All Cops are Maniac

Film: Maniac Cop
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

One of the common ideas in horror is finding something that is supposed to be trustworthy and turning it into a killer. This isn’t turning rabbits into monsters (like Night of the Lepus), but more people and things we think are safe. Consider Chucky from the Child’s Play movies, medical professionals like Dr. Giggles or The Dentist, and babies in It’s Alive. Even Santa Claus gets this treatment in a lot of movies. Maniac Cop does the same thing, obviously with the police.

Maniac Cop is a pretty typical schlocky movie from 1988 as the title suggests. Call your movie Maniac Cop and you’re not going to expect Shakespeare. Add in B-movie king Bruce Campbell and genre mainstays like Tom Atkins and Robert Z’Dar (as well as genuine badass Richard Roundtree), and what you’ve got is a B-movie that at least has the potential to be fun.

What I've Caught Up With, April 2025

It’s probably not much of a surprise that I didn’t actually watch a lot of movies or television in April. My mother’s funeral service was a week ago, and things have been hectic. Watching a movie seems less easy to do right now, but it’s time to get back into things, I think.

Television-wise, the only show I actually completed was the latest season of Reacher. I have been watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, The West Wing, and The Critic, but lately, my viewing is pretty much down across the board.

How Many Roads?

Film: A Complete Unknown
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

I used to be a music nerd. Before I was a movie nerd, I was very much the sort of person who would name a bunch of obscure bands. And, honestly, then I grew up and I stopped caring about knowing more about stuff than other people. I’m old enough that there’s a lot of music that I like that’s gone past the category of “oldies.” I’m a huge Beatles fan, I love Steely Dan, and most of my musical roots are in ‘70s prog rock and early ‘80s punk. I’m also a fan of Bob Dylan for his lyrics and because of, not despite, his voice. There’s a part of me that seems to love singers who can’t really sing. Anyway, A Complete Unknown just started streaming on Hulu, so I figured I’d give it a watch.

Like any biopic, or at least like most of them, this is going to cover a period of the person in question. For Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), this means from his beginnings in 1961, his rise to folk music prominence, and his controversial move to electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. I mean, I get why folk fans were angry about the move to an electric guitar, but a ton of Dylan’s best songs were played on electric guitars.

IHQC

Film: In a Violent Nature
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’ve been thinking about the idea of a Myers-Briggs categorization for slasher killers. Right now, my thinking is Mortal/Immortal (M/I), Huge/Small (H/S), Quiet/Talkative (Q/T) and Covered/Uncovered (C/U, and this means basically masked or unmasked, but the “M” was already taken). So, Jason Vorhees would be IHQC—he’s immortal, huge, doesn’t talk, and has his face covered. Freddy Kruger would be ISTU—he’s also immortal, but normal sized, spits out one-liners, and doesn’t wear a mask. Leatherface is MHQC; Chucky is ISTU, and on and on. Johnny, our killer from last year’s In a Violent Nature, would be another in that classic vein—IHQC. Johnny can’t be stopped, is gigantic, never talks, and despite being unmasked initially, hunts down a mask after his first couple of kills.

Just like you can give the killer a type, you can also rank slasher movies in a variety of ways. You can look at the killer’s origin story, the number of kills, the style/gruesomeness of kills, the quality of the mask, etc. Leslie Vernon from Behind the Mask has solid kills and a great mask, but a weird origin. Freddy’s origin is horrifying, but he has panache and a fantastic signature weapon. Johnny, once again, is going to go for the classic. Johnny was a developmentally-delayed child who lived with his father at a logging camp. A bit of a pest to the other workers, he was tricked into climbing a fire tower, where someone waited at the top to scare him. Johnny fell off the tower to his death, and then his father was killed in the resulting brawl.

Everyone Needs a Helping Hand

Film: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

Sometimes, the title of a movie tells you everything you need to know about the plot. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (or Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant is one such film. There’s not going to be a lot of surprises here in terms of who the main character is or who the main character is going to find. This is a story of a vampire who doesn’t want to kill anyone, and figures that it would be better to find someone who wants to die. Honestly, it takes a page out of the movie Byzantium, but it’s a good page to crib notes from.

Sasha (Lilas-Rose Cantin as a child, then Sara Montpetit for most of the film) is traumatized when her vampire family kills and drains the blood from a clown hired to perform at her birthday party. Because of this, she decides she doesn’t want to kill. Because of this, her fangs never come in, and she survives because her mother (Sophie Cadieux) and father (Steve Laplante) hunt for her, providing her with bags of blood for her to drink. Sasha is something of a scandal in the family, of course, since everyone else in the family is clearly a predator. To solve her problem, she is sent to live with Denise (Noémie O’Farrell), her cousin.

