"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Jacob Latimore’

House Party (2023)

Monday, March 13th, 2023

You wanna know how old the movie HOUSE PARTY is, and therefore how old those of us who grew up with that movie are? Well, let’s just say that I did a 20th anniversary retrospective on it thirteen years ago. So you can go ahead and do the math if you want. Personally, I refuse.

It’s not something I would put in, like, my top 100, but it’s a fun and sweet movie and a good time capsule of pop culture as it existed when I was a teen. I had a great time back in 2010 doing a quasi-pretentious review series called Kid ’n Play: 20 Years On Film: A Cinematic Legacy, in which I reviewed the original HOUSE PARTY (1990), HOUSE PARTY 2 (1991), BEBE’S KIDS (1992) (created by House Party dad Robin Harris and written by House Party writer/director Reginald Hudlin), CLASS ACT (1992) (starring Kid ’n Play), WHO’S THE MAN? (1993) (cameo by Kid ’n Play), HOUSE PARTY 3 (1994), and HOUSE PARTY 4: DOWN TO THE LAST MINUTE (2001). Then in 2013 I reviewed a new one called HOUSE PARTY: TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT. Obviously I’m a completist, so it is my duty and honor to review the 2023 addition to the franchise, which is called HOUSE PARTY. (read the rest of this shit…)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Monday, February 21st, 2022

“He needs special care, he doesn’t do well outside, you understand.”


TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022) – not to be confused with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003) – is the new TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE movie released on (but not made by) Netflix. Like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986), LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III (1990), TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION (1995) and TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D (2013) it’s a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece, seeming to ignore all the other installments.

As in the original film, we have a group of young people driving from Austin to a remote Texas town where they don’t fit in. But instead of a pretty casual day trip it’s for a business venture: chefs Dante (Jacob Latimore, SLEIGHT, DETROIT) and Melody (Sarah Yarkin, HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U) purchased a small ghost town at a bank auction, with plans to open a restaurant and turn the town into some kind of hipster enclave. Along for the ride are Melody’s younger sister Lila (Elsie Fisher, EIGHTH GRADE) and Dante’s girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson). (read the rest of this shit…)

Sleight

Tuesday, July 21st, 2020

SLEIGHT is a 2016 film from director J.D. Dillard, who later did that fun woman-trapped-on-an-island-with-a-monster movie SWEETHEART. It’s produced by Blumhouse Tilt and the prestigious WWE Studios, who I still contend should only make movies starring wrestlers, but I forgive them in this case. The Undertaker would’ve been weird in this part.

Instead, Jacob Latimore (DETROIT) plays Bo, a young man living in L.A. He’s some kind of budding engineering genius and he got a great scholarship, but he had to ditch out on it because his parents died and he was the only one left to take care of his kid sister Tina (Storm Reid, THE INVISIBLE MAN). He has a cool neighbor, Georgi (Sasheer Zamata, formerly of Saturday Night Live), who looks after Tina for him sometimes, but otherwise he’s on his own.

Like SWEETHEART, it trusts us to have the patience to watch what he does for a while instead of giving us all the information up front. We see that he works as a street magician – a really good one. He does David Blaine style card tricks that blow the minds of the various young people he approaches on Hollywood streets. And he has a few weirder tricks where he seems to make objects move – like, causing someone’s ring to float and spin above his hand, moving his other hand around it to show that there are no strings involved. He does that one for Holly (Seychelle Gabriel, THE LAST AIRBENDER, BLOOD FEST) who is clearly into him, and maybe would be giving him the same look if the trick wasn’t so astounding. He gets her number and starts having awkward dates with her. (read the rest of this shit…)