Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews

[Rascally Badger]

Did I post about how much I hated Blonde? Because that movie is fucking awful. It reduces Marilyn Monroe to just a victim. There is nothing else there. It has the gall to show almost exclusively terrible things happening to her, then I guess try to indict the viewer as a participant in this for watching it. I think I've seen worse movies this year, but none that I liked less.

Conversely, Amsterdam is getting savaged by critics, and I thought it was a delight. Sprawling, kind of unfocused and more about a vibe than really focusing in on its themes, but I could have watched it forever. Maybe my favorite movie of the year so far.

 

[chud_666]

The new Hellraiser is quite good

 

[Octopus Prime]

Watched what has to be the most obscure Marvel movie; the anime adaptation of Monster of Frankenstein, instead of the recently released Ween-themed Marvel movie I actually wanted to see. Well, so it goes sometimes.

It kind of changes gears pretty severely about midway through; starting off as being a shockingly violent semi sequel to the Karloff movie rather than the original novel, then it abandons that premise and just kind of meanders for a bit before the monster says “Wrll I’m about sick of all this” and flings himself off a cliff. But not before a lot of lingering shots on how many of its injuries map on to Jesus’ on the crucifix. Which is definitely trying to be symbolic of something but I’m not sure what.

If you’re going to watch one horror themed animated Marvel movie this year… make it Dracula, that one has him rob people for hamburgers.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

The Fear Street Trilogy is a weird little film series. In a way I appreciate. Tonally, it is a mix of what you might expect from a modern adaptation of R. L. Stine; exposition heavy and moralistically obvious and heavy-handed, albeit sideways of what you might expect from the often conservative slasher genre (the druggie kids are presented as pretty good people and while characters pass judgment, the film sees them in an initially "Hmm" but overall accepting light. Plus, pro-gay but that's been pretty normal for horror fans for a long time). However, it's polished look and fresh-faced actors make it feel like it is for younger fans but then it goes kinda hard on the blood and sex. It's odd and while I don't plan on revisiting them, I kind of like these films for being themselves and feeling kind of like Goosebumps for older people but someone gets there head caught in a bread slicer.

 

[Purple]

It's also worth stressing that the first one is good in particular, having this world building lore about someone in the town becoming a slasher villain every few years and then using that NOT to introduce someone just becoming a new slasher but to introduce just a great big slasher villain HERD covering themes from various different years. Rest of the series really can't ever find a way to top the sheer delight of that, but it's still a good watch just binging all three.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Really feel like the trilogy would have been better served by either being a miniseries or just being edited together differently. The whole of the 1977 movie just felt completely unnecessary.

The first was legit enjoyable

 

[Pajaro Pete]

The Fear Street Trilogy is a weird little film series. In a way I appreciate. Tonally, it is a mix of what you might expect from a modern adaptation of R. L. Stine; exposition heavy and moralistically obvious and heavy-handed, albeit sideways of what you might expect from the often conservative slasher genre (the druggie kids are presented as pretty good people and while characters pass judgment, the film sees them in an initially "Hmm" but overall accepting light. Plus, pro-gay but that's been pretty normal for horror fans for a long time). However, it's polished look and fresh-faced actors make it feel like it is for younger fans but then it goes kinda hard on the blood and sex. It's odd and while I don't plan on revisiting them, I kind of like these films for being themselves and feeling kind of like Goosebumps for older people but someone gets there head caught in a bread slicer.

how i describe the vibe is that it was originally pitched and greenlit for a PG-13 rating, then at some point during filming some suit was like "yeah even if you aren't showing the little kids being murdered on screen, it's still gonna be an R", so they decided to punch up the violence and language.

Really feel like the trilogy would have been better served by either being a miniseries or just being edited together differently. The whole of the 1977 movie just felt completely unnecessary.

The first was legit enjoyable

it was a miniseries!!

