Reviews

Halloween Kills picks up on the action only minutes after Halloween (2018) rolled credits. As Dylan Arnold's Cameron walks home, upset with himself and wallowing a bit, he comes across Will Patton's Officer Hawkins where he lies bleeding on the pavement as he'd been left to die in the final third of the previous installment. Though Hawkins appears to be dead at first, he is soon revealed to be clinging to life.

We are treated to a surprisingly well-produced return to Halloween (1978) in a flashback that shares the concluding events of that night from the perspective of a younger Hawkins and his partner. In this, we discover that Hawkins has cause to feel no small amount of guilt over the events of that night 40 years before.

We witness further events of that night, encountering children having an altercation before being sent home by police roaming the streets in search of Michael Myers. One of those children will be a familiar character to discerning viewers of the older Halloween.

We meet up with Tommy Doyle (now played by Anthony Michael Hall), Nancy Stephens's Marion (returning to the character for a fourth time in the series, though only the second in this internal timeline), and Kyle Richards's Lindsey (reprising her role from the 1978 classic) at a bar where open mic night is in full swing. While I would have enjoyed seeing a nod to The Curse of Michael Myers, with Paul Rudd returning to portray Tommy Doyle, I was nonetheless pleased to see so many performers returning to roles they played in 1978 and 1981 respectively. This includes Charles Cyphers returning to take on the mantle of Leigh Brackett yet again.

As emergency services race toward Laurie Strode's burning home, Jamie Lee Curtis's Strode shouts a desperate plea that they let it burn. If they had heard her and heeded her request, the movie would have turned out quite differently. A single firefighter falling through the floor into Strode's trap basement provides the means for the still breathing Myers to remove himself from his imprisonment below the house.

Carnage ensues in a scene that pits Michael against a group of firefighters, in which the killers prowess is displayed to be anything but diminished. This is something we experience more than once in this movie that has rarely, if ever, been incorporated in a slasher flick. In Halloween Kills, we are treated to one-against-many conflicts that are typically antithetical to the slow, methodical stalker and prey relationships we often expect from such stories. The Michael Myers of this movie is more a force of nature than we've come to expect, capable of bursts of intense violence directed, rather than toward singular targets, at groups of people. An economy of brutality is on display with murderous efficiency, as Myers dispatches multiple opponents with expedience and ruthlessness.

I went into Halloween Kills with the expectation that it would suffer from middle movie syndrome, being the second of a planned trilogy of sequels following the events of Halloween 40 years before. What I experienced was more like The Empire Strikes Back than The Two Towers, a self-contained narrative that--while it is designed to carry the plot between beginning and end of the trilogy--manages to satisfy my needs as a standalone experience.

The performances are spectacular, the kills are savage and visceral, the soundtrack/score was superb, and the story unfolding for the characters as Michael makes his way through Haddonfield toward his natural destination is a vivid enough assortment of threads as to make for a worthwhile tapestry. The sheer brutality of Michael's murders is almost enough to distract the viewer from the underlying theme of fear spreading through a community primed for terror and harboring a certain tension just beneath the surface for nearly half a century. This explodes in a predictable fashion as the residents of Haddonfield create the conditions wherein Michael is able to thrive and flourish, feeding--as he seems to--on the very anger and horror being amplified by the mob mentality spreading like wildfire throughout the movie.

A bit of dialogue near the end of the movie manages to sum things up nicely. When Hawkins expresses his regret at having made this possible by not letting Michael die back in 1978, Laurie Strode corrects him and explains that this is her fault, that her fear of Michael's return has been allowed to spread and fester like an infection in the otherwise quaint community.

I know that I am certainly looking forward to the release of Halloween Ends next October, and I truly hope a whole lot of you are as well.

If you're unfamiliar with We Need To Do Something, I recommend that you sift through my earlier blog posts for my review of the novella by Max Booth III. Published in spring of 2020, Max's We Need To Do Something set an unexpectedly appropriate tone for a year that frequently included the term "shelter in place." Deeply disturbing and claustrophobic, the novella got under the skin of almost everyone who read it. It was no surprise that the screenplay Max adapted from his novella managed to capture attention. Now we have the opportunity to watch the result of more than a year of hard work from Max and the cast and crew involved in the production.

