"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Juror #2

In Clint Eastwood’s JUROR #2, Nicholas Hoult (THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD) plays Justin Kemp, an upstanding magazine writer in Georgia who gets summoned for jury duty. He tries to get dismissed because his wife Ally (Zoey Deutch, THE DISASTER ARTIST) is expecting soon in what he describes as “a high risk pregnancy,” but he ends up seated on the jury for a murder trial.

The prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette, xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE) and public defender Eric Resnick (Chris Messina, BIRDS OF PREY) are friends, or at least professionally friendly enough to talk to each other at the bar they both hang out in. Faith is running for district attorney and feels putting away a real scumbag like this may put her over the top; Eric insists she’s got it wrong this time, the guy is really innocent. Defendant James Sythe (Gabriel Basso, THE KINGS OF SUMMER, also unfortunately played dictator elect J.D. Vance in HILLBILLY ELEGY) is a known asshole who was seen arguing with his girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood, M.F.A.) at a bar (a decidedly different one than the lawyers go to) until she stormed off, refusing a ride home. The next day a hiker found her dead under a bridge on Old Quarry Road.

As the story is being told to the jury, Justin has a growing “oh, fuck” look on his face, and if you haven’t heard the premise of JUROR #2 you’re gonna be shocked too: he’s realizing that he was there when that fight happened. He remembers the date, because it was Ally’s due date from the last pregnancy, when they lost twins. He took his depressed, recovering alcoholic ass to the hideaway, stared down a drink but didn’t give in, then on his way home his car hit something on Old Quarry Road. He got out, couldn’t find anything in the dark, saw a deer crossing sign and hoped to God that explained it. (read the rest of this shit…)

November 7th, 2024 | 35 Comments »

Man, I don’t know.

I wish I had it in me to write something beautiful and optimistic and give everybody some solace. Should’ve prepared something in advance, I guess. Right now it feels like the bad guys won for the rest of my lifetime and it’s hard to even think or do anything. Evil, chaotic times ahead. I’ll be back on my movie review bullshit soon I hope but for now I need to regroup. Take care everybody.

November 6th, 2024 | 174 Comments »

Megalopolis

I’m no scholar of the works of Francis Ford Coppola. I agree THE GODFATHER I and II and APOCALYPSE NOW are amazing, and I’ve recently grown into a BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA zealot. I enjoyed THE CONVERSATION and THE OUTSIDERS and RUMBLEFISH and THE COTTON CLUB and DEMENTIA 13 and obviously CAPTAIN EO. I’ve had some of his wine, too – we get those little cans of Sofia for Oscar parties. But like most people I’m not really up on the experimental shit he’s been up to b’twixt the 21st century. In fact the last time I saw a new FCC joint was JACK in 1996.

But hell, I wasn’t gonna miss MEGALOPOLIS! You know the legend. He conceived it in the ‘70s, he’s tried to get it off the ground many times across the decades, now he finally did it with his own $120 million. Amazing. Whatever it is, you gotta respect what he did. Become a rich guy just to make a true indie on the largest possible scale. Pretty much all rich guys waste their money in far stupider ways.
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November 5th, 2024 | 19 Comments »

Azrael

Maybe it’s weird to watch a post-apocalypse movie right before this particular election, but I’d wanted to see AZRAEL and then I saw that it was on Shudder. I knew it was a low or no dialogue movie starring Samara Weaving (MONSTER TRUCKS, THE BABYSITTER, SNAKE EYES), and not much more, but “genre movie starring Samara Weaving” is enough for me. It would’ve been a bonus if I’d known it was written by Simon Barrett (YOU’RE NEXT, THE GUEST) or if I recognized the name of director E.L. Katz from the dark comedy CHEAP THRILLS.

We’ve seen so many post-apocalyptic worlds, but this is a new one for me. It opens with a card that says, “Many years after the Rapture… Among the survivors, some are driven to renounce their sin of Speech.” Yes, it’s a movie where none of the main characters speak, or even sign, so the details of their situation are never directly addressed. But that leaves plenty of space to interpret and contemplate.

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November 4th, 2024 | 5 Comments »

Suspiria (1977)

1977 gave us some pretty important movies. Some influential ones. Some we still talk about today. STAR WARS was a big one. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. ERASERHEAD. SORCERER. THE HILLS HAVE EYES. And hailing from Italy, Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA. One of the greats, a true original, and I think it’s safe to say one of the most beautiful looking horror movies ever made.

When I first saw it as a young man it set my brain on fire. I was pretty new to the world of Italian horror and had never seen anything quite like it, but it turns out that’s also because there’s not anything quite like it. Since then I’ve seen it many more times, including once in a theater with a Jessica Harper Q&A, and its reputation has grown even stronger as a generation or two discovered it in the age of screen caps and gifs. Its stunning visuals require no context to knock you on your ass. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 31st, 2024 | 9 Comments »

Rosemary’s Baby

The central theme of ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) is right there in the title. It’s about someone having a baby, so it’s about fears surrounding a healthy pregnancy and beginning a new life as a parent. That’s part of what makes the movie so powerful, but one way I know it’s good is how effective it is even for someone like me, a non-parent, a childless cat lady. I’m sure it kicks your ass harder if you’re an expecting or aspiring parent, but it has other things going for it too.