 

[Octopus Prime]

Yeah but minier! Like a bunch of 40 minute episodes so each time period got a little bit of focus rather than having whole movies for each

 

[Rascally Badger]

I was somehow unaware that David O Russell is a big creep, and I am tempering any recommendation I had for Amsterdam. I still think its a good movie, but I don't feel comfortable recommending it to people.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Dark Night of a Scarecrow is apparently a TV movie that scared a lot of kids in the 80s so I decided to check it out. It's an OK, if overlong morality tale thriller where a "simpleton" named Bubba is murdered by townfolks who mistakenly believe he's killed a child and decide to cover it up. One by one they are picked off by a specter dressed in the scarecrow costume Bubba was wearing when he died. It's a slower, quieter horror film about mounting dread but it's only OK. I can see why it made an impression, though. It does a lot with a little, Charles Durning is great as the villain who is slowly realizing karma is going to get him and the Scarecrow costume is memorable.

I was kind of expecting a slasher but it's really more of a classic ghost story. We barely see the scarecrow and we don't even see it move until the end. It feels like a Night Gallery episode. A bit overlong, maybe, but a decent Halloween watch.

 

[Voncaster]

I re-watched Vampires vs. the Bronx on Netflix. Its a family friendly horror comedy about vampires moving into the Bronx. The movie also about the gentrification of the Bronx. Surprisingly it doesn't suck. In fact it is great as far as family friendly halloween themed movies go.

If you haven't seen the movie, I can easily recommend it. I think it will be a Halloween season staple for my family.

***
I was also flipping through the channels and caught the last half hour of Van Helsing (2004) on Syfy.

Its a terrible movie. Van Helsing is overlong, it has caricature European accents, unfunny comedy, and dated CGI. But for whatever reason, I count myself as a fan of the movie. Maybe being a fan of Dracula and Castlevania puts this movie in my wheelhouse despite its quality.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I didn’t much care for the original Halloween, but I loved the 2018 Halloween. So I watched that movies sequel Halloween Kills. Which isn’t even a fraction of as good.

Definitely lived up to its title because Halloween killed a crapload of people in it.

If you just watch the scene where a bunch of firefighters get ready to throw down with a burning man emerging from a house fire, you’d get everything you need from the movie

 

[Pajaro Pete]

now it's time to watch Halloween Resurrection, the Secret Best Halloween

 

[MetManMas]

ANASTASIA

BROKE: It's fucked up that they made a kids movie about an actual dead princess.
JOKE: It's fucked up that they made a kids movie about Rasputin's Rotting Corpse.
WOKE: It's fucked up that they made a kids movie about how the Russian Monarchy was cool and good.
BESPOKE: It's fucked up that since Disney bought Fox Anastasia is now literally a Disney Princess.

By this very same chain of logic, Bartok the Bat is now literally a Disney character.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

The Babysitter is an interesting movie in that it tonally feels more of an early 2000s film. Not in a bad way, entirely. Sometimes it's attempts at editorial cuteness feels like an older director trying to learn from the younger generation in terms of editing and storytelling and it's a valiant effort but it doesn't all work. The use of text is cheesy and has been done better by a lot of directors. At the same time, I was engaged the whole time and many of the actors are good. I wouldn't recommend it but I don't think I'd deter anyone from watching it either. There's good stuff in there, even if it feels made up of parts that feel like photocopies of other, better movies.

I will say, doing a nerdy protagonist character kid is hard and this film... both succeeds and fails. It hits too many of the hallmarks but I think doing it well involves specificity. But then from time to time it does specificity great. I don't buy this kid would be into Billy Jack but I like that choice. But spending all night googling facts on a show he's not allowed to watch yet feels just right.

 

[Purple]

The Babysitter is an interesting movie in that it tonally feels more of an early 2000s film.

I was talking to someone a while ago about how there's a real look you can picture for any given decade, and I used to have a hard time with describing the early 2000s, but go watch those (wow, 20 years old now!?) Charlie's Angels movies by this director, and go watch D.E.B.S. and oh yeah it is totally a thing.

 

[Voncaster]

now it's time to watch Halloween Resurrection, the Secret Best Halloween

I have to go with Halloween III Season of the Witch as the secret best and best Halloween.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

I have to go with Halloween III Season of the Witch as the secret best and best Halloween.

i am an apologist for both tbh!!!