Salo Lite

Film: In a Glass Cage (Tras en cristal)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

There are times when I know I’m going to get hurt by the movie that I am watching. Sometimes, this is an experience that, as rough as it is, is something that is worth doing. Come and See is a film like that. I don’t want to watch it again, but I’m happy I watched it. Sometimes, I’m there to tick a box, as was the case with Salo, a film that scarred me enough that I remember pretty much everything about that viewing. Rarely, I get something like In a Glass Cage (Tras en cristal, a film that is unpleasant in terms of topic and characters, but felt as middle of the road as any film I’ve seen in some time in terms of quality.

There are some connections that In a Glass Cage has with other media. I’d be shocked if you told me that the film’s writer/director wasn’t familiar with the Stephen King novella Apt Pupil. While the stories aren’t identical, they are certainly similar in a lot of respects. There’s also a great deal of Salo in this movie, oddly. There’s nothing as overtly disgusting as the coprophagia scenes in that movie, but the destructive, awful hedonism is certainly in both films. It took me a bit to make that connection, but it’s definitely there.

The Wedding Shamble

Film: [REC]³: Genesis
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Rules, the say goes, are meant to be broken. There is some truth to this idea in the sense that breaking rules is how we get presented with stories that surprise us. The truth is that you need to be able to understand and use the rules to know how to break them correctly. This is true in grammar, in storytelling, and in movie making as well as just about everywhere else. [REC]³: Genesis breaks a huge rule of its genre, does it for no good reason, and ultimately suffers because of it. There’s no getting around the fact that this movie breaks faith with the audience.

To talk about [REC]³, we’re going to need to dive back a little into the previous films. The main thing that needs to be remembered is that we are dealing with something that is a great deal like a zombie virus in the sense that it apparently brings back people from the dead who immediately start trying to bite other people. The other thing we’re going to need to remember from the original films is that the virus in question is essentially a viral version of a demonic possession. This will become extremely important in the plot as we proceed.

Hungry Like the...

Film: The Wolf Man (2025)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

Aside from the studio execs at Universal, there are few people who want the Dark Universe project to succeed more than I do. I love the classic Universal monsters, and have watched most of the movies and sequels, and I even have some affection for the terrible movies in the sequences. Universal has had several abortive attempts to reboot the monsters. The current attempt is five movies in. I’ve now seen four of them, since I just watched The Wolf Man from this year.

This was kind of a make-or-break for me in a sense. The Tom Cruise version of The Mummy is absolute hot garbage. The rebooted The Invisible Man is as good as the Tom Cruise movie is bad (and that’s saying a lot). Abigail isn’t a great movie, but it’s a fun one, and that counts for something. I still haven’t seen Renfield. So, the Dark Universe is (for me so far) one clear win, one sort of win, and one absolute thrashing. The Wolf Man, then, would give me either a net-good or net-negative for the entire franchise at the moment.

What I've Caught Up With, March 2025

We lost Mom on the 21st. Not a shock that I didn’t watch a lot this month, as most of it was spent dealing with her decline. As such, a lot of the movies I did watch were more of the comfort variety. I didn’t feel a need to be challenged. I did discover, though, that my Max subscription comes with access to TCM movies, and in March, the artist of the month was my classic movie girlfriend Barbara Stanwyck. So that I spent a lot of time there.

Television-wise, I watched the short Creature Commandos season, and it was fun. I also finished Boardwalk Empire, which is a dandy companion piece to Peaky Blinders. I also finished Bojack Horseman, which was surprisingly deep for a show with so many pop culture references. It does need to be said, though, that I took a break from the show for a bit, and when I came back to it, the first episode I watched was the one where our title character gives a 25-minute eulogy for his mother. Gotta love a coincidence.

Honey, I'm Home

Film: The Return
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

There’s almost always some value in looking at the true classics when it comes to making a story. There are a number of ways you can do this, of course. You can adapt a classic story into a new setting (like The Lion King is animated Hamlet) or you can play it straight (like Olivier’s Hamlet is Hamlet). With big, sweeping stories, a miniseries is more in keeping unless you go for a complete reimagining, like the Coens did with O Brother, Where Art Thou? You can also just do a piece of the story. That’s the case with The Return, a film that concerns itself with the end section of The Odyssey, the moment when Odysseus comes home after 20 years.

