Movie Review Dude Bro Party Massacre 3

Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 (2015) 

Directed by John Salmon, Michael Rousselet, Tomm Jacobsen, Joey Scoma 

Written by Alec Owen 

Starring Alec Owen, Greg Sestero, Patton Oswalt, Nina Hartley 

Release Date July 7th, 2015 Re-Release Date September 1st, 2023 

Published August 31st, 2023 

Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 is a glorious piece of horror satire. Released in 2015, this comic send up of 80s horror tropes and Dude Bro caricatures is now getting a special re-release for on-demand rental on Friday, September 1st. The creation of 5 Second Films, Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 comically satirizes 80s horror movies by picking an in progress franchise with a deathless villain named Motherface and a group of Dude Bro frat guys who make terrific bloody fodder for inventive and imaginative horror movie death scenes. 

Dude Bro Party Massacre tells the story of a twin frat brothers, one of whom has survived two previous Dude Bro Party Massacres at the hands of the vengeful Motherface. The twins are played by Screenwriter Alec Owen and part three picks up with the brother who'd starred in the previous massacres being murdered. This his more shy and reserved twin brother to his old college campus to investigate his brother's death. To do this, he will have to join his late brother's frat, Delta Bi, a group of hard partying survivors known for their epic parties and epic pranks. 

In classic frat movie fashion, those darn Delta Bi's are major pranksters and troublemakers. The only difference is that there pranks tend to have a body count. The frat was responsible for more than 4000 deaths but hey, it's just a prank bro. They also toppled a South American dictator? Maybe? These scenes are hilariously presented as boys will boys stuff punished with a week long suspension, during Greek Week, so you know they are in real trouble. 

The suspension is a ruse to get the Dude Bros of Delta Bi off the campus and onto a lake side where they are set up to be killed by Mother Face. As happens in long in the tooth 80s franchise horror, new supernatural elements tend to get added to the plot. Here, the local sheriff, played in a brilliant cameo by Patton Oswalt needs the Dude Bros to be killed and a virgin sacrifice in order to protect the town from some vaguely specified demonic presence. The sheriff has conspired with the College Dean, played by adult film star Nina Hartley to set up the Dude Bros while he sets up a former Dude Bro turned cop to be the virgin sacrifice. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review Surf Ninjas

Surf Ninjas (1993) 

Directed by Neal Israel 

Written by Dan Gordon, Neal Israel 

Starring Ernie Reyes Jr, Ernie Reyes Sr, Leslie Nielsen, Rob Schneider 

Release Date August 20th, 1993 

Published August 29th, 2023 

With apologies to Ernie Reyes, Jr and Sr, Surf Ninjas is a truly terrible movie. This incomprehensible mess of a kids movie posits a world where orphan brothers are protected by a homeless drifter who may or may not be their father and who stealthily dispatches of ninjas looking to kill his children. The kids are unaware of the constant peril they live in and they don't seem to have any questions about their lives, their back story, or the father that abandoned them. They just want to surf bro. Reality however, comes crashing through the walls when Ninjas attack and daddy is forced to reveal himself. 

I genuinely don't know what else you need to know about Surf Ninjas. The plot is rudimentary, the shooting style is amateurish and the performances are devoid of interest. For reasons that defy logic and the ability to suspend disbelief, the brothers go to school with their pal, Iggy, played by Rob Schneider. Is it supposed to be funny that Schneider is 30 years old while playing a character described as a Junior in High School? It's not funny but I also don't know why this choice was made at all. I get that in 1993 Schneider was vaguely appealing as a cast member on Saturday Night Live but why not have him play his age instead of defying credulity as a supposed teenager. 

Naturally, Schneider cannot wait 10 minutes before committing a minor hate crime. As the kids fall under the attack from Ninjas in the employ of Colonel Chi, a hate crime committed by Leslie Nielsen, Schneider breaks out the racist accents and tells a ninja that he 'no speaky the English.' It's hard to even write that line and yet Schneider says it as if it's just totally normal. This was only Schneider's third feature film role but he was setting the tone for the cinematic hate crimes he would continue to commit for the next 30 years of devolving as a human being, and as a comedian and actor. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Coneheads

Coneheads (1993)

Directed by Steve Barron

Written by Tom Davis, Dan Akroyd, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner 

Starring Dan Akroyd, Jane Curtin, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Phil Hartman, Sinbad, Michelle Burke 

Release Date July 23rd, 2023 

Published August 30th, 2023 

Am I more mature or less fun? It's a sad question that I was forced to confront as I sat through another movie from my youth that was not nearly as much fun as I remembered. Coneheads is an utterly dreadful movie. When I was a teenager, with a heavy nostalgia for the glory years of SNL that, admittedly, I had only experienced via reruns, I liked Coneheads The Movie. As I once said in a column on this very website, linked here, movies don't change, you do. That's very clear to me after watching Coneheads for what I thought would be a nostalgic look back at a cult favorite. 

Coneheads began life as a popular running sketch on SNL in the late 1970s. Beldar and Prymaat Conehead (Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin), are aliens from the planet Remulak who are hiding out on Earth and trying to cover up the fact that they are very obviously aliens. They have giant cone shaped heads and they speak in a staccato monotone, like some kind of robot affecting a human voice. That's the joke, the juxtaposition of the attempts by Beldar and Prymaat to seem like suburban Americans versus the tension of them obviously being aliens. 