 

[Johnny Unusual]

There are some mean-spirited horror movies that turn me off early on... but then there are some mean-spirited ones that are sort of perfect. This is one. The other one is Return of the Living Dead.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Season of the Witch is an excellent movie about Halloween, but I’d say that the 2018 is the best Halloween movie

 

[ASandoval]

I've been lukewarm on the Danny McBride Halloween franchise overall myself - personally I think I liked Kills slightly more than 2018 simply because it really wants to say something thoughtful and meaningful, even though it kind of meanders around those thoughts inbetween some very tonally jarring cartoon violence (armed to the teeth firemen being one such example), but I appreciate the weird audacity of it all. 2018 just felt like a pretty good update meant to replace all the goofy sequels and retreads.

Anyway, the whole venture was worth it for Ends. Still playing with a lot of the themes they explored in Kills, but much more evenly this time, with a cool twist on the formula that plays with a bunch of different, interesting things and makes for a very different experience from the other films, and a much more even film overall. There's a few nitpicks I have about character motivations and arcs following the other movies and it doesn't quite stick the landing, but it's easily my favorite of the three.

 

[ASandoval]

Followed up Halloween Ends with Psycho 2, the one film in the series I hadn't seen (made for TV back door pilots not withstanding). Given what I knew about the film going in, it felt like a good follow up to some of the ideas explored in Ends.

Given the context of the creation of the movie (essentially a studio mandated film rushed into production after the author of the original novel decided to write a new book 20 years later and they wanted to secure the rights), it's surprisingly well done? It's very different from the original film, borrowing elements both from it and other Hitchcock thrillers, and also maintaining it's own sense of style. Beautifully shot, well acted (Anthony Perkins is a treasure) and just an all around interesting movie given it's history.

 

[Purple]

Finally getting around to watching Nope, and it was... pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Just a nice solid horror movie with a generally likeable cast and a couple really interesting recontextualized needle drops, dusting off a horror premise nobody's really done much with in Kind Of A Bit. The one thing that did really surprise me was "oh hey! Keith David is in this!?" but that's kinda par for the course with everything he's in. And I guess I wasn't expecting the third act to go in quite the direction it did, that was a nice surprise.

Getting into the spoiler zone... wow for real when was the last time someone just straight up did a spooky flying saucers abducting people and animals thing? Was it Signs? And what was the last time anyone really did that before Signs? A couple things in the early '80s? And then we're also mixing in a pretty generous helping of "you thought this was a well-trained friendly animal? Ha, shame on you for letting your guard down!" which also feels like a direction nobody's taken in a while.

I do have mixed feelings there a little. Like, it absolutely works here. I actually guessed the big sky fish twist WELL in advance because the animal training and chimp subplot in particular had to go SOMEWHERE, and where else could it really? Ties everything together really well, argues its point nicely, leads to the monster being pretty well realized as an actual plausible creature which elevates things a lot.

But on the other hand, it does skew a bit further towards "you should never trust any animal no matter how safe it seems to be because they could just snap and try to kill you" territory than I would like. Specifically invoking the infamous Siegfried and Roy incident even, and that's a whole can of worms. Also a little odd to establish "OK we are not going to use these horses that we love as bait" right before they... absolutely proceed to do that. I don't know, it's a hard needle to thread when this is your plot obviously, but there's a whole lot of "hey you, audience, feel sympathetic towards these performing animals who have to deal with being spooked by careless idiots all the time" so I'm gonna be looking at the whole thing through that lens, you know?

But back to being hugely complimentary, that uh... rain of foreign objects and blood over the house scene really stood out. As did going all Flatwoods monster/lion fish towards the end.

 

[YangusKhan]

Anyway, the whole venture was worth it for Ends. Still playing with a lot of the themes they explored in Kills, but much more evenly this time, with a cool twist on the formula that plays with a bunch of different, interesting things and makes for a very different experience from the other films, and a much more even film overall. There's a few nitpicks I have about character motivations and arcs following the other movies and it doesn't quite stick the landing, but it's easily my favorite of the three.