It's always been one of the weirder parts of the story. In the original Homeric epic, Odysseus and the Greeks have spent 10 years fighting the Battle of Troy. Odysseus comes up with the Trojan Horse ploy and ends the war and he and his men sail home to Ithaca, but because he angered Poseidon, his return took another 10 years. Naturally, Odysseus is presumed dead, and so a number of suitors arrive to Ithaca in the hopes of winning the hand of Penelope, Odysseus’ presumed widow. She delays them through various methods waiting for her husband’s return and seemingly oblivious to the abuse that the suitors are piling on her son, Telemachus.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Acts

Film: Sing Sing
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

Who is the best actor working today? There are a lot of good answers for this, some who have been working for years and some up and comers who are making names for themselves. Colman Domingo might be the easiest to overlook in some ways despite two Oscar nominations in as many years. With Rustin, he was the best thing in the film by far. With Sing Sing, he is an outstanding part of an outstanding whole.

Sing Sing is a prison movie in the sense that it takes place in prison, but it’s not the sort of prison movie that you are thinking of. This is no made-on-the-cheap “sexy women behind bars” film, nor is it the story of gang vengeance or learning to live on the inside. It’s not a film about an escape attempt. Sing Sing takes place in prison, but it is about the transformative power of art. It’s cliché to say that a movie about prison is actually about freedom, but it is—and about why art matters and should matter.

Captive Audience

Film: Heretic
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

Hugh Grant is in his villain era, and I am here for it. While he’s played a villain or two in the past (Bridget Jones comes to mind), lately he’s been doing more and more bad guy roles in films both comical and serious. He’s great in Paddington 2 and equally fun in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. It has to be fun to reinvent yourself in this way, to go from the rom-com boyfriend to various incarnations of evil. That’s exactly where we’re headed with Heretic.

Grant, in Heretic, is having a really good time. He’s enjoying the hell out of being someone truly, diabolically evil. We are going to have to deal with the religious implications of this, because Heretic does what many movies that have a religious bent do, and even some without much of a religious angle: it’s going to make sure that the evil being done is being done by someone who will eventually discover is a non-believer, because of course he is.

This is Why Some People Don't Want Kids

Film: Case 39
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

The idea of a story about an evil child is hardly new in the movie business. Orphan, The Other, The Good Son, The Bad Seed, The Omen and plenty more have been enough to establish something of a subgenre and given us a good number of expectations. There are basically two ways this movie can go. One is that we’re led to believe that there is an evil child who turns out to be the victim of evil adults. The second is that we’re led to believe that there is an evil child who is actually evil. The big turn in this movie is always when we find out which of the two movies we’re in. In Case 39, this happens pretty early.

We’re introduced to Emily (Renée Zellweger), a social worker who deals with children in troubled situations. Up to her eyeballs with 38 cases, her boss Wayne (Adrian Lester) assigns her a 39th case, that of Lillith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland), a 10-year-old girl whose grades have suddenly slipped and who shows some signs of abuse from her parents. Emily believes that bad things are going on in the house and when she receives a panicked call from Lillith, she heads to the house with her cop friend Mike (Ian McShane). What she discovers is Lillith’s parents trying to kill her in the oven.

Half a Story (Is Better than None)

Film: Wicked
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

I knew a little bit about Wicked before I watched it in the sense that I knew the very basics of the story. I haven’t seen the musical (I don’t do a lot of theater), and I haven’t read the book on which it is based but just through osmosis and being alive in a society, you learn a few things. So I was prepared for a lot of what was to come even if I didn’t know the details.

What I knew going in was that this is the story of the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. I also knew that the witch, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) was given that name specifically by the author of the original book because it would recall the name of the author of the Oz books, L. Frank Baum. I expected this to be a big, blustery, traditional Hollywood musical, which, of course, it is. I am honestly shocked that the controversies surrounding this were about Cynthia Erivo’s reaction to a fan poster and the fact that this ruined the marriages of Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater. I genuinely can’t believe that the reactionary bastards of the American right wing didn’t have an absolute conniption over how utterly “woke” this film is. I mean this in only the most positive way.

(Pitch)Fork You!

