"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Finn Wolfhard’

The Legend of Ochi

Thursday, May 1st, 2025

THE LEGEND OF OCHI is a beautiful and imaginative PG-rated fantasy from A24. Since the number of friends I recommended it to this week that had never heard of it is higher than the number of people at the Saturday matinee I went to, I’m thinking there are limits to that company’s marketing powers. But future adults who remember seeing it in a theater will know they had cool parents. This one is special.

It was filmed “on location in the remote mountain villages of Transylvania” and other parts of Romania, set on the fictional island of Carpathia. Apparently it’s the early ‘90s, though the time doesn’t matter that much. Maxim (Willem Dafoe, LIGHT SLEEPER), who lives in a small village on the north side of the island, is obsessed with fighting off furry, ape-like creatures called Ochi, who live in the nearby mountains. He trains the local adolescent boys in riflery and leads them into the woods on night time hunts. This is not a situation where he’s the lone true believer and everybody else thinks he’s crazy – Ochi are a fact of Carpathian life. In the opening scene the troop encounters a group of them, gets attacked, shoots some of them, but not fatally. (read the rest of this shit…)

Pinocchio (2022) (the Guillermo del Toro one)

Wednesday, December 28th, 2022

Well, would you look at that? Guillermo del Toro (BLADE II) finally finished his stop motion version of Pinocchio! Looks like it was first announced 15 years ago. Like with his Frankenstein and his In the Mountains of Madness I’d kind of given up on it ever happening. Then when it clearly really was happening it was stop motion so it took some years.

After all that it’s kind of a bummer that it’s a Netflix production with too limited a theatrical release for me to see it on the big screen. But they do seem to be promoting it more than most of their movies, and maybe more people will watch it at home than would’ve if a real movie company put it out. I don’t know. The point is he finally got to make it (co-directing with Mark Gustafson, a Will Vinton claymation veteran and animation director for THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX). And even better, I think it’s really good.

I wasn’t sure I would love it. I was a little put off in the opening, because this Geppetto has a young son named Carlo who is… dare I say, pretty annoying? Something bothered me about this boy (Alfie Tempest) who seems to have no friends, life or interests outside of spending the day with his strangely-old-to-have-a-young-son father. Mrs. Vern said I hated Carlo because he was an obedient little boy, which made me realize why he had to be that way: he’s what Pinocchio will think he has to live up to. But I don’t know, man. Of course it’s incredibly sad for this elderly man to lose his young son and only friend, but it would move me even more if the kid wasn’t so damn cloying. (read the rest of this shit…)

It

Tuesday, September 12th, 2017

STAND BY ME vs. THE THING. A group of young nerd friends in the small town of Derry, Maine battle a shape-shifting (usually clown-shaped) thing-from-another-(not-specified) that feeds on the fears of children. Oh, and also feeds on the actual children, apparently as a way to create more of that sweet fear.

Stephen King’s book tells the story of this “Losers’ Club” in 1958, and then reunites them as adults to do It in grown up style. Andy Muschietti (MAMA)’s movie just handles the childhood half of the story, moving it up to the summer of 1989, three years after the book even came out.

I read the book probly 30 years ago and only remember it well enough to be thankful they left out the pre-teen gang bang scene. I still question the part where a bunch of boys and one girl go swimming together in their underwear and then hang out that way. Maybe it was different on the east coast but this seemed like an alien clown’s idea of what the youths do together. Also the graphic blood pact seemed to me from a different time, but I guess God bless those little psychos for being up to that kind of self-mutilation. I couldn’t do it. (read the rest of this shit…)