It's a great sketch premise. I imagine that it is a premise that Dan Akroyd had in mind for many years before he got his big break on SNL. It has the feel of something improvised on stage at Groundlings or Second City show. On SNL that improvised vibe fueled the 5 to 6 minute sketches with one character entering the world of the Coneheads and obliviously accepting the premise that these are normal suburban parents or someone growing more and more frustrated in their attempt to prove that they are aliens. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s Hardware

Hardware (1990) 

Directed by Richard Stanley 

Written by Steve McManus, Richard Stanley, Kevin O'Neill 

Starring Dylan McDermott, Stacy Travis, John Lynch 

Release Date September 14th, 1990 

Box Office $5.1 million 

You know your career is not going well when someone makes a documentary about your being fired. Richard Stanley became infamous in 1994 when his first major studio directing job went worse than it could have possibly gone. The behind the scenes documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr. Moreau, is an all timer in terms of epic film boondoggles. Stanley went over budget, fought with executives, lost the star of his film 2 days into filming, was forced to watch as Mother Nature destroyed his multi-million dollar sets and then was fired during filming. 

Then, taking a bad situation and making it even crazier, a distressed and lunatic Stanley, snuck back onto the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, made up like one of the movie monster extras, and was able to appear in several scenes as a background player. No joke, the fired director can be seen writhing and shrieking with his fellow freaks in a couple scenes in the final cut of The Island of Dr. Moreau. It's the kind of story that goes down in Hollywood lore and it all really happened to the young director who was making his major studio debut with a ludicrous cast that included the infamous Marlon Brando and even more risky and infamous Val Kilmer. 

The epic mishap of The Island of Dr. Moreau will be the lead in Richard Stanley's obituary one day. Perhaps, somewhere near the bottom of the article, there will be a mention for the rather ingenious, low budget sci-fi horror movie that brought him to the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1990's Hardware. This hybrid of horror, steampunk, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi is kind of genius and kind of deeply awkward. This is likely due to the director making one thing and executives, led by Harvey Weinstein, wanting the film to be cut to a length that was potentially more commercial, the point and purpose of the film be damned. 

Hardware is a movie that is sort of about how advancements in technology have begun to dehumanize us, reprogram us, and convince us to give up more of our freedom for a sense of security. Through the story of Mo (Dylan McDermott), a scavenger, and Jill (Stacy Travis) we get a glimpse of the modern condition of the world, one where scrappers can thrive if they are willing to risk their lives and artists, like Jill, struggle to get by despite creating transcendent works of art, things that belong in museums that no longer exist. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Documentary Review The Disappearance of Shere Hite

The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023) 

Directed by Nicole Newnham

Written by Documentary 

Narrated by Dakota Johnson 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published August 27th, 2023 

I pride myself on being aware of cultural phenomena, even ones that happened before I was born. I have made efforts to be aware of many odd little corners of pop ephemera from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And, of course, there were inescapable phenomena such as Woodstock or Disco, Roots as both a book and a TV Miniseries. I made it my business to know at least a little about a lot of things. So how did I not know about Shere Hite? Her series of books called The Hite Report were a massive phenomenon. She sold millions of copies, appeared on every talk show of the 70s and 80s and into the early 90s. 

And yet, I don't recall anything about her. The documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite makes a remarkable case that Shere Hite's legacy was buried intentionally by a culture terrified of having a genuine conversation about sex and of a woman who spoke openly about male sexual insecurities. What Hite did could not have been more rigorous and thoughtful and she was punished for it with exile after a years and years of men, especially those who had not actually read her book, bashed her in print and in television interviews. It cannot be called a coordinated attack, there was no one man behind removing Shere Hite's legacy, but there were many men, a confederacy of dunces, who worked to dismiss, undermine and destroy a prominent female intellectual and feminist. 

In many ways, the story of Shere Hite is the story of a woman living her life online in 2023. Even before the invention of Twitter where anonymous pundits can share uninformed opinions from the comfort of made up personas, Shere Hite was being met by waves of men who sought any reason to discredit and demean her work, her effort, and her life in general. Whether it was pointing out that she worked as a model and occasionally posed nude, including in Playboy, or just out and out lying about the methodology behind her writing, men called Shere Hite a whore and a liar all while rarely, if ever, confronting her actual findings and what they tell us about the modern sexual attitudes of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. 

Hite's first book, The Hite Report, sent out thousands of anonymous questionnaires with deeply personal and sexual questions specifically for women. The goal was to create a safe space for women to talk about their bodies, their desires and whether they are sexually satisfied in their current relationships. Hite received thousands of detailed responses from women addressing sex from different economic statuses, racial and religious categories, and so much more. What she found was that a lot of women were convinced that something was wrong with them and it meant that they could not reach orgasm. One of the most controversial theories the book put forward was that clitoral stimulation and not vaginal penetration was more likely to produce a satisfying orgasm. 

Find my full length review at Filthy.Media 

Movie Review Back on the Strip

Back on the Strip (2023) 

Directed by Chris Spencer

Written by Eric Daniel, Chris Spencer

Starring Spencer Moore II, Tiffany Haddish, Wesley Snipes, J.B Smoove, Bill Bellamy, Faizon Love 

Release Date August 18th, 2023 

Published August 23rd, 2023 

Why is this movie called Back on the Strip? That's a rhetorical question that I am merely using as a jumping off point, don't try to answer it. The main character of Back on the Strip has a role that fits neither of the two meanings the title implies. Merlin (Spencer Moore II) is not back on the strip in Las Vegas, he's never been there before. And Merlin has never stripped down as a professional stripper before. Thus, he can't be 'Back on the Strip.' I call him the main character because the movie revolves entirely around Merlin and yet you can sense that no one involved in the making of this movie has any interest in Merlin or confidence that lead actor, Spencer Moore II can carry this movie. 

Back on the Strip should just be called Merlin, or you could call it 'Magic Merlin' and hope that people get that it is a reference to Magic Mike. That would make far more sense than the actual title. Then again, considering that Back on the Strip is a slapdash, slipshod, nonsensical movie to begin with, why does it matter if the title is also nonsense. I'm spending time complaining about the title because complaining about the actual movie is a deeply unappealing obligation that I have. Here we go... 

