This may surprise you, but I have always wanted to see ANACONDA. It’s a theatrically released, pre-SyFy Channel, early CG giant snake movie with an all star (more so now than then) cast, and I heard pretty good things about it, including a description of the best part of the movie (a famous scene involving Jon Voight) which was convincing. But somehow in all these years I never rented it. And then all the sudden last month Seattle’s S.I.F.F. Uptown screened it in a remastered DCP. The kind of thing I was hoping would happen to make up for all the theaters being forced to switch to digital. You take away our 35 mm, you better give us theatrical re-releases of ANACONDA and shit like that.
Maybe that’s why I never watched it. I was waiting for it to come back to the big screen. Maybe dreams do come true. (read the rest of this shit…)
American movies of the ’80s were so fascinated with fraternities and sororities. Was that just an offshoot of the popularity of ANIMAL HOUSE? They saw that and realized the Greek system was a good way for a movie to have a bunch of young people drinking beer and having sex?
Maybe that’s all they wanted, but this world also has alot of built-in conflict in the rivalries between fraternities, or (as in this case) the new people going through hazing to try to get accepted. It’s a pretty good microcosm of the way alot of us remember the age of yuppies and Ronald Reagan: you got these good looking assholes in charge, coming from rich families, re-enacting weird fetishistic rituals of cruelty while excluding people different from themselves from their superficial, hedonistic lifestyle. Usually we’re supposed to identify with an underdog or outsider who’s trying to be accepted into this world, not opposing it. Here it’s two good looking girls (Joanna Johnson and Elaine Wilkes as Jennifer and Phoebe) and their quirky bespectacled friend Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch, whose only other movie was FINAL EXAM) who the sorority sisters clearly don’t like. So there’s that tension that they might turn against her to get in, or after they get in. (read the rest of this shit…)
This Chucky series is one-of-a-kind. Of course it all started in ’88 with CHILD’S PLAY, a genuinely effective creepfest that put a drop of contemporary into a classic horror premise. It’s been a while since I’ve watched parts 2 (1989) and 3 (1991), but I remember the second is a pretty solid (if unnecessary) continuation and the 3rd one is, you know, terrible. But in ’98 the series was ingeniously reborn as absurdist horror-comedy with BRIDE OF CHUCKY, directed by Ronny Yu, and in 2004 we got the severely more ridiculous SEED OF CHUCKY, which was a great time at the movies for me and 25 other people around the world.
The constant through all these movies has been Don Mancini, credited with story and co-screenplay on CHILD’S PLAY, sole writer on every single sequel and director of SEED and now CURSE OF CHUCKY. He’s always trying to keep the doll alive so here he is 9 years later doing what he has to do to make a part 6: do it for $5 million dollars, straight-to-video, returning to the roots of it being a serious horror movie about one scary doll instead of a preposterous comedy with a whole family of puppets. The word “reboot” was even used in some write ups since for a while they were planning it as a straightup remake instead of sequel. (read the rest of this shit…)
GRAVITY is the new one from Alfonso Cuaron, genius director who hasn’t done one since CHILDREN OF MEN seven years ago. You remember for that he and his criminally award-snubbed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (THE TREE OF LIFE, THE CAT IN THE HAT [!?]) devised several completely jaw-dropping long take shots where the protagonists run through these crazy battles and go through all kinds of shit without any visible edits. Remember that scene where the car is rolling down the hill and they get attacked by a band of marauders, or the one where he has to fight his way up the stairs looking for his elephant? Or actually I think one of those was TOM YUM-GOONG. But even so there were some great ones in CHILDREN OF MEN, and for GRAVITY they took that to the next level, doing most of the movie in long unbroken takes. You just stop thinking about it, but apparently the first shot lasts 17 minutes. And this is in an era when 17 seconds without a cut would seem like a long time.
Like AVATAR, this plays like a live action movie but actually has more animation onscreen than organic human flesh. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts who are out in their astronaut suits fixing a satellite or telescope or some scientifical type shit when debris from an exploded satellite wrecks the shuttle and kills the rest of their crew. They have no contact with earth, no space ship and limited resources they gotta try to use to get their ass to the International Space Station or whatever. One of those space joints they got up there. Stop me if I use too much technical jargon and what not. (read the rest of this shit…)
I think ABDUCTED was a barely seen drive-in type of movie. IMDb doesn’t even have a release date or box office info for it. Have you ever heard of it? No. But nine years later in the completely different climate of mid-90s DTV they actually made a sequel. The titleational reunion, thankfully, is not between Renee and Vern, it’s between three old college friends. And also between Vern (still Lawrence King-Phillips, still alive despite getting shot off a bridge and splattered against a bunch of rocks, legendary in the area, now even crazier and living in a cave like it’s a prequel to OFFSPRING) and his dad Joe (still Dan Haggerty, still hanging around the woods). And of course it’s a reunion between Haggerty, King-Phillips, writer-director Boon Collins and co-writer Lindsay Bourne.
