Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Tuesday, December 24th, 2024
RED ONE is not a prequel to THE BIG RED ONE or READY PLAYER ONE, but in fact a Christmas fantasy action movie produced by Amazon Product Corporation and starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Chris Formerly Captain America Evans. It has made around $180 million in theaters but is considered a flop because it cost something like $250 million before marketing. I have seen many holding it up as an example of the worst fucking crap imaginable. “Slop,” if you will.
I don’t have a high opinion of most of the recent artistic choices of the named parties, so I didn’t rush out to see it. But now I have seen it on Amazon’s streaming/package delivery service (it’s already on there) and it is my duty to report that I liked it. This is a genuinely funny movie! That is not something I expect out of Dwayne T.R. Johnson in the year 2024. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bonnie Hunt, Chris Evans, Chris Morgan, Christmas, Christmas action, J.K. Simmons, Jake Kasdan, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Liu, Reinaldo Faberlie, The Rock
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords | 42 Comments »
Tuesday, December 17th, 2024
DESPERATE LIVING (1977) is the fifth feature film from John Waters, the one he did before dipping his toe in the mainstream with POLYESTER. Its opening – not counting the credits sequence showing a fancy place setting where a (real) fried rat is served and (fake) eaten – introduces us to Baltimore socialite Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole, NEIGHBOR), returned early from the mental hospital. Her husband Bosley (George Stover, WRESTLEMASSACRE) insists she’ll be fine, but she’s immediately throwing manic fits. When a kid accidentally hits a baseball through her window, for example, she believes it’s an attempt on her life, and is sure to squeeze the maximum amount of drama from it.
As we laugh at Stole’s crazed rantings, we can see the trick of Waters’ distinct brand of outrageousness. In reality (or realism) this would be incredibly sad. This poor mentally ill woman is detached from reality and in constant fear and mania. But the purposely stiff style of most of the acting and dialogue creates a distance for us and an appreciation for the fact that everyone in this world is an absolute mess. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, George Stover, John Waters, Liz Renay, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, December 11th, 2024
FRANKIE FREAKO is the new one from director Steven Kostanski, who I started paying attention to when he did PSYCHO GOREMAN (2020). He’s Canadian and he’s part of this group called Astron-6 who also did MANBORG, THE VOID, LEPRECHAUN RETURNS and others. I’m gonna have to give those a shot. He was also prosthetic makeup effects lead for IN A VIOLENT NATURE, among other things. They got a fun scene going on up there, those Canadians.
This one is primarily the Astron-6 version of a li’l bastards movie like MUNCHIE or GHOULIES, but it’s also kind of a RISKY BUSINESS “party while the parents are away” movie, and also they work in some 976-EVIL – the kid whose parents are away summons a little guy called Frankie Freako by calling his phone line. Except it’s actually not a kid, it’s a sexually repressed adult man who does this while his wife is out of town on a business trip. The beginning part is lit like a noir-inspired erotic thriller and it plays like a dangerous foray into forbidden sexual desires or some shit. But it’s actually just funny puppets. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Brooks, Astron-6, Blitz//Berlin, Conor Sweeney, Kristy Wordsworth, li'l bastards, Metthew Kennedy, puppets, Rich Evans, Steven Kostanski
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, December 10th, 2024
THELMA (2024) is a cute little comedy about a 93 year old lady (June Squibb, NEBRASKA) spending a couple days feeling like her life is an action movie. She’s widowed and lives on her own, but her very nice twenty-four-year-old grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger, EIGHTH GRADE) visits often, drives her places, helps her with checking her email and things.
Then one day she gets scammed by somebody who calls her pretending to be Danny in trouble. In fact Danny is fine, but sleeping in and not answering his phone, so she puts the whole family in a panic, and by the time they figure out what happened she’s already mailed ten thousand dollars cash to a p.o. box. The police can’t do anything except tell her don’t worry, you’re not the first to fall for this, and apparently “Zuckenborg” can’t even do anything even though they might’ve gotten her information from social media. She specifically asked about that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Clark Gregg, Fred Hechinger, Josh Margolin, June Squibb, Parker Posey, Richard Roundtree
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 9 Comments »
Monday, December 9th, 2024
Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the holiday spirit, the cozy, crackling fire is back. ADULT SWIM YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT is a sequel to the brilliant 2022 Christmas surprise ADULT SWIM YULE LOG. If you’ve never heard of that, it was a yule log video that aired without explanation at midnight on Adult Swim, now viewable on [HBO] Max or on a special edition blu-ray from Dekanalog. As you watch the fire in the fireplace you start to hear conversations in the cozy cabin where it takes place, and someone comes to the door and there’s a murder. It becomes a found footage horror movie slowly zooming out to show more of the cabin and eventually changing format as the story turns increasingly absurd and surreal.
