed up by it dominating all discourse around the movie.

So given that I do recommend this, I won't say who, and recommend (if you don't already know) that you don't look it up until after.

Was initially not interested in watching any of the sequels, BUT Salvation has Kirsten Dunst second billed, so idk man that's tempting.

PSYCHO SISTERS. QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST?

Hard to say if I enjoyed this more than the original, as that one had a non-existent structure, and extremely poor audio/visual quality. Can definitely see now why people prefer the original; and looking back, yeah that one does have a lot more charm to it.

Intro feels more like a "previously on", and hard opens so hard that at first thought we were watching preview trailers for a different film, until a penis gets cut off and we realised "oh right this is the movie".

Also studio splash features blood-soaked full nudity, which is by far the most insane studio splash I've seen, ever. No exaggeration.

This one feels a lot less "lets tie him up and jack him off", despite this one actually featuring a scene where a tied up guy gets jacked off. Funny how life works.

It's more watchable than the original, but it's a harder recommend over what was otherwise an extremely hard to recommend B-movie.

uh oh, y'all, it's getting kinda hazy

This shit rules. Maybe the ultimate dad movie.

I've gone on record on not being much of an action guy, but MAN all the fights here are REALLY good.

Way boobier than I thought it was going to be? Also way more explosions? Honestly was not expecting a single explosion in this, but stuff is blowing up left right and centre.

Now, it starts out embarrassing, but in a charming "vanity project" sort of way. Like this guy is a pub bouncer with a legendary status and everyone's heard of him. Did a pub bouncer write this?

Then, we have a Simpsons-esque "initial plot that's abandoned and we focus on a second plot"; which is a minor issue, but still an issue. It's possible there were passing-the-torch scenes that got cut.

We have our obligatory Twin Peaks link by way of Kathleen Wilhoite, AKA - say it with me - Lucy's sister from that one ep. She even gets to punch a guy and has a full music number! Every Wilhoite has her Wednesday.

Got a real surprise when I saw the Vinegar Syndrome splash at the end. I thought this was a hit? Critical reception of the time looks very "erm thing bad", but this doesn't seem like something that folk generally wouldn't like? Maybe it was just too late into the 80s, and sweaty machismo action was on the way out.

Not touching that remake. I will say that while watching this, I understand how you might try and cast Jake Gyllenhaal in the role, but it still doesn't work. Also read that they change his backstory in the remake to be an ex UFC fighter? "UFC fighter" might be the lamest way you could play his backstory. While UFC shit in general is incredibly lame, it also misunderstands that this is a modern day western. He is the new Sherif in town with a clouded past. I will refrain from further complaining about a film I've not seen.

Give this a watch. Maybe not with your Dad - lotta nudity.

As any child of the 2000s will vouch, this was a beloved childhood movie. And you know, as these forgettable, maligned 2000s kids films go, this is one is alright.

It's main failing is the main kids don't do anything at any point ever, and have no bearing on the plot outside of flying a ship at one point very briefly. Like it's all just Penelope & butler who do anything. Luckily they're by far the best part of the movie. I'd watch the shit out of a DTV spin-off with those two.

Right, why the fuck are two out of five of the Thunderbirds space related. Who the fuck are international rescue rescuing in space. Just have five Thunderbird 2's, it's clearly the most useful one. I guess not making good use of all the Thunderbirds is also a major failing.

Also this was directed by Jonathan Frakes? Huh?

Actually liked this a good bit more than the first. Has a lot more fun with it's premise, and the city setting gives more kill fodder.

For some reason we introduce rule where he can't hurt you if you have his gold? What? The whole idea of the first one was someone would take his gold, and then he'd kill them. Also we killed him in the last one and it's not mentioned? Did the first film happen? Is this even the same leprechaun???? That honestly would make the most sense.

We have our obligatory Twin Peaks link with Kimmy Robertson, who plays a schmucky tourist power couple with Clint Howard. This is the stuff we get out of bed for.

Sadly we don't make great use of the tourists on the scam horror tour. It's only used to introduce the uncle character as a scammer, and to introduce a specific location to the characters. If you're gonna have tourists in a creature movie, they gotta get harassed by the creatures. It's simple as.

Previously said that I had no interest in watching more of the series, but this was a lot more fun, so maybe I will watch more. Leprechaun in the Hood, here I come.

Alright slasher. Kills are very good, bits where the characters are wandering about are less good, but not as bad as they normally tend to be in slashers. At the very least, everyone's aware of the threat, and there's a little bit of conflict between the characters. Could've done with more, but let's not be greedy - gotta get out with whatever we can.

Extremely Canadian. Normally I cannot tell, but my word the accents here. Gotta be a rural thing, right?

Apparently the seminal shoegaze band that debuted two years after this came out was not named after this, was a total coincidence.

Don't think I have any interest in the remake.

One-time actor/director (who may or may not have been killed by the mob after borrowing funding to make this) channelling Matt Berry's character in "Citizen Kane but with astrology and a lengthy chapter where we steal cursed rubies in Kenya".

Not the most exciting sell, but once you're in, it's a real fine wine of a B-movie. Top-shelf whisky shit.

Very much feels like a 50s film, and apparently turns out his Mom wrote this, so yeah that absolutely checks out.

We start the movie by him himself claiming that he is a con man, but over the course of the film it's like we forget this, and this is a world where astrology is just real? Like predictions are all over the news, and the US military is in contact with him?

Several chapters end by hard cutting after a character gets shot out of nowhere. It's never not funny.

Had this one sitting around for a while, but put it off because good lord look at that poster.

Start was actually surprisingly fun, but after the halfway mark it starts to peter out, it ends up very forgettable by the end.

Out of all of these Fred Olen Ray (and similar) movies, this one feels the closest to a regular 80s horror comedy. With a bigger production, I could easily see this being a cult movie. As is, don't bother.

Eddie Deezen is very good. Not much else to say.

A little sleepy as B-movies go, but solid "thing you put on in the background and occasionally look up at." Apparently this is a fall from grace from known director Michael Winner, but I have no idea who that is, and I didn't feel like looking it up.

Seen a lot folk saying that this is like a sleazy Nancy Drew, but honestly I straight up don't have the cultural context for that.

Recommend for fans of Nancy Drew. Also voyeurism, I guess? Like half of this movie is her sneaking around and watching people bang. Including the funniest line of the film, where she's like "hurry! come on! they're fucking!"

Fun, but nowhere near as good as Ghoulies II (1987), despite having a much solider start.

And boy, what a start. In this one the Ghoulies are toilet demons summoned and controlled by a pulp horror comic. The demon toilet is also just in a random college frat house, for some reason.

The Ghoulies themselves here are extremely divisive, because they now talk, and boy do they not shut the fuck up. Constant annoying dialogue and little quips. I only half hate this, as it does work to make them annoying.

I actually do really like concept of "chuddy frat bros being harassed by little creatures, who are also acting like chuddy frat bros", but - much like Ghoulies 1 - it suffers from just not having enough of them. There, you at least get other camp horror goings on, but here it's just these annoying frat bros pranking each other. I don't care about a prank war. I will never care about a prank war. Bring on the freaks.

Not sure if this was actual of-it's-time at-it's-place slang, but the frat bros refer to pranks as "yanking". Leading to a lot of Very Good lines where they go "me and the boys are yanking later, no girls allowed".

Very anxious about Ghoulies IV. This is because I have looked at Ghoulies IV. Ghoulies IV looks rough.

also turns out matthew lillard is in this. he appears like twice and I don't think he has any lines

THE THRILLING CONCLUSION OF BIRD MONTH (SQWAAAH). THUNDERBIRDS WAS ALSO A BIRD MONTH MOVIE, FORGOT TO INCLUDE THE INTRO. MOST OF THE TIME THESE ARE WRITTEN AT 4AM.

Surprisingly let down by this. Expected The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and Priscilla this was not.

Doesn't give enough of a reason for them to hide their identity, and doesn't have any character arcs to bookend things. Leaves it feeling very "hmm yes we need to please the moderates, we are lesser men".

I knew going in there was a dinner where they had to hide their identity, but I thought it was either "we have a business opportunity I think we need to hide our identity for", or "shit we need to interact with family and I'm not wanting to come out to them", but no it's their shitty son going "erm yeah you gotta hide your identity, in the views of the film you are novelty lesser people". Fuck off dude.

Also dreadful pacing. The entire fucking thing is them getting ready for this dinner, only for it to start 30 mins from the end and only last 15 mins. Why is this two hours?

We're also missing a conclusion, and character arcs feel very incomplete because of it. I thought we were about to change scene and have the "you know what, you people are alright, I'm fine with my daughter marrying your son" scene, but the credits started and we just end instead.

Right, it's missing it's one big song? Going in, I thought "is this the 'I am what I am' movie?" and turns out I was wrong because it's only in the play, even though that's like THE big moment. Why would you not include that in the film? Was there a rights issue? Fair enough, if so, but that does suck.

If this was made in 2010 Calista Flockhart would be Alison Brie. Also if this was made in 2020 we'd have so many "serving" jokes.

Next up for "beloved 90s drag movies" is To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), a film I initially wrote off because that title reads very strangely, but immediately changed my mind when I found out it stars Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze & John Leguizamo. They should've just made the title that.

Bird month is over. There were a couple more bird movies that got added to the regular watch list, so here's some honorable mentions that got veto'd:

• Beaks: The Movie (1987)
• Lady Bird (2017)
• Birdy (1984)
• Birdman (2014)
• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
• Bird on a Wire (1990)
• Fly Away Home (1996)
• Chicken Run (2000)
• Ladyhawke (1985)
• Happy Feet (2006)
• Rio (2011)
• Rio 2 (2014)
• The Birds II: Land's End (1994)
• Bird Box (2018)
• The Goldfinch (2019)
• Paulie (1998)

madchen amick please ruin my life

Wants to be a weirdo psychological marriage thriller, but was forced to be a 90s erotic thriller. Kinda feels like if Lost Highway (1997) got studio notes (this is nothing like Lost Highway btw). I reckon this would be like 10x better if you made this today.

Good start, kinda dull uneventful middle, and then a crazy ending that was unintentionally very funny. I assume this is what Gone Girl (2014) is like. It is up to you to decide how much of a joke that is. Death of the author.

Big fan of the clown dream segments. More things should have clown dream segments.

something something twin peaks link

Maybe not the lowest on the iceberg B-movie I've seen, but it's close.

Only non-extended copy I could find had half the file as a blue screen, with about 3 minutes of boating ads after a short amount of blue screen. The extended version didn't have all the dead air, but I think 20 more minutes of Black Devil Doll from Hell might kill me.

Not sure what to make of the film itself. There's a couple funny highlights, but not enough happens to really make it a fun watch. If you wanted to watch someone fuck a puppet, though, look no further.

Will not be watching the 2007 different-director remake/sequel/whatever. I get a vibe.

Ehhh. Very sub-par supernatural modern-day nior. Like a mediocre episode of Buffy, but without any of the fun or charm of Buffy.

Also no fun Clive Barker weird guys? What's even the point?

Right, is the PI a supernatural buff PI or a skeptic PI? We introduce him as the former, but then he's confused at everything, constantly going "no that's not real". You have to pick a lane here.

Very importantly, features Kevin J. O’Connor, a guy who every single time he appears in something, I don't recognise him, and then 30 mins later I go "OH SHIT IT'S THAT GUY".

A film that dares to ask "what if a cop was bad?"

It's ehhh. Mixed slasher, but interestingly, not in the ways they're usually mixed.

Usually, they're mostly boring but with a couple high points (kills). But here we really trip up on tone. It feels like it wants to be like an "elevated slasher", but that concept doesn't really work. It misses the point that the ideal tone of a slasher is that you cheer when the slasher kills people. Even though it's innocent people being butchered regardless, cop slasher doesn't work for a similar reason to why an abusive husband slasher wouldn't work. The tone especially isn't helped when we cut to baby Bruce Campbell's rapidly eroding marriage.

We also feature Robert Z'Dar's chin, along with the rest of Robert Z'Dar.

There is some interesting meat with mistrust of police through all the ways that happens, but it only touches on it very lightly. Like, very lightly. This really ought to have been like a 90s or 2000s cop thriller. An 80s slasher-boom slasher is a very poor vehicle for this kind of story.

Gonna be honest, I, uhh, just stopped paying attention after a certain point. The back third of this is a complete blank for me.

Worst part is, all the kills suck. At least all the kills I saw. Feel free to disregard this one. The review that is. Also the movie.

Given how polarising my Hitchcock experience has been so far, I was surprised at how neutral I was on this. It's alright, but a little dry. I am just not really the audience for non-supernatural mysteries, though.