We Need To Do Something is a tale of a dysfunctional, broken family taking shelter in a bathroom as a tornado warning precedes a massive and destructive cataclysmic event taking place in the world outside of their confinement. Trapped by a fallen tree, the family bonds dissolve as panic sets in. Revealed in flashbacks, we learn that the daughter, Melissa, might have something to do with what begins to feel more like the end of the world than merely a storm.

To say that Sean King O'Grady captured the foreboding atmosphere and quirky humor of the story is an understatement. I sincerely believe he'll have a lot of attention after this particular movie makes the waves it surely will. I don't doubt Max had plenty of input on set as an Executive Producer, and the screenwriter of the project, but it required a quality director with vision and attention to detail no matter how much consultation the writer provided.

Largely a single-location shoot, the set was an important character in and of itself. The bathroom where the family found themselves trapped as a storm--and whatever else--raged beyond the walls needed to be perfect in its way. The art department nailed the bathroom design.

Pat Healy's performance as the angry, alcoholic father, Robert, is eerily well done. Vinessa Shaw captures the humor and sympathetic nature of Diane, the mother who, desperate to hold everything together, had been planning to leave her awful husband until the storm forced them into captivity. The true stars are Sierra McCormick and John James Cronin, Melissa and Bobby, respectively. The two of them portrayed siblings so well as to make one feel as if they'd been living together for years. Melissa was brought to life as a confused, terrified teenager wracked with guilt over the witchcraft she'd performed with her girlfriend, Amy, and the belief that they'd been responsible for everything happening. Bobby was believable as the equally adorable and annoying younger brother, so much so that the events are no less heartbreaking and painful than they were when reading the novella.

While the production wasn't at all what I'd pictured in my imagination, it triumphantly came to replace the things I'd seen in my mind's eye while reading the book more than a year ago.

I can only imagine how proud Max Booth III must be, having seen his vision brought to life in this new way, with such spectacular quality. It's especially gratifying, I suspect, to have seen the "good boy" scene played out on screen. Anyone who has read the novella will know precisely what I'm talking about. It's truly the turning point of the story, where the reader/viewer realizes there's something horrifying taking place.

We all need to do something, indeed. We Need To See This Movie!

Well, Would You Rather was one of the most discomforting movies I've had the pleasure of seeing.

I have watched intensely gory movies, films with the express purpose of disgusting the viewer or making them physically ill, and essentially every horror flick I could get my hands on from a young age on...but this movie was deeply unsettling.

At its core, it's a story of human nature and kin selection, forcing the viewer to question just how far we might go for those we love...but it's so much more than that too.

The cast was fantastic. Jeffrey Combs is fantastic in his role as the sadistic (presumable) billionaire hosting the events of the evening, but I have always loved Combs as an actor. Brittany Snow is heartbreaking as the protagonist, desperate to do whatever it takes to save her dying brother. Seeing Robb Wells in a role outside of Trailer Park Boys was satisfying, as was seeing Robin Lord Taylor outside of his role as Penguin on Gotham. Sasha Grey continues to show that she has made a successful transition from adult movies, though her role in this movie was a fairly small one, and far from sympathetic.

I doubt I'll watch this movie a second time, not because it was bad, but because it will stick with me well enough that I don't need to witness it again...but I am quite glad that I did finally watch it.

I recommend that you watch the documentary The House I Live In, all of you. If you have never critically analyzed our "War On Drugs" or the policies our nation enforces where drug use and drug trafficking are concerned or if you disbelieve that there is a problem in our nation where systemic and institutionalized racism comes into play, then you absolutely need to take the time required to watch this film.

I am not a fan of drugs or drug use. I've had my experiences, numerous as they have been, and I opted to sober up of my own volition without treatment or incarceration. That needs to be said, because I wanted to establish my own perspective before I go any further.

Narrated by a man who's family immigrated to the United States in order to escape persecution in Europe during the spread of fascism, this ends up being an oftentimes chilling exploration of the problems with our legal attitudes toward drugs as a whole as well as the serious and severe issues in our society that contribute to the seemingly endless cycle of disenfranchisement that produces these crimes.

We have interviews with judges, police officers of all sorts, community leaders, prison guards, as well as numerous drug users and dealers (both on the street and incarcerated)...and it all paints a horrifying portrait of just how bad our government and legal system have failed massive segments of our population, most notably minorities and those who live in poverty.

