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Reviews
Extra Ordinary (2019)
Low budget dark comedy done right.
I had fun watching this. I laughed so hard in places I almost scared my dogs. You don't need an obscene budget or plastic actors to tell a good story. "Extra Ordinary" is one of the few finds that just goes to show that. This is a well written script, normal looking actors and a whole lot of well placed and well timed jokes making hilarity of the old "sell your soul to the devil" and "virgin sacrifice" tropes. You don't have to re-invent the wheel. The story doesn't have to be new, it has to be entertaining. What can I say, I was entertained. If this holds up to a second watching, I'll be adding it to the DVD collection. This is one of a few I give a solid recommend to.
Where the Devil Roams (2023)
Art for Art's Sake. Not for the Audience.
I really love the other titles this family has given us. My expectations for a film are rather particular and my tastes are a little exacting. Not many pictures particularly move me. When I heard Wonder Wheel had a new movie, I was genuinely excited. Trying to keep my hopes in check, I still knew they're not going to shy away from making a gripping movie that's unafraid of a supernatural concept. The creepy carnival gig is right up my proverbial street.
But there's so little plot. This isn't a movie so much as an art project and a showcase for their daughter's ability to sing a capella.
I respect what they were going for, I respect what they were trying to accomplish but it's not for me, as much as I really wanted it to be.
Fawn (2019)
There's no reason to watch this movie.
I was bored and it's free on Tubi. I've never heard of it. IMDB had no reviews. So I gave it a go. It's not "good bad." This has the feel of an Israel Luna movie it's that pointless. For one thing, a movie should at least have a plot, a script and locations. This has 3 tacky young actors but in fairness, they're probably doing admirably for what they're given to work with and, I presume, direction. The "monster" is nothing but a voice filter. All the paranormal suspense is the same as you've seen in dozens of other no-budget found footage film school projects. Just with no attempts at execution. I'm a bad movie addict and I love an indie ghost story but "Fawn" doesn't even have the heart to be a rip off or cash in. Even its title is nonsensical. This movie is evidence to the claim that no film that begins with a quote is bound to impress. "Fawn" opens with two. I just can't find anything positive to say for this film.
The Invitation (2015)
Gender Swapped 1BR
I'm not joking, it has the exact same ending. I unintentionally watched both of these a night apart, thanks Tubi - and these are effectively the same movie. We get an angsty man with Previously Dead Child Syndrome rather than the animal abuse 1BR treats us to. The Invitation wants to play it safe with the diversity bingo card for our cast of characters, but manages to be good enough to stick it through to the end. That's my main problem with it. It's merely good enough without raising to the level of - good. It's one of those where you wait for the good parts everyone else promised - only to be left cold. It's unintentionally hilarious in places that should be at least intense. The plot device of "feel bad for our main character, his kid is dead" and "look at our diversity" just isn't enough. Not for me at least.
The Taking (2014)
Not as great as people lead me on.
A fake documentary about dementia and Alzheimer's disease. I was lead to believe this was a "must see" for anyone caring for an elder, anyone working in a care home or with an aging relative coping with senility. It's not. It annoyed me right off, with the first 10 minutes being nothing but people greeting each other. How many times can you tolerate hearing "Hello! Hello! Oh hi there!" before patience wears thin?
After that hello-fest, the acting is poor. The emoting is forced, the empathy is forced, no one conveys relatability in a subject matter that should be very relatable. The film is shot in that tedious found footage / "these people are making a documentary" style trying hard to cover for this movie lacking every aspect of movie making. If you enjoyed this movie, I get it. Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me and I found it merely annoying.
The Haunting of Julia Fields (2023)
Don't let this movie waste your time.
It wasted mine. I forgave the plot contrivances, dumb little errors and writing flaws that made no sense - in the dwindling hope it would "get to the good part." While this movie is available for free, it's not worth it. It hasn't a good part. There is no pay-off to "Balloon Boy," no development of the paranormal aspects, the script is just in every way awful. The acting - what there is of acting, is merely acceptable. Neither good nor bad. The incorporation of the cell phone text messages does not though, pass for dialogue, drama or tension building. And boy happy howdy, does this sham of a movie rely on that. GET IT? SHE'S 22, SHE HAS A CELL PHONE! That doesn't make a movie. I'd tell the people behind this thing to try again. But, they sure weren't trying with this.
Come Play (2020)
Almost
Nice looking sets, good camera work. But, nothing to offer.
This film is as by the numbers as it gets. Too many tedious tropes, predictable from beginning to end and I'm frankly tired of the filmmakers hiding the fact that they can't cast child actors by having them "mute - for reasons!" The kid who played "Byron" did a good job with what he was given and clearly this kid can act. The lead, though, well, he can moo and grunt but this isn't Charlotte's Web.