Felt a little lost with what characters were thinking towards the end, but apparently that's just part of the genre. Again, not the audience for this. Put a ghost in it.

Also Grace Kelly you GOTTA start asking more questions, husband is clearly sus af.

Expected nothing, but honestly as these things go, it's alright? Definitely one of the better examples of a 2000s boner comedy.

After a rough start where it feels exactly like you think it would, we straighten out and things are fine. That is, apart from whenever we cut to GGF (german girlfriend) going "unt jäh ich bin saving myself for him", which is very disgusting every time. Would've been better to do a bit more with her character, but that's also a problem everything like this suffers from.

Really like the use of music from each respective country, even if we don't stick to it 100%. While Bloodhound Gang are definitely not Dutch, big thumbs up for using The Jam while in London. Crazy to me how The Jam are unknown outside of the UK. If you take nothing else away from this, please check out The Jam.

I spent the whole thing thinking the lead was one of the more forgettable leads from American Pie, but no! Turns out he's nobody! Speaking of folk who're in things, we have Dawn from Buffy, and the cool guy fae Snatch anaw!

Not sure where else to put this, but at one point there's an incestuous make out scene that goes on for a weirdly long amount of time? Like they hold on it for a solid minute. It's weird.

Also between this and Moulin Rouge (2001), absinthe looks magical. I hate liquor however, so there is no way I'd like it.

Overall it's weirdly not that problematic? Like of course there's a couple things, but these are usually some of the worst shit of the 2000s, but there's only like 4 things here? Wild.

I fucking knew this was too good to be true. God damn it.

Whenever there's a frog person, it's great. The frog costumes are actually surprisingly good for this calibre of film.

However, the first half of this is frog-less, instead occupied with a horrible, gross, rapey, "government forced breeding" plot. These aren't the villains either, these are the good guys. We are supposed to be behind this.

Their plan also makes frustratingly little sense. Piper has a rare set of working balls in the post apocalypse, so the government captures him. Checks out. They then strap explosives to his balls, have a button that zaps his balls at will, and then they send him to "the frontlines of the war" to breed. Huh?

There also seemingly isn't even a war? Frogtown is a shanty town with one bar. Humans can just walk in freely.

And if all that gross shit wasn't enough, it commits the ultimate unforgivable movie sin of teasing a rocket launcher that is never fucking fired. Are you shitting me?

Came out of this thinking Piper's performance in They Live (1988) was an absolute fluke, as he's awful in this. Same year, even.

Avoid.

DIG THROUGH THE DITCHES, AND BURN THROUGH THE WITCHES

This poster was tailor made for me. I have never been more drawn in by a film poster, and I never will again. This was the one.

Film itself is okay. Cute little clumsy B-movie. If you're the kind of person who looks at something like this and goes "I could get some modicum of enjoyment from this", you will.

Not really much to say on it other than it's interesting that we have not one, but two one-hit-wonder music artists in the main cast. We got "Hey Mickey" and "She Blinded Me With Science" (more obscure, one of those where every youtube comment is referencing media it was used in).

Also Bo Diddley is here; as in, "one of the guys who invented rock'n'roll" Bo Diddley.

Over-hyped a little. By no means not an awful slasher, but it's extremely middle of the road. And these are slasher-boom slashers, so it's a very low road.

Has the classic slasher issue of the characters not knowing anything is up for way too long, which prevents tension from building.

And very importantly for slashers, it doesn't really have a fun hook to keep things, well, fun. I initially wrote this off completely as it looked very generic and without a fun hook, in-fact.

However, I kept reading that this was "a feminist slasher", which is an interesting enough hook for me to watch. And while, "feminist slasher" is probably giving it a little too much credit, it does deserve credit for having much better than average female characters. It is kind of just a case of "it had a woman director so of course it had better female characters", but sometimes that's really all it takes. They're hanging out and having a good time, they have hobbies, and they're allowed to be horny for themselves without demonisation.

Also the drill being phallic, is worth mentioning; and every labourer is a woman. Labourers aren't a big part of this or anything, though.

This is very much at odds with the couple of oggly nudey scenes there are, but these are also extremely front-loaded, like we're contractually getting them out of the way. Nudity dead on the 2 min mark, and then no more after the 30 min mark.

Right, this is gonna sound like a weird complaint, but the killer needs a costume/disguise/anything. Like it's just a regular-ass guy with a drill. He was allowed one, and only one, piece of characterisation.

While I would otherwise be done with the series, 2 looks fucking crazy, and will be checking that out promptly. Yes, that thing on the poster appears in the movie.

man this kid sucks.

I actually kind of enjoyed this early on, but after O'Donnell leaves, we kind of just fuck about and do whatever, until the last third when the conflict is introduced. And throughout that last third, Harriet is constantly in the wrong with everything, and only apologises after she just gets what she wants at the end because that's when that would happen.

It's a definite failing when you see your protagonist get Carrie'd and think "yes, that was a deserved Carrie-ing."

At one point the protagonist says the r-slur, which is fucking wild, as this is by all possible angles a baby movie for babies. Absolute 90s moment.

Right, I gotta come clean and admit something: I've been getting Rosie O'Donnell and Roseanne Barr confused this entire time. I don't have that much context for either of them, but I do have context for That One Thing One Of Them Did, so I would like to formally apologise to O'Donnell, as I know you read all these reviews.

smoking! somebody stop me! it's party time! these are things he says in th emovie

It's alright. Whenever he's The Mask™-ing out it's a lot of fun, but it's a little watered down and unfocused, and a lot of the connective tissue is pretty weak.

Initially, I thought that this was a flubbed comic translation deal, but I've since read the first 100 or so pages of the comic, and unexpectedly this isn't the case. There's actually a lot of things the film's plot does better, even if it doesn't do a great job of them.

While the comic is very violent, and the film is very not, you don't need violence to tell this kind of story. What you do need is more of a link between the protagonist and the villains, as he kind of just bumps into them by pure coincidence like halfway through. Have him get thrown into the pier by the mob and then he finds the mask, or something.

I also don't think it works to have this character be the likeable hero. While I thought the comic (of which he's only in like the first 50 pages) plays his character arc way too quickly, it fits narratively to have him be corrupted by the power of the mask and become the villain.

Despite both the comic and the film having the "wow I can become a superhero, but first let's do this selfish stuff for me", it works in the comic by him abandoning the former, and doesn't work in the movie because he's protagonist man and faces no consequences for anything he did.

Outside of the opening, he's also not losery enough, leading to not enough contrast between pre-mask and post-mask. The addition of making him into Tex Avery cartoons is a good one, albeit very under-cooked. Maybe still have him work at the bank, but he settled there after abandoning his dream of becoming a cartoonist, or something. The comic doesn't give any link at any point, as far as I can tell. Though there it's less "tex avery wolf whistle" and more "rip off the face disguise and kill 17 cops".

Speaking of things the comic does better, while the girlfriend character has a lot more backstory in the movie, she's kind of just your typical "subservient agency-less dream girl trophy" character. In the comic they start out together, and part of the arc is how it impacts their relationship. She kicks him out at one point, and even gets to wear the mask and kill!

What I'm saying is, give Cameron Diaz the mask, you cowards.

Now, I will NEVER watch Son of the Mask. EVER. You hear me? You got that, bucko??

Honestly nowhere remotely near as bad as it's reputation proceeds it. Like, I get that I'm a B-movie guy, but it's very easy to tell whether something is enjoyable to a general audience or not. And as these buried 00s CGI kids films go, this one is genuinely more entertaining than most.

It's main issue is this: what's the ONE thing you need to do in a The Mask™ movie? That's right, it's "have a guy fucking wear The Mask™". How do you fuck this up?

It's not that the dog wears it for most of it either, as the dog is barely fucking in it. No, instead the entire movie is devoted to this disgusting morphing baby that got The Mask™ powers from being conceived while The Mask™ was worn. He only wears The Mask™ at the start, and right at the end. And why the fuck does he have this plastic Jerma hair? How do you fuck this up?

With the man-child cartoonist protagonist, and how disgusting and loud everything is, it kinda ends up as like Freddy Got Fingered (2001) for kids. Apart from the impregnation scene. Yes, you heard that right, this kids movie for kids has an impregnation scene. This played on kids TV. Insane.

Disgusting 2000s CGI nightmare. Must watch.

WITCH MEDIA. This is what it's all about, folks.

Extremely solid up until the last 20 minutes where it begrudgingly has to have conflict. Even has a Smiths (cover) needle drop. It's all here.

Also ends in a really unsatisfying spot for a movie about a witch coven, but that's getting into spoiler territory for something I 100% with every fibre of my being recommend.

Watched this with a mate who hadn't seen it before, who recognised Skeet Ulrich from Scream (1996) but not fucking Neve Campbell somehow?

Not sure. Especially not sure about this being a Critereon Collection movie? Does everyone who works there get a cheeky "one for them" or something? Eating Raoul (1982) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) are also bizarre Critereon films, though there's an (I'd say weak) argument to be made with Fast Times.

Though Melanie Griffith is a fun character, it is just kind of a typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl affair. That is, until the back half, where it turns into like a really pedestrian Blue Velvet (1986), and the film realises it let a woman have agency, so just doesn't let her do anything for the rest of the film.

Was watching this going "woah Ray Liotta looked really different back then", and then Ray Liotta showed up. Different guy; makes more sense.

John Waters also shows up in this.

Didn't enjoy it as much as the first watch, but solid comedy blaxploitation. Plot kinda falls apart in the last 20 mins, but there's still decent jokes.

Also nowhere near as goofy as I remember it? It's definitely that I've seen way more B-movies since, but like apart from a couple of especially silly jokes (along with the last 20 mins) it's not that far off a Rudy Ray Moore flim. Like I absolutely would not call this a parody movie, just more on the comedic end of things.

Some of the edgier jokes you'd probably tweak today, but you wouldn't entirely cut them.

Killer rat movie. Kinda like The Birds (1963), where any bit where the critters are killing people is great, but they're too few and far between, and everything else is a dull drag.

This kid sucks. Was rooting for him to die the whole time, but then again I always root for the kids to die in movies. They never do.

Watched this without seeing Willard (1972), and felt very lost from the get-go, as instead of an intro it's like we start in the middle of the end of the last film. Don't think I'm interested, looks like a boring 70s movie, but might watch the Crispin Glover remake.

Skip. Don't get suckered in by the concept of a killer rat movie like I did.

Decent comedy retro throwback slasher. No, it's not a sequel, but in-universe this is the third entry in a series.

Gets a little shouty and annoying as it goes on, but when they jokes land they land harder. Maybe cut the dog penis montage, though.

All the kills are really good! Like, surprisingly so! Every little one-liner attached is also good! Surprisingly I've not seen a slasher do this outside of Nightmare on Elm Street. There are definitely more examples, though. Probably those epic clown movies that look ugly and I have no interest in.

Got excited when we first had a fake ad-break, (and the first one's good!) but after that there's nothing too them. Maybe there's a single joke line, maybe there isn't. Missed opportunity.

Recently deceased American talk show host Larry King appears in this, as he wanted to be killed in a movie.

American sketch comedy duo Britanick also appear in this. I did not recognise them until the last 20 minutes. I have seen them live.

The Room's Greg Sestero is also in this.

Wasn't that hot on Withnail and I (1987), but "Richard E Grant with a talking boil on his neck" was literally impossible to pass on. Literally.

No idea what to make of this. I get what it's going for, but it's way too messy to really land it. Thought "hmm this is probably a book adaptation and the book is way better as they'll get to explore the ideas more", but nope, original movie.

The plot doesn't take place over enough of a stretch of time to actually show if we got ahead in advertising or not. The neck boil creature launches this insane marketing plan to "make boils sexy to increase demand for boil cream" by promoting some spotty singer, but we never get to see how it turns out.

Also kinda suffers from being way too abrasive up front. Like, I swear to god the first 26 minutes are just Richard E Grant continually shouting, and it's a while before it lets up.

Just putting it out there, a better movie would have the boil creature be real and spit acid at people. We're all thinking it.

Also towards the end we spend a lot of time building up this conflict where the boil creature is like "AT 1 AM I'M GONNA BANG YOUR WIFE, GET READY" and then it just never comes up again?

You can skip this.

WHAT IF THERE WAS A MACHINE THAT KILLED YOU BUT MADE YOU SLIGHTLY HORNY.

The other Jeffery Combes/Barbara Crampton camp 80s HP Lovecraft adaptation.

I can't tell if I love this movie? I think I might love this movie?

The story of a scientist so horny he makes a machine to find sex 2.

Kinda feels like a Cronenberg movie, if Cronenberg was extremely repressed.

Dreamy, horny, goopy, fantastic practical effects; what more could you want?