If you can watch this documentary without feeling like there is something terribly wrong with the way we approach these things, you lack in basic reasoning capacity and human compassion.

The "War On Drugs" has been nothing but a costly, losing battle against an abstract, which is something a lot of us have known for a long time...and the problems have only gotten worse over the years as it devolved from the progressive and strangely human policy Nixon originally implemented.

Drugs are a problem. No one will dispute that fact. I certainly wouldn't deny that drugs destroy lives...but the drugs themselves aren't destroying lives at anywhere near the rate that our draconian policies happen to be. Those policies need to change, and we need to change the way we perceive the things we accept so readily without critical analysis from our government officials, law enforcement officers, and courts.

Watch the documentary, really think about what you're seeing, and try to find a better way...because we can't keep doing things the way we have been.

Avengers: Age of Ultron was an excellent movie. I would absolutely recommend taking the time to see it, especially if you happen to be a fan of the Marvel movies that have been released to date.

I've seen a lot of mixed reviews, the complaints mostly focusing on the fact that there was a lot of story and a great deal of activity shoved into a package that was just shy of two and a half hours. Maybe it's because I spent a lot of my life reading comic books, but I didn't feel at all like the narrative was rushed or unevenly paced at all. Personally I felt that there was a terrific balance between well choreographed action and well-written character development...though I might have liked to see a little bit more of the story dedicated to The Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver depending on how it was managed. The introduction of those three characters was fantastic though, and I thoroughly loved the change in dynamics that they forced upon the existing Avengers.

One of the other negative things that I saw frequently expressed was disdain for the segment of the movie that took place on Hawkeye's farm, with the introduction of a secret life that only he, Black Widow, and Fury were previously aware of. I couldn't disagree more with those who complained about that bit of story arc, or any of the other sections of the movie that focused on fleshing out the characters who haven't had the benefit of multiple movies establishing the more human, non-hero sides to them.

Ultron was handled better than I went into the movie expecting, AI is always a bit touchy for me because it is handled so poorly in almost all cases. Ultron, however wasn't necessarily an AI, not in the sense that The Vision was at least, basically amounting to little more than a trap waiting for an individual or society technologically advanced enough to assemble it. The results would likely have been the same or at least similar if Hydra had completed the project instead of Banner and Stark doing so, the only real aspect of Ultron that was provided by Stark was the name and a sort of substrate into which the AI was dumped. I get the feeling that people who claimed that the character arc was basically little more than an AI being created, accessing the internet, and deciding that humanity was something that needed to be eradicated weren't paying altogether too much attention to the fact that the AI template for Ultron was already present, within the Mind Gem, and Tony was essentially stealing that blueprint and hoping to embed it into his Ultron project...at least that was what I gathered from the dialogue between he and Banner.

I honestly didn't see any of the flaws that I heard people complaining about at all, and I loved the movie. I don't know that I would trust anyone claiming to have liked it more than Guardians of the Galaxy, but it comes a close second to that as far as the Marvel cinematic universe is concerned, edging just ahead of Captain America: The Winter Soldier as my second favorite of these movies.

I tried to avoid any spoilers, but some tiny ones were necessary in order to counter the criticisms I've been reading from those who disliked the movie or at least aspects of it. Ultimately you're going to have to make up your own mind though, see the movie (if you haven't already), and decide for yourself whether it was great or just good...I am leaning towards great.

have to admit that I didn't expect much from Project Almanac. For what amounts to a modern found footage take on My Science Project, but without the sense of wonder and imagination of the former film, this really wasn't such a bad movie at all. Most of these movies focusing on high school students are about characters that I can't relate to, not because I'm 36 but because they are terribly two-dimensional (or even one-dimensional) caricatures of people. Chronicle was pretty damn good, for the same reasons, an interesting science fiction premise and fairly well-developed characters.

This movie starts off as sort of a feel-good movie about a group of kids tampering with technology that they don't fully comprehend...and toying with the fabric of time in initially innocent ways. But, as anyone would expect, everything goes off the rails and the feel-good aspect of the movie dissipates rapidly.

The movie ends up being almost heartbreaking simply because of how relatable and sympathetic the characters actually are.

I can see why people might not like this movie, and not exclusively because of how worn out the found footage genre is and how this movie borrowed a lot from the likes of The Butterfly Effect (a movie that I actually loved)...but I personally ended up enjoying the tension and well-written story quite a bit, though that could have a lot to do with how little I expected from it.

