"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS is the new Transformers picture directed by Steven Caple Jr. (THE LAND, CREED II). It’s not a reboot, but a new chapter set in 1994 – after Travis Knight’s BUMBLEBEE, before all the Michael Bay ones. So technically it’s a prequel, but there’s not much important continuity (as there really isn’t in any of these movies).

Aside from a new director and attitude, the flashy new attraction is the Maximals – robotic animal characters from the 1996 computer animated show Beast Wars. You know how it is, you’re on Cybertron just minding your own business being a mechanical rhino or cheetah made out of metal but with fur on some parts, suddenly you gotta flee to an organic jungle world to hide the portal-opening Transwarp Key from the the giant planet-munching robot Unicron. That character was famously voiced by Orson Welles in THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE, and here he’s Colman Domingo (ZOLA), a great choice of voice to process even lower and blast through Imax speakers so loud you can feel it vibrating your bones. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 14th, 2023 | 15 Comments »

Renfield

RENFIELD is a so-so movie with one element of excellence that kinda goes without saying, but I will say it. Later in the review.

This is basically a comedy-action vehicle for Dracula’s crazy bug-eating stooge Renfield, played here by Nicholas Hoult (CLASH OF THE TITANS). I guess you could say it follows in the tradition of the much dorkier VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, and (sort of) I, FRANKENSTEIN, in that it’s riffing off of classic horror characters and putting them in a modern action/super hero type of context. But it’s different in that it’s a straight up comedy, complete with jokey first person narration and the hook “what if Dracula’s familiar started going to group therapy for co-dependency?” I guess you could say it’s kind of a ZOMBIELAND tone. I generally prefer ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER approach of using an absurd concept but committing to it as if it’s serious and trusting the audience to get it, but this is not my movie. It’s not up to me. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 13th, 2023 | 22 Comments »

Octopussy

June 10, 1983

As I’ve demonstrated a few times in the past, I’m not a Bond guy. So believe it or not OCTOPUSSY is a first time viewing for me. I come to it with incomplete context, zero nostalgia, but also no preconceived notions of what a Bond movie or actor needs to be like. I can view it casually as-is and report that it’s pleasingly silly and mildly amusing.

Some of its qualities that some would consider shortcomings barely need to be stated. Roger Moore (THE CANNONBALL RUN) as James Bond is a horndog who hits on and beds multiple women 15-20 years his junior, and without having to put in any effort, since every woman is charmed on sight, no matter which side they’re on. And he makes several intentionally bad jokes. He also gets himself out of ridiculous situations with far-fetched plans, abilities and gadgets. It’s all part of the deal, and the last part is what I most look for. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 12th, 2023 | 31 Comments »

Trading Places

June 8, 1983

To many, TRADING PLACES is a beloved comedy classic. To me it’s a movie that Mrs. Vern references often and that we occasionally flip past on TNT. I think the only time I saw it all the way through I was still in elementary school. So I came to this viewing pretty fresh.

I know it goes back to The Prince and the Pauper or some shit, but Hollywood particularly loved this kind of comedy concept in the ’80s through ’90s: What if a non-rich guy could live among the rich? And what if a rich guy could live among the non-rich? What laughs would we have? What lessons would we learn? Don’t you agree it would be valuable? This one’s writers, Timothy Harris & Herschel Weingrod, later gave us BREWSTER’S MILLIONS, and you could also count THE TOY, LIFE STINKS, KING RALPH, and I’m sure some others. This is John Landis’s version, and he kicks it off with some satirical bite, but it eventually eases up and acts like we’re supposed to like the rich guy, assumes we want to see him have a happy ending. As was the style in those days. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 8th, 2023 | 25 Comments »

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE is the first sequel to SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, the brilliant 2018 movie I still believe is a watershed moment for computer animated features* as well as super hero cinema. I’m happy to say that ACROSS is a worthy sequel that finds a smart way to build on the first film’s clever multiverse premise and push its revolutionary visual style into the stratosphere. Miles gives me the same “it’s weird to see him taller” feeling as real kids I’ve seen grow up, and the series’ already astonishing artistry has also experienced a growth spurt. Honestly the gimmicks and the eye candy would be enough to make this a classic, but they’re not the only reason these movies have become a phenomenon. They’ve also given us characters to really care about as they live their lives in that perfect Spider-Man intersection between regular every day problems and universe-shattering super shit.

This one works particularly well on the level of a teen movie. You may remember that our main characters Miles Morales/Spider-Man (Shameik Moore, Raekwon on Wu-Tang: An American Saga), and Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld, 3 DAYS TO KILL) exist in different realities. As in, different dimensions, timelines, worlds, whatever. They met when a super-collider brought Gwen and people from various other realities into Miles’s, but now they’re apart, trying to get through life as their reality’s Spider-Person. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 7th, 2023 | 41 Comments »

Influencer

INFLUENCER (2022) is an excellent horror/thriller that recently came to Shudder. A friend recommended it and I watched it blind, which was a good way to go. I’ll try to set the stage and then I’ll warn you when I’m going to get into specifics of the structure and plot that you might prefer to experience first hand.