Larry was in interesting concept and it's refreshing to see movies adapting to the inclusion of current technology.
Ginger Snaps (2000)
You loved it, I despised it.
Yep.
I thought it blew.
If you get hard or damp at animal mutilation, watch this. Then seek psychiatric help.
Another unthinking, rote "horror" trash heap oversexualising girls and pretending to be "edgy." Puberty is not a transformation any more than male pattern baldness is, but I'd far and away prefer to see a werewolf movie about that.
If you have a functioning brain, give it a miss.
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Surprisingly good!
I actually enjoyed this more than the 1986 musical. As much as I love Steve Martin and Rick Moranis, this 1960 production is brilliant. The script is either pure genius or terrible - which seems to be the genius of it. It's campy. For sure. Campy as all get out. But, it's camp with heart. I especially enjoyed the Mushnick character. The plant itself really was the least of it and could have been made far more with a puppet design. This is a poor looking lever operated prop plant that just doesn't get where it needs to. Set in 1960 L.A., the vintage nostalgia of the city streets, signage and aesthetics are quaint and homey. Of everything Roger Corman snapped together in a week, this is at the top. Genuinely surprised to say, but this is still another case where the "original" is better.
Doll House (2020)
Odd.
This movie was a bit of a hard sit for me.
I found myself dawdling, doing other things, not paying attention and wondering at a scene change, "now how did THAT happen, what's that all about?" then back the movie up a bit and still not know what gives. This could have sorely done with an editor. Though, I suspect the production and technical crew were as bored as the audience, the end credit sequence is laden with every snarky sardonic joke that I hope blew off some steam for somebody. I suspect Gaz De Vere. Or as the Post It notes (uncredited sponsor?) said, "Gaz is a c#nt!"
So, it's somebody's tax shelter. I've seen worse.
But it could have been better.
Be Still and Know (2019)
Some kind of Pure Flix type "horror" movie. Whatever that means.
This is a movie written by elderly men trying to write characters the age of their grandkids. No, I didn't fact check that but I'm sure of it.
And this lady who plays the grown up version of the blonde girl, Sophia, is at least in her late 40s playing a 19 year old. Really, look at her throat. She has a young sounding voice but in the scene where the two are laying on their backs looking at the sky making sista talk, you can see the make-up job and how old her throat skin is. This is a seasoned actress, if not a known one. I keep harping on it because of how distracting and obvious it is, she stands over the other actresses in this creepy parental way - I'm sure she has a bunch of kids, and feels some instinctive drive to mommy over them. This being a crusty christian horror movie, it's punctuated with way too much christian pop music that comes out of nowhere for no apparent reason. Maybe it's Mom's neice's band.
The direction is abominable. I had better actors in community theatre. It has good audio, I'll give it that. All the dialogue is very clearly audible. That's also a drawback in this case.
I can't force myself to watch how these "girls" well, these girls and this middle aged lady who's convinced she's still got it, - end up coming to Cheese Its. I can't. I only have so much patience for these stinkers.
Orphan (2009)
Same movie?
The opening sequence others are describing as gripping and shocking made me bust up out loud.
The accent of Esther doesn't sound remotely Eastern European.
The efforts to make the husband unlikable, blundering and obtuse seem hand handed and just a trope to garner sympathy for Vera Farmiga's character. And Farmiga herself - I see everyone time and again praise her acting and range - yet I've never seen her play anything other than the same pipsqueak "but strong on the inside!" mewly mouthed bland housewifey character.
The movie includes the obligatory deaf girl who of course is a lip reader of the sign stealing at Fenway capacity.
It's not for me. If it's your thing, that's great but I am not sold on it in the least.
Ghostkeeper (1981)
You there! Stop calling this movie "good"!
It isn't!
The 3 dimwits are unlikable characters, the old lady caretaker has gone nuts from years of isolation and her sons are literal monsters. I hate these characters, I hate this movie.
No budget 1981 trash and wasted potential.
Mama (2013)
Doesn't Stink!
This movie's been out a long time now. I've just finished watching it here in the throes of coronavirus pandemic March when it's a 2013 piece and I only learned of it via Cordery FX and his excellent YouTube channel.
I still put off watching it quite some time. I watch so many dreadful movies. This one though, is actually one I can recommend. It's reminiscent of Nell, the 1994 Jodie Foster movie - if Nell and her sister had been raised by the murderous ghost of an escaped mental patient from the Edwardian period. If Nell and The Babadook did the fusion dance. Glad I finally got around to seeing it.
I love ghost stories, I'm fascinated by feral children and this movie actually made me feel things. I see so much pure garbage, I forget that movies are supposed to make you feel things.
The child actresses were uncommonly brilliant, there's no happy ending, the Mama is left morally ambiguous.