Chappie is the modern version of what we would have gotten if someone had made the god awful decision to cast Vanilla Ice and Lil' Kim in Short Circuit...ignoring that neither of those two pop culture "icons" were available when Short Circuit was produced, and we can ignore that without any cognitive dissonance because we also know that there is absolutely no way anyone would have decided to do such a terribly stupid thing even if it was temporally possible.

Die Antwoord being cast in this movie as themselves (albeit some sort of legitimate gangster iteration of themselves, listening to their own music in the process) was easily one of the dumbest decisions I have ever witnessed being implemented by a filmmaker. I can enjoy Die Antwoord in small doses as a sort of guilty pleasure that I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about; but there is literally no way I would ever consider them to be viable acting talents...though Yolandi does manage to display greater skill as an actress than I would have expected, but that isn't saying much, considering how little I expected of her.

Beyond those two somehow finding their way into the movie, it was actually very poignant and not at all exclusively the gritty Short Circuit remake that I suspected it might be. Chappie is more likable and less irritating than Number 5, which doesn't take much because, no matter how much I still enjoy Short Circuit (mostly out of nostalgia), the movie was really just all around bad and stupid.

Watching Chappie evolve through development of consciousness and identity from infancy through to adulthood is actually quite fascinating and terribly sad thanks to the gauntlet the poor thing is put through along the way. It explores topics of mortality, free will, and morality in a surprisingly interesting way, through the innocent eyes of Chappie.

Depth and insight are undermined as the story suffers from a low brow thug sentimentality that is kind of humorous at times but ends up wearing out its welcome along the way. The largely Die Antwoord-infused soundtrack and the subpar acting by the same are not high points, and tend to reinforce the thug dynamic to an extent that is simply uninteresting. I keep finding myself coming back to those two as being the biggest problem with the movie.

The rest of the cast, notably Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, and Dev Patel especially are almost enough to raise the overall caliber of the acting in the movie from the bargain basement outhouse quality Ninja and Yolandi create...but almost simply isn't good enough.

Honestly, I might have been able to really enjoy this movie had it not been for the perplexing casting choices...but that alone was enough to ultimately ruin the movie.

As Above, So Below is the found footage horror genre's answer to The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones...though it falls somewhere in between as far as quality is concerned, being not as good as the Indiana Jones movies but quite a great deal better than The Da Vinci Code.

An extremely well-educated (though perhaps too impulsive) woman follows a series of clues from Iran to Paris in search of the alchemical Philosopher's Stone. The search leads her into the catacombs beneath Paris and much deeper, into a nightmarish place where things steadily fall further and further out of control.

All said, it was one of the best found footage flicks I have seen. It wasn't entirely predictable (which was a nice touch), the acting was better than the standard quality from this sort of movie, and the story was actually quite interesting.

If you're reading this, you should stop right now and go see Mad Max: Fury Road...and if you've already seen it, go ahead and see it again. Sure, there isn't much for character development or much by way of story, at least not the conventional variety that movies usually contain...but it was still there, just a bit differently conveyed and with a strange sort of (I'm loathe to use the word in reference to this movie, simply because it sounds absurd)...subtlety. The plot is propelled in a very visceral way, with the explosive momentum of the action itself as the vessel...and good lord was that intense.

This movie took the tension and action from Max Max, The Road Warrior, and Beyond Thunderdome, rolled it all into one beautifully executed package, and made it far more epic than the previous films could have been. This was the movie I spent more than a decade waiting on, from the first time George Miller began discussing his plans for Fury Road (only to have it put on what appeared, at the time, to be a permanent hiatus), and it was worth the wait. As much as I wanted to see Mel Gibson reprise his role, Tom Hardy handled it with the sort of professional capability that made it easy to deal with while experiencing the final product. Hell, there were even scenes where he was almost indistinguishable in the role from Road Warrior era Gibson. Charlize Theron was fantastic in what amounted to the leading role of the movie, but Theron being great comes as no surprise to anyone, I would imagine. She always is. Of course, we can't forget the absolute perfection of continuing the Farscape correlation, at least those of us who were fans of Farscape. Melissa Jaffer (who played Utu-Noranti Pralatong) plays Keeper of the Seeds in Fury Road just as Virginia Hey (who played Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan) portrayed "Warrior Woman" in The Road Warrior.