I watched this tonight. Man. What an interesting fucking movie. I honestly can't even begin to think about how "good" it is because it's just... so different from what I expected. It retroactively made me appreciate Kills more, and I thought that movie was pretty weak, so that feat in itself is quite the accomplishment. I saw some discourse on Twitter about it with one person saying "I went in expecting Rise of Skywalker and what I got was The Last Jedi." And yeah man, that's a great analogy.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is an odd little 60s Japanese horror movie. Ostensibly it's based on two unrelated Kazuo Umezu short stories smashed together but even then despite some death it's more of a PG-13 horror not only in levels of violence but also kind of blunting its horror with it's reveals of the villains being more generic bad guys than truly perplexing monsters. It's still very fun, trippy and weird and a perfect watch for the Halloween month.

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

now it's time to watch Halloween Resurrection, the Secret Best Halloween

I like it conceptually more than most Halloween sequels because it’s just so flagrantly disrespectful to Michael Myers and slasher morality conventions. (Busta Rhymes, venal dot com mogul, kicks his ass!)

I’m really surprised to discover I think I liked Halloween Ends even though I hated the last two movies. It does a lot for me that this film is kind of rude to and disinterested in Michael Myers. Plenty of baffling creative decisions here, but he is no longer murdering dozens of randos over the course of a few real-time hours nor a supernatural entity. And I would like to see the legal proceedings following that police endorsed public corpse parade and disposal.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Here’s a Hot Take that the man doesn’t want to hear;

Lord of the Rings is some good movies

 

[Patrick]

Indeed.

 

[Purple]

So I don't think I've ever said this about another movie before, but... The Black Phone really would have worked so much better as a videogame. Also frankly if you lopped off the first 40 minutes. It just spends WAY too much time just kinda vaguely establishing that it is the 70s and there is a kidnapper and there's this long uncomfortable child abuse scene which is really uncomfortable to watch, has nothing at all to the plot, and isn't followed up on in any way? The protagonist's dad just wails on his sister with a belt for like 5 minutes and then the rest of the movie kinda pretends that didn't happen? It feels like there was some sort of early draft where they were trying to do some kind of misdirect to paint Abusive Dad as the killer and then the movie just completely dropped any Whodunnit aspect and left this in for some reason? Super offputting. But anyway-

Once we really get into it the structure is we've got this kid locked in this very exaggeratedly unpleasant and weirdly spacious basement, trying to come up with a way to escape this guy who has killed 5 kids to date, and we have this very formalized structure where each past kid in general calls him on the titular black phone, which is just conveniently down here in the murder basement, unable to make or receive calls except from spooky ghost kids. Anyway each kid goes over what they learned on their escape attempt, and gives a semi-cryptic hint about where they hid an adventure game item, and then the protag has to putter around the basement a bit doing light puzzle solving to find them, and then combines them all in a really convoluted way to kill the killer. And just... seriously. The whole thing's begging to have a little use/combine/examine UI at the bottom and dialog trees.

There's also this whole mostly unconnected side plot with the protagonist's sister who swears like a sailor and reminds me of the little girl from Monster Squad. She has psychic visions which eventually lead to uh... her being around for a hug when the protagonist escapes purely with the aid of ghost tips? She's kinda the best thing in the movie and it's kind of a shame she doesn't actually make a meaningful contribution in the end.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Brain Damage is a weird little horror comedy. There's definitely comedy in there and it has the feel of a cheapo horror comedy but for every scene where a woman planning to give a blowjob ends up with a brain eating monster in her mouth, there's a lot that is basically just about the sadness of being a drug addict, where the drug is a phallic parasite. It feels more sad and sedate than anything. I think based on what little I knew about the director, I was expecting something transgressive and while the aforementioned blowjob scene is (in that it goes on a while and there is a monster going in and out of the actresses mouth for a while), a bit of unreal tone and an articulate monster voiced by 60s horror host Zacherly, the film is not quite the fun chaotic film I was expecting overall. But I think it's a good movie with some inventive scenes (one of the drug hallucinations is pretty great).