Back on the Strip is about a dreamer named Merlin. As a kid, Merlin fell in love with magic and dreamed of being a professional magician. Unfortunately, his earliest attempt at achieving his dream was a disaster of epic proportion. Mostly, this failure introduces the running gag and theme of the film, Merlin has a giant penis. I'm not merely saying he has a giant penis, I'm saying his penis is a medical anomaly. The entirety of Back on the Strip hinges upon revealing his secret giant penis and then returning to that as a gag and plot point throughout the rest of the movie. 

Find my full length review at Filthy.Media 

Horror in the 90s Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift (1990) 

Directed by Ralph S. Singleton 

Written by John Esposito 

Starring David Andrews, Kelly Wolf, Stephen Macht, Brad Dourif 

Release Date October 26th, 1990 

Box Office $11.6 Million 

Graveyard Shift is a grimy, gross surprise. I had zero expectations for this mostly forgotten monster movie, based on a Stephen King short story, and I was wonderfully surprised by just how boldly gross and silly Graveyard Shift is. Director Ralph S. Singleton has only one credit as a feature film director and credit to him, he made a heck of a unique little monster movie for a guy whose only previous experience was a pair of episodes of Cagney and Lacy. 

Graveyard Shift stars David Andrews as John Hall, a drifter who arrives in a small New England town looking for work. Despite his having just arrived, everyone seems to know that he went to college at some point. Townies call him a college boy and express needless resentment for a group of adults. John does however, make a friend in town. A coworker named Jane takes an interest in John after finding out he's a widower and thus the only attractive and datable man in her zip code. 

I say that John and Jane are coworkers and they are. John has just found work on the overnight or 'Graveyard' shift at a local textile plant owned and operated by the ruthless Warwick (Stephen Macht). Warwick is beyond merely shady, he's covering up multiple deaths that have occurred in his mill. Most recently, the man that John replaced was found mauled to death in the cotton thresher. How he got there is a mystery that will become clear as Graveyard Shift unfolds its monster movie narrative. 

Rats have a big role to play in Graveyard Shift. Let's just say that this is not a movie that PETA would find acceptable. Rats are never a welcome site but the abuse and violence aimed their way in Graveyard Shift is almost enough to make you feel bad for the plague spreading little pests. Rats are everywhere in Graveyard Shift and even our hero John is not afraid to demonstrate his disdain for the little buggers. An important plot point finds John using his trusty slingshot to fire empty soda cans at invading rats near his thresher, unaware that antagonizing the rats got the last guy on this shift killed. 

The rats are responsible for introducing the best thing about Graveyard Shift, the performance of horror movie MVP Brad Dourif. Indulging in his show-stealing, scene-stealing character actor schtick, Dourif plays a deeply gross and tormented exterminator who delights in his chosen profession. That Dourif's rat-catcher is going to die is not in question. How he dies and how gruesome that death will be is only a matter of patience on our part. Until his very expected demise however, Dourif is completely awesome, a wildly out of control weirdo who is so much gross fun to watch. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review Stir of Echoes

Stir of Echoes (1999) 

Directed by David Koepp 

Written by David Koepp 

Starring Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Kevin Dunn, Illeana Douglas 

Release Date September 10th 1999 

Published August 21st, 2023 

Stir of Echoes is such a great title. It's both esoteric and evocative. It creates a sense of history being brought swirling back to life but not fully. It's the perfect title for this movie about the echoes of the recent past resounding into to the present and leading into a terrifying and sad future unfolding before Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon), his wife, Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), their son, Jake (Zachary David Cope), and the tight knit neighborhood that welcomed this family with open arms. 

Six months ago, just before Jake and Maggie moved into their new rented home in closely knit Chicago neighborhood, a young girl went missing. Her name is Samantha Kozac and she's been written off as a runaway by most. Samantha was mentally challenged and this has also been used as an excuse to dismiss her disappearance. Samantha is almost entirely unknown to Jake and Maggie even as they've been brought wholly into their new neighborhood home. 

Jake is a failed musician supporting his family by working as a telephone lineman and bitterly lamenting his life. Maggie is far more content, loving her husband and raising their son Jake. For his part, Jake is a happy little boy who likes to indulge in talking to imaginary beings. At least, that's what it would seem from the outside. In reality, Jake has an innate ability to speak with the dead. Moreover, he's been speaking with Samantha Kozak, though his parents are not aware of this. 

Meanwhile, Jake has a strained relationship with his wife's sister, Lisa (Illeana Douglas). Lisa is a free spirit who is not a fan of grumpy, bitter Jake and isn't afraid to say so. Lisa fancies herself as a hypnotist in training and when challenged about her new profession at a neighborhood party, her conflict with Jake comes to a head. Jake challenges Lisa to hypnotize him and after a little hemming and hawing, she agrees. Taking Jake deep into his own subconscious, Lisa plants a suggestion for Jake open up more and be more receptive to the world around him. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo (2023) 

Directed by Neil Blomkamp 

Written by Jason Hall, Zach Baylin 

Starring Archie Medekwe, David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Djimon Hounsou, Geri Halliwell 

Release Date August 25th, 2023 

Published August 22nd, 2023 

There is nothing particularly wrong with Gran Turismo. It's an occasionally rousing, occasionally emotional, sports movie. It's well acted, it's shot well, the special effects are terrific. So why don't I care about this based on a true story melodrama? It's odd, I can remember enjoying Gran Turismo while I watched it and now, as I sit to write about it, most of the movie has slipped away. I'm left with this sort of vague admiration for Gran Turismo but not much beyond that. I'm having to check and recheck notes that I made and go back to the film synopsis for help. Am I just getting old or did this movie just leave that little of an overall impression. 