Film: Dark Night of the Scarecrow
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

A lot of American horror movies take place out in the middle of nowhere. There are naturally millions of Americans who live in the country, of course, but Americans are by and large urban and suburban people. I live in a farm community in large part—we’re also home to a large university, but this town made its bones in the agricultural world, and it’s still more or less suburbia. In the summer, you can find corn or soybeans within 15 minutes of my house in literally every direction, and yet I’d be hard-pressed to tell you I actually live in the sticks. The sticks can be scary, and that’s what we’re going to be exploiting in Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

This is very much a Southern Gothic tale of murder and revenge from beyond the grave. I have to say that, good or bad, that’s the kind of thing that I’m going to find interesting. There’s a long history of this kind of horror film. There’s something dangerous out there in the corn fields (or whatever they’re growing in this small Southern town), and it comes from murder most foul and prejudice.

Change the First Letter to "C"

Film: Trap
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I wonder sometimes how many chances someone should get. I’ve given M. Night Shyamalan a bunch of chances based on the strength of a couple of his movies. The Sixth Sense was great for the time, although I have since discovered that I like Stir of Echoes much more. He’s had a few good movies, though, but has also had some legendary stinkers. I went into Trap knowing that reviews were mixed (at best), but having at least respected both Split and Knock at the Cabin. And, truthfully, any good will he earned from those movies he has lost with this one.

The set-up for Trap is an interesting one until you actually discover what the set-up is. The tag line is “30,000 fans. 300 cops. 1 serial killer. No escape.” What that sounds like to me is that there’s going to be some sort of massive concert (check) where a serial killer is operating, suddenly presented with a huge number of possible victims (not so much). That’s a movie I would find interesting to watch. Trap is not that. Instead, what this movie includes is a massive concert where a serial killer is in attendance with his daughter and somehow the cops know he’s there and are working to catch him while he tries to get out undiscovered.

What I've Caught Up With, February 2025

It’s been a difficult month for my family; my mother is very ill right now, and it’s difficult to deal with because of the diagnosis she has received. I also was down myself for a week with a superficial blood clot in my right calf—nothing serious, but scary, given my genetic history. Because of that, my focus has necessarily been elsewhere. I did watch a few movies of various vintage, though, and most of my viewings were better than average.

On the television front, I did a lot of work on shorter series including The Queen’s Gambit, which was a darling during lockdown. I went back to Marvel shows as well, getting through Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Echo, which respectively were quite good, good until the last episode, and should have been better. I’ve spent a lot of time with Danny McBride shows in February, finishing The Righteous Gemstones and watching all four seasons of Eastbound and Down.

Watery World

Film: Flow (Straume)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Of the seven Oscar categories I watch every year, Best Animated Feature is one that is really special. The reason is that over and over we are treated to some really unique and beautiful films in this category, films that, assuming you could make the equivalent film live-action, would never get a moment’s consideration. Writers and directors can do some experimental things in animated films that they couldn’t otherwise do, and every year, we are treated to a film that is unique. These are the films that expand how we think about animation and about film itself. In previous years, Flee, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Loving Vincent have filled this role. For this year’s Oscars, that film is Flow (Straume in the Latvian).

Flow is a visual feast, a film that contains no real dialogue and in fact no human characters. There’s not so much a plot as there is a series of actions and events that happen to a small, black cat in a post-apocalyptic world where it appears that humanity has disappeared and where some manner of cataclysm seems like a regular event. We don’t know what happened, and we’re never really going to get that information. Whatever got rid of all the humans happened in the past at some point, but not so long ago. Many signs of human civilization still exist.

Cartel Queenpin

Film: Emilia Pérez
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

When you learn that the main actress in Emilia Pérez is transgender, you know immediately that this is a movie where you can’t really rely on the viewer reviews to get a good idea of what it’s going to be like. I guarantee that a bunch of the ½- and 1-star reviews of this film were written by people who haven’t actually seen the movie and are slagging it specifically because they don’t really know what pronouns are. Because of that, it becomes even more important to actually watch the movie carefully.

It’s also a movie where one has to be very careful in the criticism. I go into every movie hoping to like it and wanting to like it. I don’t want to spend my time watching things that I don’t like. So it’s frustrating when I don’t actually like a movie. When it’s something like Emilia Pérez, the worry is that the assumption will be that I didn’t like it because it’s largely about transgenderism, and that’s not the case. Emilia Pérez has problems that have nothing to do with the characters or the plot.

This is What I Expect from the G7

Film: Rumours
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

Guy Maddin makes some crazy-ass movies. When I came across Rumours, I knew it was one I would want to get to eventually, and when a copy essentially fell into my lap, I figure it was better now than later. I had to watch this over a couple of days just because of life, but I think taking a break in the middle actually helped me. This isn’t a deep movie, but it’s one that you need to soak in for a bit to try to make some sense of.