And then there's also the fact that Hugh Keays-Byrne (who played Toecutter in Mad Max) once again portrayed Max's major antagonist by portraying Immortan Joe in Fury Road.

Little things like that really do make me happy.

I'm not going to deny that there are probably numerous flaws with the movie beyond the miniscule ones that I noticed, but I couldn't conceivably care less...the whole was strong enough to compensate for any shortcomings in the components. Admittedly, I'm a Mad Max fanboy. I'm one of those people who sincerely feels that original trilogy of films stands just as strong as movies like The Terminator, and the other movies from the same time period that are considered to be classics by many. My opinion is, of course, a bit biased in that respect...but not that biased.

It was fun, it was intense, it was jaw-droppingly spectacular where the effects were concerned, the cinematography was actually beautiful in a lot of respects, the acting was solid and consistent throughout, and Miller's directing was superb. This one is worth seeing on the big screen, as many times as you can manage it, in 3D if you can manage it (it takes advantage of the 3D better than a lot of movies do).

So, get going!

Don't Blink was a refreshing change of pace from the found footage horror flicks I have been seeing lately. I don't know if it's horror so much as suspense, but it is definitely the sort of movie, if you can immerse yourself in the experience, that will give you chills. This isn't one that relies on jump scares, creature effects, gore, or anything of the sort. This movie was all about the atmosphere that it builds up. It was very original, in fact the closest I can think to compare it to was Vanishing on 7th Street...and I loved that movie. A fairly large group of friends heads into the mountains for a camping trip, but when they arrive at the resort lodgings they find cars in the parking lot but no people anywhere. It doesn't take long before they realize there are also no birds, insects, or animals of any kind in the surrounding area either. With gas pumps that aren't working they have no way to fill up their cars and leave, so they opt to stay where they are only to begin disappearing one after another. In the middle of conversation or while in the midst of doing something, the person simply vanishes, clothing and all.

There is no explanation given for what is happening, no investigation to speak of by the group that is dwindling in size, just terror and discomfort as they wait to see who is next to go.

It was well-executed enough to manage pulling off an eerie quality that kept me watching and waiting, just like the characters, to see what might happen next.

It's not a scary movie, but it is unsettling and spooky in a way that I enjoyed very much...and the ending was suitably desolate to feel like it was fulfilling.

I don't know that I enjoyed The Houses October Built as a horror movie so much as I enjoyed it as a premise for a documentary. Yet another found footage horror movie, it was better than a lot of them but not even close to as good as the best. It would be a fun way to spend the time leading up to Halloween, traveling around the country to find increasingly more extreme haunted houses and the like. The fact that I could easily see myself in the position of the amateur filmmakers of this movie served to make it more enjoyable than it might have otherwise been. The bizarre and surreal way that the group begins to get tormented and harassed along the way is certainly more interesting than it could have been, and in their position those things would be scary as hell. As the movie builds towards the climax, it becomes clear that they are getting precisely what they were looking for, something terrifying; but they would have been better off not getting what they asked for. I was more invested in the characters than I am where most of these found footage movies are concerned, but that was in large part because I could relate to the impulse that inspired the journey they were on. In a sense there could be some correlations drawn between the antagonists in this movie and those from The Strangers, just on a larger scale. I assume that the moral of this story is that it can be dangerous to seek out greater and greater thrills, and to be damn careful what you wish for. Like the haunted houses and scare attractions this movie focuses on, the movie itself relies strongly on jump scares...but it does manage to establish a nice and tense feeling of expectation, which is more than I expected. It's worth watching, if only because there is a bit of unexplored country involved in the focus on Halloween haunts gone horribly awry...also there were some clowns, and everyone loves clowns.