Gran Turismo, according to my notes, stars Archie Medekwe as Gran Turismo videogame star player, Jann Mardenborough. Jann has long dreamed of becoming a race car driver but that particular track of profession, is not available to most people. Though the movie only glances in the direction of any kind of social conscience, it's clear that many drivers have had long time ties to family and corporate racing interests. Trying to independently become a race car driver, especially on the European circuit, is beyond merely a pipedream. 

The closest that Jann can come is spending most of his waking hours playing the game Gran Turismo, a real life hit videogame series. Created by Kazunori Yamauchi, Gran Turismo is a painstaking recreation of what it is like to race on European race tracks. Yamauchi dedicated years to capturing the cars, the tracks, pit crew experience, everything down to the minute pieces of the car, in order to create a racing simulator so lifelike, it feels like the real thing. I've never played Gran Turismo, I don't play many videogames, nothing against them, but I was really impressed by the glimpses of the game we get in this movie. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Strays

Strays (2023) 

Directed by Josh Greenbaum

Written by Dan Perrault 

Starring Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, Randall Park, Will Forte 

Release Date August 18th, 2023 

Published August 21st, 2023 

Strays Stinks! Reaching the nadir of talking animal movies, Strays pees, poops, and generally grosses out in every possible way while begging us to find it cute. Featuring the voices of Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, Strays is a cruel, nasty, disgusting little movie that also happens to be an amateur effort in terms of production and direction on top of the lame gross out humor. I felt a sense of embarrassment while watching Strays, an embarrassment on behalf of the people who filmed this and assumed that what they were doing was worth doing. 

Will Ferrell provides the voice of Reggie a badly abused dog that doesn't realize it is being abused. Reggie's owner is a cruel bully that the movie seems to think is a clever takedown of redneck, man-boy stereotypes. Doug (Will Forte) is instead, a monstrous, nasty creation who says and does terribly cruel things that we're asked to laugh at. It's supposed to be funny that Reggie thinks his name is S###bag. It's supposed to be funny that Doug hates this dog that much. 

It's also supposed to be hysterical that Reggie thinks Doug is playing a game with him when Doug drives Reggie into the country, throws a tennis ball and leaves Reggie to find his way back home. The plot of Strays kicks in when an angry Doug drives Reggie more than 3 hours away and drops him in the middle of a mid-sized city. Reggie has no idea where he is and is immediately set upon by bullies. Thankfully, he's saved by Bug (Jamie Foxx) who, though even smaller than Reggie, is more resourceful. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Blue Beetle

Blue Beetle (2023) 

Directed by Angel Manuel Soto 

Written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer 

Starring Xolo Mariduena, Bruna Marquezine, Adriana Barraza, Damian Alcazar, Susan Sarandon, George Lopez 

Release Date August 18th, 2023 

Published August 18th, 2023 

What I loved about Blue Beetle is the enthusiasm that pours forth from every frame of this movie. There is a sense of wonder and delight even in as the movie laying out a heartbreaking backstory for main character, Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena). Jaime, as we join the story, has become the first member of his family to graduate from college. Sadly, he's returning home to a lot of bad news. His father, Alberto (Damian Alcazar), has suffered a heart attack and is no longer working. His not working led to the family losing their auto repair business. And the family home is about to be foreclosed upon. 

Jaime feels responsible as his parents had gone to great lengths to get him into college. Now, he's back home and he can't find work. He can't afford to go back to college to complete his law degree and he's trapped in a world where his education doesn't mean nearly as much as the color of his skin. The racial divide in Palmera City is very obvious and seems to have been engineered by the Kord Corporation, headed up by the vicious and vindictive Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), a weapons manufacturer preparing to release her most terrifying new weapon, super-soldier suits based on an ancient technology. 

Standing in Victoria's way is her niece, Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), daughter of Ted Kord, the benevolent former CEO. Jenny wants to carry on her father's legacy of community involvement and investment. She wants to get out of the weapons business completely. Naturally, this places her in conflict with Victoria to a point that places Jenny's life at risk. In a desperate attempt to stop Victoria, Jenny makes a big play. Sneaking into the Kord labs, Jenny steals an ancient piece of alien technology known as The Scarab. The Scarab is the key to Victoria's plans and without it, she's got nothing. 

As Jenny tries to sneak The Scarab out of Kord she runs into Jaime and enlists him to sneak the ancient artifact out of the building. The two had met the day before when Victoria fired Jaime and his sister, Milagro Reyes (Belissa Escobedo) from their cleaning jobs at her resort home. Jaime developed an immediate crush on Jenny so, naturally, he's happy to help her in this moment, unaware of the level of danger he's inviting into his life and the life of his family. 

The legend of The Scarab is that it chooses the person that it will attach itself to. The choice is based on who The Scarab believes is worthy to wield its magical powers. When Jaime picks up The Scarab he has no idea that he would be the one the ancient alien tech would choose. Once The Scarab does choose Jaime however, Blue Beetle kicks into second gear as the war between Jaime, his family and Victoria Kord's army of super soldiers, led by the ruthless Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), is on. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Brightwood

Brightwood (2023) 

Directed by Dane Elcar 

Written by Dane Elcar 

Starring Dana Meryl Berger, Max Woertendyke 

Release Date August 22nd, 2023 

Published August 22nd, 2023 

Brightwood is a trip. A bickering couple goes for a run. The husband whines and complains, the wife won't stop listening to a podcast. He wants to go home but can't because he's trying to spend time with her as he feels his marriage is disintegrating. She would like to run alone but feels a pull from who they used to be and lets him come along. They go for a run around a local pond and something supernatural occurs. The couple becomes trapped in the forest, unable to escape and seeing strangers in the woods who may or may not be hostile. 