Rumours is generally being classified as a horror comedy, and that’s probably the closest we’re going to get to an actual genre/sub-genre choice that makes sense. In reality, this is an absurdist film. It makes a certain bizarre sense, but only by forcing yourself to make some sense of it. It feels like a dreamscape that shows up after you’ve been eating a tray of brownies that you didn’t know had been altered by the baker, and, inconsolably high, you decide to sleep off the drugs. There’s a kind of through line of story, but all of this feels like dream logic and it doesn’t actually make a great deal of sense.

Hush...Hush, Sweet Sarah

Film: Silent House
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

If you’d told me years ago that the Olsen twins had a younger sister who was extremely talented and was going to take some really interesting movie projects, I’m not sure I would have believed you. Elizabeth Olsen is a real talent, though, and it’s worth seeking out her movies whenever possible, as she has been extremely successful in digging herself out from under the weight of her sisters’ careers. Silent Houseis one of her earlier films where she isn’t serving as third fiddle to her sisters, one of her first roles as an adult. To be fair, Martha Marcy May Marleen is a better showcase for her talents, but this will do in a pinch.

The main issue with Silent House is that there is no way to really talk about it in detail without diving head-first into spoiler territory. That being the case, this will contain a bunch of spoilers. I’ll do my best to keep them as far to the end as possible if you want to avoid them, but I’ll be up front here—I'm not entirely sure this is a movie that you can’t enjoy spoiled, mainly because it uses a plot device that you’ve almost certainly seen before multiple times.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2023

The Contenders:

American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer (winner)
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

At Least They Didn't Name Him Ryan

Film: The Wild Robot
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Animated movies, the common wisdom is, are for kids. To be fair, most of them are for kids, at least in terms of the main audience. It takes a great deal of talent from the film makers to create an animated movie that is going to be entertaining for kids and keeps their attention and doesn’t bore adults silly. And, while I think that’s not always a talent that everyone has, it’s definitely a quality that the best of animated films have. This brings us to The Wild Robot, one of the more critically-acclaimed animated movies of last year.

While I am going to talk about the story, I first want to talk about exactly what makes this film work as well as it does in the main: it gets our relationship with “things” right. For a lot of science fiction, the basic thought is that people don’t really care about their tools or the things that they have around them, and this is absolutely ridiculous. Humans will pack bond with anything. It’s why we as the average adult tear up when we contemplate the Mars rover Opportunity, its mission gone on so much longer than planned, sending out the message “My battery is low and it’s getting dark” before signing off forever. That truth—the fact that we will force personality onto our toaster—is what makes The Wild Robot work as a film.

Actually, They Were Normal Length

Film: Longlegs
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

A friend of mine saw Longlegs in the theater, and when I asked her about it, she told me she had to see it again. Essentially, she said that she and her group had an edible and then sat in the front row of the theater, which made the whole thing something of a surreal experience, and she’s not sure how much of what she watched is actually accurate to the film. Well, for what it’s worth, I watched Longlegs stone cold sober, and I’m not sure what to make of it, either, something that she found very comforting when I told her.

Longlegs is, to this point, the latest film from Osgood Perkins, although his next film comes out in a couple of weeks. It’s also, as of now, his best-reviewed film. Perkins makes unusual movies, and this certainly fits that pattern. This is a serial killer movie, but it’s also a supernatural horror movie, and through most of it, it’s almost impossible to know what is going to happen next.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2023

The Contenders:

Justine Triet: Anatomy of a Fall
Martin Scorsese: Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan: Oppenheimer (winner)
Yorgos Lanthimos: Poor Things
Jonathan Glazer: The Zone of Interest

Mother Superior Jumped the Gun

Film: Ms .45
Format: Streaming video from Plex on Fire!

I like a good exploitation film, which is why I tend to be at least mildly fascinated by the work of Abel Ferrara. Ferrara seems like a director who has genuine talent behind the camera, but has B-movie sensibilities. Moives like The Driller Killer are a good example of this. It seems strange to say this, but Ms .45 might actually be even more of an exploitation film. There’s not a great deal going on here beyond finding an excuse for murder. I wouldn’t normally call this a horror movie, but it’s on the They Shoot Zombies list, so here we are.