Must watch.

Where else to go after space, but the hood?

Not as unwatchable as it's reputation would have you believe, but it's just a very rough rehash of the same.

And much like the first, it doesn't have enough fun with it's concept. And worse than the first, the leprechaun is kept to a minimum, and there's basically no focus on gold. It's all this fucking flute macguffin that is never really used for anything?

At one point they introduce a trans character and we're instantly on thin ice, but as far as trans characters in 2000s movies go, it's relatively okay? Not good by any stretch, but was expecting a lot worse.

There's this extremely funny production still of someone teaching in-costume Warwick Davis how to use a bong, but there's no bongs at any point in the movie. Maybe there's bongs in 2? I'm not watching 2.

Don't watch this. Might check out 4 (space).

More derivative than slasher boom slashers are the straight up Friday the 13th clones. And as these go, this one is mostly decent! Better than Friday the 13th 1, for sure, but that is a low bar.

While otherwise this would be nowhere near interesting enough to check out, the hook here is that Jason Alexander plays one of the campers. Dare I say Jason Alexander in this movie is the only slasher character I would actively want to hang out with.

Sadly, he doesn't die, which - like vikings ascending to Valhalla - is the highest honour you can achieve in a slasher movie.

It actually improves on the common issue of failing to build tension by characters not knowing there's a threat, by way of writing the characters further into isolation as the killer encroaches. I'm sure there's nothing bad about whoever wrote this!

While somewhat boring lead(s) are expected, they aren't typically that much of an issue. You do, however, need them to be likeable, and boy do these two suck. Sex pest creep who the film lets off of creeping on women in the showers, and the very boring camp councillor connected to the killer's backstory who let that kid off of creeping on women in the showers. I'm sure there's no pattern with the film's creators, or anything.

While there's not a lot of kills, they're all pretty good! Fun practical effects!

So yeah, solid genre example, can recommend. It's a good thing there aren't any horrific monsters involved in the production- OH NO!!!!!

Wasn't sure what to expect with this, but it's decent! Like if Snatch was Sean of the Dead. Also less stylised.

Not much to say on it, except it's weirdly missing an entire plotline? Like we introduce the shady money with the building company, have the bank robbers take that money, and then it's never mentioned again? Like I thought we were going even more Snatch with having different plotlines intersect, but I guess not.

I think they stopped making British horror movies because The Automatic – Monster fell out of fashion, and they're otherwise impossible to market without it. Also just now learning that song was not by The Kaiser Chiefs. There's no way non-Brits have context for any of this.

Check this out maybe.

It's fun, but can't say I'm not a little let down.

Very little happens? Like, you hear "mad scientist creates liquid that re-animates the dead" and go "okay, so a bunch falls on a bunch of zombies somehow, and there's zombies everywhere, that's what happens", but up until the last 13 minutes there's only ever max 2 zombies running about at any given time.

Also runs into a lot of tonal issues. The stuff with the cat feels too mean for camp horror comedy, the fake head is a little too silly to not impact the atmosphere, and the "decapitated head groping scene" is a little too gross and exploitative - especially with Crampton barely being a character in this.

While Re-Animator has higher highs than From Beyond (1986), I think From Beyond is more consistent and well-rounded. Then again, as a certified repressed weirdo, maybe the repressed weirdo film just appeals to me more personally.

Excited to round out the Stuart Gordon/Jeffrey Combs/Barbara Crampton trilogy with Castle Freak (1995).

Holy fuck this was dull. Dullest movie I've watched in quite a while. Saw a bunch of user reviews claiming it was dull, and usually these aren't true, but oh my god I should have listened.

It's so dull that we genuinely have zero direction or goal until the 35 min mark. Also there isn't really any reason for Matthew Broderick to be there, until he's hanging around so long that he gets invested in the chemistry-less romance plot.

Hauer is so unlikable in this that it feels like he's the secondary villain. At one point, he straight up goes "right I'm gonna do this thing, if I fail, KILL MY UNCONSCIOUS WIFE". Fucking what?

The solution given to the problem is maybe the most literal deus ex machina I've ever come across. At one point a character just goes "oh God told the cure was to do these steps" and there's no additional context. Fuck off.

The soundtrack is almost entirely an extremely out of place 80s synth prog rock affair (which honestly bangs), but every now and again we'll have a generic fantasy orchestral piece, which is extremely jarring.

Do not watch this movie.

FUCK I got poster scammed. Even though I mostly watch the kind of films notorious for poster scamming, it's rare I actually feel like I get poster scammed.

Though it's not just the poster, every site says this is a horror, and that is absolutely untrue. There is not a single horror element in this at all. Some websites even list this as a mystery! There is not a fucking mystery! What is going on!? Why was this marketed as a horror????

So it's not these two fending off the elf-masked local gang, what is it? Two recently orphaned army kids move to Florida, and then the guy has a bunch of back and forth spats with the local bullies while the girl isn't given anything to do at any point ever because it's 1985, women can't impact the plot, are you nuts?

And instead of the spats ramping up and up, building tension, they're almost all the same level of intensity, leading to everything feeling extremely repetitive.

Also the protagonist's actions are often way more extreme than the bullies? Like the bullies vandalise the park and scratch up the cadillac, so the protagonist sneaks into head bully's house, ties him up and steals his money at knife point. At one point he straight up decapitates one of them. Our hero, folks.

I'm half convinced this was solely made so James Spader could go "SEE I CAN BE A YOKEL TOO, I HAVE RANGE".

Don't watch this.

Textbook pretentious mid 2000s psychological thriller from the director of World War Z and Machine Gun Preacher. The kind of film where even in broad daylight every scene is dark and desaturated, every 2nd shot is a Dutch angle, and characters say things like "do you recall the dream of the burning boy as referred to by Freud?"

Also one of those mystery films where the mystery is figuring out what the mystery is. Unfortunately, the films tagline gives it away instantly, so it's a very rare case where I have to spoiler warning the gosh darn poster.

Throughout the movie we have what I can only describe as "bowling alley animation scene transitions". It's a shame there aren't any compilations on YouTube, they are all extremely funny.

McGregor's accent in this is laughably bad, it's like halfway through every line he's like "SHIT I WAS MEANT TO BE DOING AN ACCENT".

Bunch of user reviews saying this is like Mulholland Drive (2001), but it's nothing like it at all. Same with Donnie Darko (2001).

Avoid.

Turns out the answer to the age-old question of "can you make a movie less boring by adding 50 lions to every scene" is "only for a little bit".

It's gimmick of "the most stressful movie you've ever seen" is short lived, as very little happens, and what does happen is hyper repetitive. The whole thing is the family running from room to room, trying to avoid 50 lions. It could only be stressful for so long.

Movie is famous for the insane amount of crew injuries that took place during filming. Because of the 50 lions.

Don't worry though, because the movie opens with a message that "no animals were harmed", which is a fucking lie, as there was a flood and several of the 50 lions had to be shot.

One of the lions is permanently covered in blood. Because how else do you differentiate one lion out of 50.

Weirdly structured like Resident Evil? You have the big house they keep cutting through and around, and then they escape and go to a smaller nearby house, where we get plot progression.

Between this and The Birds (1963), Tippi Hedren does not have any luck with large groups of the similar animals, does she?

Probably skip this.

Very pleasantly surprised by this. Extremely solid camp 80s horror. Gets listed as horror comedy, but even as joke-lite as the genre tends to be, this one is very joke-lite.

I was fully expecting going in for this to be a very low budget "stuck in one single building" movie, but turns out each waxwork display is a Mario 64 teleporter to a classic horror movie scenario. This is what it's all about, folks.

Though the entirely wrong synopsis I read didn't prepare me for it, it's kind of like an 80s The Cabin in the Woods (2011), except it isn't all meta and annoying. Also no Joss Whedon connection. I do not like Cabin in the Woods.

The wrong synopsis does actually reflect a plot point, but it's not one that makes sense? The villain claims "these are the souls of the 18 most evil men who ever lived", but, like, they're just classic monster movie monsters? There's several aliens? One of them is just like a hundred Night of the Living Dead zombies?

It's to the point where it feels very out of place where exactly one single wax work creature is real life historical figure Marquis De Sade. The film also instantly goes from not particularly horny to extremely horny at that point. Like I don't think anyone kisses in this movie that also has French death bondage. Subverts the final girl trope by making her the horniest person in the movie, I guess.

We got links for days with this one, folks. The lead from Gremlins. The lead from Valley Girl (the valley girl, not Nic Cage). David Warner. John Rhys-Davies. Bobby from Twin Peaks is also here, seemingly as like a mod version of the same character? Did the US even have a mod revival?

Speaking of Twin Peaks, we also have the "mysterious very short guy and very tall guy who you meet in the waiting room" dynamic. Maybe this was an old forgotten trope or something?

Very easy recommend. Outstanding in it's field. The sequel doesn't look very interesting.

It's alright, but a little let down given how hyped up it was.

For some reason I thought this was a 90s/early 00's Post-scream wave movie, even though I knew Megan Fox was in it and those timelines do not match up. But no, this was 2009, and honestly I think that's a very poor time to try make a big budget film like this.

It manifests itself mostly in tone. It is an absolute mess, especially towards the start. Despite horror-comedy being my go-to genre, it actually took me a while to even tell that that's what it was going for.

Pretty much throughout, it very awkwardly bounces between CGI stretchy-mouth played-straight horror, and very jokey bitchy dialogue, and doesn't fit together. There was just not enough camp in the late 00's for horror comedy outside of weirdo movies.

If this was made today, the tone would've been perfect. Also the queer elements would've been more prominent. I've not looked into it, but can almost guarantee there was meant to be more, and the studios suppressed it.

Post-apocalyptic rockabilly/surf rock action comedy.

Neat little weirdo movie, but definitely held back by budget.

Despite there being a pretty constant great soundtrack, there's a lack of focus on music in the plot itself. Also not enough of the main character fighting other music weirdos, after the start it's all just the villain picking them off. Needed to lean into that more.

The first time I watched this, I got it confused with Blind Fury (1989), and went into this having no idea what it was. I have still not seen Blind Fury (1989).

I wonder if the Fallout: New Vegas devs saw this?

Ehhh.

I have an immense amount of respect for having a 21 minute intro where nothing happens, and the protagonist just endlessly monologues, and while I enjoyed the intro, it falls off very hard after we leave Paris.

The character very quickly goes from fun neurotic, philosophical monologuing screw-up, to generic 2010s epic sigma assassin man.

There is next to no exposition or context for anything happening at any point, which leads to the entire film just feeling like "oh, he's doing this now."

Also, for a thriller, a genre based on building suspense, there is no suspense being built. The final 5 minutes feel exactly the same level of intensity as the rest of the film.

We also have a straight up Amazon ad at one point. This is actually unforgivable.

There are a large amount of The Smiths needle drops, which is usually enough to keep any film afloat, but frustratingly it never plays enough of a song. It'll just play 2 seconds, and then either drops the volume so low it's almost inaudible, or just stops completely.

Awful ending. It's so nothing that I was shocked that the film actually ended and credits were happening, and there wasn't an extra final set piece. What.

Skip.

Not as incomprehensible as YT vids led me to believe, but there are a lot of laughs to be had here.

If you did not know ahead of time that was 2009, you genuinely would have no idea. This is the most late 90s feeling late 2000s movie I've ever seen. Like it looks like should be at absolute max 2003, but no. Wild.

Starring Robbie Coltrane (yes, Hagrid) as a giant teddy bear, who hangs out all day with this kid who is the spitting image of Winona Ryder, as - I shit you not - love ballads play? I cannot overstate how much this kid looks like Winona Ryder. Also Eugene Levy is here.

Again, the love ballad song choices are insane. Was this a protest by the editor? How does this happen?

Coltrane is (obviously) absolutely terrible casting for this, and combined with the how the costume looks, makes the whole thing very creepy, and very funny. Like he's not even doing a voice, he's straight up just speaking in his regular cadence. Honestly I think if you swapped Coltrane with Levy it'd work better. Not by much, though.

The plot tries to do a "deadbeat, neglectful dad" story, but they don't really show the Dad being neglectful at any point? Like he ends up in a busy period at work, and that's meant to be really bad?

Pretty decent PG-13 horror!

Admittedly a little too slow paced (this is in the realm of weird little creature movie, and there's none until the back half), but what it absolutely nails is it's characters. Might be some of the strongest character development I've seen in a weird little creature movie.

Plays around a lot with childlike imagination for it's horror, with the demon's specifically playing on their fears.

Not much else to say on it, really. Easy recommend if you want to scare a kid, but not by too much.