Jen (Dana Meryl Berger) and Dan (Max Woertendyke) have an immediately tense chemistry. Their bickering is charged with various slights and a lengthy history of misdeeds and miscommunication. The night before this run that they are on, the couple was at a party where an inebriated Dan appeared to flirt with everyone there, much to Jen's increasing irritation. Dan thinks he was just being friendly but tries to apologize, though Jen isn't particularly interested. 

As he struggles to keep up, Jen says she's going to the pond for a few laps. Dan wants to quit but also doesn't want his wife to have the last word in their conversation. He follows along and the two end up in an unfamiliar spot. There is something off about the trail on this day, something Jen can't quite put her finger on. Eventually, after a lap, she can't find the path they came in on. More attempts to leave, more times arriving back where they started. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review The Babadook

The Babadook (2014) 

Directed by Jennifer Kent

Written by Jennifer Kent 

Starring Essie Davis 

Release Date May 22nd, 2014 

Published November 24th, 2014

Awards, I realize, do not matter to the actual quality of a movie. Quality is a subjective trait related to the person assessing such. That said, I wish to begin the most unlikely Oscar campaign of the year for Australian actress Essie Davis in “The Babadook.” “The Babadook” is a horror movie that may or may not play on the cliché elements of movies about demons and possession but Ms. Davis and indeed the film itself put the clichés to great use and for a larger, more thoughtful purpose.

“The Babadook” stars Davis as Amelia, a put upon single mom dealing with an increasingly troubled child. Amelia’s son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), like many children, believes he has a monster under his bed. This fact has kept his mother up late many nights in attempts at reassurance. Samuel’s monster takes on a name from a bizarre children’s book that Amelia does not recall having purchased, ‘The Babadook.’

‘The Babadook’ is not, in fact, a children’s book but rather an illustration of upcoming events that will change as events change in the home. This, of course, is not a new concept in horror but there is a twist here that only the observant audience member will be able to pick up on. What’s truly clever about “The Babadook” the film is how this book and all of the varying cliches of possession/demon horror movies are routed to a single emotional point, the death of Amelia’s husband on the day that Amelia gave birth to Samuel.

There is a very big, very complicated metaphor at play in “The Babadook.” Many mother’s struggle to connect with their own child. For Amelia, her son’s life is tied inextricably to the day her husband died. Thus, the seemingly supernatural elements of “The Babadook” take on a psychological weight allowing us to wonder if indeed Amelia is being menaced from without or within.

On a filmmaking level, “The Babadook” is exceptionally well crafted. The set design and lighting are incredibly evocative and compelling in their deep dark grays and blacks. I also loved the architecture of the home which feels cramped when necessary and overly expansive when its time for a character to make a getaway.

The sound design and character creation of “The Babadook” is wonderfully terrifying as well. The image of the character ‘The Babadook’ is a perfect picture of a childhood nightmare all sharp edges and darkness.  The character seems modeled on Max Schreck’s Nosferatu with a little bit of Danny Devito’s take on The Penguin in “Batman Returns.”

The film ultimately boils down to just how much you believe in Essie Davis’s performance. I believed it completely. Davis does an extraordinarily complex bit of work here calling on some very difficult emotional damage to achieve just the right effect. Davis is portraying a mother who’s ambivalent about her son, still grief stricken over the loss of her husband six years later, and is, late in the film, clearly losing her grip on reality. That’s a large number of beats to be played and Davis is exceptionally in tune throughout.

Based on the title and premise I didn’t want to bother with “The Babadook.” I assumed I had seen this movie before in a dozen other horror movies. That’s true to an extent but “The Babadook” transcends the genre trash because it is exceptionally well directed by Jennifer Kent and because Essie Davis delivers what is arguably the best performance by any actress this year. That she’s done so within the strictures of the horror genre only elevates her triumph.

Classic Movie Review Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday

Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday (1993) 

Directed by Adam Marcus 

Written by Jay Huguely, Dean Lorey 

Starring John D. LeMay, Kane Hodder, Erin Gray, Allison Smith, Steven Culp, Steven Williams 

Release Date August 13th, 1993 

August 17th, 2023 

It's weird and rare to see a horror movie franchise parody itself and yet, that's exactly what we get in the opening moments of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The film opens on a beautiful woman alone at a summer camp. She's making all of the mistakes that a victim of Jason Voorhees makes. She's getting naked and then running around in just a towel. Naturally, of course, this grabs Jason's attention and he begins his usual methodical pursuit. And then the see is turned on its head. Floodlights fill the scene, the woman as well as dozens of FBI Agents pull guns and explosives are used to blow Jason Voorhees to little bits. 

This sequence features a shot of Jason's mask flying toward the screen and a shot of Jason's still beating heart which is pretty cool. For a moment, only a moment, it seems as if Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, might have a sense of humor and purpose in taking this aging franchise in an interesting new direction. And then, the movie flies completely off the rails. If you could think of a worse direction to take Jason Voorhees and this franchise you would be meeting quite a challenge. The decisions made by director Adam Marcus and writers Jay Huguely and Dean Lorey are so insane that they defy any attempt to defend them. 

So, with Jason blown to bits how does the story continue? Jason's charred pieces are taken for an autopsy. The coroner in charge of Jason's body, for reasons that cannot be explained, decides to eat Jason's heart. It's implied that something supernatural, something Jason is doing from beyond the grave, is causing this otherwise normal guy, to eat Jason's heart but that doesn't make this scene any less insane. Eating Jason's heart turns the coroner into Jason Voorhees but he still looks like the coroner. As the coroner, Jason sets about murdering the staff of the coroner's office and begins seeking a way to keep himself alive. 