It follows alot of the usual sequel standards: cheesier and more TV-movie than the first one, rehashed plot, ante upped. Well, they up the ante by having three women instead of one: Maria (Raquel Bianca), Sharon (Debbie Rochon) and Ingrid (Donna Jason). This time you get to know them a little bit before Vern jumps out of the bushes. They’re old friends on a trip together, they don’t like the idea of hunting, they’re rude to the locals, one of them is in the middle of a bad breakup, another one seems like maybe she’s gonna make a move on that one, etc. They camp out in a tent together, drink and are real loud and obnoxious even though they know they’re bothering a nerdy park ranger guy nearby (they don’t know that he’s thinking about them and jerking off, though). (read the rest of this shit…)
This is not really a slasher movie, there’s not much of a body count and the villain uses a gun, not a knife. And I didn’t find it in the horror section. But it does involve an innocent woman out in the woods getting abducted by a crazy mountain man, and there is a part 2. It sounded like enough echoes of TEXAS CHAIN SAW to be worth giving it a shot.
Renee (Roberta Weiss, THE DEAD ZONE) is a lady in pink Nike sweats out for a jog on a hiking trail somewhere (it was filmed in or around Vancouver) when suddenly she gets jumped by a crazy shades-wearing mountain man named Vern (Lawrence King-Phillips, ROLLING VENGEANCE), who ties a rope around her neck like a leash and makes her come with him. The cover says it’s based on a true story so I want to make perfectly clear that they better not be saying it’s based on me. I never abducted nobody. I’ll sue. (read the rest of this shit…)
Like its part 1, THE COLLECTOR (2009), I can’t say that the 2012 sequel THE COLLECTION is any great shakes. But man, it starts out with a bang.
If you haven’t heard of THE COLLECTOR it’s because it was a pretty low key release, opening on 1,325 screens. The first SAW movie was released on almost a thousand more screens. I make the comparison because this one’s definitely in the SAW vein – in fact it started with a rejected script for a SAW sequel. It has a genius inventor/torturer in an S&M mask who sets up preposterous contraptions, bear traps and hidden razor blades in the sizable home of a rich family. But the cool gimmick is that the protagonist Arkin (Josh Stewart, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES) is a traitor who installed the security system and then tried to rob the place while they were supposed to be on vacation, not tied up by a maniac. He stumbles on this nightmare and tries to do the right thing and help them. They’re like “I’m so happy to see you! Wait– why are you here?” (read the rest of this shit…)
Dito Montiel is a director I’ve kept an eye on since I saw his underground fighting movie FIGHTING. That one’s not good for action filmatism, but it’s really enjoyable as a more realistically textured take on the LIONHEART type of movie, and it has alot of personality. The example I always give when I try to convince somebody to see it is that the ultimate goal of the fight manager character played by Terence Howard is to get enough money to franchise an IHoP. So see that one, everybody. Totally underrated.
EMPIRE STATE is Montiel’s first movie that doesn’t have Channing Tatum in it, instead it stars an occasionally Tatum-esque Liam Hemsworth, a.k.a. the only expended Expendable as of part 2 (spoiler). There’s something odd about an Australian doing a New York meathead character, but Thor’s little brother has more range than I knew. Maybe Tatum was Montiel’s DeNiro, and Hemsworth will be his DiCaprio. I guess we’ll know that’s what’s up if Tatum starts doing a bunch of DTV cop movies with 50 Cent. (read the rest of this shit…)
“Well, I didn’t think it was terrible or anything.”
–Vern, outlawvern.com
For the most part PAIN & GAIN is not that bad in the usual ways that Michael Bay movies are bad. Check this shit out: I honestly had no major stylistic problems with this one, other than some late-in-the-game freeze frame/on screen graphic things that are supposed to be funny (listing the side effects of cocaine use, saying “this is still a true story” during a crazy part, etc.) Even the action scenes are fine and have a good energy to them. I think maybe when Bay is limited to what he considers a low budget ($26 million) he has to do more planning and less shooting everything from a hundred different angles to slap together later.
What I really expected to be deadly in this movie was the jokes. Of course I hold a grudge against Bay for the way his and Simon West’s editing and framing began the crumbling of the visual language of action cinema that led to the current state of things where only a very small percentage of American action movies are worth watching if you are hoping for there to be action scenes in them. That’s what he’s gonna have to answer for when he gets to the Pearly Gates, but it’s definitely not the worst thing about his movies – that would have to be his terrible sense of humor. BAD BOYS 2 and the TRANSFORMERSes especially can’t go a minute without some unfunny ad-libbed jibber jabber, or a cut away to a dog fucking something, or a sassy black lady swearing at somebody (or vice versa), or a cartoonish service person or government stooge being an asshole for no reason other than to reflect Bay’s world view. So when this joker said his next movie was gonna be a comedy I heard the JAWS music.
