Stay Calm

Film: Rammbock (Rammbock: Berlin Undead; Siege of the Dead)
Format: Online video on Fire!

It does often feel like the zombie subgenre of horror films is played out, and then you run across something that does a couple of things different. Such a case is that of Rammbock, also known as Rammbock: Berlin Undead, and sometimes as Siege of the Dead. I was unable to watch this in the best of circumstances—I could only find a dubbed version online, and I would imagine that it being fully in its native German would only help it. Rammbock (which translates to “battering ram”) has its issues, but it’s pretty solid for what it is.

The basics of the zombie film were set in place with Romero’s film in 1968. Zombies, more technically ghouls, are the recently dead returned to unlife, mindless and craving the flesh of the living. Anyone bitten will turn into a zombie, since the virus/bacteria/whatever that creates the zombies in the first place is guaranteed to be eventually fatal. This is a reality that is included in zombie-adjacent films like 28 Days Later, where the “zombies” aren’t actually undead, but are otherwise the same as the standard cinematic zombie.

No, Not the Show

Film: The Walking Dead
Format: Internet video on Fire!

Some actors give every role their all no matter what. Even if the movie is terrible, poorly thought out, filled with holes, or just not very good, these actors put their heart and soul into every role they take. It’s one of the reasons I love about Boris Karloff. To be fair, Karloff made a ton of great early creepers, but a lot of them were low rent and low budget and filled with weird science and even weirder mysticism. Regardless, Karloff treated each role like Shakespeare. All of this brings us to The Walking Dead from 1936. This is technically an old-school zombie movie (in that it involves literally the walking dead), but we’re not going to be dealing with flesh-eating ghouls.

At its heart, The Walking Dead is a sort of revenge picture combined with Karloff’s classic Frankenstein role with mob ties to boot. The difference is that rather than being made up of a bunch of stitched-together body parts, Karloff is going to play a man fully resurrected by Science! and seeking revenge on those who had him killed in the first place.

Liquid Evil

Film: Prince of Darkness
Format: DVD from New Lenox Public Library through interlibrary loan on basement television.

For whatever reason, we have decided that when it comes to horror, the only real religion is Catholicism. Protestants, Hindus, and Muslims can all take a back seat, because it’s the holy celibates who have the real ability to hold back evil. If I had to guess, I would say that this comes from the fact that huge parts of the Catholic faith are hidden and kept secret. Tell someone that there is a secret Presbyterian library that holds secret lore and they’ll roll their eyes at you. Tell them that there are secret Catholic scriptures, and they’re right on board. This is, more or less, the starting place for Prince of Darkness (or John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness if you like that stamp of approval).

The secret lore in this case is a completely unknown Catholic sect of priests called the Brotherhood of Sleep. Centuries ago, the story says, the order found a container of swirling green liquid. The container, which can only be opened from the inside, is millions of years old, and we will eventually find out that the liquid itself is, essentially, the essence of Satan. The Brotherhood of Sleep has existed to keep this container sealed—and hidden even from the Vatican—but the last of the Brotherhood has died before passing on the secret.

Declaring Your Major

Film: Thesis (Tesis)
Format: Streaming video from AMC+ through Amazon Prime on Fire!

There seem to really be only two things required to make a good thriller film. You need to put your character or characters in legitimate danger, and you need to make sure that what that character or characters need to do to survive isn’t obvious. A part of the danger has to be that we don’t know who to trust—that anyone could end up being dangerous or the cause of the terror. Thesis (or Tesis in the original Spanish) is a master class in creating this kind of tension. That it happens to be the debut feature-length film from Alejandro Amenábar makes it only that much more impressive.

A large part of the tension in Thesis comes from not just the way the film is set up, but the subject of the film itself. Thesis is very much a film that dives head-first into the idea of snuff films, following from Mute Witness from the previous year and followed by 8MM a few years later. It’s a subject that has always been of some dark fascination for many horror fans—films that touch on the subject feel dangerous, and Thesis, while it never feels at all like a snuff film, definitely does feel dangerous.

Step Right Up

Film: The Funhouse
Format: Internet video on Fire!