Prior to watching Treehouse I ended up reading what were seemingly universal negative reviews of this movie. Now that the movie is over I would find myself wondering if these people were watching an entirely different movie if it hadn't been for specific plot points that they referenced. Sure, there have been better suspense/horror movies made, but there wasn't anything particularly wrong with this one. The story takes place in the Ozark mountain region and when the movie starts off, children and young adults have apparently been going missing for a little while. It begins with a fairly tense and interesting segment regarding one of these instances of people going missing before the title sequence comes up. There will be a bit of a spoiler here, though not much of one. There seems to be some misapprehension with people who had reviewed this before because they seem to be under the impression that there was some sort of inhuman creature (or creatures) out in the woods where the titular treehouse is located, when it was more than obvious to me that these were nothing more than people, even having a totally human shape when all we are exposed to are silhouettes and shadows initially. Like movies along the lines of Wrong Turn and The Hills Have Eyes, the monsters in this movie are human beings, depraved as they might be. One of the other major complaints I read about was the rapid connection developed between two of the characters, to the point that the girl begins referring to the boy with a bit of a pet name after they had spent the night in hiding. Clearly, these individuals had never been made aware of the fact that high stress, frightening, and life threatening situations have a tendency to cause people to develop an intense emotional bond with others who are in the same position. There was nothing bizarre or ludicrous about that use of a pet name in the least. Finally, the other big complaint was about the ending, leaving a final little piece of the story open-ended, not for a potential sequel, but simply because there was no reason to film it. That is a common thing, in movies and in literature, to complete the climax and then have a final scene in which our heroes head off to finish the last little bit of what needs to be done, without following them on that last stretch of the journey, allowing us to fill it in for ourselves and enjoy a tiny little shred of mystery regarding what happens. I can only assume that the people who watched this movie before me (and complained about these aspects of it in the clearly oblivious manner they exhibited) are either stupid or not altogether familiar with movies in general. The score was good and helped to enhance the atmosphere of the story, and the same could be said for the camera work and overall direction. The acting was better than par for a relatively unknown, low budget horror flick. The story was good, though not perfect, and it was more than coherent enough to keep my interest.

Always Watching is another addition to the preponderance of found footage movies within the horror genre. I was getting tired of this gimmick a good number of years ago, but it obviously isn't going anywhere...and when it works it actually does end up leading to some worthwhile movies. This one is a bit of a loose take on the internet-created Slenderman trope, arguably the first entirely crowd sourced urban legend. The antagonist is referred to as The Operator rather than Slenderman, though the parallels are transparent. In this movie the antagonist only shows up on camera and a news crew working on a story about a family that disappeared happens across home videos that they are scouring for any information regarding the disappearance. The cameraman begins experiencing some encounters that have him (and his coworkers) questioning his sanity and he begins taking his video camera with him everywhere he goes. Though the human naked eye doesn't seem to he capable of seeing The Operator, the camera man's dog seems to see it just fine. I won't bother with drawing any correlations between this movie and the Marble Hornets' short films, because there isn't really a whole hell of a lot that actually connects them beyond the use of the name The Operator in place of Slenderman. There isn't anything new or really inspired in this movie to set it apart from other found footage titles, though it does have some good tense moments and a few decent jump scares. If you're looking for a creepier, more unnerving Slenderman experience, I would recommend playing the video game Slender: The Arrival, which has both a better atmosphere and more effective jump scares (in addition to being interactive, which is quite a bit more immersive). The movie isn't horrible, and the acting is pretty good for the sort of low budget found footage movie it is...so it isn't a waste of time to watch. But if you are looking for something that might be actually scary or really interesting I would recommend waiting for the upcoming CreepyPasta movie directed by Clive Barker. I suspect that his treatment of the Slenderman story will be be far superior.

My friend Bryan recommended that I watch Home Sweet Hell, thinking that I would enjoy it. He was absolutely correct. This movie is a twisted little black comedy about a man who cheats on his frigid, OCD wife with a woman he hires to work in his furniture store...a woman he believes is sincerely sweet and genuinely interested in him as a man. The affair goes sideways and his life spirals out of control when his wife becomes aware of the situation. That is as close as I can get to sharing spoilers, aside from the fact that anyone who saw the trailers for the movie is already aware that the wife informs her unfaithful spouse that the only solution is for him to kill the woman he had been having the affair with...so that part should be no surprise. Patrick Wilson manages to succeed in coming across as the bumbling, panic prone, jackass of a husband without any difficulty, but the true star of this movie is Katherine Heigl. This was a very different role for Katherine Heigl...and she pulls it off exceedingly well. I never really felt one way or another about her as an actress, but I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by her performance here. This was an entertaining movie, no question about that. I like this sort of movie though, this sort of dark humor is just my kind of thing...though I tend to prefer things that go a little bit more perverse and a bit darker in my comedy, this one manages to satisfy.