This is the third time I’ve seen PROMETHEUS. I saw it twice in the theater. It’s one of the most divisive movies in the history of outlawvern.com comments, and I wanted to see how it played after sleeping on it for a while. I still like it and think that its great filmatism overcomes its underlying stupidity. But I’ve got a few new thoughts on it.
We’ve discussed alot of unscientific things these scientists on the Prometheus do, but one I don’t remember thinking about before is that they’re totally jumping to this conclusion that humans were engineered. All they’re going on is the “DNA match,” that “their genetic material predates ours,” but doesn’t that seem more like we evolved from them than they purposely created us? I guess they’re going on the cave paintings, which they assume were made by the Engineers and did in fact lead them to this planet. But I don’t know, I don’t feel like this Engineer theory has been adequately proven. (read the rest of this shit…)
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THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Curt on KPop Demon Hunters + Boys Go to Jupiter: “I finally saw this one because a local indie theater held a screening. I enjoyed it. I appreciated the colorful…” Mar 17, 04:29
Miguel Hombre on Oscar 2026 preview: “As a follow up comment I’ll add that I feel like this year the actual winners in each individual category…” Mar 16, 16:28
Muh on Oscar 2026 preview: “I’d give it to One Battle, Anderson delivers like he usually does and it’s really a good, funny weird movie.…” Mar 15, 11:35
Mr.Shemp on Song Sung Blue (2025): “Oh Vern, you must see the version of THE JAZZ SINGER. It’s almost like the makers understood that the original…” Mar 15, 09:57
Miguel Hombre on Oscar 2026 preview: “I consider OBAA by far the best movie of the year, but I wanted to go on record as saying…” Mar 15, 08:53
Ben Railton on Oscar 2026 preview: “I know that it’s not this simple by any means, and I know that OBAA does deserve the nod if…” Mar 15, 07:35
RRA on Oscar 2026 preview: “I’ll admit that after the internet got Butt hurt over Muad Dib’s comments about ballet/opera, I’m glad Oscar season is…” Mar 14, 19:56
JTS on Oscar 2026 preview: “I, too, watched all the movies nominated for Best Picture, and I’ve also seen IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK…” Mar 14, 19:09
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This may surprise you, but I have always wanted to see ANACONDA. It’s a theatrically released, pre-SyFy Channel, early CG giant snake movie with an all star (more so now than then) cast, and I heard pretty good things about it, including a description of the best part of the movie (a famous scene involving Jon Voight) which was convincing. But somehow in all these years I never rented it. And then all the sudden last month Seattle’s S.I.F.F. Uptown screened it in a remastered DCP. The kind of thing I was hoping would happen to make up for all the theaters being forced to switch to digital. You take away our 35 mm, you better give us theatrical re-releases of ANACONDA and shit like that.
American movies of the ’80s were so fascinated with fraternities and sororities. Was that just an offshoot of the popularity of ANIMAL HOUSE? They saw that and realized the Greek system was a good way for a movie to have a bunch of young people drinking beer and having sex?
This Chucky series is one-of-a-kind. Of course it all started in ’88 with CHILD’S PLAY, a genuinely effective creepfest that put a drop of contemporary into a classic horror premise. It’s been a while since I’ve watched parts 2 (1989) and 3 (1991), but I remember the second is a pretty solid (if unnecessary) continuation and the 3rd one is, you know, terrible. But in ’98 the series was ingeniously reborn as absurdist horror-comedy with BRIDE OF CHUCKY, directed by Ronny Yu, and in 2004 we got the severely more ridiculous SEED OF CHUCKY, which was a great time at the movies for me and 25 other people around the world.
GRAVITY is the new one from Alfonso Cuaron, genius director who hasn’t done one since CHILDREN OF MEN seven years ago. You remember for that he and his criminally award-snubbed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (THE TREE OF LIFE, THE CAT IN THE HAT [!?]) devised several completely jaw-dropping long take shots where the protagonists run through these crazy battles and go through all kinds of shit without any visible edits. Remember that scene where the car is rolling down the hill and they get attacked by a band of marauders, or the one where he has to fight his way up the stairs looking for his elephant? Or actually I think one of those was TOM YUM-GOONG. But even so there were some great ones in CHILDREN OF MEN, and for GRAVITY they took that to the next level, doing most of the movie in long unbroken takes. You just stop thinking about it, but apparently the first shot lasts 17 minutes. And this is in an era when 17 seconds without a cut would seem like a long time.
Dito Montiel is a director I’ve kept an eye on since I saw his underground fighting movie 
“Well, I didn’t think it was terrible or anything.”