To let us know that Jason is still around, we occasionally see Jason, full hockey mask and overalls regalia intact, in reflections. You know, in case we forgot what movie we were watching. For real, we might actually need the reminder as Jason Goes to Hell is set to retcon more of Jason's backstory to serve this new narrative. In a move that baffled long time fans, Jason is revealed to have a sister, played by a slumming former television star, Erin Gray. She has a daughter who is about to give birth and Jason wants to get in that baby in order to be reborn into a new body. 

Thus, Jason kills his way through several bodies, he can't sustain the bodies he enters by vomiting himself from one victim to another. All while he searches for his sister and the baby that he hopes he can enter and be reborn. Why and how a mindless killing machine like Jason Voorhees would suddenly have this supernatural body swapping power to the knowledge of how to use these powers is beyond any attempt to explain. He just now has these powers just as he now has a sister that he never had before. Look, if you're going to question it, you're not going to enjoy Jason Goes to Hell. I know, I didn't enjoy it. 

Well, I should say, I didn't enjoy it in any way that the filmmakers intended me to enjoy it. On a derisive level, I did have a little fun making fun of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The sight of various characters in the guise of Jason Voorhees vomiting Jason from one body to the next is a gross but hilarious visual. I laughed at poor Erin Gray who seems to be lamenting every moment that she spends being in this movie. Gray was once a popular and beloved television star and its clear that being part of a late in life sequel to a dying horror franchise is not how she saw her career playing out. Her dead behind the eyes delivery borders on intentional comedy. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Classic Movie Review Sorcerer

Sorcerer (1977) 

Directed by William Friedkin 

Written by Walon Green

Starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou 

Release Date June 24th, 1977 

Published August 16th, 2023 

In our final tribute to famed director William Friedkin, myself and my co-hosts on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast watched and talked about Friedkin's much maligned and recently reconsidered 1977 thriller Sorcerer. When it was released, Sorcerer was written off by many critics and it was considered a failure for not reaching the box office heights of Friedkin's twin classics The Exorcist and The French Connection, a standard that was desperately unfair to this far more challenging movie. 

Sorcerer was a remake of The Wages of Fear, a challenging, cynical, and deeply uncommercial French movie that was based on an equally bleak and unrelenting book. Sorcerer thus was never designed as a typical blockbuster with the kind of wide appeal that creates box office success. It's a tribute to Friedkin's dedication as an artist and his hubris as a businessman that he would try use his clout to make a deeply uncommercial movie into a success. It didn't work, but he did make one hell of a great movie. 

But don't ask my why it was called Sorcerer, that title is complete nonsense. The story of Sorcerer introduces us to four desperate men fleeing from what is likely an early death. Each has a criminal background that was a recipe for dying before their time. Wanting to prolong their miserable lives, each man escapes to South America where work is scarce and survival is a struggle. There are few jobs and the one potentially well paying gig is so ludicrously dangerous it may not be worth doing. 

Oil companies are destroying the natural beauty of the South American jungles. When one of their oil rigs catches fire the only way to stop it is to blow it up. For that, they need nitroglycerin, a volatile explosive, one that is deeply unstable. The slightest jostling could set off the explosive and destroy anyone in the vicinity of it. Nevertheless, the oil company is offering good money to transport nitroglycerin via truck over the uneven ground of the jungle to their oil well fire. They need four men for the job and, of course, the four desperate men we've met before are the men for the job. 

With nothing to lose, these four lost souls must rebuild trucks that are capable of running smoothly enough not to set off the nitroglycerin while sturdy enough to make it over the mountainous jungle terrain where paved roads are a non-existent luxury and dirt paths are often covered over by landslides due to the rainy season. It's a fool's errand that only men at the very end of their tether would attempt to take on. That's the backdrop of Sorcerer that sets us on a path of intense, grim, nasty scenes that you watch through your fingers as you gasp for every tension filled breath. 

Sorcerer is like Ice Road Truckers on steroids. If you've never seen that History Channel reality series, it follows truckers who carry supplies across the most perilous terrain in the world as they risk dropping their giant semi-trucks through ever more perilous and icy terrain. Sorcerer may not be on ice but the landscape of loose dirt and gravel feels just as perilous. Add to that the nitroglycerin in the back of the two trucks on this journey and you get the sense of the pressure cooker of suspense that is Sorcerer. Where the thought that a TV show can't necessarily film and share the death of its protagonists, removing a little of the suspense of Ice Road Truckers, a movie is not bound by this and it feels as if we could lose any one of our main characters in Sorcerer at any moment. 

One of the reasons that Sorcerer was a bad bet to be a big hit was Friedkin's decision to cast actors not familiar to American audiences. Aside from Roy Scheider, fresh off the success of The French Connection and Jaws, the cast is almost entirely unknown to American audiences. This was a calculated choice by Friedkin as because we don't know these actors, we can't assume which one might survive and which one might die. A movie star provides a comfort that they will be around for a while in a movie they are the star of. Hiring unknown actors however, creates doubt that has a big role to play in the breathtaking suspense of Sorcerer. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90's Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder (1990) 

Directed by Adrian Lyne 

Written by Bruce Joel Rubin

Starring Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello

Release Date November 2nd, 1990 

Box Office $26.9 million 

Director Adrian Lyne is known best for his sexy, sweat-soaked thrillers about cheating husbands, scheming women, and rich guys who pay for sex. So, seeing that he's also the director of a gritty, Vietnam era horror movie like Jacob's Ladder is a little jarring. Now, of course, he does throw in needless nudity, Elizabeth Pena's breasts are lovingly captured on screen for no particularly good story reason, but otherwise, Jacob's Ladder is a grand departure for the tawdry director of admittedly zeitgeist grabbing sex thrillers. 

