"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Land of the Dead (20th anniversary revisit)

June 24, 2005

In my (mostly embarrassing) review on The Ain’t It Cool News, I jokingly called George A. Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD “the actual, genuine most anticipated movie of the summer,” despite all the excitement over the Batman one and the Star Wars one. I don’t know if that was true even for me, but it was certainly a long-awaited event. In the review I mentioned there had been other recent zombie works including 28 DAYS LATER and Zack Snyder’s DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, but my love of zombies was really more of a love of George Romero movies. There had not been one of those since BRUISER in 2000, there had not been a good one since THE DARK HALF in 1993, he had not been involved in a zombie one since the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake in 1990, and hadn’t directed one since DAY OF THE DEAD in 1985. Twenty years. And now it’s been twenty years since that.

SUMMER 2005I really liked LAND OF THE DEAD at the time, and for a while after. But when I last watched it in 2017, having bought the Scream Factory special edition, I wasn’t as into it. I was hoping that would change this time, but I’m sorry to report that LAND OF THE DEAD just doesn’t do as much for me these days. And that’s a shame because it has plenty of cool ideas, and its central theme of the powerful living in luxury locked safely away from most of the world (including the people who actually do all the work they got rich off of) is somehow even more relevant now than it was then. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 26th, 2025 | 20 Comments »

Bewitched

June 24, 2005

If you’re like me you knew there was a Bewitched movie, but you didn’t know it used a weird meta premise. It turns out that yes, it’s a fantastical romantic comedy starring Nicole Kidman as a pretty blonde witch trying to live among the normies without cheating too much by using her magic, and Will Ferrell as the non-witch she falls in love with. But they don’t exactly play Samantha and Darren, the characters from the sitcom that ran from 1964 to 1972 but that I did in fact watch sometimes as a kid, on Nick at Nite or something. They play the people starring as Samantha and Darren in a 2005 revival of the show.

SUMMER 2005So I started the movie thinking that director Nora Ephron (writing with her sister Delia, who also wrote THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS) just thought it would be cute to have Nicole Kidman do that nose-wiggle thing Samantha does when she casts a spell, but pretty soon I was thinking no, they just liked the logo and the theme song, and needed an excuse to keep using them throughout. They’re also able to show a bunch of clips from the original show, show a gift basket full of its merchandise, animate the expressions on an officially licensed Samantha Barbie doll, and remake the animated credit sequence with Will Ferrell’s likeness. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 24th, 2025 | 7 Comments »

Herbie: Fully Loaded

June 22, 2005

HERBIE: FULLY LOADED is the sixth motion picture in Walt Disney’s Herbie i.p. franchise saga (following THE LOVE BUG [1968], HERBIE RIDES AGAIN [1974], HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO [1977], HERBIE GOES BANANAS [1980] and DISNEY’S THE LOVE BUG [1997]). It’s a sequel, not a reboot like BATMAN BEGINS, because the opening credits feature clips from some of those movies as backstory.

SUMMER 2005The story proper starts like a normal Herbie movie, with the lovable anthropomorphic (but not talking) Volkswagen Beetle with the #53 on his side causing trouble at the junkyard he’s been dumped off in. When Ray Peyton Sr. (Michael Keaton, FIRST DAUGHTER), leader of the Bass Pro Shop NASCAR team brings his daughter Maggie (Lindsay Lohan a year after MEAN GIRLS) there to buy a fixer-upper as a college graduation gift she ends up owning and restoring Herbie (due to wacky Herbie mischief). (read the rest of this shit…)

June 23rd, 2025 | 7 Comments »

Batman Begins (20th anniversary revisit)

June 15, 2005

If there’s a universally agreed-upon absolute banger of a summer blockbuster type movie from 2005, it’s gotta be Christopher Nolan’s BATMAN BEGINS, right? I’ve watched it many more times over the years, it holds up completely, and also seems historically significant as, among other things, a transition point between the ‘90s era of comic book movies and the seemingly endless one we’re in now. It kind of blows my mind that I reviewed it early for The Ain’t It Cool News and here I am two decades later writing more thoughtfully about it for a much smaller (but better) audience. Like a memory cloth cape tailored to fit a rigid skeleton when a current is put through it, time flies.