Loses points for a couple of F and R slurs. Actually maybe don't show it to kids, then.

bro who invited carrie to the function

Very odd mix of neat trauma-guilt ESP girlfailure movie and completely unremarkable Ft13th sequel.

It feels weird that Jason is even here? Surely this would fit way more if it was the dad she revived instead of Jason, as she was the one who killed him, with the trauma-guilt being the whole driving factor of the story.

Watching this, I was 100% convinced that this wasn't initially meant to be a Ft13th movie, and was changed to be that for funding or whatever, but no, Ft13th from word go. Wild.

And for a film that was intended to be "Jason vs Carrie", there's way too little of Jason vs Carrie. It's only in like the last 10-15 minutes?

Though this is an extremely low bar to pass, this is probably the strongest protagonist in any of these movies. I have not seen all of them granted, but I'm fairly confident here. She's great!

Because of course it does, it has the classic slasher boom slasher issue of everyone spending the whole movie having no idea that something's up. Because of course it does.

Kills all kinda suck, apart from the one where he swings the girl in the sleeping bag into the tree. Apparently behind the scenes they were made to censor a lot of the kills, and yeah it fucking sucks.

While it doesn't have a direct Twin Peaks link, we do have a mousy girl named Maddy, whose character arc involves her ditching her large glasses before [REDACTED]. And brother, that's good enough for me.

Though speaking of direct links, we got a cast member from greatest film ever made Ghoulies II (1987) as "guy who's really into creature movies". Don't remember who he is in Ghoulies II, though. Thought it was the protagonist at first, but it's not.

One of the more interesting entries, but probably shouldn't chase this down.

Extremely PS2 core.

It's okay, but is way too long and trips up on a couple major plot beats, which unfortunately really diminishes the fun. It's a little camp, but it's mostly just a sincere "early 00's cool" vibe, which it does not do well enough to age well.

Like, Dracula walking up the walls for no reason and chewing up the scenery is very funny, but also most plot beats don't have any set up or reasoning given, simply just coincidence-ing it's way to creating and resolving every problem.

Dracula is invincible and we've tried every possible thing to kill him? Oh, that thing that happened a couple scenes ago means you can kill him. Frankenstein holds the secrets to creating artificial life? Oh, we don't need to experiment him, just strap him to The Contraption and zap him like the last thing. Why do Dracula's mpreg sacs even count as artificial life, anyway?

Like every time he appears in something, I didn't recognise Kevin J. O’Connor in this at first, only 40 minutes later going "OH WAIT IT'S THAT GUY". This time I have an excuse, though.

Skip.

Watched this entirely because I saw a clip where Paul Rudd and Adam Scott mention Dune (1984), and we were completely sidelined by how insane this was.

It looked like your typical 2010s mediocre slacker comedy, where the down-on-his-luck Rudd betters his stressed city slicker family by sharing his hippie ways. The middling uninteresting user reviews would back this up, but this could not be further from the case.

In actuality, it is a miserable drama where we strained to even pinpoint jokes, despite this being stacked with all the 2010 Hollywood comedy names you could think of. Except him, he's not in this. Or her. Okay, maybe not everyone.

The family dinner at the start is insanely funny, just dumping the dynamic of Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, Steeve Coogan, and Adam Scott on the table, leaving you to figure out the relationship map.

Also at one point during dinner, they drop that Deschanel fucked her cousin? Huh???? What's going on in this movie??

Additionally during dinner, we are introduced to "lesbian Rashida Jones". Now, while I can appreciate that there was an effort made to try and have a more butch-coded saph instead of just having two petite femmes for men to look at, good christ her costuming is unbelievably funny. This is intended to be a drama, and it's like she's an SNL caricature of a lesbian. At one point, her and Rudd are bouncing on a trampoline with the kid, and she is straight up wearing an almost identical outfit to the kid.

Now, the main issue with the drama is that Paul Rudd genuinely doesn't do anything wrong at any point? All he does is accidentally break the news of the awful stuff other people did to them, and they're all mad at him? It makes sense that Deschanel is mad at him, but why the fuck is everyone else so pissed at him? He didn't do that shit!

Like, at one point the family straight up blames the wife for her husband cheating on her, as she's "not hot enough anymore". What the fuck?? I've genuinely not heard anything this backwards towards relationships in anything 80s or even 70s I've seen. This came out in 2010. This plot beat is also never even resolved!

Points for Steeve Coogan's ballsack.

Ahh… French-Italian-Turkish-American cinema…

Worlds first action incest movie. This is not a joke. This is not an exaggeration. The plot is that he wants to bang his sister. Not even her death can stand in the way, as they give a woman Face/Off (1997) surgery to recreate the sister. This is all played completely straight, like it's normal.

While this is spoiling a large swath of the plot, that is the entire hook. The rest of the plot is honestly pretty unintelligible. And outside of the Incest/Off, there really isn't anything crazy to keep you engaged, meaning even as far as B-movies go, it's a very hard sell.

The titular White Diamond is a radioactive diamond, the macguffin with powers that every party is chasing after. So of course, nothing ever happens with it, and it explodes seemingly of it's own accord for no reason at the end. Solid. Why not.

When we sat down to the watch this, it turns out that the only language track on the file was French. This felt like a con that held the film back, as every character is seemingly speaking in English, and is shoddily dubbed over in French. I am not sure if this has an English language version, even.

This might actually be my first French language film. I do not want this to be true.

Dull and pretentious. I didn't really have any intentions of watching this, because I knew it wasn't for me, but I had social plans to watch Gladiator 2 the next day that I couldn't get out of.

I will say I did not expect to dislike this as much as I did, like I fully expect to just be slightly underwhelmed, and I hated this.

It has the same issue as I have with a lot of prestige TV, where there's a real palpable lack of emotion with pretty much every performance. Like, as much as people lament about "bad acting" in B-movies, there's so much more humanity reflected in a clumsy, over-acted line read than grumbly, stoic, overly serious prestige TV voice.

This is a movie where characters are sold into slavery for the purpose of dying on stage, and none of them ever show any fear, or sadness, or anything. Completely blank faced, all of them.

The only one closest to actually emoting is Phoenix, but his character is ruined by making him the least threatening evil emperor ever. Like fucking Rick Moranis in Spaceballs gets more done than Phoenix in this.

"Ooh, oh no, the only political rival who threatens my regime has revealed his identity as a powerless slave. There's literally no action I can take, I just have to roll over and let him do a coup. If I kill him that would make people not like me…"

Fucking what? This is a plot we're meant to take seriously? Ridley Scott is a hack and has always been a hack. I don't care that he didn't write it, he's getting the heat.

Also does my favourite duel trope of having guy who has not been shown to be fight man fight The Main Fight Man.

Skip, unless you're somehow reading this in 2000, as you'll probably like it then. Weirder things have happened.

After hating Gladiator (2000), I am completely shocked that I actually kind liked this? Like it fixes basically every issue I had with G1, it expands on and challenges a lot of the ideas in it, and - while the plot is similar - it approaches it from an interesting different angle. All great sequel stuff.

No pretentious masturbatory "THE DREAM OF ROME" stuff. Whenever "the dream of Rome" is mentioned, it's specifically in regard to it being overly idealistic and impossible to maintain. There's even some stuff about how awful imperialist expansion was. G1 would never.

They sadly don't connect the dots on why the aggressively expanding imperialist empire was not able to "provide a safe and prosperous place for all", but the dots are at least there.

People actually emote in this one! It isn't just gruff stoicism! The gladiators are mostly shown bro-joking around with each other, and you get a much better sense of the camaraderie between them than in G1.

Pascal is great, but sadly underused. He adds a great angle to both the political drama and character drama with Mescal.

Speaking of Mescal, a large number of user reviews always include "he's nowhere near as good as Crowe in G1", but I didn't really find Crowe particularly of note in G1? Mescal is fine - very good in the scene where they fight the baboons, in fact.

And holy shit, that scene where they fight the baboons is so good. They are genuinely scary, and seeing Mescal frothing at the mouth in order to beat these agressive animals, the only option being to out primal them as they are only armed with their shackles, is such an insanely good action scene. The rest of the action scenes are pretty good, but nothing in either of these films come close to the baboon scene.

The monkey fun doesn't stop there, either! At one point we appoint a baby monkey to be 2nd in command to all of Rome.

Two issues I did have it, though.

First, this is one of those films where the plot synopsis spoils a major plot beat. I get that that information is part of the link to G1 to sell you on the film, but it absolutely hurts the viewing experience to have that information going in.

Secondly, it doesn't really end in conclusive enough of a place. Like, the bad leader is defeated, and we have an inspiring speech, but then we don't really establish who is in charge next? Also the inspiring speech doesn't really gel that well with all the "Rome bad" stuff throughout the film.

Damn, back-to-back pleasant surprises.

Went into this as an experiment, as I'd heard that this was phobic in a specific way that I shan't spoil (part of a big reveal), and whether it would be enough to ruin it or be camp enough to ironically reclaim it.

To my surprise, however, it actually wasn't that at all (apart from arguably one shot), and was actually a really empathetic, and extremely fun slasher boom slasher. This is instantly in my top 2 - would easily be top 1 if it wasn't for one major issue I have, that I'll get into later.

I wish I could talk more about this aspect of the film, because - shockingly for a cheesy B-movie - there's a ton of thematic meat here to unpack. While I'm sure the creators did not intend for this to be positive (idk, maybe they did, I've not watched the docs), it actually comes out really positive. Death of the author, and that.

Also, while I did know the reveal going in, it didn't hurt the viewing experience at all. That being said, it is information that is kept secret and only revealed in the final scene, so I will refrain from spoiling.

Hits all the slasher beats you want. Near every line read is a blast - the aunt especially, who screams "single scene David Lynch character". The kills are also all really fun; apart from one, which didn't really line up with the killer's motivations and leans a bit too much into shock schlock, but only one miss ain't bad.

And then, after a home run of a slasher, we slam on the gas and have the final shot be - no exaggeration - one of the scariest shots I've ever seen in a movie. As horror sub-genres go, slashers are one of the least scary, so it's practically impossible to not get completely blindsided by this scene. I have to hold myself back from describing it, even, as I wouldn't want to lessen the impact.

This is also the one point where arguably it does get "phobic in that specific way" in the imagery it uses (that tends to be the most common reading), but I personally didn't interpret it in that way, as it's only related to [THING] instead of outwardly being [THING]. But even if that one shot is problematic, one shot out of an entire movie where it's very positive is pretty fucking good for 1983.

Now, the main issue I had with it was, after this amazing final shot where we have the big reveal, we just instantly hard cut to credits and don't resolve anything. The whole plot-line with the camp director doesn't end up resolved, and we never get to see the cousin's take on the whole thing, given that they grew up with them. Sadly kinda sucks, but at the very least the way the does film is extremely memorable.

Wasn't too interested in the sequels, but read that the 2nd one is very fun, so I'll give that a shot (DO NOT READ THE SYNOPSIS, YOU WILL BE SPOILED FOR THIS ONE).

If you want to check out a slasher boom slasher, watch either this or Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984).

Must watch.

Not as good as the first, but decent horror comedy.

Suffers from a lack of focus. The catholic boarding school angle is neat, but we don't spend enough time there, instead mostly just doing a weaker version of the first movie. Also never settles on a main character, and doesn't spend long enough on each character for an ensemble cast, so everyone just feels like a minor side character.

Part of the reason why it feels weaker is the second that the demons are introduced, we instantly arm ourselves with holy water that instantly melts them into puddles, so there's never any threat. Apart from the racist girl from The Craft (1996), who is the only one who's healed from the holy water, and just spits up some bugs. Very weird to only have one of them react differently.

It actually took me a bit to realise that this wasn't a college movie at first, as we open on the playbook trope of skeezy male students peaking on the girls changing - which feels slightly less bad than usual, as it's introducing characters who are definitely dying to demons, but it's still bad.

Then a couple of scenes later, we introduce a nun, and I thought "huh, nun is weird, surely there's colleges with nuns, but this is a weird mix of horny college hijinks and domineering catholic nuns, not sure if this works".

But then a couple of scenes later, we cut to everyone in class in uniform, revealing that no, this is catholic school, and these are teens. Now, I don't know if it's because I just watched Sleepaway Camp (1983) which cast actual teens to play teens (something I forgot to include in the review), but these are some aged looking teens. Like, what are we doing casting busty 30 year old women as schoolkids, this does not work.

Not sure if the demon girl is a returning character - she certainly doesn't look like any of them. Might've been the girl who danced to Bauhaus, maybe? Maybe? More movies should have people dance to Bauhaus, I don't know why we haven't got on top of that yet.

The nipple lipstick from the first returns, now upgraded to macguffin, and in this one we have an acid tit-hand kill, so excited to see what breast tech they introduce in the 3rd.