I had some issue with the CG effects. The schitck to this movie is, the Mama comes from a CGI hole in a wall - which moths fly out of. The Mama moves in that scrawny, jerky, twisted way ghost effects are created these days. Sure, she's creepy, but we've seen this method too many times to be frightened. The Mama's voice is something between a bear and a pigeon, a coo and roar at once, which when phrased that way is symbolic.
The main character in this movie is the uncle's girlfriend. Not only is it refreshing to see an uncle be treated as a sympathetic character in a movie, the girlfriend is pushed to the forefront when the Mama tries to kill him and he is sidelined in hospital. I enjoy those different sort of treatments in character writing. Though there is a scene where we area asked to believe a Bloodhound could track a 5 year old trail (I'm a former dog trainer - that's so absurdly a c'mon, man - that well, just forget about it) but those are my only gripes. Mama is one of the better movies I've seen in a long time.
Yes, it has predictable components, but it's far from the same old same old in ghost stories.
"It's about family."
Family and obsession and love and torment and death.
In Fabric (2018)
Well, that was something. Something.
The clashing red and greed colour palatte made me hopeful. I love campy, gritty French films with their mindlessness and paradoxical intellectualism. This one seemed like that was the direction we were heading in, with a goofy chick-flick plot of a cursed dress.
Great to look at, some interesting editing and camera work. I loved the late '60s-early ' 70s re-creation. Far better at building the world of that time than big-budget movies. The elite department store with the peculiar sales lady was interesting. Seemed like it would go somewhere.
Then it got way too wanna-be avant garde and artsy.
Proceed at your own risk.
Don't Open Your Eyes (2018)
Not so bad.
I'm the kind of person who likes things everyone else scoffs at and abhors the popular so it's not surprising to find myself enjoy this movie. Then again, the main character reminded me so much of a former friend of mine, I was a bit more patient with it than others who've reviewed this.
Yes, it's a cheap, low budget movie that is very clearly someone's pet project.
The kind of schlock I love.
So, we have a male nurse who takes a job as a home hospice carer to save money for his wedding, frequently pulling out the engagement ring to remind himself of why he's putting up with the needs of this sour, foul tempered old lady whose suffering appears to be caused by her one instance of showing a hint of joy.
But the old lady is a practicing occultist and has prolonged her own life at the expense of victims, who continue to prowl about and go "boo!" after the old lady's death. Our boy is stuck in the house after the adopted daughter of the biddy just straight up leaves him there with the dead lady in the most blatant construction of the isolation trope you may ever find. He's left to stumble about in the dark with a spooketty tape recorder and come to terms with the failings of faith and traditions while being harassed by spoopies and ghoulies who come out at night to be creepy.
There are a couple points of the movie lacking in any logic or reasoning. Less as plot holes and more a lazy cop-out of "ghosts did it! deal with it!"
The soundtrack is nonsense.
It could have been streets better.
Still, it's not so worthy of trashing.
Not really.
Or I'm just being nice because the guy reminds me of someone I knew.
One or the other.
Blood Craft (2019)
That's a nope from me
I was with it up until the sister incest thing. Started out as a way-low budget supernatural dark comedy - eh, that may have been unintentional. "Keep 'em guessing," as the director of this flick was saying. Two orphaned sisters raised by a nonce perv pastor father are reunited by his death. They both have this peeve about having been made their father's sex slaves and decide to re-animate his body with their mother's goofy magic rituals. Then they can get a fair bit of torturing on the scoreboards, too. Okay, I'm down with all that, seems fair. Then they forget what they were doing and bone each other in their childhood bedroom. DONE!
Agramon's Gate (2019)
Not really even an enjoyable sort of bad.
The acting - most definitely not good. Those praising this film can't be real. They just can't. Nothing about this feels at all natural. Not the plot, not the characters, not the backstories of the characters, not even their appearances. Real people just don't think, speak or behave as the script tells them to. It could have been a "same story told with a twist." It came off more as some hobby project of some bored guy and his pals. I can't think of anyone I'd recommend this to.
Inner Ghosts (2018)
Almost.
I love a good ghost story. I don't object to the same story being told, so long as the film makers put some heart into it and make it their own, adding something. "Inner Ghosts" came close. We follow the struggles of a lady who straddles the conflicting worlds of psychic mediumship and neurology. She is a university professor, working to develop a patent worthy device to communicate with the disembodied. She has research collated that suggests the consciousness (the film even wrestles with the word - soul) of severe dementia patients, the comatose and the dead are alike and can be reached for communication.
Well, that's different.
Nifty idea. In this movie's world, the dead and company have things to say, the living cope with grief, and proving the concept of life after life is all on the table in this movie, down to Helen's steadfastness in holding to her research, fighting with tenured professors and couching the language of her findings to not be too far down the rabbit hole of "woo," nonsense, superstition and rubbish.