It’s set in Thailand, but all the characters are westerners, most of them on vacation. The opening introduces us to Madison (Emily Tennant, SNIPER: ASSASSIN’S END), who narrates in the form of an Instagram video or social media post about her love of travel and adventure, of meeting new people and learning about new places. But we see she’s doing none of that – she’s almost entirely alone at a luxury resort, floating in the pool, getting a massage, lounging on scenic overlooks, occasionally smiling for selfies. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 6th, 2023 | 11 Comments »

Shin Kamen Rider

From what I’ve read, “SHIN” can mean new, true, or God. SHIN KAMEN RIDER – which I saw at a Fathom Events screening last week, and it’s playing again tonight only, check local listings – is the third and (as far as we know) final movie in the “SHIN” series by Hideaki Anno. Best known as the visionary director of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, Anno kicked off this live action thematic trilogy with 2016’s SHIN GODZILLA (which he wrote himself and co-directed with Shinji Higuchi). It was a strikingly reimagined Godzilla with memorably bizarre monster work (as Godzilla evolves through multiple stages of development) and the best and most detailed portrayal ever of a government bureaucracy tackling the problem of a giant monster.

Next was SHIN ULTRAMAN, directed by Higuchi and written by Anno. I haven’t seen that one yet because I skipped it when I realized the second night screenings were dubbed, and it doesn’t come out on disc until next month. But the “Shin Japan Heroes Universe” concept is just meant as a brand name for merchandising, not an MCU-style shared universe, so I knew whatever happened to the new true god Ultraman in his movie would have no bearing on SHIN KAMEN RIDER, and I made sure to read the fine print on the listings this time. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 5th, 2023 | 12 Comments »

Psycho II (40th anniversary revisit)

June 3, 1983

The summer of ’83 saw the release of many blockbuster sequels. There was the big space one, a comic book one, one or more James Bonds, also a PORKY’S, a PINK PANTHER, and a SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. I suppose you could say there were two horror sequels, both continuing beloved classics from Universal Pictures. One of those involved a shark. The other was riskier. These people had the audacity to make a sequel to a hallowed decades-old classic, the mother of modern horror.

I reviewed PSYCHO II back in 2009, and I think that piece is a good summary of what the movie’s like. Even back then I got that it’s not just better than you’d think or surprisingly good, it’s a genuine classic among horror sequels. I didn’t see the movie until quite a few years after it came out, but having grown up in the ‘80s it used to be impossible to think of anything made in that period as worthy of a classic black and white film from 1960, directed by the iconic Alfred Hitchcock. You have your recency bias, but you also think of contemporary stuff as inherently lesser than the classics. In some of my really old reviews you can see me shit talking what I saw as the cheesy ‘80s, not understanding the reverence people younger than me were starting to have for that era. Now I get it, though. I just needed more distance. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 1st, 2023 | 23 Comments »

WarGames: The Dead Code

“We’re targeting today’s savvy media consumer who demands quality video entertainment regardless of where that entertainment experience takes place. By leveraging film and television franchises, which have already proven to be popular with specific targeted demographic groups, we’re able to both continually replenish our library while also maximizing revenues from our existing film and television programming!” —Jason Weiss, Vice President of MGM DTV division, 2007


Do you remember this – that they made a 25-years-later DTV sequel to WARGAMES? Please join me in wishing it the happiest of 15th anniversaries. As one of today’s savvy media consumers who demand quality video entertainment regardless of where that entertainment takes place (a.k.a. an aficionado of the DTV-sequel-nobody-asked-for format), I was always curious about it, but never bothered to find out what the deal was until now. It’s called WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE, and it seems at first like it’s following the WILD THINGS model of DTV sequel: just do kind of a loose ripoff/update of the original plot with different characters. Will Farmer (Matt Lanter, the voice of Anakin Skywalker on Star Wars: The Clone Wars!) is a young computer genius who does some computing/hacking that brings him to the attention of an A.I. called R.I.P.L.E.Y. (voice of Claudia Black, PITCH BLACK), a project of the Department of Homeland Security or somebody.

Later it turns out to be kind of using the THE HIDDEN II method: bring in a character from the first one, recast. Part 1’s eccentric inventor Dr. Stephen Falken shows up to help (introducing himself as “a gentleman who almost started World War III”), but now he’s played by Gary Reineke (RITUALS, IRON EAGLE II) and no longer has an accent. Oh, his computer WOPR is also back. Still uses the same password, too. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 31st, 2023 | 9 Comments »

WarGames

June 3, 1983

A mere three weeks after John Badham’s BLUE THUNDER, he came out with another movie that is in awe of, but also a cautionary tale about, then-newfangled technology that (as one would assume) seems very crude from the perspective of 40 years later. This one is WARGAMES, and the technology is computers – both home computers used by high school hacker prodigy David Lightman (Matthew Broderick in his second film, after MAX DUGAN RETURNS) and a more fantastical experimental A.I. (though that’s not the term they use) created by eccentric genius Dr. Stephen Falken (John Wood, later in LADYHAWKE with Broderick).

David is well known to the vice principal due to his “attitude problem.” He gets kicked out of class for an actually very high quality smart ass response to the teacher, who writes “ASEXUAL” on the board and asks who came up with the idea of reproducing without sex. He hears the class laughing at something David whispers, and asks him to repeat it.

“Your wife,” David says. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 30th, 2023 | 15 Comments »

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