I remember seeing I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER when it came out. I believe I enjoyed it for what it was – it had the appropriate ratio of competence to goofiness for a slick studio teen slasher sequel in the post-SCREAM era. I did not know or remember that it made less than the first film did on a bigger budget. Of course, this was 1998. They had not yet run over the home video industry, thrown it in the sea and vowed to never speak of it again, so that was where horror movies would thrive, and it at least made enough to justify a DTV sequel.
Things were different then. Horror was more disreputable, even when it was expensive and starred beautiful people from TV shows. Critics had taken to SCREAM, but of course they were gonna hate the goofily titled sequel to SCREAM’s less show-offy, more traditional cousin. But fuck ‘em. This is a solid slasher sequel. Not in the sense of “this is one of the all time great horror movies,” but in the franchise slasher sense of “we took this format and put some enjoyable spins on it and there are some cool touches and some enjoyably dumb ones so I can rewatch it every once in a while and still enjoy it.” That’s what I wanted, and this delivered. (read the rest of this shit…)
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER is a major pillar in the late ‘90s streak of newfangled glossy studio teen slasher movies. It was released less than a year after 
July 1, 1983
Burt (in his followup to BEST FRIENDS) stars as Stroker Ace, undisputed regional champion of smarmy womanizing, also a legendary NASCAR driver. There’s a prologue where he’s a little kid and seems to gain his love of driving fast by experiencing a police chase while getting a ride home from his friend’s dad, who’s a moonshiner. The kid they have playing young Stroker is really good, chewing gum and repeatedly checking his hair in the rear view mirror. 
DEAD PIGS is a little movie that premiered at Sundance in 2018, and didn’t come to home video in the U.S. until a few years later, but I knew about it because it’s the feature debut of director Cathy Yan, and got her the job of directing 
As a serial discusser of movies, I often run into this thing where I find that other people put a way higher premium than I do on things being logical, or realistic, or believable. They complain about characters making a bad choice or a strange choice or not doing the obvious choice. They seem to think it’s better for characters and stories to be normal, or sane.
MASTER GARDENER is the latest from Paul Schrader, who I consider to be on a late career roll between 
June 24, 1983
When Barry Allen (Ezra Miller, 
After watching 
Call it super hero fatigue, call it The Rock mistrust, call it what you want, but for some reason I, a guy who has seen most comic book movies, including ones everybody says are terrible, did not bother with BLACK ADAM. Until now. I don’t know, I was trying to figure out something to watch, I knew I’d be seeing that THE FLASH movie soon, and I kinda wanted to catch up beforehand, just for the sake of completism, I guess. So I put it on.