The protagonist's own daughter is a suicide victim she, of course, is desperate to reach. This story line is present, but not as over-bearing as many flicks would make it.
Then the third act happens and it all goes to complete waste.
I wonder what the original script was. Surely not this.
Sad, it could have been so much better.
I came this close to recommending it. Uncork'd entertainment seems to be a "just okay" distributor. They offer low budget films that aren't on the dreadful side but could really use better editing and this is one. One choice that should not have been made is the attempt to cut corners on the climactic end scene. We get a combination of CG and prosthetic effects that look - well, how do they look? I can't tell, between the blackness and flashing. I had to minimise the screen down to thumbnail sized - those g'd@mn flashing light don't "stimulate the reptilian part of the brain" so much as give me immediate migraine and eye pain.
I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
The Last Hangman (2005)
Amazing
What a refreshing piece of cinema.
I watch a lot of bad movies. With the dreck churned out by Hollywood, the schlock milled by budget studios and the indie stuff just a springboard for some noxious opinion, the search for an original story in a crafted feature kisses toads. This movie though may not be my new favourite, but it's on the short list.
I loved it.
Highly recommended.
Other reviews give spoilers and plot synopses - I'll keep it short and sweet. This movie is brilliant.
Wraith (2017)
Pregnergeist
This is a low budget but professional looking movie. That is, it's well lit, uses professional equipment, great set. The movie is centered around a gorgeous house as beautiful as it is huge.
That's the strong point.
I wondered why this movie had such a low rating.
Then I found out.
What a waste.
This is like "Voiceless" meets "Poltergeist."
I am really sick of the tired trope drug out by imagination-bereft 68 year old producers: if a female character is in a B movie, she has to have a "crisis pregnancy" and be pestered by unseen forces.
This one doesn't want to tear apart her family, it wants to be her foetus.
It's not even the ghost. It's - I guess been roaming about for more than a century in search of ovulation. From an early scene with the mother and teenaged daughter in an Italian bistro talking about the mother being in early pregnancy, the mother drops the "well, for the time being, women can make choices about that" I had a brief hope this film would avoid that trope. Not this one - it belly flops right into a plot of women-are-baby-dispensers-and-spookitty-bumps-in-the-night-want-to-be-born-and-only-the-forces-of-eeeeeeevil-can-stop-them-from-being-born.
Throw in Lance Hendricksen as the requisite wizened old Catholic priest on a mission to fight the forces of the demonic and BINGO! You guessed it. Only he and the teenaged girl can see the eh, bornless one, shall we say. The odometer on the guilt trips laid on the mother character just keeps spinning.
This movie is made by old men who despise anyone not of their faith or gender.
That and the acting stinks.
Communion (1976)
Surprisingly watchable
I hadn't heard of this movie until tonight. It's a strange blend of "the housekeeper did it" and "psychopathic creepy kid" story. The story itself is gritty and uncomfortable, and happening to a rather innocent cast of supporting characters. I am left with the impression that the writers of this screenplay had a killer creepy kid story - then tried to reign in what they had created - but still committed to the little girl murderer plot point even after throwing the demented housekeeper twist. I'd rate it more favourably if the film had stuck to the story it was telling. At least some of the script writers knew the basic points of Catholicism. All in all, I can neither recommend nor discourage from watching it. It's not the worst but it is something of a let-down.
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer (2003)
Dumb.
It doesn't really need more adjectives than that. Fails to capture any historical accuracy, set or vernacular. Wooden, bland acting with a daytime soap opera script. Someone is supposed to be a hero or good guy in this but it's just another exciting as oatmeal flick.
I see too many reviewers asking about the house. Google exists.
Well, it's Thornhill Castle in Seattle. Well, properly, Lakewood. Yes, it really was dismantled in England and sent here as the ultimate display of love from a man to his bride. Obviously, a very popular wedding venue. Yes, the "Rose Red" mini series was filmed there. Yes, it's lovely. It has a website. Now go look.
Frailty (2001)
PureFlix fans will dig it, I didn't.
Another Christjihad movie masquerading as a psychological thriller. Mediocre acting from Paxton, tedious "twists" and entirely uncomfortable for the wrong reasons. Some people can't rest until they get their "prophesised" holy war. Keep them away from film making.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
No, I did not enjoy it.
Seems to be a reason so much King material has been made-for-TV mini-series. This thing felt more fitting as one of those. I can't understand how this got a theatrical release. I kept wondering if King forgot what story he was claiming to tell and took a Pink Pearl eraser to the material and shoe-horned "Shining" character names in to sell it to the chumps. Took 3 attempts to watch the movie. I'm looking for something positive to say about it. Not finding it.