Jacob's Ladder tells the story of a deeply haunted Vietnam vet named Jacob, played by Tim Robbins. Jacob nearly died in Vietnam after his unit was the subject of a violent surprise attack. Jacob himself was stabbed in the gut and had to have his intestines pressed back into his body before he could be taken back to the base hospital. Jake remembers being gutted by a bayonet but he also has another memory that he cannot quite reconcile. Just prior to his being stabbed, Jacob's unit seemed to be having severe hallucinations and overdoses. 

Is it a dream or a memory? Jacob cannot tell. However, when Jacob survives a pair of attempts on his life and compares notes with some of the members of his unit, it appears that there may indeed have been more to this firefight than a surprise attack. Meanwhile, Jacob isn't sleeping, he's in desperate pain from a back injury. Thankfully he has a benevolent chiropractor named Louie (Danny Aiello) who acts as friend, confessor, therapist and guardian angel. Louis is seemingly the only one able to comfort the ever-tormented Jacob. 

On top of his traumatic near death in Vietnam, Jacob lost a son before the war. Gabriel (Macauley Culkin), was struck and killed while riding his bike. Jacob's life has been a mess ever since. Despite having two other children, Jacob fell apart, his marriage to his wife, Sarah (Patricia Kalember) fell apart and then Jacob nearly died. It's no wonder that he can barely function and gave up life as a Park Avenue Shrink for a relatively more peaceful and less stressful job as a postal worker. Boomers and Gen-X'ers are making dark jokes right now, millennials are a bit confounded and thinking yes, being a postal worker would be less stressful.  Both sides are right. 

Anyway, that's Jacob's Ladder. Jacob barely functions, survives a few attempts on his life, has a couple more near-death experiences and begins seeing demons. He has meltdowns at any function he attends, when he's not sick he's obsessed with his time in Vietnam. He's slowly destroying his relationship with his girlfriend, Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena), while she may have a secret related to what is happening to Jacob. What is real and what is a hallucination begins to intermingle into a confusing mélange of disconnected horror images that all mean nothing when the ending is revealed. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Documentary Review Filling in the Blanks

Filling in the Blanks (2023)

Directed by Jon Baime 

Written by Jon Baime 

Starring Jon Baime, Phillip Schafer 

Release Date August 15th, 2023 

Published August 14th, 2023 

Who are you? What makes you, you? Is it your name? Your parents? Your genetic makeup? What do you know about you for sure. An in-built anxiety that many have is related to the fact that, though, obviously, we were there when were born, we didn't start developing and saving memories for several more years. We are entirely reliant upon our parents and other family members, to piece together the portions of our childhood where we were not yet fully developed enough to remember anything. That's a big deal, not having those memories can have a profound long term effects. 

Imagine if you had the building blocks of your own life toppled by a secret from before you had awareness enough to know what happened? All that you have relied on your parents, grandparents, or siblings to recall for you was a lie. Foundational truths about who you are can be brushed away by a breeze when a major lie is revealed. Case in point, documentary filmmaker Jon Baime. He has first hand experience of having the formative years of life explode before his eyes. Jon took a DNA test and found out that his father is not his biological father. 

All those years of formative memories, questions about why his brothers don't look like brothers. Questions about his mother's experience of childbirth, about whether or not he can trust anything his parents have ever told him in his more than 50 years on Earth is now in question. Jon's brothers are also not biologically related to their father. The oldest of the siblings also seeks out his bio-family while Jon finds himself welcomed by half-siblings and cousins that he never knew existed. He even finds his biological father is a man named Hesh, who also welcomes Jon like family. 

Find my full length review at Humans.Media 

Movie Review The Last Voyage of the Demeter

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) 

Directed by Andre Ovredal 

Written by Bragi Schut Jr, Zak Olkewicz 

Starring Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian 

Release Date August 11th, 2023

Published August 13th, 2023 

The Last Voyage of Demeter is the second attempt this year by Universal Pictures to tap the Dracula I.P for box office dollars. The first attempt, Renfield, was a disaster business-wise. Whether you enjoyed Renfield or not, the movie cost $65 million dollars and made $26.7 million at the box office. The Last Voyage of Demeter cost Universal and Amblin Entertainment more than $45 million dollars and on its opening weekend, Demeter made a meager $6.5 million. This is no reflection on the quality of The Last Voyage of Demeter but rather on the marketing of the movie which failed to convey the horror elements of the movie well enough to rope in that often very loyal market. 

As for the movie, it's far better than the reputation the film now has another Dracula related box office failure. The film stars Corey Hawkins, a tremendous young actor who appears doomed to supporting roles after his leading man play here failed at the box office. Hawkins plays a man named Clemens who purports to be one of the first black doctors to graduate from Cambridge University. However, because of the severe racism of the time, Clemens was unable to find work after his graduation. He then accepted a position in Romania only to find that he'd been offered the position by someone who didn't know Clemens was black. 

Now, having been stranded in Romania for an unspecified amount of time, Clemens finds a potential way to get home to England. A ship called Demeter is set to transport cargo around the Horn of Africa and back to England, a two and a half month trip. They need hands and after locals refuse to board the ship, having seen carvings and symbols on the cargo that they recognize as evil, Clemens finds himself hired as Ship's Doctor and Deck Hand. He's also getting a share of a small fortune that the crew of the Demeter has been given for this trip, a sum large enough to get the Captain (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) to ignore the many, many red flags going up regarding this trip. 