Finally! Let down by a film again! Was starting to get scared for a moment.

This thing is like one small step away from being an incel movie. One of the most embarrassing scripts I've ever come across, and I've seen True Romance (1993). This is the kind of thing a 16yo boy would write, and then burn in his 20s. It's real bad.

Seen a couple user reviews describe this as "porn-brained", but it's very much not a horny movie. Instead, it is the wannabe romantic nice-guy kind of inceldom.

The concept is that he wants to repair his sex robot (that, like a cybertruck, got a little bit of soap on it and instantly exploded), except actually he's better than everyone else because he likes the ROMANCE of his object to service him. The sex robot stuff itself really isn't that bad, as it's like firmly in the realm of fetish stuff, but it's the attitude that really pushes this thing into the dirt, and really cements it's view on women in general.

Also seen a couple of user reviews comparing it to Blade Runner 2049 (2017), but it really isn't. maybe if Gosling was lecturing everyone about how he's superior for his waifu.

The way to save this would be to look to a different Gosling film: Lars and the Real Girl (2007). The concept of "romance movie involving sex doll" is not inherently doomed, you just gotta not be a huge weirdo about it.

The main reason it doesn't work is the main guy. Fucking hell is he unlikable. Like you'd think a story about a guy wanting to repair his sex doll would be a loser-y character, but no he's meant to be a cool action guy. I do not buy that this fucker can beat Robert fucking Z'Dar (who is, of course, caked up in booty shorts) in a hand-to-hand fight.

Melanie Griffith is also very miscast. She's not particularly believable as "epic badass bounty hunter" type, and she's certainly not directed to act as such. Instead, because of course it is, her only purpose is to better the protagonist by way of being the chemistry-less love interest. This could've done with like the Joel/Maggie dynamic in Northern Exposure, or something. Anything.

This isn't that related to the plot, or the discussion, but I have to mention the insane brothel scene, where beside each sex worker there's a lawyer who you negotiate a sex contract with? Like it feels like a Futurama bit. Laurence Fishburne is also there, as one of the lawyers.

I have no idea what the villains are trying to achieve. I must have missed some line, as they seemingly just start chasing the party across the desert to kill them, for some reason?

Hard avoid.

Sadly more than a little disappointing, and that's with this kind of thing being my thing to a tee.

For the darling of Cannes, I did not expect for this to have as many severely major script issues as it did. It's like they came up with the concept of "body horror about feeling pressured to get cosmetic surgery" and then forgot that the things that happen in the movie actually need to relate to that.

There is genuinely zero upside to taking The Substance™ whatsoever, which leads to the whole thing feeling pointless. The best possible case is that you give up half your life so the hot person you back-spawned can cut about. This is supposed to be satirising the pressure to get cosmetic surgery, but she doesn't get any benefit from the procedure? Like it's not her, it's a fully different person. I get the idea between the switching, but like, it's gotta still be the same person or else the whole conceit crumbles.

And as much as the film repeats "YOU ARE ONE", this is just not true from any angle. They have separate identities, bodies, memories and consciousnesses. You cannot just say "no they're the same" if everything else in the movie contradicts that. There isn't even a plotline about "oh are they the same or are they different".

I actually half expected for that to be one of the directions it went in, with some conspiracy with the company behind The Substance™, but no actually we never get any context for the people behind The Substance™ whatsoever.

I saw the trailer for this (against my will, was at the cinema before Alien: Romulus (2024)) and I thought Dennis Quaid & co were part of some RoboCop-esque company that were behind The Subtance™. But no, there is quite literally nothing whatsoever about who is behind it, how they discovered it, what their angle is. Nothing. Was this a rough outline that went straight to shooting?

A lot of these vaguenesses could actually be alleviated by leaning more camp, but it's played too straight for it not feel like it's missing things that should be there. If it was more camp, you can easily brush things aside with a Little Shop of Horrors "WOW. WHAT A STRANGE AND INTERESTING PLANT."

Neither Moore or Qualley really do much of anything, also? It needed to focus more on the public perception of both of them, considering the reason she gets the procedure is because her career is fading, and then Qualley's career pops off, but we never really see either of these things. Even before the depressive spiral, we never see Moore do anything, and all Qualley does is twerk on a daytime TV aerobics show. Also apparently spends 6 out of her 7 days doing DIY work creating an extra room? Huh? I thought you were the one who's meant to be living it up?

And speaking of the show, surely the markets for "aged celebrity workout show" and "hot people twerking" are very different? We could've maybe explored changing market tastes, or a focus to more sensationalist sexy content, but no, again, nothing. There's never anything. Why would there be something?

Had a lot of tonal issues with the final stretch. While the film has an outlandish premise, it's played very straight and serious. And then you get to the ending stretch, which is WAY too goofy for what otherwise has not been a comedic film.

Despite having a lot of issues with the script, I did very much like all the stylish flourishes in how it's presented. Also liked that scene where the guy eats shrimp and it makes vine boom sounds. Also the bit where Margeret Qualley does her famous WR3 launcher.

Even though I didn't like it, I'm very glad that's it's ended up as popular as it has, as that hopefully means we'll get more stuff like it.

Would be willing to watch more by the director, but her only other film is a rape revenge, and unlike satirical body horror those are Not My Thing, though I hear it's a good example of one.

Fun hangout film, held back by being utterly exhausting.

With the concept of "Jet Li travelling to different parallel universes to kill Jet Li's, getting stronger Highlander style", you might think "this is gonna rule, we're gonna be hopping between different alternate universes as Jet Li keeps fighting more Jet Li's". However, because nothing in life is as you'd expect, we spend the entire movie in a very slightly alternate timeline where the Bush administration inacted free health care, and there are only three Jet Li's in the movie. One of them is killed in the intro.

Why would you do this? The remaining two Jet Li's also look identical. They have identical faces, they don't act differently (you can only tell with certain line reads), and for almost the entire movie, they wear identical clothes. Why would you do this? Whenever there's a new scene, it takes a solid minute to work out which fucking Jet Li it is, and it leads to the whole being so exhausting to watch.

And, I almost didn't include this because the optics are not good, but the first time this happens, and we realised both Jet Li's look identical, it turns out it wasn't Jet Li in that scene, but a different guy who looks a lot like Jet Li, and only appears twice. Why the fuck, in a movie where the entire premise is "clones of guy" would you then cast a guy who also looks like that guy, and he only appears in like one scene. That is psychotic.

At the start, evil Jet Li does CGI time slow fighting, but then after that he just stops doing that? They also set up that evil Jet Li - who has done nothing but hunt Jet Li's - is equally matched with the good cop Jet Li (who for some reason knows martial arts, because why wouldn't he). This means evil Jet Li really never feels like much of a threat, which is not something you want from a villain. This is very much not helped by both Jet Li's looking and acting identically, you end up with both the hero and villain not really having a different presence from each other.

Jason Statham in this feels like a parody of current day Jason Statham films. He's stood there with a full-ass head of hair and a pew-pew gun, going "OI'M A MUL'IVERSE AJUN'".

The mouse scene is one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a movie. No, there really isn't any additional context to this in the movie.

Fun in parts, but very ehhh overall.

Sort of like a grimier Carry On film. Horny, but even more so camp. Like this shit has a Looney Tunes soundtrack, and every female character is called "super" something.

There's a lot of fun line reads, but that's not really enough to carry it through the film, especially with the tonal speed bumps at the start. Like, this is a movie where a guy gets kicked in the nuts and a slide whistle plays, and also where a cop traps a woman in her home and very brutally murders her. This also happens pretty early in the film, which really just kills the fun tone with very little hope of ever recovering.

Plot is also very barebones and makes it hard to get invested in, especially with how unlikable the intro section makes the protagonist. It's kind of just a series of loosely connected horny cartoons, with a different woman in each.

I will say it was sold to me as being a lot more grotesque and extreme than it was. Like I was fully expecting like a heteronormative John Waters movie with almost gross-out hypersexualised figures, and it in practice it's just women with fairly large breasts going "ooh, what if i did a little dance". Not the freak shit I was expecting, and definitely a lot less interesting for that.

Also that woman on the poster appears for like two seconds at the start and then never again.

Not sure I'm interested in watching more Russ Meyer films.

As the genre of CGI kids movies go, this was surprisingly pretty good? I mean it's a CGI kids movie, so there isn't much reason to watch this outside of ironic nostalgia, but - as a child of the 2000s who grew up with this - I fully expected this to suck, and it did not.

There's a little bit of thematic meat, touching on suburban housing estates, commercialism, and a little bit of deforestation. While every now and again a kids movie will talk about deforestation, how many kids movies can you name that try and satirise things like commercialism? This isn't too deep for kids to get, either, as I was a kid who watched this and I remember it standing out a lot more for having this stuff. Doesn't do a lot with it, or anything, as CGI kids film, but a little goes a long way here.

Bruce Willis plays the lead in this and there is not a single point in this movie where he sounds like Bruce Willis. It's weird.

I remember Steve Carell being the annoying red squirrel, and I was expecting this to be a big source of friction on rewatch, but honestly it's fine. It's not that intense, and he's not in it much. Like it's just Steve Carell talking quickly.

The music is all really good! Not a big Ben Folds guy, but I like Rockin' the Suburbs, which even has a squeaky clean rewritten version for this. He should've done more film soundtracks.

At one point there's a Citizen Kane reference, which - while I normally detest homage like this - I found it really funny conceptually to do a Citizen Kane reference in a kids CGI movie. Also a Streetcar Named Desire reference at one point, but the only thing I know about that is the reference, and that it doesn't seem like my thing. That one at least fits more in the context of the film, instead of sticking out.

I'm sorry millenials, but I did not get the appeal of this one at all.

It's not purely just the problematic Pygmalion stuff, like you can be dodgy but still provide whimsical fun, but you still have to be fun and likeable. Also you need to have some chemistry between the two leads, and there is certainly none present here.

The lead girl in this is just really unlikable. An unpleasant person. And not in the way where they're setting up "these are the traits you're supposed to hate which we will strip away and correct to fashion the idealised woman", she's just kind of an ass who feels superior to everyone.

The post-makeover reveal is the funniest one I've seen in one of these. She looks fucking identical except her hair is in a bit more of a bob and she's not wearing glasses. At least have an actual transformation. This is insane. There is actually just no difference. I genuinely cackled.

Is there actually any of these where they don't start off already just conventionally attractive? Somehow the DeCoteau sleaze flick Nightmare Sisters (1987) is still the best example I have, where they don't start off at more or less the finish line.

Why do those bullies eat the pube pizza when Freddie Prinze Jr. tells them to? You would not unless you were forced? Does he have The Voice?

Also in that scene, little Kieran Culkin is skating around offering folk pepper from a big pepper grinder, and who does he offer pepper to? Sarah Michelle Geller.

Now, earlier in the movie, we have an external shot of a courtyard in the school. And it is actually the same one from Buffy. I'm not sure if the internals of the school are the same as in Buffy, but it added a very fun angle to the film where we can only assume that this is all just happening in the background of an episode of Buffy where she's fighting Frankenstein or some shit.

Serial sapphic Clea DuVall is also in this, and while her orientation is never revealed, you know.

Still not seen a weak Matthew Lillard performance.

I think I have to watch Pretty Woman (1990) but I don't want to.

No I did not re-watch this in preparation for Wicked (2024). I have no intentions of watching Wicked (2024). This is not a bit like Son of the Mask (2005).

Saw this as a kid and had little memory of it outside of the munchkin village.

It's hard to really give an opinion on this? Like it's such an overwhelmingly important and influential film, it's extremely ahead of and it's also a fun and enjoyable watch.

Alongside Star Wars (1977), might be one of the best aged films of all time? Like outside of the lion costume looking a little rough and the flying monkeys looking abominable, it's all fine? It really does feel like a golden age Disney animated film.

Munchkin village is easily my favourite part. Wonderful set design, fun songs. The lollipop guild slaps. Big fan of there being geezer munchkins. I did accidentally call them Oompa Loompas the first few times until we realised.

Also in this section we see that munchkins are hatched from eggs that are three times the size of the adult munchkins. Who's laying these eggs? Is there like a queen munchkin that's way bigger?

I wonder if the flower ones were what inspired Pikmin. There was an extra joke here I cut.

Right, now I'll admit that this is a weird, extremely specific thing to get hung up on, but we introduce the ruby red slippers, and then pair them with these muted blue socks, and it makes the big signature thing not stand out at all. They not have white socks in the 30s? It looks better on the squished witch.

We're then introduced to the rest of the squad. The lion is clearly the easy favourite; affable and charismatic. Scarecrow is okay; inoffensive, but a little try hard. I get very bad vibes from Tin Man. Not a fan of that guy. Big "where's my hug?" energy.