And now, in secret as far as I know, writer/director Casper Kelly (Too Many Cooks, the Cheddar Goblin commercial in MANDY) has made a continuation with a totally different, but still very impressive, Christmas/horror/comedy conceit. It centers on part 1 character Zoe (Andrea Laing, Step Up: High Water), revealed to have survived the massacre at the cabin (though her fiance did not). She wakes up in a hospital, haunted by hallucinations of the ultimate villain of the first film – the cursed yule log that flies around bashing people to death. Her failure to adjust to the trauma ends up costing her her job, so her fun gay friend Jakester (Chase Steven Anderson, “Ticket Booth Operator,” THE COLOR PURPLE [2023]) convinces her they should go to Cancun to get away from it all. But their car breaks down at the exit to a picturesque little town called Mistletoe, in time for “the festival.” You know – the annual yule log festival. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adult Swim, Andrea Laing, Casper Kelly, Chase Steven Anderson, Christmas, Jesse Malinowski, Jonathan Snipes, Michael Shenefelt, Sharon Blackwood, Susan Savoie
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 7 Comments »
Monday, December 2nd, 2024
NUTCRACKERS is a new David Gordon Green movie that went straight to Hulu. Since 2018 he’s directed four Blumhouse horror sequels (HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN KILLS, HALLOWEEN ENDS, THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER), at least three of them controversial/hated, plus 15 episodes of television. Personally I like his horror phase and wouldn’t mind if he kept going, but I’m also excited that he’s returned to standalone indie films.
Ben Stiller (NEXT OF KIN) stars as Michael Maxwell, an obnoxious Chicago real estate guy happy to tell you about the big deal he’s in the middle of or complain about the young guy Devon trying to steal it from him. Before he can get back to work he has to drive (in his yellow Porsche) to Wilmington, Ohio, he thinks to sign paperwork for his four nephews to be adopted after the death of his sister and her husband in a car accident. But as soon as he shows up the social worker (Linda Cardellini, CAPONE) tells him the foster family didn’t pass the background check so it’s on him to watch the kids until another one is found. Sorry dude. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Arlo Janson, Atlas Janson, ballet, Ben Stiller, Christmas, David Gordon Green, Edi Patterson, Homer Janson, Leland Douglas, Linda Cardellini, Toby Huss, Ulysses Janson
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, November 19th, 2024
I’m trying not to overdo the horror movies during these times of dread, but I feel very strongly that I didn’t fit in enough Slasher Searching this October. In order to be the change I want to see in the world I intend to continue the mission periodically, free of holiday constraints. So today I have for you a double-header of wrestling themed horror movies. I thought it was a good gimmick when I reviewed WRESTLEMANIAC 16 years ago (!), but I didn’t realize until scrolling Tubi recently that it’s a whole subgenre now.
WRESTLEMASSACRE (2018) is a slasher movie of the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT or Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN variety in that it follows the killer and gets into his psychology before he goes on a rampage. I guess it’s more of a grappler movie than a slasher movie, since he mostly kills with his bare hands. (But sometimes hedgeclippers.) Randy (Richie Acevedo, “Vendor (uncredited), SUPERFLY) is a timid Cuban immigrant who works as a landscaper but dreams of becoming a wrestler like his dad (Nikolai Volkoff). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Twigg, Channing Decker, Daniel Turres, Dee Snider, Glen Michael Grant, James Roberts, Jesse Buck, Joelle Farrow, Julio Bana Fernandez, Marqus Bobes, MIchael Therriault, Nicholas Yoder II, Nikolai Volkoff, Richie Acevedo, Rosanna Nelson, Shawn Roberts, Tara Spencer-Nairn, wrestling, wrestling horror
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 8 Comments »
Monday, November 18th, 2024
ANORA is a real knock out of a movie from writer/director Sean Baker, major indie voice of the 21st century known for style on a microbudget, authentic performances by non-professional actors, and being one of the first to shoot an acclaimed movie on an iPhone. I’ll be honest, I’ve only seen THE FLORIDA PROJECT, which I loved at the time, but for some reason haven’t caught up or kept up with the rest of his filmography. So correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression from that limited view is that this is him doing something a little more slick and mainstream than usual without abandoning what he’s good at.