Because there’s not a great deal of plot here, I’m going to keep it pretty simple. Thana (Zoë Lund acting under the name Zoë Tamerlis) is a mute seamstress working the Garment District in New York. One day, walking home from work, she is sexually assaulted in an alley. When she gets home, her apartment is invaded by a burglar who also sexually assaults her. During this attack, she grabs a heavy glass object off her table and smacks the guy across the temple, then beats him to death with an iron and drags him into her bathtub. The next day at work, her boss Albert (Albert Sinkys) rips the blouse off a mannequin, which sends Thana into a sort of fugue state.

What I've Caught Up With, January 2025 Part 2

I got through a lot of television in January. I've finished the Mike Flanagan NetFlix shows by watching The Midnight Club, which should certainly have gotten a second season (and certainly could have). I also finished Parks and Recreation and Peaky Blinders, both of which I was close to finishing when January started. I got through the three current seasons of The Lincoln Lawyer, and I'm looking forward to the fourth season, and also finished Doom Patrol. I'm currently through the first season of The Righteous Gemstones, and my new workout show (which will go through April) is Battlestar Galactica.

What I've Caught Up With, January 2025 Part 1

My goal every year is to watch 400 movies--not necessarily new movies, but movies in general. A secondary goal is that I'd prefer 80% or so of those movies to be new. To be on pace, that's a movie per day, plus three movies per month. I'm not starting out perfectly in this case, since I watched only 32 in January. I did take a lot of movies off the giant list, though, a number of them being from 2024 and thus getting full reviews. So, while today and tomorrow will look a bit shorter than usual, I actually removed a bunch from that giant black hole of things I need to watch.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2023

The Contenders:

Jeffery Wright: American Fiction
Paul Giamatti: The Holdovers
Bradley Cooper: Maestro
Cillian Murphy: Oppenheimer (winner)
Colman Domingo: Rustin

Family Ties

Film: A Real Pain
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

I’ve decided to be a little more proactive on watching Oscar films (and 2024 films in general) this year, so I figured diving head-first into A Real Pain would be a good place to start. I tend to like Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg. A running joke I have is that the easiest way to tell the difference between Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera is to remember that Eisenberg is the one with talent. A Real Pain is evidence of this, even if you haven’t liked his previous work; in addition to starring in it, he also wrote and directed it.

The film tells the story of David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin), a pair of cousins born less than a month apart. David is a fairly normal, responsible person with a wife and child, and a job selling advertising banners online. He is very concerned with appearance, and with being on time for things, correct and not causing a scene. Benji is the complete opposite, someone with strong ideas and opinions, but who is otherwise aimless. They are wildly different, and have decided to take a trip together to Poland to visit their heritage, the house where their grandmother grew up, and the concentration camp that she survived.

Return to Form

Film: Alien: Romulus
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on various players.

In the world of science fiction, there are few film franchises that are more storied than the Alien franchise. The reality, though, is that this is based almost entirely on the first two movies, Alien and Aliens. Those two movies are extremely highly rated, and with good reason. The other films in the series have been okay (Prometheus, Alien: Covenant), disappointing (Alien³, Alien Resurrection), or actively dumb (both Alien vs. Predator movies). Despite this, I always go into each film in the franchise with expectations. And so it was with Alien: Romulus.

I’m glad I did, because this is a real return to form for the franchise. I didn’t realize it until I watched this, but what has been lacking from the Alien films in general since 1986 is fear. The first two movies have genuine terror moments in them, and since that time, the franchise has relied more on jump scares and horror moments that simply don’t work. Alien: Romulus is scary, and that’s what I’ve been looking for.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 2023

The Contenders:

Sandra Hüller: Anatomy of a Fall
Lily Gladstone: Killers of the Flower Moon
Carey Mulligan: Maestro
Annette Bening: Nyad
Emma Stone: Poor Things (winner)

If Only, If Only

Film: David Byrne’s American Utopia
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

Ask people who watch a lot of concert movies and you’ll hear over and over that the single best concert film in history is Stop Making Sense, the Jonathan Demme-helmed film of the Talking Heads tour at the end of 1983. Honestly, it’s not a huge shock to me that what is probably the second-best concert film in history is another David Byrne project, this time produced and directed by Spike Lee. David Byrne’s American Utopia captures the same sort of lightning in a bottle, showing a display of music, dance, and art from front to back, covering Byrne’s Broadway show of several years ago, and nothing more (with a few minor exceptions).