SUMMER 2005I haven’t experienced an era when people weren’t complaining about there being too many sequels and remakes, but I do remember a time before people complained about reboots, because it wasn’t until this movie that I ever heard that term. Nolan’s co-writer David S. Goyer (KICKBOXER 2) used it to explain that they were completely starting the series over. Not a sequel, or a sort of sequel with the same actors playing Alfred and Commissioner Gordon, but a do-over, a totally different take on Batman. I wish that definition had stuck – it’s useless now that it can mean that or a sequel or a remake.

Nolan’s successful turning on and off of the bat-computer seemed revolutionary in part because his notion of a stripped down, quasi-realistic Batman was so unexpected for the character. The expressionistic movies of former animator Tim Burton had birthed the mega-garish ones by former costume designer Joel Schumacher – the series was synonymous with lavish artifice. BATMAN & ROBIN made money in 1997, but it became so widely hated that many believed it would be the end of Batman movies, and maybe even super hero movies as a whole. Luckily that gave Warner Bros. an opening to consider acclaimed indie directors with drastically different approaches. They tried developing one with Darren Aronofsky (who had only done PI and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) before they settled on the guy who did FOLLOWING, MEMENTO and (at the recommendation of Steven Soderbergh) INSOMNIA. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 19th, 2025 | 45 Comments »

The Ugly Stepsister

THE UGLY STEPSISTER (Den Stygge Stesøsteren) is a 2025 movie from Norway, available on Shudder. If I’d seen it somewhere else I don’t know if I’d think of it as a horror movie exactly – more like a dark period drama with some magic, some blood, and some puke. But I’ve seen people call it “body horror,” and it’s the rare movie I’ve seen described that way that isn’t very Cronenbergian, so I support that. I read in Fangoria that the director calls it “beauty horror.” It has also been compared quite a bit to THE SUBSTANCE, and that’s nice because the similarities are all thematic. Otherwise they’re very different movies.

Confession: it took me embarrassingly long to put together that this is literally a retelling of Cinderella and not just making an allusion to it with that title. Let me say this: this ain’t your grandpa’s Cinderella! But it’s cool that your grandpa has his own version of Cinderella that he likes, I respect that.

The story centers on Elvira (Lea Myren), oldest daughter of Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp, DEAD SNOW), who is about to remarry to older widower Otto (Ralph Carlsson), but during the wedding celebration he suddenly drops dead. While trying to comfort Otto’s daughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss, THE LAST KING), Elvira learns that both partners thought the other was rich and were trying to marry for the money. Since younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) hasn’t had her period yet it now falls upon Elvira to save the family by marrying a prince. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 18th, 2025 | 2 Comments »

The Last Showgirl

In the tradition of THE LAST STARFIGHTER, THE LAST WITCH HUNTER and THE LAST SAMURAI comes THE LAST SHOWGIRL (2024). This is a simple movie, and the kind of thing I probly wouldn’t have heard of if there hadn’t been talk about it being an awards contender and surprise comeback for a once hugely famous actress who pretty much never got any critical respect in her heyday. Pamela Anderson (BARB WIRE) is outstanding in the title role, and it has a meta quality to it since it’s about coming to terms with aging in an industry that mostly appreciated her as a sex object.

She plays Shelly, 57-year-old cast member of a long-running show on the Vegas Strip called Le Razzle Dazzle. She’s been in the show since the ‘80s and is kind of a friend/mother figure to some of her younger co-stars, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka, LONGLEGS, RED ONE) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song, “Hostage Child,” BLADE). They also hang out with a grizzled former showgirl now working as a cocktail waitress at one of the casinos, Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis, BLUE STEEL). Both Shelly and Annette seem to be sort of delusionally hanging onto jobs they’ve aged out of, but they’re proud to be able to be the o.g.s offering advice to the new generation. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 17th, 2025 | 5 Comments »

Diablo (2025)

I’ve been a broken record about this for quite a few years now, but Marko Zaror (who hails from Santiago, Chile) is one of the best and most interesting martial arts stars of our time. He’s played great antagonists in a few well-loved modern action classics that I’ll mention later, but his purest works are the starring vehicles he’s made with writer/director Ernesto Díaz Espinoza since 2006 (KILTRO, MIRAGEMAN, MANDRILL, REDEEMER, and FIST OF THE CONDOR). They’re all very different from each other and he always mixes things up by varying the types of character he plays. He seems to think that just sticking with one persona would be cheating.