I also get why "friend of Dorothy" became coded slang, as these fellas fruity as hell.

The snow being pure asbestos is so fucked up that loops back around to being extremely funny. Like there's SO much of it, and the scarecrow's costume was stuffed with it. At one point the lion is lying face down in it.

"I think I'd feel safer on the Roar (1981) set."

I don't like where they go with the wizard. Why have all the dream stuff reflected from life, and then at the last second go "no actually there's another real guy here". Why is the wizard not just the dream version of the snake oil salesman? Like they even have the same character of "con-man who gives her heartfelt advice at the end". Why is he the door guy?

Actually, looking this up, and he's fucking every male character in the emerald city for some reason? What? Huh? Why would you have one guy have several dream world versions? And why do we pretend that there was another real guy? What?

Why do the aunt and uncle not have counterparts in Oz? Also they set up the figures from her real life very poorly, I don't think we even see the farm hands until the very end.

Looking more things up, it turns out it's because Oz being a dream world that reflects figures in her life was entirely a thing in the movie added, and in the books Oz is a physical place you travel to. This means the wizard being a real guy is a weird middle ground that doesn't really work.

Also not keen on the ending. Not the "you could've done this the whole time" thing, but it's that they treat it as if she had a character arc where she grew as a person, but she doesn't? It's rest of the squad who have character arcs, but they're not real? It's fine to not have a character arc, like you don't HAVE to, but this feels like it's missing something by not having one.

No I'm still not interested in Wicked, nor the film or the musical.

I am, however, very interested in Return to Oz (1985). Because of course I did, alongside Watership Down (1978), I saw the start of this as a kid, and then quickly turned it off. While I probably should finally watch the entirety of Watership Down for closure, I'm not really that interested, seeing as it's a sad film.

Uwe Boll you motherfucker, I cannot believe I got Almost Famous'd with a fucking Uwe Boll video game movie. This shit is TWO HOURS FOURTY and we only realised it when we sat down to watch it. The extended cut adds FOURTY extra minutes of In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007). That is too much, man.

And because there exists an extended version, the theatrical version is seemingly wiped from existence.

Jason Statham plays a character only named Farmer (who was known as Boy as a child; not a bit, this is a line in the movie), who for some reason can do Tekken kicks? We never establish why he's good at fighting, also. Like not just "action movie protagonist" good, like he's flipping through the air like the Star Wars prequels.

The names don't stop there, either, as we have Ray Liotta (who's voice does not fit in a fantasy movie at all), Burt Reynolds, Matthew Lillard, John Rhys-Davies and Ron Perlman. Who gave this man this much money.

The Magus' daughter is never given anything to do ever, even though we explicitly set up a character arc where she sets out to redeem herself. Also we never really set up how she even met Ray Liotta in the first place, as she's not allowed to leave the castle and he wouldn't be allowed to enter.

The forest battle scene is possibly the funniest battle scene I've ever seen in a movie. I was genuinely struggling to breath, between the Zorro merry men jumping around, the goblin's fighting style of "throwing a guy into a tree and then seven of them beat him with hammers", Jason Statham punching a horse until it's stamina bar runs out and it falls over, and oh my fucking god the goblin slingshot.

It might actually have saved the movie, as we never really reach any heights after that (aside from Jason Statham being launched 200ft by swinging on a rope).

I have still not seen a weak Matthew Lillard performance.

Interest in watching more Boll has risen. House of the Dead (2003) or BloodRayne (2005) next. No I'm not watching Postal (2007). Some things should stay in the 2000s.

DO NOT LOOK UP THE SYNOPSIS FOR THIS MOVIE, THERE ARE MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST, WHICH I VERY MUCH RECOMMEND.

Definitely weaker than the first, but it's pretty fun! Very much a different kind of movie, though. That one was an empathetic movie about childhood bullying and [REDACTED] casting actual children, and this one is a trashy, horny, quippy, "yass queen slay fr fr" type slasher. And while it's definitely held back by being a lot lower budget than the first, this is a much more fun slasher than most.

What really carries this is Pamela Springsteen's performance (yes, sister of Bruce). Hands down one of the most fun slasher villains around. Though they do call back with certain traits, painting her as the matured version of the shy character from the first, it's more or less an entirely different character. She's now chatty, and an overly moralistic prude, which leads to fun character motivation for the kills. Jason might hack up teens for smooching, but he never serves like this while doing it.

She also looks surprisingly a lot like Felissa Rose. In the movie itself, that is. I'm not even sure that is Springsteen on the poster (though the poster rocks).

Has the usual slasher boom slasher thing where no one knows what's going on until 1 second before they die, but as the slasher is the central character, this ends up not being an issue, as the tension is entirely shifted to "how long until they get caught".

Now, though it's mentioned a couple of time here and there, it actually doesn't really go into [THE THING] from the first one. It takes the character in a different way that feels like it's very much misunderstanding [THE THING], but that's fine. Dare I say it still feels progressive? There's no shock element to it here, either. Though we don't have the heartfelt angle, we just have lighthearted fun.

We do at one point have a line that almost feels like a modern day satire of [REACTIONS TO THING]. I wish I could say more.

Features Renée Estevez (yes, sister to Emilio) AKA Betty from Heathers (1989), as a slightly less dweeby Betty from Heathers. I would die for this genre of character.

Early on we introduce the stoner sisters, the mythic rarity female stoner archetype, who are one of the best slasher side characters in the biz (yes they count as one character). Sadly, however, they only last until the 2nd kill, and one of them is even killed off-screen. You never know a good thing until it's gone.

Definitely check this out if you liked the first. Though they go in different directions, they're still both fun cheesy slashers.

man I bet it'd feel so good to just drop kick him full pelt

Another childhood kids movie. Yeah, really nothing of note to say about this one. Painfully middle of the road. Almost fell asleep towards the end. Caught my head drooping a couple times.

Right, I know this is the thing everyone brings up, by why are the rules different for mice and cats? There's some dark racial connotations going on here in this Michael J Fox CGI kids mouse movie.

Even the Twin Peaks link is dull and uninteresting. Kimmy Robertson appears for one nothing line.

Don't recommend revisiting it if you have nostalgia, and you should hard avoid if you've never seen it.

It's alright! Liked this one a lot more than the later Hitchcock mystery films I've seen. The dialogue is really clean in this one; feels very ahead of it's time.

Might be the only film ever to pull off the "HMMM, IS IT REAL OR NOT REAL?" shtick.

As 30s movies go, it's very watchable.

I will say the first 20 or so minutes are excruciatingly slow, though. Which is especially weird because the last 20 minutes are so action packed.

Also in this intro section we get the trademark Hitchock "smug guy who treats women terribly that you're not sure if it's intended for you be on his side or not", but unlike the other examples, in this one he lightens right up, and the two do actually have a fun dynamic.

Big fan of the two very straight English guys who are obsessed with cricket. Wish they were in it a little more.

Check this one out maybe.

Have a couple issues, but it's a very fun watch.

Marisa Tomei is the clear elephant in the room, serving so hard she literally won an Oscar. Apparently there's some weird conspiracy about her Oscar being illegitimate, presumably because it's a fun bimbo-y character and not a sad character from a movie about movies or whatever the fuck lame ass award shows care about.

She is great in this. More movies should have a "bombshell autistic car wife" character. There is a much better timeline where this became a regular archetype.

And then we get to the actual lead, Joe Pesci. Though it's a very fun performance, he feels kinda miscast, as he's WAY too old for the role. Like, this character is the archetypal "loser 30 year old male who's trying to turn things around", being played by a 49 year old man. This archetype cannot have wrinkles. Sure it's very funny in Goodfellas (1990) where he's meant to be 21, but from a functional standpoint that character can be Joe Pesci age. Here it kinda doesn't work.

Zooming out to the two of them, I'm really not keen on their relationship. It's very "my bitch wife nagging over here while I'm tryna read the paper", and it leads to tonal speed bumps every now and again that hurt the fun tone.

We also have the age gap between the two of them, which feels weird at first, but after they settle into the characters and it becomes apparent that Pesci is playing way younger and Tomei is playing less way older, it kinda stops being an issue. Though it does lead to an extremely funny line where a 27 year old Tomei says to a 49 year old Pesci "it's been 10 years and we're still not married! my biological clock is ticking!"

Other issue I had was a severe lack of setup to the some of the key solution beats. Like, Pesci goes from "fucking everything up miserably" to "absolutely killing it" instantly without any build up. There's like one disconnected scene of him interviewing a witness, but it's not enough for the jump to not feel weird. Like it's mid-court session he starts popping off.

We also don't set up Tomei's mechanical hyperfixations enough. We have a fun exchange about the sink in the hotel, and then there's nothing, until the film drops a "deus ex autisima" on us, where out of nowhere she suddenly saves the day by rattling off inhumanely specific char mechanics trivia for like 10 minutes straight. I mean go off queen, but the sink scene and the brief mention that her family are mechanics is nowhere near enough for this.

Check this out maybe. Karate Kid's also here, but he doesn't do much.

Immediate jail for everyone involved in the production of this.

Your classic "hooker with a heart of gold is saved from hookering by meeting the right man, fulfilling her destiny by becoming a mother" story, and it is somehow way more repugnant than usual.

I actually tapped out a few minutes in when I first went to watch this, but I will NOT be defeated by a studio picture. You hear me?

What is it with Melanie Griffith and being in shit like this? How the fuck is Cecil B. Demented (2000) - a John Waters movie - the least fucked up Melanie Griffith film I've seen? What a cursed career. Oh my god, she was also in Lolita (1997).

This film is a perfect representation of how Hollywood views women, and I mean that in the most scathing way possible. At one point she literally has to argue that she's a human being, and there's a different scene where they sneak her into the classroom to use her as an anatomical model. This is stuff you'd exaggerate on purpose for satire, but here it's played 100% straight.

I don't know if this could ever fully be saved, but you could make a fucking start by ageing the boys up to teens (as it's incredibly fucking creepy here), and paint the intro as the negative starting point of a character arc, instead of just playing off them harassing women on the street as "oh boys will be boys".

Were they having 50s teenybopper school discos in the 90s? Who cares at this point.

I am, however, a big fan of this sappy romance movie also having a ticking clock where Malcom McDowell is ripping people's hearts out in ritualistic gang violence. How is this in the same movie?

real dialogue in the movie:

"You know, there IS a place you can touch a woman that'll drive her crazy…"

"WH-WHERE???"

"Her heart…"

Hard avoid.

Like I assume everyone who watches Psycho (1960) goes through, I saw that there were 20 year later different director sequels and immediately wrote them all off, before hearing that "actually at least 2 is good".

And it is surprisingly very good. No one saw this coming.

Early on it seems like it's just gonna be a less creative more of the same, where he gets released and sent back to the house, and what do you know, he went crazy again and started killing. However, as it goes on it turns out it actually isn't doing this at all.

Actually, it's a very empathetic thriller about a guy battling his childhood trauma driven mental instability, as the people around him trick and goad him into trying to break again. I actually think it does a much better job than P1 of making Perkins empathetic. Like he really does not want to do any of this.

Like P1, there's also very much not many kills. Heard this described as a "more slasher-y P1", but it really isn't. I've heard 3 might be?

The one aspect I really didn't like was the final scene. I'd be fine with it if it was explicitly not true, and he was hallucinating her saying that, but what her saying being true is very shit, and makes the character a lot less interesting in retrospect. It still might be a hallucination, but it's more likely that it's not than it is. Quite like how it ends how it ends aside from that, though.

Our Lynch link for this one is Robert Loggia, AKA Mr Eddy in Lost Highway (1997), in an almost jarringly calm role here.

Will check out 3 at some point, but I'll be honest sounds a lot less interesting.

Unexpected Robert Loggia mental health double bill. Except in this one, he's back to being an angry shouty man.

Blatty's take on the Vietnam War Traumasploitation genre. And would you guess it? The main theme is grappling with faith! How out of character!

Very rare case where I wrote the entire review while watching the film. It's not something that demands a lot of attention (almost at any point), and there's not a lot of atmosphere to get soaked in.

For some reason the Google scrape lists this as a horror/comedy, which might be the most incorrect one of these I've ever seen. At least it didn't set me up on a lie like The New Kids (1985), as there is no way Blatty has a horror/comedy in him.

Very book-ish, and sadly it's very much a detriment here. The story just isn't interesting enough, and the performances aren't strong enough to carry it through. While the cracking faith parts of The Exorcist III (1990) are relatable, here they're much too in the sauce of "guy who's grappling with faith" for someone like me who's never had a faith to grapple with to really understand. And the dialogue is almost entirely either this, or crazy person gibberish. I remember the dialogue in Exorcist III being one of the film's strongest elements, and well I guess he had to wait another 10 years to figure that out.