It is very much like Stop Making Sense. What was unique about Demme’s film, or at least very different from a lot of musical documentaries and films is that there was nothing behind the scenes. It was just the concert, one song leading into the next, the band and the instruments coming out one by one as the show progressed and screens drop down so that images could be projected on them. American Utopia is even more stripped down. This is literally just the show, filmed from start to finish. The genius of the show, and the genius of the film is that it doesn’t need to be anything more than this.

Good for Her!

Film: Blink Twice
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

There’s a sub-genre of movies, typically horror and thriller movies, that are colloquially called “good for her” movies. Essentially, a good for her movie is one where a female main character faces significant adversity and ends up successfully getting what she wants, more or less, by the end. Well-known and popular examples of the sub-genre include Midsommar, Swallow, Ready or Not, Jennifer’s Body, and You’re Next. Blink Twice is a clear addition to that list, a film where women are put in terrible danger and fight their way through.

We’re going to start out with some background information about a man named Slater King (Channing Tatum), a tech billionaire who has stepped down as CEO of his company for some unspecified problematic behavior. While it’s not really discussed, the implication is some sexual impropriety; basically, he got me-too'd. While not CEO any more, King is still involved in his company, and we’re going to spend some time at a party where he encounters Frida (Naomi Ackie), a cocktail waitress, and our main character.

Psycho Killer

Film: Strange Darling
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

There are a few films on my various lists that I will probably never watch. This blog, at least in part, is about going places I might not have otherwise gone in my viewing, but there are still a few places I don’t want to go. Egregious torture and abuse are difficult topics for me, not because of any past history, but because I find it unpleasant. I’ve never been a torture porn fan. Strange Darling rules close to that line in places. This is an ugly film in a lot of ways, even if it is narratively interesting.

One of the reasons that Strange Darling works is that it’s told out of order. Each part of the film is preceded with an episode number, and aside from the epilogue, these are told entirely out of order. It’s an order that reveals information in very specific ways, giving us just enough information to follow the story while revealing just enough to keep us wondering what will happen next.

What Some People Won't Do for a Slice

Film: A Quiet Place: Day One
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

When A Quiet Place came out a few years ago, I thought it was a really interesting take on a basic horror story. It’s not the main plot that is different, but the details. Having creatures that hunt entirely by sound created a different sort of danger. Any movie that pits humans as essentially prey animals will have its tropes; focusing them differently makes for a different experience. The sequel was decent as well and built on the lore. Naturally, I was curious about what the prequel, A Quiet Place: Day One was going to add to the lore of these alien invaders.

The sad truth is that, aside from getting a few really good looks at the creatures, we’re not actually going to get a great deal. A Quiet Place: Day One is a pretty standard monster movie in a lot of respects. There’s a huge amount of destruction, lots of people get killed, and we follow the survival attempts of a few people hoping to make it through alive. Since this is a prequel, we’re going to know some things about the invading creatures that the characters won’t. We know that they hunt by sound, for instance, which is something we’re going to have to see our characters discover. Because of that, even the joy of discovery of the particulars of the creatures is denied us.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2023

The Contenders:

American Fiction (winner)
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Feathers McGraw

Film: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

I love Wallace & Gromit, and I have for years. I was first introduced to them by a friend who gave us a VHS of the short The Wrong Trousers more than 25 years ago, and I’ve been a fan ever since. There’s a lot of good animation out there, and a lot of good stop-motion, but Aardman is the king of stop-motion work. It’s been too long since we’ve had a new W&G film. Curse of the Wererabbit is from 2005 and the short A Matter of Loaf and Death came out in 2008. It’s been 16 years since Wallace & Gromit have been in a new adventure, so when I learned about Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, it moved to the top of the list quickly.

This is a film where it genuinely helps to have some knowledge of the Wallace & Gromit canon. The second W&G short, The Wrong Trousers, which is the highpoint in my opinion, is going to be important as backstory. If you haven’t seen it, the 30 minutes it takes to watch is highly recommended; you can find it on Prime as well as free on DailyMotion, and in terms of plotting, animation, and story, you’re not going to find much that beats it.