My main association with ROSEMARY’S BABY is that it was my mom’s favorite horror movie. That might just mean it was one of the few she’d seen. But I remember when I was a teen obsessed with Freddy Krueger and Clive Barker she said “Do you want to see a real scary movie?” and we rented it. As far as I remember I thought it was pretty good, but not enough that I thought of as a favorite. It didn’t make it into the rotation.

That was more than three decades ago. For years now I’ve been wanting to revisit it and review it for the day before Halloween, my mom’s birthday. But I always get behind on all my other plans and get bogged down. I decided to make it happen this year even before I realized there was a new prequel on Paramount+, but I’ll review that soon. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 30th, 2024 | 17 Comments »

The Invasion (second review)

THE INVASION (2007) is the fourth (and final, the way civilization is going) official movie adaptation of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers. I actually reviewed it for The Ain’t It Cool News when it came out, which is one way I can prove it exists. It’s documented! Anyway I after I watched the other three I figured I oughta complete the set.

This one stars A-listers Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and is the Hollywood debut of acclaimed German director Oliver Hirschbiegel (DAS EXPERIMENT, DOWNFALL), as well as the first movie written by David Kajganich, who later wrote A BIGGER SPLASH, SUSPIRIA and BONES AND ALL for Luca Guadagnino. But it was kind of a fiasco, losing money and getting poor reviews, universally considered the weakest of the four versions. I’m sure we would’ve noticed it was kinda sloppy even if it hadn’t been widely reported that producer Joel Silver thought it wasn’t working and spent $10 million on reshoots written by the Wachowskis and directed by their guy James McTeigue (V FOR VENDETTA, NINJA ASSASSIN). It was delayed over a year and moved from a confident June release to a resigned August one.

And, would you believe it? It doesn’t really work. But it has its moments.
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October 29th, 2024 | 23 Comments »

Body Snatchers

Abel Ferrara’s BODY SNATCHERS (1993) was my first body snatcher invasion movie. I saw it when it was new on video, and I knew it had been poorly received, so I figured my ignorance of the original and the original remake must’ve helped me to enjoy it more than everybody else. But watching it now with a deep appreciation for the other ones, yeah, it’s still good anyway. So maybe I liked it better because I’m a unique individual with my own feelings and not a plant programmed only for survival. Or because I was ahead of my time – it seems to have a pretty good reputation now.

The title sequence is admittedly chintzy compared to the one in Kaufman’s version. Something about the long sequence of the title flying through a crude starscape and letter-by-letter turning from red to black, set to the score by Joe Delia (MS. 45, FEAR CITY, THE SUBSTITUTE 2: SCHOOL’S OUT), was putting me in mind of a Stuart Gordon/Brian Yuzna type movie, but that might’ve been my subconscious remembering that this was actually from a screenplay by Stuart Gordon & Dennis Paoli, rewritten by Ferrara’s guy Nicholas St. John. Gordon was supposed to direct but couldn’t get a commitment from the studio to actually make it until leaving to do FORTRESS. He told Fangoria that his version was originally designed as a sequel to the Kaufman version and went into more detail about how the pod people are plants. “It’s not like they have a brain in their head. The creature’s consciousness is throughout its whole body, so that if you destroy the head, it doesn’t kill or stop it.” That would’ve been fun! But what Ferrara did is good too. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 28th, 2024 | 9 Comments »

The Ogre/The Church

This DVD I rented is labelled DEMONS III: THE OGRE, but I knew that wasn’t really a thing. That’s just how video labels chose to promote THE OGRE, a 1989 TV movie that Lamberto Bava went off to do after giving up on a third DEMONS.

THE OGRE opens in Portland, Oregon, where a little girl wakes up and wanders into a dungeon/wine cellar and finds a bizarre, pulsating cocoon on the ceiling. It’s like a giant spider egg sac except it glows yellow, drips fluid and beats like a heart. She sees a spindly monster inside, and it reaches a hand out for her, then chases her. Eventually she wakes up. Yes, it was only a dream, but she dropped her teddy bear in the dream, and now it’s gone. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 24th, 2024 | 7 Comments »

Demons 2

Until now I had never seen DEMONS 2, really didn’t know anything about it, and considering its provenance it could’ve been a sequel-in-name-only. So I was excited when the opening narration described the events of the first film: demons unleashed from a movie theater. But it says that was followed by “days of terror that convinced the world demons can exist.” Days. So the war between the survivors and the monsters implied by the ending has already wrapped up, I guess. Things seem to be back to normal.

You could say it’s a DAWN OF THE DEAD type sequel – new set of characters later in the same apocalypse – but really it’s more of a do-over, a different take on the same rough idea. I think that’s a pretty cool approach, and they chose good elements to remix. Instead of a movie theater, the specific structure it focuses on is a high-rise apartment building called The Tower. Instead of the meta element of a movie about demons showing in the theater, they have one broadcast on TV, and various people in the building are watching it. They also have another part where suddenly it cuts to some punks driving around, although in my opinion they don’t really do much of interest with it. On the other hand they do one-up the iconic people-with-glowing eyes scene by doing it with a bigger mob of demons and then again looking up a staircase as they run down it. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 23rd, 2024 | 4 Comments »

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