I do actually quite like the concept of the film, and where it goes, but it gets there in a way that is sadly a bit dull.

The kind of thing that could do with a re-make.

Given Blatty only ever directed two films, this marks another completed filmography. He joins David Lynch, and Neil Breen. No iceberg, as there's only two.

Loses points for a howie long scream. Gains points for Jason Miller making Shakespeare adaptations for dogs.

Apparently the original novel, "Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane" is a pretty short read at only 144 pages, so I might actually give it a shot at one point? It's the kind of thing a book would do better, anyway.

Probably skip this, but do check out Exorcist III.

What an adorable little movie. Clumsy and dodgy, like all good romcoms are, but that's what you're here for.

This is completely carried on it's back by Jami Gertz performance, turning what very much should be an unlikeable character with unlikeable stakes into a very likeable time. She engineers her own meet-cute by setting her sights on a guy, getting him into a car accident, then continually stalking him until he eventually agrees to take her out in a moment of vulnerability. I have not exaggerated any of this for comedic effect. It is actually just like that.

And, because why wouldn't he, the main guy sucks. Boring, smug, piece of shit.

I thought I only knew Gertz from Square Pegs (1982), but turns out she's the main girl in The Lost Boys (1987). I do not remember her in Lost Boys. I should re-watch Lost Boys.

I genuinely I have no idea how it took me this long to come across this, as this is the El Dorado of Twin Peaks links. Romcom with Sheryl Lee as "initial hoity bitch girlfriend he needs to leave to be with the main character". She's great in the role, but in it a weirdly little amount, given how you'd expect her to be a central character. That being said, I would watch paint dry if Sheryl Lee was third billed. Unfortunately, most of her filmography is far worse. Another cursed career.

Like we genuinely spend way more time going "can this working class girl from Jersey and this career money guy who started off poor in Queens ever overcome the class divide", even though half the plot is literally him cheating on Sheryl Lee with her. By the end of the movie, she still doesn't know that he ever dated Lee, like what the fuck?

Lee's performance in the role is good enough for you to forget that she kind of doesn't really do anything wrong? Like outside of being a little mean, the worst she does is flirt with her not very coded gay friend to create drama for one scene. Meanwhile, this guy is cheating on her the whole time, as well as lying to Gertz.

Ending "final deceleration of love to win her back" is adorable, though. It's nothing crazy, but it's one of my favourite of the genre.

A fair few user reviews call this a "cheap Pretty Woman knockoff", but from what I know about Pretty Woman (1990), that's not true at all? Like there's no character transformation for the lead - that's the complete opposite thesis of the film.

Is everything I know about Pretty Woman a lie? Fuck, I have to watch Pretty Woman, don't I?

Check this out maybe. Good luck getting a copy of this that isn't the fucking 2004 Kevin Smith movie, though. Took me four attempts.

Hold the fucking presses. I've just been alerted to another forgotten 90s romcom with Twin Peaks links.

It's Goldberg running about as a killer Santa! You think I know who Goldberg is? I've never given a shit about wrestling! He's solid in this, though.

Film is alright. Expected it to bomb, and while it's nothing to write home about, maybe check this out if you're after edgy 2000s Santa schlock.

It's not as campy as user reviews make out, but it also isn't as abrasively edgy 2000s. There's a one-off R slur, and at one point Santa quietly uses the term "queer" in a derogatory way, but it's nothing worse than like, of-the-time Family Guy.

The reveal to why Santa is very specifically here killing instead of anywhere else in the world is WAY too late, leading to his motivations feeling very confusing for most of it. Even then, it's weird who he kills and who he doesn't kill? It's like he just picks somewhere to go and who to kill at random.

The kills themselves are all passable. One thumbs up affair. However, they're often paired with some very skungy 2000s core Christmas song covers, which are mostly a little too much and start to get grating.

Fran Drescher and Chris Kattan appear in the opening, so of course they're killed instantly.

Ending doesn't really make any sense? Like they do not beat him, and he kind of just fucks off at the end? Sure, whatever, film's over.

This scene was definitely the highlight.

"What if you took Speed (1994) but made an action movie guy the bus."

Decent. Very close to very good, but it's a bit too ugly 2000s, and it ends up kinda ramping down in the last 3rd.

Like outside of the kinda racist stuff and the odd F-slur here and there, that first hour is an absolute blast. Crazy setpiece after crazy setpiece, edited in an incredibly unhinged manic way. It's so much fun.

Last 30 minutes really slows down, though, and kinda just turns into a typical straightforward "crime revenge action movie".

Also very 2000s in a very negative way. It's ugly and grimy in a way that doesn't propel itself, just kind of of-it's time cool meandering. Also, the trashy 2000s loved that shiny gold bikini. Whatever happened to those? I don't think I've ever seen it outside of the slimiest 2000s American movies. Real hallmark of sleaze.

It is so insanely funny how everyone knows what the Crank juice is. Like he calls his doctor, lists three very generic symptons, and the doctor is instantly like "oh yeah that's the Crank juice, you've been Crank'd". There's even a character who knows about the Crank juice, but doesn't know what insulin is? Or is that actually not crazy, and the 2000s were great for insulin education or something. As a child of the 2000s, I knew what insulin was. I'm an ally.

Very weird that the film somehow has multiple F-slurs from the protagonist, while he also has a queer friend that the film is never homophobic towards? It is possible that the way they are presented is meant to be something viewers in the 2000s would laugh at, but like it doesn't come across as bad. That character is A-okay in my books. Your action movie can have a fruity little guy, why not. More fruity little guys in action movies.

"Adrenaline Crank BF and sleepy pot GF" is a very good couple dynamic. Wish she had a little more to do, as it's a fun character, but it'd be overly optimistic to expect a Jason Statham movie to have a good female character.

Very big fan of him using "video game programmer" as a cover for his real work. I've been doing that for years.

Also a very big fan of the 2000s CGI heart zoom ins. At one point we do one for a pigeon, and I could not tell you why we do that.

Right, everyone always mentions "there's a scene where he has sex to keep his heartrate up", but no one mentions that it's in public, in Chinatown, surrounded by a cheering crowd? This was as unhinged as some of the sex scenes in Crimes of Passion (1984).

Turns out I was getting this confused with a scene from Die Hard: With A Vengeance (1995), and had the TV edit trivia at the ready, but I was wrong. Like that would not be out place as an edgy 2000s Crank scenario, and given the dodgy stuff early on, I was expecting it.

Poetically, I did accidentally call Jason Statham Bruce Willis a couple times. Surely he's the Bruce Willis of the 2000s, no?

This poster fucking sucks, by the way. Makes it look way more generic than it is. Should've used some of the video-gamey graphics from the opening. Maybe they were a DVD cut thing.

Check this out maybe if you can stomach 2000s grime.

Pretty good! There's exactly one plot beat at the end I don't like, but I can't say anything whatsoever without getting into spoiler territory.

The rare pre-Halloween (1978) slasher, and this is also way more interesting.

If you've seen Scream (1996), this is the film the phone calls are based on.

Throughout the hour it absolutely nails it's atmosphere. This a very bleak, feel-bad slasher. Sadly, that atmosphere lets up a bit during the final 3rd, but it still does a good job of keeping tension.

Also, presumably because it's pre-Halloween, it's a slasher with a lot of thematic meat to it, with the way the police keep ignoring the girls complaints.

Not much else to say on this one. Check it out.

It's alright.

Great performance by Niell, but the focus on a handful of barely connected setpieces from the sequel to a book that doesn't exist makes the main meat feel more than a little undercooked. There's a lack of the focused, effective worldbuilding of something like Prince of Darkness (1987). Makes it feel a bit half-hearted as it jumps around, instead of the serious sincerity of similar Carpenter films.

Also a lot of the dialogue heavily leans into campy jokey territory, and that is not something Carpenter is good at, tonally. And I'd know, I've seen Escape from L.A. (1996).

Our Twin Peaks link is Frances Bay, AKA the old woman with the grandson who teleports the corn, AKA it's the 90s and you need to cast a sweet old lady character actor. She turns into a tentacle monster at one point. Great stuff.

Don't avoid, but probably leave this until after you've seen all the good Carpenters.

Crazy guy gets obsessed with Sheryl Lee and kills her. If you really squint, that's kind of the plot of Twin Peaks, so that means it's good. There's more similarities I cannot get into without Twin Peaks spoilers, and I would rather die than spoil Twin Peaks.

As 90s TV movies go, it's okay. Still kinda sucks, but it's funnier and more endearing than usual.

It's main issue is how overly unlikable it makes Whaley. While obviously you want to make him somewhat unlikable, this goes WAY too far, and it shifts the mood from "damn that's sad how things ended up like this" to "man fuck this guy. get his ass."

Like the first thing we see is literally him going on a racial tirade. And every so often we cut back to him being racist again, providing constant tonal speedbumps. He even calls him a straight up racial slur at one point. I think the other thing he keeps calling him is also a slur, but I tried looking it up and couldn't find anything. Unique slur.

The other issue is that the mom (Danner) sucks way too much and the daughter (Lee) doesn't suck enough, leaving the familial drama very one-sided.

Literally the entire thing is her fault, also. It's not like him being a creep is a surprise that comes out of nowhere, he's been a creep that made advances the entire time. Fire him and get him out of the house.

Maybe if it succeeded at making him a little more empathetic it wouldn't feel so forced at why she keeps him around. He is such a weiner in this though, it's very funny to watch. Starts off "where's my hug" and fully spirals into incel by the end.

Weird amount of sexual tension between Frank Whaley and the mom. Like I thought I was seeing things that weren't there, but no it almost turns into like a love triangle, and it is very funny.

Also weird how everyone in the post-murder present day was also there in the pre-murder flashbacks? Makes it feel very small scope, like a play. edit: I later found out that this was, in fact, based on a play

Somehow there are multiple scenes of Frank Whaley beating off in this movie. That couldn't have been good for his Career Opportunities. Homage? More like Tribute. I'll be here all week folks; tip your wait staff.

Part of the ending was very confusing. Not sure why that side character was so involved?

Also seemingly the only copy of this in circulation (on YouTube!) is missing the very end. It's in the wrapping up monologue part before it cuts to credits, though, so it's not like you're missing much.

Probably don't watch this. Or do - all on YouTube.

PUNISHMENT.

Solid one-thumbs-up B-slasher.

Two things this is notable for:

1. For some reason people got really mad at this for having a killer dressed as Santa and got it banned (Reagan's America, baby!
2. This is the prequel to the "GARBAGE DAY" movie: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Given that I've already seen 2, which is mostly just clips of 1 (but the original content is more than worth the price of entry), I'd already seen every beat and kill from this, but a highlight real misses the atmosphere. The je ne sais quoi of the killer Santa movie full of gore and nudity.

Only thing it's really missing is more kills, but at this budget there's not a lot you can do. Like he kinda just goes "fuck this one house in particular" while on the way to this destination. He doesn't go to any other houses.

However, for a slasher boom slasher, there is a crazy amount of characterisation of the killer. By that I mean there's a normal amount of characterisation you'd expect from a main character in a movie, but boy you'd be surprised.

Noticing a pattern that the best slashers are those where the slasher is the protagonist. I'm gonna say it. I think Halloween (1978) was bad for the genre. Bulky silent mystery monster men just do not give you enough to go on.

Big fan of his main move where he hides around a corner before jumping out and going "PUNISHMENT". I'm gonna start saying this. Vocal stim unlocked. I cannot post a clip because there's always nudity in frame.

B freaks might also know that this was an early role for genre legend Linnea Quigley. Not much to say; not in it much. Wikipedia lists her as 2nd billed for some reason, even though she's in one scene.

She probably has the most memorable kill in that it's extremely exploitation-y, but definitely not the most fun or funny. That definitely goes to the sledding beheading.

Check this out maybe. 'Tis the season.

"Life sucks. First you're Santa, then you die."

Did not expect this to be as insane as it was. Good lord.

Not-Susan Sarandon and Dan Haggerty team up to fight a Nazi troll. Like, "goblin in the woods" troll, not an online weirdo. Though probably don't look into his online presence. Can't be good.

You'd think you were in for a very predictable "teens accidentally summon monster and it goes around killing" deal, but, no, this quickly turns into an incestuous Nazi occultism version of what I assume Rosemary's Baby (1968) is like. I refuse to watch Rosemary's Baby (1968).

The creature is so fucking funny. It looks like Nosferatu and moves like Mac and Me (1988). For some reason, even though he has claws, he kills people with a little pocket knife? Though it does lead to an incredibly funny shot where he shoots someone with a gun.