Cross Country

Film: Will and Harper
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Most people, I think, have a fairly strong opinion about Will Ferrell. I don’t actually. When Ferrell has good material and is reined in by a strong director, he’s a very capable actor. He can pull off drama and he has the capacity to be incredibly funny. I think television was much more his medium; his movies often feel hit-or-miss to me. Will and Harper is very much a different sort of film, though, and when I heard about it, I knew I’d be watching it.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of this one, it’s pretty simple. Former Saturday Night Live head writer Andrew Steele decided late in life, after having kids and ultimately getting divorced, that he would be more comfortable living as a woman, and began transitioning. This was something that she sprung on people with an email. Her close friend Will Ferrell decided that the two of them should take a road trip across the country, going to places where Andrew had been before but would now be approaching as the newly-named Harper Steele for the first time.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2023

The Contenders:

Anatomy of a Fall (winner)
The Holdovers
Maestro
May December
Past Lives

Get a Gift Receipt

Film: Oddity
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I frequently do full reviews on newer horror movies with the thought that it is possible that they will appear on future versions of the They Shoot Zombies list. This is especially true when the films are highly acclaimed, by critics, audiences, or both. I’m pretty confident that Oddity will show up in a year or two; the list tends to drag a few years behind release dates.

Oddity is a film that is going to attract a very particular type of horror fan. Gorehounds are going to find it dull and slow, and if your interest is in blood and severed limbs, there isn’t going to be a lot for you here. Oddity spends about the first two-thirds of its running time building up an atmosphere. Some of that is what you expect—it's going to be the sort of dread and sense of danger that we tend to get from the average horror movie. There’s also a very distinct sense of menace coming from one character, but that’s what the actual review is for, right?

Monsterpiece Theater

Film: Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I’m not really a kaiju guy. I don’t actively hate them the way I hate televangelists or people who leave their shopping carts in the middle of a parking space, but I don’t generally go out of my way to watch giant monster movies. It’s not quite a “when you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all” thing, but it’s in that ballpark. Godzilla Minus One (or Gojira -1.0 if you prefer) got a lot of acclaim, though, and also won the big lizard his first Oscar, so it was hard to resist.

My ambivalence to kaiju is almost certainly related in part to early Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, which were rife with Gamera movies. Sure, it’s fun to watch a giant turtle fly through space and attack another dude in a rubber suit, but there are a bunch of them right in a row, and it gets tedious. These movies also went through a strange evolution. Godzilla, Gamera, and the rest started as giant beasts created by radiation or pollution taking out their rage on the Japanese countryside. Over time, though, they became the heroes, fighting monsters worse than they were, causing destruction like superheroes. The buildings still got knocked down, but our hero kaiju were doing it to defend Japan rather than destroy it.

What I've Caught Up With, December 2024 Part 2

I managed to do something unpleasant to my knee a few weeks back, which means I wasn’t able to do anything in the gym for a few weeks. I had to give up on Peaky Blinders as my workout show, so instead of finishing it at the end of the year as planned, I’m only about halfway through. I did watch a few shows, though, getting through both seasons of Altered Carbon, finishing Killing Eve, and watching Death and Other Details. This really wanted to be a variation of the Benoit Blanc movies and really wasn’t. I also watched Exploding Kittens on NetFlix. You can (and should) get through it in an afternoon. I’m in the middle of the sixth season of Parks and Rec, and have also started Doom Patrol, which is the right kind of weird.

What I've Caught Up With, December 2024 Part 1

So I finished the year with 366 movies watched. Of those, about 285 or so were new to me, with the rest being rewatches. On the They Shoot Zombies list as it currently stands, there are 205 I haven’t written reviews for, and ten or so more than that that haven’t been posted and I have in reserve or for Halloween. The big list of movies that have been recommended to me dropped under 1000 briefly, but with 2024 to not catch up on, it’s ballooned back up. Feel free to recommend anything from 2024 that is worth watching.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2023

The Contenders:

The Boy and the Heron (winner)
Elemental
Nimona
Robot Dreams
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Sacre Blech!

Film: An American Werewolf in Paris
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Sometimes, when someone drops a sequel years after the original movie, it turns out decently. Sometimes, you get An American Werewolf in Paris. This is a movie that very clearly wants to capitalize on the vastly superior first film that is more than a decade and a half older. Honestly, it feels like a cheat. If you’ve seen An American Werewolf in London, you’re likely to go into this with expectations. Those expectations are not going to be met. This is equally true if you thought it was instead a riff on An American in Paris.

In terms of the set-up, you don’t really need more than the title of the film and the knowledge of the London version. This time, there’s a trio of Americans, and this time, they’re not walking across the moors but instead find themselves in the City of Lights. Andy (Tom Everett Scott), Brad (Vince Vieluf), and Chris (Phil Buckman) are touring Europe and attempting extreme thrills. Andy, who we are going to be following here, is behind on points, but plans on upping his total by (sigh) bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower, because that’s something that you won’t get caught doing.