Diablo is Zaror and Espinoza’s sixth film together, and the most different in that Zaror plays the villain in this one. Scott Adkins (THE PINK PANTHER) stars as Kris Chaney, a guy who sneaks into Bogota, Colombia where he seems to be stalking a drug lord’s daughter. You know – the old following people around wearing a baseball hat technique. Disguised as a homeless man he approaches the car Elisa (Alana De La Rossa, DOMINIQUE) is being driven in, beats the shit out of her security team and throws her in his trunk. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 16th, 2025 | 3 Comments »

Ballerina (2025)

BALLERINA (2025) is “from the world of JOHN WICK.” That’s the tagline, not the title – like “Die Harder.” I have seen some spinoff skepticism swirling around this one, but don’t come to me for that shit. When the makers of JOHN WICK invite me into the world of JOHN WICK I don’t even have to grab my go-bag. I just run full speed toward them.

I have also seen grumbling about it being directed by Len Wiseman (UNDERWORLD) and about having had reshoots (seemingly quite extensive) overseen and/or directed by Chad Stahelski. But I think the former has pretty good action chops and the latter has honest-to-God action vision, so it is not surprising to me that BALLERINA has arrived as a total banger. Is it as good as the JOHN WICKs? No. Is it better than most movies that are not JOHN WICKs? Yes.

Here is my viewing journey with BALLERINA: first 15 or 20 minutes – It’s okay that this is kinda clunky compared to a JOHN WICK because it kinda rules anyway. Everything after that – on second thought this almost is as good as a JOHN WICK and in fact it absolutely rules. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 12th, 2025 | 28 Comments »

The Quiet Ones (2025)

THE QUIET ONES (2025) is a very dry Danish true crime movie about a heist that happened in 2008. The main character Kasper (Gustav Giese, RIDERS OF JUSTICE) is a boxer, but seems to also have a past in armed robbery. He’s trying to make a comeback in the ring but one day Slimani (Reda Kateba, LOST RIVER), whose group we saw really blow it in an opening armored car robbery, asks to meet with him. He heard from Kasper’s brother-in-law that he was “smart.”

Their target is a cash processing facility. Basically just like a warehouse fenced off in an industrial area. The impetus (which comes from the real crime that inspired the movie) is that the company who runs the place posted a promotional video on their websight showing off what they do. The thieves watch the video together and laugh in disbelief that somebody was stupid enough to post all this information. We don’t see it, but apparently it reveals to them the layout of the building and which currencies are stored where – easy break-in instructions. Kasper agrees to plan the robbery, but not go in, even though it means a smaller cut. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 11th, 2025 | 7 Comments »

Howl’s Moving Castle

June 10, 2005

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE is the ninth film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. He’s only done three more in the twenty years since, so I guess it counts as late Miyazaki. When I saw it back then I went to a subtitled screening, so this time I tried it with English dialogue, and that worked well too.

SUMMER 2005It’s a story about Sophie (Emily Mortimer, THE 51st STATE), a young woman who makes hats in a shop founded by her late father. When her sister Lettie (Jena Malone, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME), a baker, encourages her to find something she loves rather than staying shackled to the family business she swears she’s content doing this.

Then one night after close this terribly rude rich lady (Lauren Bacall, THE BIG SLEEP) comes into the shop and starts saying the hats are tacky. To quote THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, “we’re a business with posted hours,” so get the fuck out. But this lady is actually the Witch of the Waste, who has come not to look for headwear, but to curse Sophie by turning her 90 years old. Then she’s out of there in a palanquin carried by her henchmen, oily black blob people with nice coats and masquerade masks. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 10th, 2025 | 8 Comments »

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