I’m not gonna waste your time pretending you need my opinion whether to see AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH or not. If you don’t like these movies, no, don’t bother. If you do, obviously you’re gonna see it, it’s a new AVATAR! A new James Cameron! You’re not a heathen. And he’s still pretty much undefeated. The streak continues.
If I were to offer viewing advice it would be to avoid HFR (high frame rate) projection at all costs. I recklessly decided to see it at my favorite theater (SIFF downtown, f.k.a. Cinerama) despite my hatred for that format, and as soon as it started my heart just sank. When projected in this format, what seems like the majority of the movie is presented with the ugly screen saver sheen of 60-frames-per-second, but it repeatedly switches back to aesthetically pleasing 24 fps and if you’re like me you sigh with relief until it goes back and then you start grumbling to yourself again. It felt like I spent the whole 197 minutes fighting over the remote control with some guy who wants the motion smoothing on, so my level of concentration was not ideal for maybe the first 45 minutes. I was so taken out of the movie that a James Cameron directed air battle dropped dead in front of me like some Stephen Sommers clatter. Should be illegal. I’m never doing HFR again. (read the rest of this shit…)
Would you believe I never saw a TRANCERS movie before now? And I’ve still only seen one. But when Dreadguacamole recently mentioned in a comment that it “goes pretty full-in on its christmas cheer” I decided that would be a good one to watch right now. Thanks for the tip. It’s a good balance – not a movie about Christmas that would feel weird to watch in some other time of year, but enough decorations here and there to make it kind of cool to watch when it’s seasonal.
Turns out it’s a time travel movie and a zombie movie and a couple other things. It starts in 23rd century Angel City (FKA Los Angeles) and it immediately reminded me of some weird ‘80s comic book, because it has that era’s fascination with futuristic worlds where men try to seem like they’re out of some old detective novel. Not like 
A couple years ago I really liked this horror-thriller I saw on Shudder called 
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (2025) is not a great remake, but it’s a fun one, a solid one, mostly because it’s a playful one. The first couple scenes seem like a pretty straight forward update of 
FUCK MY SON! is a movie that, for the foreseeable future, you’re only gonna see if it comes to your town as part of a road show. Writer/director Todd Rohal (
THE CATECHISM CATACLYSM (2011) is weirdly-titled Todd Rohal comedy #2, and truly the only thing I knew about it was that the OCN partner label Factory 25 gave it a special edition blu-ray a few years ago and some people seemed to think it was some type of cult classic. I feel pretty ignorant now because it turns out it’s a Seattle production and I even know a couple people in the credits. I had no idea.
Recently I got invited to see this new movie called FUCK MY SON!. It’s a disgusting x-rated comedy based on a Johnny Ryan comic, meant as a theatrical experience, they’re road-showing a 35mm print around and it was in Seattle on Friday and Saturday. Beforehand I looked at writer/director Todd Rohal’s filmography and noticed two titles I’d been vaguely aware of for many years. I really had no idea what they were about, just that somebody some time told me they were good. I decided to watch those and review them before the new one, so today we’ll be discussing Rohal’s 2006 debut THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE. It’s the very definition of a “not for everyone” movie, though in an entirely different way than FUCK MY SON!. But I liked it, so I’ll tell you about it in case you’re not everyone.
CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER’S POINT is a movie that I heard about last Christmas but it wasn’t on video yet. Some people were really flipping for it and that’s really all I knew about it, so I checked it out when I saw it was on blu-ray this week.
GOOD BOY is a 2025 indie horror movie with a high-difficulty gimmick: the main character is a dog. Played by a dog. I’ve heard it said that it’s in the point-of-view of the dog, but that’s not the case literally (because the camera is usually on the dog’s face) or narratively (because I’ll be damned if I knew what the dog’s thoughts were on all this). But as human events play out nearby the camera is always paying more attention to this dog named Indy (played by director Ben Leonberg’s dog Indy), and that does feel fresh.
BACURAU is a weird 2019 Brazilian film that I know my friend 