Jupiter Ascending is most certainly not going to be thought of as a masterpiece by anyone...ever. Especially when following so close on the heels of Interstellar, which set the bar pretty high as far as science fiction is concerned. It's more than a little bit on the cheesy side...and the narrative, in addition to being ludicrously over-the-top, jumps around in a seemingly pointless and distracting manner. Visually, it's pretty, and the special effects work is excellent, but that is hardly enough to salvage what was essentially a joke of a story. The acting was surprisingly good for being contained with the vessel of this movie...even where Channing Tatum was concerned, though he definitely wouldn't earn any awards for his performance, and he looked ridiculous in the makeup for the role (imagine James Hetfield of Metallica as an elf in Lord of the Rings and you will be coming somewhat close). Not that anyone would ever expect Tatum to merit any sort of award for acting outside of Teen Choice or MTV Movie Award shows, unless he really kicks it up a notch. Ultimately, the movie was just fun enough to be worth watching, once you get past the abysmally cobbled together story. There are some fairly interesting and enjoyable action sequences as well as some rare instances when the script doesn't feel like it was written by an adolescent comic book fanatic with ADHD who happened to watch The Fifth Element and Battlefield Earth a few dozen times. I can't help but feel like there should have been some point where someone sat down with the Wachowski's and told them that the whole movie needed to be edited in a way that made it watchable, but if that happened, they declined...and the movie I just watched is what we get as a result. I really wanted to like this movie, after all, I love science fiction...but that love of science fiction may be the only thing that made this movie palatable for me. It isn't a great movie, it barely even qualifies as being good. If you have other things you've been dying to watch, I would say that you're safe to watch them instead of this, but for lack of anything else to watch, this one will do in a pinch. And if you happen to dig the whole unwilling, surprise messiah story that they already tackled (much better) in The Matrix, I guess I would say to go for it.

I wasn't expecting much, so I suppose it shouldn't be too impressive that The Pyramid exceeded my expectations. The movie was tense and uncomfortable, though not particularly scary for the most part...that is not to say that it was entirely lacking in scares, but it spent far more time building up tension than actually frightening the audience. This is another of those examples of a situation that would lead to me getting into trouble if I were in the position of the protagonists. The opportunity to explore a previously undiscovered, and only partially unearthed, pyramid without proper preparations is exactly the sort of stupid thing I would choose to do if put on the spot. Hopefully I could avoid getting trapped inside, unlike the individuals we are following in the movie. What they discovered while inside the pyramid was far worse than any of them could have expected...and the priority rapidly shifts from escape to simply surviving. There was an interesting take on Egyptian mythology, for sure...and the creature effects are fantastic for what is essentially a low budget found footage movie (or is that redundant, saying low budget and found footage together?). I enjoyed the reasonably decent story, the all around decent (albeit not terribly well-nuanced) performances, and the concept itself. I don't know that I would ever take the time to watch this movie again, but I certainly think it's worth the time I spent watching it this one time.

Late Phases reminded me a lot of Silver Bullet (the movie adapted from Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf) but with a blind, elderly Vietnam veteran instead of a paraplegic boy as the protagonist. As much as I have always loved Silver Bullet, I have to admit that I enjoyed this movie about as much, and it doesn't feel dated the way that Silver Bullet does when watching it again. It seems fitting that the special effects were handled by the same man who did special effects work on Bubba Ho-Tep, since there are some parallels between this story and that one, except that this one doesn't take place in a retirement facility, rather it takes place in a neighborhood of retirees. I've seen better werewolf creature effects (the creature appears to be a little bit more like a wererabbit because of a strangely short snout combined with the long, pointed ears), but I have seen much, much worse than these. It's not the caliber of the Howling or the old Werewolf television series, but it beats the hell out of the shiny/glossy, god awful creature effects from the Underworld movies and so many others. The transformation process itself, that you don't get to witness until near the end, is actually pretty impressive compared to a lot of them I've seen. The story is captivating for the most part, though it does drop a few steps during the investigative portion of the narrative while the protagonist figures things out and prepares for the next full moon to arrive. The climax of the movie makes up for it though, and then some...and even that slower patch between the full moons isn't the sort of thing that can be skipped over, in part because there is a bit of a twist relating directly to the investigation the protagonist conducts. I felt like now was as good a time as any to watch this particular movie because I am in the process of writing a werewolf story of my own, and it seemed like a good idea to watch some things for additional inspiration...and this one definitely served that purpose well. I wish that the werewolf wasn't such an underrepresented monster in both movies and literature...but it seems like all anyone has time for are zombies and vampires, and that is a damn shame. I would love to see more movies like this.

