Reviews

This one is more of a "Mystery, Drama" as opposed to Cube (1997)'s "Psychological Thriller" status. These Cube films are all over the place in terms of genre and tone, so that's not a bad thing at all. I like the variety this franchise holds while somehow being as formulaic and repetitive as a Scooby-Doo film.

It also repeats a lot of the plot beats from the Cube (1997) film, that this is technically based on. The film has different characters that are different character archetypes than the original film too, which was nice to see. The characters rely less on their archetypes and more on their emotions, which made for an investing and riveting drama. This film stands alone and sets itself apart by changing so much about the characters, while keeping most of the plot beats of the original.

It's also almost 25 years after the original film's release, and VFX have advanced a lot since then. This film is able to fully replicate and in some places even surpass the effects of the original film. The gore is almost non-existent in this one, but the more mysterious and dramatic tone didn't leave me longing for gore. The cutaways to a CGI cube graphic was really annoying, but it added to the mystery, and it payed off, so i can't complain. This might actually have the most satisfying ending of any Cube franchise film, even though it leaves you on such a great hook for a sequel. One of my biggest gripes is these films' inconsistency with continuity and technology. I really hope this film gets a sequel directly following this film and is able to tie up its loose ends completely satisfactorily, for the first time in Cube (1997) history.

Keep in mind that i am an official member of the Cube (1997) appreciation society, so you should know i like me some Cube franchise media. I really enjoyed this film, but I don't think any of this Cube sequels surpass 3 stars.

Anyways, if you have a way to watch this, you should. It's a Cube film, you know what you're getting into.

I haven't seen this film since i was single-digits in age. Tim Burton's style and sensibilities work so well to showcase the circus freak nature of a superhero that has no superpowers.

I think Jack Nicholson is a bit overhyped as the Joker. He nails the look, but he doesn't do a grating voice and barely laughs hysterically. I appreciate the focus on different forms of art and expression, it really made this iteration of the Joker a lot more memorable. Although having Batman and Joker's origins tie in is very interesting, I still think it feels too convenient and coincidental to appreciate.

The score is amazing and moody and i love it so much <3 alternatively, I don't understand why Prince made most of the licensed music in the soundtrack. The songs fit the few scenes they're in, but they don't have the same tone or vision as anything else in the film. Apparently, Burton liked Prince's music and wanted him to make the original songs for the film, but I still don't think it has the same feel as the rest of the film. Maybe Burton only wanted a song or two, but it seems like Warner Bros. Pushed to have Prince do the whole soundtrack to bring media attention to Prince and revitalize his career.

I'm watching this in preparation for The Flash (2023), mainly because I don't remember much about Michael Keaton's performance as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Keaton isn't bad, but he's really not as amazing as I remembered. His costume looks goofy and you can tell he has limited mobility. This film is so stylish and fun, it can get away with that nonsense, but I'm curious to see how Michael Keaton's look evolves in The Flash (2023).

Overall though, i still liked this film. I remembered it being a lot better, but it's still one of Tim Burton's good films, so you know what you're getting into.

This episode really didn't hold back on utilizing its premise to its fullest potential. This story felt a bit more unassuming than many of the more lackluster episodes to have been released post-season 2. Although, Michael Cera kinda ruins the fun and overexplains/dumbs it down a bit too much (similarly to Donald Glover's role in The Martian (2015)).

I just loved how much fun they had with this concept. It's definitely going to be "too meta" for some people, but i think this one goes so in-depth, it almost stops being stupid.

Hopefully, the other new episodes have interesting and fleshed-out science fiction concepts as well!!

Or Violent/Heterosexual/S**t or Vague/Horrific/Segments or Vicious/Hideous/Smut or Various/Horror/Shorts or Visually/Harsh/Saga

"I will make out with you if you put the camera away" "but I don't want to" -this movie

That's this whole film. It's excessively uncomfortable and continues to be so for its entire runtime. This anthology film opens with a bit about some rude boys, similar to Clockwork Orange, they break into a house full fo VHS tapes. That is the frame work for the shorts within the film. We watch the rude boys watch VHSes in some poor guy's house. Each tape contains a short video, cutting in and out early on and slowly having longer and longer takes as it escalates into a horror story before they abruptly end and going back to the rude boys. Once it ends, there is one more short, but it has a finality to it.