Not that it’s 100% commercial or normal. It just feels that way. It’s pretty long, it’s about a sex worker, and it’s a somewhat odd combination of genres, but it’s really funny, it’s not super weird, and it has heart. It won the Palme d’Or, but I think it could pass as a fun movie for normal people better than recent winners PARASITE, TITANE, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS or ANATOMY OF A FALL. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aleksei Serebryakov, Brittney Rodriguez, Darya Ekemasova, Ella Rubin, Karren Karagulian, Lindsey Normington, Mark Eydelshteyn, Mikey Madison, Palme d'Or winner, Sean Baker, Vache Tovmasyan, Yura Borisov
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama | 18 Comments »
Wednesday, November 13th, 2024
Jody Hill’s OBSERVE AND REPORT (2009) was maybe a little ahead of its time. Or at least ahead of me. I guess I didn’t review it, but I remember being a little disappointed at the time, thinking it had kind of a fake darkness to it. I thought it was supposed to be a TAXI DRIVER type portrait of a mall security guard, and it seemed kind of forced to me.
Watching it now, though, it obviously got alot of shit right about a certain type of person that it really was important to be keeping an eye on. In fact it was right enough that now my issue is that maybe it’s treating the subject matter a little too lightly.
Seth Rogen stars as Ronnie Barnhardt, the jovial but completely deluded head of security at Forest Ridge Mall who sees an opportunity for glory when a serial flasher (Randy Gambill, production designer of Hill’s debut THE FOOT FIST WAY) keeps showing up and exposing himself to customers and staff. Ronnie treats it like a big murder investigation and becomes very competitive with the overqualified actual cop assigned to catch the guy, Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta, COP LAND). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anna Faris, Aziz Ansari, Celia Weston, Collette Wolf, Danny McBride, Jesse Plemons, Jody Hill, Michael Pena, Patton Oswalt, Ray Liotta, Seth Rogen, Tim Orr
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 11 Comments »
Thursday, October 3rd, 2024
At some point in the last decade or so the movie-discussers really latched onto the term “body horror.” They kinda act like if you can identify a movie as body horror that means it’s legit. But also when they say it they almost always mean one thing: it has some David Cronenberg-inspired New Flesh type stuff at some point. I kinda wonder how many of the people comparing any vaguely misshapen flesh to Cronenberg bothered to see his last movie, but I suppose that’s irrelevant.
THE SUBSTANCE definitely fits the category, and there are reasons to compare it to Cronenberg, but tonally, I gotta say, this is way more Frank Henenlotter and Brian Yuzna. Picture a movie that’s a descendent of SOCIETY and the BASKET CASE trilogy and makes you wonder what Screaming Mad George is up to these days, but that also boasts an acclaimed lead performance by Demi Moore, won Best Screenplay at Cannes and is distributed by MUBI. That’s what THE SUBSTANCE is.
For me it was a must-see because it’s movie #2 from Coralie Fargeat, writer/director of REVENGE (2017). It sucks that it took her 7 years to do another feature (with only the serial killer convention episode of The Sandman in between), but thankfully she struts into her delayed sophomore outing like she has diplomatic immunity. She brings along her stylish design, blood-smeared rich people homes and mythic battles between beautiful women with star-shaped earrings and awful men, but this time in a sci-fi vein and much broader, sillier and more indulgent. I’m not sure if I would’ve noticed it was 141 minutes if I didn’t know it going in, but I love Fargeat’s dedication to overdoing absolutely everything, beginning with its narratively redundant (but all the more beautiful for it) time lapse sequence about the lifespan of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: body horror, Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, Margaret Qualley
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 31 Comments »