Dan Haggerty is honestly too good for this movie early on, playing this really sad empathetic down-on-his-luck-er. Luckily he starts hamming it up later, running around shouting "IS THIS YOUR CHRISTMAS ELF, YOU NAZI FUCK?"

For ultimately not having much bearing on the plot, the Mom is weirdly psychotic. Why the fuck does she kill the cat? It has no bearing on anything? At least the cat stuff is nowhere near as mean spirited or hard to watch as Re-Animator (1985).

Also, for a movie called "Elves", there is literally, genuinely, actually, one single elf in the movie. The worst part of this is that we're now robbed of a world where you have to clarify if you mean the Will Ferrell movie or the Nazi occultism Rosemary's Baby incest movie. Truly we live in the worst timeline.

I had heard going in "there's a bit where the main character says the F-slur when they kill the creature at the end", and I worriedly assumed it was gonna be Haggarty, but it's not-Sarandon. And while still very bad, of course, it does feel less bad that it's a woman saying it. Not sure why, not a good enough queer to know. Maybe it's something to do with a lack of a perceived threat to masculinity and potential violence? Who knows.

Much more of a B-movie fan only deal than Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), but check this out maybe. 'Tis. The Season.

"Do I believe in elves? No… but God did."

Saccharin sweet "gee weren't the olden days swell" Americana. Didn't hate it, but really not my thing.

I actually didn't realise this was a period movie until we sat down to watch it. Remember us watching 10 minutes of it as a teenager and turning it off, so this whole time I fully assumed this was like a 60s movie.

Not big on Americana 40s-50s nostalgia bait unless it's using that to explore darker undercurrents that contrast with that. Things like Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet (1986), or even Harvester (game, 1996). Can't think of more examples off the top of my head.

Also, in line with that, despite the sickly sweet presentation, we also feature a kid crying in pain as he's beaten over the phone. Ah… happy days…

Again, in line with the retro nostalgia, we have the out of nowhere racist ending at the Chinese restaurant? Complete with interchangeable Asian, no less.

I did sort of like the kids imagination POV parts, but the kid is such an unlikable little dickhead it was hard to give the film credit for it. I hate this child.

That being said, I did like the little brother in the huge coat falling over, and the mall Santa bit where they all keep screaming.

A Christmas Story will not be entering my Christmas movie rotation.

By no means disliked it on first viewing, but liked it more on rewatch, as there were no expectations to live up to, and I could just sit back and enjoy what's there

Was also able to really appreciate on rewatch just how good the soundtrack is. Even though the soundtrack isn't what you remember at all about Gremlins, I honestly think if it had a less killer soundtrack that it would be nowhere near as beloved. It really amplifies all the key moments.

Honestly I also think that theory kind of applies to Star Wars (1977) as well, except there the soundtrack is insanely memorable. If Star Wars had a different score I think it would've just been another 70s sci-fi adventure movie forgotten to time.

Bar scene is still hands down the best part of the movie. Nothing ever really comes close, outside of maybe the evil old woman getting launched out of the window.

Man it really sinks in on rewatch what an awful fucking gift Gizmo is. Not only are you getting a surprise pet dumped on you, but you also have very specific rules to follow that are easy to fuck up, and also any additional Mogwai spawns will actively trick you into fucking up the rest of them.

Still bothers me a little bit how they all just congregate in one easy convenient place so they can be dealt with at the end. Maybe if there was more set up that the Gremlins really like old Disney cartoons or something. Would've also been good to actually have the protagonist be a part of why they're there. I think part of the issue is that it's not clear if it's just one contained group moving as one, or if they all spread out over town.

I actually tried to rewatch 2 at some point this year while I was sick and wanted something familiar, but had to turn it off as it was just TOO much for me at the time. Very bad flu movie. You could watch this one with a light cold.

This was THE childhood Christmas movie in my home, and I haven't watched it since being a child that didn't fully follow everything. And you know what? It's still good! Impossible to separate nostalgia, but I was also to young to actually like properly watch it.

I do have a complaint that a lot of scenes tend to end very suddenly and very hard. Not too big an issue, though.

I remember explicitly very much not liking when the cat cartoon-dies as a kid, but I don't mind it now. Is it a little mean spirited, but it's so overly cartoony it's hard to be bothered by it. Also odd that two separate Christmas movies I watched this year had cat death.

I also remember the scene where he fantasises about the woman coming out the pool playing out WAY differently. I remember him being in a garage/patio kind of room, instead of the kitchen; the woman getting out of the pool at night, instead of day; and instead of it being the perfume counter woman, it was something more fucked up, like his mate's teenage daughter or something. A real Bernstein Bears moment.

And - of course - it has a David Lynch link as Angelo Badalamenti composed for this! Can't say any of the soundtrack is very memorable, though. Outside of the main theme, which - of course - was something he didn't work on.

I should revisit Vacation (1983). Remember watching it exactly once as a kid and not liking it, as it felt a lot meaner and less whimsical, but I'm definitely in more of a place to appreciate a dad morbing out film now.

Right, I am firmly in the camp of "not a Christmas movie", but if there's an opportunity to watch Die Hard, I'm watching Die Hard. Die Hard's fucking great. Probably the ultimate boxing day afternoon movie to watch with your dad (I did not do this).

Die Hard is so good in fact, that it being the first big 80s action movie I saw actually ruined all the others for me. They all trip up on what makes Die Hard work so well.

To explain my "not a Christmas movie" stance: I know they say "it's Christmas eve" a couple times, but it has no bearing on the events, and we don't spill over into Christmas. Christmas movies revolve around Christmas to at least a secondary degree.

The event in this is "Christmas work do", and those are not on Christmas Eve. It's a "holiday period" movie, but most importantly, you can absolutely watch this at other times of the year and it not be weird. You're not watching Elf (2003) in like fucking April.

What makes Die Hard work so well is it's very focused scale, limited villains, and a likeable protagonist where the odds feel very against him. Most importantly, while yes, he's macho tough guy, but he reacts in a human way that amplifies the tension instead of diminishing it. "Cool guys not scared of anything" is my number one issue with action movies. It just makes it so hard to see the humanity in it.

I will say the limo guy is weirdly underused. Like the intro sets him up as an actual character, but then all he does is sit there and not even realise anything's happening, until he gets to do one single minor thing at the end. That being said we do already have "guy who he speaks to on the phone" in "cop who's arc is to kill again", so there's definitely a conflict of function there.

Also weird to have two Christmas movies in a row where a woman punches a guy. Definitely deserved it in this though, like he exploited her kids and almost got her killed. Elaine could've probably not.

I remember liking Die Hard 2, but I've not seen any of the rest of them. Maybe at most I'll watch 3. At most.

Boxing Day watch. For those unaware Boxing Day is the day after Christmas where everyone in the Commonwealth watches boxing movies - look it up.

Decent, but trips up a bit at the end, deflating the tension and throwing the stakes out with the bathwater.

There's so little on focus on boxing that it almost isn't a sports movie. In actuality, it's secretly a neurodivergent romance movie. ADHD meathead BF x quiet ASD LVL 1 GF. Was locked the fuck in noticing "he's stimming" and "look, eye contact avoidance". Absolutely zero way this was intended, but it's wild how much of it lines up.

There is that one scene that's very "man consent was like not a concept in the 70s", but mercifully it's only the start of that scene that's rough, and the romance is very nice outside of that.

It's absolutely not the tone you'd expect from "underdog boxing movie", but it works really well in it's favour, dialling everything back so far that it's character dramas almost feel like play-like.

Found it very funny how he keeps going on about his flat being stinky. Did not expect that to become the main running joke during the viewing, but it was a reliable one.

Also incredibly funny hearing the start of the Rocky theme, and having to play the game of "is this going to be the normal version or the really fucked up version?"

Right, the issue I had with the ending is that he basically resigns himself to not caring about the outcome of the fight before the fight even starts. This has a knock-on effect where I found it really hard to care about the big fight the movie has been leading up to - especially not helped by the underdog gaining the initial upper hand. This is against underdog law.

Outside of the ending, part of the issue I had is, for a story about how weird it is that this one random nobody gets this huge opportunity, we don't ever really get to see how the public (especially local) react to this, and what they think of him. The extent of it is basically one scene where a guy throws him a peach. Needs more. Satsuma, perhaps.

I did find the ending where she shouts "Adrian" very sweet, but again, because we threw away any stakes, it doesn't end up landing with any impact. It just ends up feeling like "I mean yeah I guess he wants to see her now, I guess."

Not sure how interested I am in checking out the rest of the series. Not really a sports movie guy; maybe after the rest of the acclaimed boxing movies. Raging Bull? Any others?

Yeah, just a much weaker version of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989). Basically the exact same movie, just with different framing. 3rd time's the charm, I guess.

Only got two little chuckles. Drier than the Christmas Vacation turkey.

Because this is the same movie, this one also has the "bit where the dad flirts with another woman". In Christmas Vacation, it's still a very negative thing, but like it's him making a fool of himself and there's nothing there. Here, however, there's active two-way flirting and he straight up cheats on his wife towards the end. His wife is also right there in frame the whole time he's flirting, which is especially mean towards the wife.

Speaking of, slightly less believable as Mom this time. Not sure if it's that much because of age, like she is too young for the role (30 while the oldest kid is 15), but doesn't look way too young or carry herself too young, both of which are more vital. Maybe those extra 5 years really do go a long way, but I think the winter setting might just gives better options for Mom hair and costuming? Actually I think most films could be improved by having someone wear the Christmas Vacation blouse.

Unlike Christmas Vacation, this one also has a racist scene. There are definitely much less problematic ways to communicate "this is the rough part of town". This is bad.

Also that poster tagline is a lie, the plot is literally "I've been to absent, I'm gonna take my family on a big trip for once".

Given the reputation of the other two, I think I'm done with the series here.

Pretty fun! Very much an oddball slasher, being way too early in the slasher boom to really have the tropes cemented in, but there's a lot of fun moments.

Instead, it takes most of it's cues from Black Christmas (1974), with the killer taunting the (now singular) woman with obscene phone calls, while the police ask her to "keep him on the line so they can trace the call" (this never comes up again), and there's even a plastic bag kill!

And oh my word are the obscene phone calls funny in this. While Black Christmas does actually create a very effective uncomfortable atmosphere with them, here he has a voice modulator and repeats "I'M EEEEVIL" like a Spongebob character.

While the identity of the killer being a mystery is slasher 101 (outside of longrunning series), here that's interpreted as "who exactly this person is", as you straight up just see him walking about the entire time. At one point he wears this fake little moustache and looks like Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting (1996).

The woman (singular) doesn't really get to do anything and kinda stops being the protagonist after a bit. Apparently she plays the Fonz's girlfriend in Happy Days but I am under 85 so I have no context for that.

Somehow this film has a crazy Oedipal son wearing red tights on his head and piercing his ear with a needle, and he does nothing, like at any point? He appears like three times? What the fuck? How do you set this up and not do anything with it?

Some fun 80s punks, but also doesn't do much with them. Tiny bit of meat with the attitude of the police towards the MTV fans, but it's moreso gristle.

Definite recommendation for B-slasher fans.

Weird poster tagline, also. I don't get what it means by that.

2nd last film of the year. Last is not on theme or anything, but had social plans.

Final film of the year.

Yeah, uhh, nah. I mean it's okay, but it's way too obvious what it's deal is from the beginning, and then we outright just say it very early on, but then we also tack on "but you're not allowed to progress with this" so we spend the entire movie just pissing about until we're allowed to progress.

It's also not helped by Nic Cage being so goofy it ends up being really funny whenever he's on screen. Like he's covered in prosthetics singing the verses to Santa Claus is Coming To Town and shit.

Then after an entire film of pissing about achieving nothing, we have the ending stretch, where we suddenly try and flesh out these mechanics to how it works, even though we answered the question at the start so there's no need to get into mechanics, like you don't need to explain this. It's really as simple as it gets. There's essentially just not a mystery here.

It also gets very Blumhouse with the epic creepy dolls it decides to throw in at the last minute, though they don't do anything. There's a lot of like, ghoul JPEG overlays too.

And not to get into spoilers for a thing with basically nothing to reveal, I don't get what the deal is with the one doll towards the end. Like, even if it is something, it didn't really have a bearing on anything.

Would be amiss to not mention the autistic reading of the protagonist, and I do see it, but it's not a huge part of it or anything. Regardless of intent, it is absolutely the "definite but not praise-seeking" representation we could do with more of. This is a person, they have these traits they've made fit with their life, and it doesn't even need to be addressed.

Skip.

edit: extremely important update I need to add:

Lynch link I somehow missed

the mom plays Alia in Dune (1984), and Donna's sister in Twin Peaks

that is all