Like any genre, horror movies have evolved over time. One of the ways in which they have evolved is in how the protagonists encounter and deal with the danger. These days, most of our protagonists are pulled into something through accident, bad luck, or a poor but understandable decision. We don’t fault the couple in The Strangers for being home, for instance. Early horror films, though, especially those of the 1970s and ‘80s, feature teens who make really stupid decisions and essentially set themselves up as a buffet for the killer. Such is the case with 1981’s The Funhouse, a film where it genuinely feels like our endangered teens don’t really deserve to remain in the gene pool.

As the name of this film implies, we’re going to be spending some time with a carnival, and a lot of that time is clearly going to be spent in the carnival’s funhouse. This is because of a monumentally stupid decision made by our endangered teens, one of whom is the cause of all o the problems that happen to them. Seriously, if you have a friend like this guy, you should rethink the relationship.

Everything is Political

Film: September 5
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

My kids get mad at me when I tell them that virtually everything they do has political ramifications. It’s true, though. Spend money at Chick-Fil-A, and you’re helping to finance a company that happily gives money to anti-LGBTQIA+ organizations. Buy something at Wal-Mart, and you’re enriching a company that has thousands of employees on food stamps and other forms of welfare. Make a movie about a group of Palestinians killing Israeli athletes, and you’re making a comment on the current situation in Gaza, even if that wasn’t your intent. That makes September 5 a movie that is a lot more politically charged now than it might have been a few years ago.

To be fair, the events of the Munich 1972 Olympics are a compelling story, and that is enough to warrant a movie. It does seem oddly timed, though, as Israel undertakes what certainly looks like genocide and the eradication of the Palestinian people in Israel. A story that clearly has Israelis as victims and Palestinians as terrorists certainly feels politically motivated, regardless of intent or the viability of the actual historical events.

Kill or Be Killed

Film: Predator: Killer of Killers
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on Fire!

I went into Predator: Killer of Killers completely cold. How cold, you ask? I didn’t realize it was an animated movie for the first few moments of it. The film opens with a shot of the Earth from the point of view of the Predator and for a moment I thought, “Wow, the CGI on this is really terrible.” And then it became clear that this is an animated film, and I felt a little more prepared for what was going to happen.

There is definitely a sense of fan service of a sort in this film. Ever since the release of Prey, people have talked about the different possibilities of Predator films. How would a Predator fare against a samurai? How would a group of Predators fare against a Roman legion? Predator: Killer of Killers starts to answer some of those questions for us, but by no means all of them.

What I've Caught Up With, May 2025

I'm slowly getting back into watching movies again, although I'm still hip-deep in dealing with my mom's estate. Just when I thought I'd gotten all of the pictures sorted, I was given a couple of thousand slides to go through as well. It feels never ending. Television-wise, I finished The Critic (don't watch the 10 season 3 webisodes--seriously) and caught up on the current series of Black Mirror. I'm in the middle of season 6 of the West Wing now. Sadly, my workout show (Battlestar Galactica) stopped streaming, so I've had to switch to The Expanse.

Trigger Warning

Film: The Entity
Format: Internet video on Fire!

When I started this blog all the way back at the tail end of 2009 (Jesus…2009. I was young-ish once), one of the decisions I made was that any reviews I posted would come from watching the film, even in cases where I had seen the film a bunch of times. I didn’t want to rely on memory of a film, but address how I approach it in the moment of watching it anew. Opinions change, after all, and some movies don’t hold up--Stripes was a classic comedy film when I was much younger, and the last time I watched it, I barely got through it. There are times when this strategy pays off, though. Such a case is The Entity.

I was not a fan the first time I watched this. I think my problem with it was simple—it purports itself to be based on a true story and it deals with, essentially, a sexually active poltergeist. As someone who has no actual spiritual beliefs, the “based on a true story” angle for films like this frustrates me. It’s the kind of thing that dupes the credulous and makes them vulnerable to scamming. So, I had a bit of a grudge against it, and I held it against the film. It was a mistake; this is a better movie than I thought it was.

Glitz and Glam

Film: The Last Showgirl
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on various players.

Years ago, I worked with a guy who used to joke that he watched Baywatch for the articles. The joke was that back in the day, it’s what a certain type of guy liked to say about Playboy—you got it for the articles, not the nudity. Baywatch, if you’re too young to remember those heady days of 35 or so years ago, was softcore television porn that featured a lot of slow-motion shots of Pamela Anderson running on the beach. It probably wasn’t too fair to her, but the show made her a sort of cultural punchline, someone desperate to be the new Marilyn Monroe. Well, she’s back, and The Last Showgirl is a clear attempt for respectability.