The first short was very sexual and perverted and I wanted it to be over the whole time. The second short rectifies this by having a female protagonist/camera holder, it's not a better short, but it keeps the tone and general feeling of unease the first short has. The third short gradually became more interesting, and was overall fantastic. The fourth short is all on Skype/FaceTime. I hate this kind of storytelling, but the Helen Rogers' performance in this got me hooked right away. It whimpered out instead of having a solid ending though, but the framework ends not soon after, and it has a more satisfactory ending, so it almost evens out. Then the last short works as a closer, and it's so much better than all the other shorts, it's the highlight of the film. It doesn't feel tonally different, it's just much better told overall. The end of it too, it hits you like a speeding train. Fantastic. That last short is really like a 7 or 8/10. Or maybe I'm just deluded from watching all the worse shorts that came before it.

Shorts ranked: 1. Halloween 1998 (5th short) 2. Tape 56 (Framework) 3. The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger (4th short) 4. Tuesday The 17th (3rd short) 5. Amateur Night (1st short) 6. Second Honeymoon (2nd short)

This film needs a scene to just explain how this got edited together onto one VHS. My thinking is like someone buys a used camera and opens it up and finds and SD card. They only find this file: This film. Also, I HATE that this isn't in 4:3. It already looks like absolute garbage, I don't understand why it couldn't be in 4:3, especially considering the title and concept. Yeah, expect this whole film to be digitally-recorded low quality widescreen video, and not fuzzy 4:3 trash like it should be. I'm guessing this was done because CGI-ing over a digital video could look bad, but then why not just make the whole film, digitally in 4:3 and then tape it onto VHSes until one of them is satisfactory. For anyone thinking, "why don't you just do that?", well, the film is formatted for widescreen, so I would have to recut the film to work in 4:3. It would be quite the undertaking. Look up "full screen formatted films", if you don't understand what I'm talking out. The Skype/FaceTime short looked like crap because there wasn't enough pop-ups or UI crap. They did a good job having the video cut in and out. Sorry to rant about the technical aspects of a subpar film. It's very amateur-ish like all found-footage media, but this one is a blast.

Watch this film if it sounds intriguing.

The agonizing A-plot centers around a bunch of adults bullying a child. The depressing B-plot revolves around a group of poor orphans who couldn't afford real costumes, so most people won't give them candy. It's awesome. Once the plots cross over, the special really gets more interesting, but it becomes intensely more depressing for this group of impoverished children.

Honestly though, I don't know how these kids are ever going to get adopted. Who buys their kids used? They're not like a Nintendo game, this isn't GameStop.

For a 70s Hanna-Barbera thing made for the TV, it looks stellar. There's a really gross, almost body-horror bit of animation where a cat almost falls off a broomstick. Its arms stretch really long, on a disgusting way, and I hate it.

The special does get a bit less sad near the end. It never really becomes happy, even if the orphans eventually do get costumes. This all just made me so sad. It was very Halloween-y though, and it definitely made me feel "the Halloween spirit".

I remember the comic fairly well, but at least they showed dusk/sunsets more, so the whole comic had more orange images. Bantam (2022) diluted my memory of the comic because it uses some of the plot details/ideas. It also definitely took inspiration visually, that comic is super dark with a lot of barely-not-silhouettes on orange backgrounds.

Visually, it looks fine. It's your standard 2010s DCAU film. I wish the film hard more of an orange palette like the comic. None of the voice cast stands out. Although, Jack Quaid is a supporting character, and a suspect at one point, and I find his voice super distracting because I can only identify that actor as Hughie from Amazon Prime Video's The Boys (2019).

This film was pretty good, but I thought scarecrow was going to be in this. My rating doesn't affect that, I'm just saying. I did just google it and Scarecrow's going to be in part two, so I wasn't wrong.

Watch this if you like Bantam (2022) or just Bantam in general.

