"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Jeffrey Donovan’

Villains

Thursday, October 9th, 2025

VILLAINS is a 2019 indie movie I’ve wondered about for a while. It uses the reliable formula “somebody tries to rob a house and discovers a horrific thing going on there.” Other ones that come to mind are THE COLLECTOR, LIVID and DON’T BREATHE. This is a much jokier take on the format than any of those, more of a dark comedy than anything, but I’d say it’s at least horror adjacent. There are maniacs doing something crazy, it takes death seriously, it stars two perhaps underrecognized greats of contemporary horror… yeah, I’ll count it as horror.

It’s about a couple of addled deadbeats named Mickey (Pennywise/Orlok/The Crow himself Bill Skarsgård) and Jules (Maika Monroe, THE GUEST, IT FOLLOWS, WATCHER, LONGLEGS) who clumsily rob their last gas station, intending to use the money to move to Florida and start a new life selling seashells. Trouble is they run out of gas on a remote, wooded road. They are not criminal masterminds.

On foot they find a large, isolated house where no one seems to be home. They break in, hoping to steal the car in the garage or come up with some other escape plan. But they face a moral dilemma when they find a young silent girl (Blake Baumgartner, MADELINE’S MADELINE) chained up in the dark basement. (read the rest of this shit…)

Wrath of Man

Monday, September 13th, 2021

WRATH OF MAN is a pretty different type of Guy Ritchie movie. It certainly shows some of his interests, his directorial chops, and his long relationship with filming Jason Statham. And okay, it also has some of that lightning quick snappy banter between the fellas, some of which I couldn’t follow at all. And it has Josh Hartnett playing a character called “Boy Sweat Dave.” I’m not sure I can picture that being in somebody else’s movie. Guy Ritchie is the Boy Sweat Dave type.

And yet this is a different style (a more calm and controlled type of flashy) and tone (less flippant, more foreboding, and even mythical) than what we expect from him. It doesn’t have freeze frames with character’s names as they’re introduced, but it does have four sections with pretentious chapter titles. A trend I very much approve of.

It’s a remake of a 2004 French film called LE CONVOYEUR (or CASH TRUCK), which I could only find on VHS with no subtitles (update: I got to see it on a Region B blu-ray so here’s my review). But this seems to me like it’s playing off of two American traditions: pulp crime novels, and movies that try to be like HEAT. I can enjoy both. (read the rest of this shit…)