I read somewhere that this movie had been referred to as being a love letter to horror movie fans everywhere and I figured it had to be hyperbole. I have never been happier to be proved wrong.

I won't spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it, and describing anything about the plot would almost assuredly do so, but it was amazing.

I recommend that anyone who enjoys horror of any kind, but especially the more cerebral variety, should get one hell of a kick out of this one. There was an almost perfect mixture of horror and self-referential humor.

It is quite probably impossible to accurately adapt any novel to the screen without some flaws in the translation. That said, Horns is about as God damn close as one could hope to get when it comes to converting a novel into a movie. I absolutely loved the novel by Joe Hill and this movie is without a doubt one of the most impressive screen adaptations I've ever been lucky enough to see. The trailers, interviews, and reviews gave me some faith that I could safely expect a good movie, but this was so much more. It was everything I hoped it might be and better, because it exceeded my expectations as far as what I could safely anticipate when a great book is adapted to alternate media. Whether you have read the book or not, you should absolutely watch this movie.

I'm tempted to say that children's movies or family oriented movies are getting better, but that would be tantamount to outright dismissing gems like The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, The Secret of N.I.M.H, and so many other fantastic movies from my own childhood. So, even though the movies today might not actually be better as far as subject content and narrative are concerned, there are a lot more of them...and that makes me happy. Big Hero 6, which I just watched last night, was both sweet and adorable while simultaneously poignant with its handling of difficult subjects like the death of close family members and the grieving process. My favorite thematic element would be the focus on science and engineering as positive and pleasurable hobbies and occupations for children to pursue, a sentiment that is sadly underrepresented in the world today. Much like Frozen, Despicable Me, and Monsters Inc., there isn't much that I could complain about where Big Hero 6 is concerned. The animation, like so often anymore, was fantastic and the cast of voice actors brought life to even the less pivotal characters on screen. Like most, if not all of the family friendly movies coming out, this isn't just for children and can be enjoyed by anyone of any age, I think.

I almost feel ashamed of myself for watching The Maze Runner without having first read the books upon which the movie series is based. I was fully intending to do just that, but just didn't get around to it, and I didn't want to put off watching the movie any longer. I've read articles and reviews where others have commented on the deviations from the novel, both positively and negatively...but I want to read the books even more now that I have had the chance to watch the movie. It was quite interesting and intense at points, overall very well done. On the surface it bears more than a passing resemblance to stories like Lord of the Flies and The Most Dangerous Game cobbled together with the now commponplace (but not overwhelming) dose of dystopian, post apocalyptic coming of age drama. I'm certainly looking forward to the next installment in the series being released later this year, and by that time I hope to have gotten around to reading the series of novels if I can squeeze them in with all of the other things I have in my ever growing to-be-read collection.

It has been a long time since I've seen an action/revenge movie as enjoyable as John Wick, and those who know me well are aware of just how much I love a good revenge story. It looked like it might be fun to watch, but I had no idea how much I was going to like it...this was easily one of the most epic collections of choreographed violent episodes I have seen. Being a dog lover, and an owner of a beagle since she was a little puppy, that only made it all that much better to watch someone exact the most out of proportion vengeance for the loss of a dog. This isn't something you'd want to watch if you're looking for something intellectually stimulating, but it is something I would recommend anyhow.

Just watched Jodorowsky's Dune and I have never been so glad as I am right now that David Lynch ended up directing the film adaptation that ultimately came out. Lynch may not want to take credit for the film, he may feel more disappointed about that movie than anything else he's done, but the alternative would have been an even greater departure from the source material...would have been abysmally dismissive of the novel and the subsequent additions to the series that was Dune. There are some aspects of Jodorowsky's vision that impressed me, and some stylistic choices that would have been interesting to witness...but the end that he planned would have been enough to ruin the movie for me. Paul dying and beginning to speak through the mouths of everyone else present followed by Arrakis becoming a verdant paradise with a consciousness of its own is just stupid.