And let me say this so that I don’t come across as crass: Pamela Anderson deserves that respectability. The problem with the fake-breasted, blonde-haired bubblehead stereotype is that it is a stereotype. Like Marilyn before her (and like Judy Holliday as well), Pam Anderson is a hell of a lot smarter than anyone gave her credit for being. The Last Showgirl feels like something incredibly personal to her, and it shows in every frame.

A Little Dab'll Do Ya

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

I’m not going to virtue signal here, because something I’m about to say is kind of belied by a lot of the films I really love: women and marginalized groups make better horror movies. I say this full in the knowledge that some of my all-time favorite horror movies (28 Days Later, The Thing) are made by white dudes, and Wes Craven is far and away my favorite horror director. That said, for the last decade or so, the really interesting things being done in the genre are being done by women and marginalized people. That brings us to The Substance, a brutal body horror film that was so damned good it got a bunch of Oscar nominations, including a win for makeup and hairstyling.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is an aging actress who, Jane Fonda-like, has made a significant portion of her later career working in fitness videos. On her 50th birthday, her producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) fires her essentially for being too old. On her way home from being fired, she sees one of her billboards being ripped down, and loses control of her car. At the hospital post-crash, a young nurse slips a flash drive into her pocket offering her “The Substance,” which promises to create a better, more perfect version of herself.

Check Your Warranty

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

I mentioned yesterday that the They Shoot Zombies list has recently updated. One of the things that happened with the new update is that a couple of movies that I reviewed on my monthly roundups now appear on the list as entries. This means a rewatch, something I’m not really looking forward to in terms of Psycho Goreman, but one I very much looked forward to with Upgrade. It’s been a couple of years since I watched Upgrade, and it’s a film I liked quite a bit the first time through.

It’s also a film that suffers slightly from the fact that it very much plays like a feature-length Black Mirror episode. It kind of speaks to the success of Black Mirror that any dystopic near-future science fiction can easily come across as an episode of the show. Upgrade is a bit more involved than a typical episode, but it wouldn’t shock me if this was at least temporarily conceived of as an episode for an early season.

Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Film: The Last Broadcast
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

The They Shoot Zombies list updated recently, which is always a several day process for me in terms of updating my spreadsheets, blog, and Letterboxd site, since I am the unofficial curator of films that were on the list and have been removed. Typically, the update involves 3-4 dozen movies, most of which will have been on the list in the past with a few new additions. This year was a wholesale change, with 172 changes. Of those, 84 were returns and 88 are new to the list. It was a needed overhaul, though, because the list has been light on modern films, and the update is mainly films from the last 10 years. There are some exceptions, though, including The Last Broadcast, a found footage film that predates The Blair Witch Project by a year.

It's important that The Last Broadcast came first, because it explains the main issue with the film. Blair Witch established a lot of the rules of found footage despite there having been a number of films in the style before that. So, when I say that The Last Broadcast breaks the rules of the style, it’s only fair to point out that those rules weren’t really set in stone until the following year—it’s a sort of ex post facto complaint on my end.

Reboot

Film: Mickey 17
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

The best science fiction asks interesting questions that can’t really be answered by non-genre fiction. One of those questions that gets asked is how we define ourselves as human beings. Star Trek explored this with characters like Spock, Worf, and Data, for instance. Mickey 17 asks this question in the title character. Our title character Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is essentially a clone, someone who in the context of the film has been basically 3D printed. Is he human? Depending on who you ask in the movie, you’re going to get a different answer.

Going into Mickey 17, I figured there was going to be a lot of similarity to Moon, and there is some surface similarity. But where Moon is about deep, existential questions, Mickey 17 is much more visceral and also much more political. In today’s climate, it’s hard not to see this through a political lens, whether that was intended or not. However, since this was written in part and directed by Bong Joon Ho, looking at this politically is going to more often than not be the right way to do things.