Yeah. "Weird" Al Yankovic is great at The Riddler. He's just a punching bag for Bantam, who continually guesses Al's riddles. Bantam is played by Kevin Michael Richardson, which is really cool. He's good in everything. I just saw him (with very few lines) in Scooby-Doo and The Samurai Sword (2009). He was great in that too.

Enough about casting, the 2D animation is serviceable for this short. I wouldn't say it particularly looks good, but it looks passable. It's cheap and low-budget, but it's just a short that plays between commercials, so who really cares?

It's like a minute and twelve seconds, so seventy-two seconds overall. Overall, It was great to see Kevin Michael Richardson and Weird Al as Bantam and The Riddler.

Quirky and lonely.

I like how sad and lonely it is, but that's pretty much all it is. The soundtrack keeps you from getting bored as you watch scene after scene of people walking through a desert. At least they have good chemistry. The desert looks beautiful, and it is lit/exposed very well.

The voice actor for the robothead is fantastic and i love them as the narrator. The chemistry between these two actors works for me and definitely builds up throughout the film.

The emo (kind of Muse-y too) song that plays over the credits, that the movie must be named after fits the tone of the end of the film pretty well.

It's a little less lowbrow than Robot Chicken usually is too. There's a really unfunny segment where "The Nerd" becomes Green Lantern, but I think they only made it because they had the toys from the 2011 Green Lantern cartoon at their disposal. Other than that, all the gags here are really thought-out and specific to the characters they're poking fun at. Many of the jokes have unexpected payoffs later, which made it feel like it was treated with more care, and truly a special, as opposed to an episode of television.

This was fun. I would still recommend it as DC parody content, it's more than just regular Robot Chicken.

This film can't decide what kind of movie it was to be or what kind of tone it was to have.

Jessica M. Thompson continues to improve, giving us a more tense and spooky experience than The Light of the Moon. I wish it had a similar tonal shift like that film had though. I didn't like the splashes of the supernatural we got throughout the film, and I would have much rather preferred it he ambiguous whether or not they're vampires (or even just really eccentric) sort of like George A. Romero's Martin.

The first thirty minutes or so have a lot of Get Out parallels, just in the way the story is set up. At one point, she goes for a run at night for no reason, just like in Get Out, but then the movie veers into a totally different direction and doesn't feel like such a blatant copy. I'm glad her best friend wasn't in it too much because I think it would have distracted me from the drama/mystery of the story.

The scene from the trailer where they're like having dinner really got me hooked, and it really helped get me invested for the last thirty minutes of the film, but it felt too little too late after already teasing us so much. I think this film should have saved its supernatural aspects for those final minutes rather than sprinkling them throughout, it would have made the reveal so much more impactful. I basically wish the film tricked you into thinking it's a drama/thriller, but I am not at all discrediting the movie for what I wanted it to be.

I really don't think this was a great movie, but it was decently-shot. I liked a lot of the performances and I felt like I could always tell what was happening (like in the dark) which is important to me in a horror movie. Not that everything needs to be shown, I just don't think dark = scary. I also really liked the long black nails the vampires had and I thought their teeth didn't look too fake or cheesy.

Nathalie Emmanuel did a great job as the lead in this film, but Thomas Doherty really stole the show for me here. He was so hot in this movie (I would let him bite me lol).

It's worth a watch if you really like vampires or are bored. I did have some fun though, but I don't think you need to rush out to theatres for this one. It would be just as good at home on your television.

Not just a concert film, not quite an art film, but it definitely showcases some excellent performance art. Zero narrative, and standing alone as just musical performances, this film constantly reinvents its sound by progressively adding more performers to the stage until it's just a hectic showcase of dancers, singers and musicians showing true creativity with improvisations, synchronized choreography and inventive dances.

This concert film, like most works on audio alone, and I want you to keep that in mind with what I say next. Pretty much everyone in this film is coked out of their minds (almost) the entire time. People often go off stage as a song ends, presumably to do more coke. Everyone is bouncing off the walls and sweating buckets and it is just an absolute treat to see.

Props to David Byrne to name dropping all the musicians onstage during Take Me To The River. Also, rest in peace to their director, Jonathan Demme.