Kinkshaming

Film: Crash (1996)
Format: Loaned DVD on basement television

Crash, the David Cronenberg film and not the maligned 2005 Best Picture winner, is a film I have been looking for for some time. Cronenberg is the king of body horror, and his films are always at least visually interesting. Crash is based on the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, who is an author I like a great deal, almost despite his subject matter. I have a fondness for Ballard in no small part because I discussed his books in my comps exam for my Master’s degree. Ballard often deals with human atrocities and physical degradation, a self-destructive impulse that he seems to feel is a natural part of human nature.

Crash is absolutely in the heart of that element of Ballard’s work. Much of his writing looks at people living lives on the extreme edge of existence, barely surviving, but seeing how far they can go while still managing to be alive. Crash specifically is about people who get erotic satisfaction from car accidents, both those that they see or witness and those that they are involved in. It’s as perverse a fetish movie as Salo in some ways, the sort of film you watch with the blinds drawn (not unlike Cruising).

Blood is Thicker than Water

Film: Sinners
Format: AMC Market Square Theater (Theater 8)

I have to think that it’s not easy to try to rework a classic monster into something new. Tell people that you’re making (another) werewolf movie or (another) zombie movie and you’re likely to often get a yawn in response. That’s nowhere more the case than with vampires. Seriously, how many different versions of vampires are there? How many times have I reviewed yet another version of the basic Dracula story on this blog? (Answer—at least six that are based directly on the Bram Stoker novel). So if you can do something really new, you’ve got a chance to get an audience really interested. That’s where we are starting with Sinners.

This is a vampire story, not a Dracula-specific story, though. We’re going to get vampires here that are going to have a lot of similarities to traditional vampires (weakness to garlic, killed by sunlight or a stake to the heart), but these are more of a hive mind of vampires, and while they are certainly sexual in a lot of ways, these are not romantic in the least. These vampires are more feral, and that works to the story’s benefit.

Why You Gonna Call?

Film: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

What are we to make of the Ghostbusters franchise? The original film is still a classic and still holds up—iconic cast, iconic lines, and moments that will go down as some of the best in horror/comedy ever filmed. The sequel is a bit of a mixed bag, again having some fun moments, but not living up to the original. The female cast reboot tanked, sadly, because I think it’s a better film than its reputation. Then we got Ghostbusters: Afterlife that really wanted to carry on from the original film. It was good, and it spawned the sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and this movie doesn’t know what it wants to be, and it’s going to make that a problem for everyone watching it.

Right off the top, there’s a massive issue with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and it’s one of the biggest issues from Ghostbusters II. In both films, we have protagonists who have essentially saved the world from a massive influx of ghosts are now essentially running on a shoestring and essentially maligned by everyone. I get that heroes sometimes fall, but we’re not given that story. It’s just that suddenly the people who saved the city now have a target on their backs and they’re barely making ends meet.

Does Nazareth Get a Cut for Naming Rights?

Film: Love Hurts
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Some people are natural action stars and some people aren’t, and it’s not always clear who works and who doesn’t. When Bruce Willis did Die Hard, it was seen as a huge misfire until people actually saw the movie. Who would have believed Bob Odenkirk as a movie badass before Nobody came out? Love Hurts attempts to do the same thing for the recently career-resurrected Ke Huy Quan, and sadly, the whole thing feels like an error. The action sequences are fun, but the movie itself is a huge miss.

It's a shame, too, because I really like Ke Huy Quan. He’s easy to like, and that’s one of the problems with Love Hurts. We’re presented with real estate agent Marvin Gable (Quan), who is evidently a very good real estate agent and who has signs up all over town. Someone is defacing those signs, though, giving him mustaches and sideburns, which seems like a harmless prank and the sort of thing that typically happens to real estate agents.

Back Through the Looking Glass

Film: Black Mirror Season 7
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

I don’t talk much about television on this blog, but as streaming services occupy more and more space in media, the dividing line between television and movie continues to blur. Black Mirror is an anthology series, but also has episodes that are essentially feature-length films. Are these short movies? Actual movies? Shows? I tend to think of them as kind of like novellas—they don’t tend to have the heft of a full novel, but they’re more involved than a short story.

The series has had its ups and downs. I didn’t hate Season 6 and it had some clear highpoints, but it also felt badly misdirected, as at least three of the five episodes were very clearly horror-themed rather than centered on ideas of technology, especially technology run amok. Season 7 feels much more on track as far as that goes, something like a return to form. If the series continues, this feels like a good place to continue it from.

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.