It should not be very hard, nor should it be considered a spoiler, to know that the cargo is, in fact, the body of Count Dracula (Javier Botet), his many possessions, and a young woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi), who is set to be Dracula's traveling snack until he starts chowing down on crew members. Plans change when the box containing Anna breaks during the trip and she's rescued by Clemens. Dracula then is forced to start feeding on livestock and then step up to eating the crew while leaving just enough of them alive to finish the journey to England. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review The French Connection

The French Connection (1971) 

Directed by William Friedkin 

Written by Ernest Tidyman

Starring Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco 

Release Date October 7th, 1971 

Published August 11th 2023 

I don't get it. I don't get what anyone sees in The French Connection. I've tried. I've seen The French Connection a half dozen times. Each time I watch I try and see what so many others, including my idol, Roger Ebert sees in this beloved action movie. For the life of me, I just don't see it. The characters are thin, the action that is supposedly pulse-pounding feels plodding as I see it, and that car chase that has been raved about for more than 50 years is only impressive because it looks genuinely dangerous. I guess we're lucky no one was killed. That's supposed to be impressive. 

I do believe that the elements of The French Connection should work. William Friedkin is a very good director. I have recently written about his exceptional work much later in his career on a pair of outlandish but artful and exciting movies, The Hunted and Bug. I also have a great deal of love and respect for Gene Hackman. Hackman is one of the greats of 1970s cinemas, an icon who kept up his remarkable legacy of great work through to the end of his career via well-earned retirement just as Friedkin returned to the big screen. Roy Scheider, the cinematography, the dirty, grimy milieu, all add up to what should have been a really great movie. So why do I find The French Connection so mind numbingly dull? 

The French Connection tells the wide-ranging story of a drug deal. It begins in France where, presumably, an undercover cop is brutally gunned down. The opening scene of The French Connection lingers for ages as we watch the cop watch his targets, a French businessman named Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), and his henchman, Pierre (Marcel Bozzuffi). He follows them from one location to another, and then goes for a walk and buys a baguette and appears to be calling it a day. He grabs his mail, and he gets shot in the face. 

Then we head to New York City where Detective Popeye Doyle is dressed as Santa Claus and talking to some kinds. Out of the corner of his eye, Doyle is watching a bar nearby where his partner, Cloudy (Roy Scheider) is undercover and waiting for a perp to make a move. When the perp does make a movie, a chase ensues. Eventually, in a back alley, after Cloudy gets stabbed in the hand, the perp is caught, and Doyle purposefully confounds the suspect by asking him if he 'Picked his toes in Poughkeepsie. Why? Who the hell knows. It never comes up exactly why Doyle does this. I had to google it to find out that it was a nonsense phrase intended to cause confusion during an interrogation. 

Toes aside, we then watch as Doyle and Cloudy get on the scent of a new player in the local drug business. Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) is a small-time shop owner who dreams of moving up in the drug racket. He's become connected to a top guy, a money man and Kingpin named Weinstock. Having made another connection with the aforementioned French guys, Sal has positioned himself to potentially pull off the biggest international heroin smuggling operation in history. Millions of dollars of the purest heroin on the market being brought into the country via a French movie star named Devereaux (Frederic de Pasquale). 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993) 

Directed by Andrew Davis 

Written by Jeb Stuart, David Twohy 

Starring Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Julianne Moore, Selma Blair, Joe Pantoliano

Release Date August 6th, 2023

Published August 7th, 2023 

The story behind the movie The Fugitive is much crazier than I would have ever expected. The movie is so tight and so uniquely performed, I assumed that it must have been a terrifically assembled piece of work behind the scenes. Then, I read an incredible thread on Twitter from a user named @ATRightMovies. This person lays out a behind the scenes story that, on the surface, you would assume led to the creation of a complete disaster of a movie. Script problems, a star who was halfheartedly interested in making the movie, and assumptions on the set that everyone was making a bad movie, somehow led to the creation of a film that was nominated for 7 Oscars, with one Oscar win. 

The Fugitive is based on a popular 1960s television series starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, a man wrongly accused of murdering his wife. Harrison Ford takes on the role of Dr. Kimble in the movie which finds him returning to his well appointed home to find a one armed man had assaulted and murdered his wife (Sela Ward). Kimble fought the one armed man but he managed to mistake. When Police arrived, they found Dr. Kimble covered in his wife's blood, he'd tried to perform CPR and ended up clutching her dead body in his anguish over her death. 

The blood and Kimble's story about a one armed man are too much for the Chicago Police Investigators to buy. They arrest Kimble and charge him with murder. Found guilty, Richard is facing life in prison when fate intervenes. While being transported to a Federal Prison, other inmates on the transport initiate a plan for escape. They attack and stab a guard, the driver of the bus is shot and killed, and the bus crashes on train tracks. In a spectacular sequence, a train is headed toward the bus on the tracks. Kimble picks up the injured officer and saves his life. Then, in a moment that has been shared among the best action sequences of the past 30 years, Kimble leaps from the broken bus seconds before the train strikes it, leading to a train derailment. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 

Directed by Jeff Rowe

Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit 

Starring Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Hannibal Burress, Rose Byrne, Nicolas Cantu, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Post Malone

Release Date August 2nd, 2023 

Published August 6th, 2023 

I watched the 1990 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles recently for a review timed to the release of the latest attempt to rebuild the Turtles as a viable movie franchise. What I found was a movie that I absolutely loved. I was too old when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released in 1990, I was 14 and I thought it was for much younger kids. Look back now, with the wisdom of more than 30 years, I can say, yes, it is a product for young children, younger than 14 even, but it's a wonderful product. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 is a ridiculously fun movie. It's filled with wonderful invention and kid friendly action. 

Everything that came after that movie, not counting the television shows that I've never seen, has been a dreary slog. Each new film iteration of the Turtles has carried with it the very obvious burden of corporate exploitation. Each of the various filmmakers who tackled the franchise appeared to be doing so with a studio held gun to their head that dictated exactly how the movie should be geared toward selling merchandise and creating sequels was the only reason these movies existed. Thus, we got a series of joyless, unpleasant live action and animated attempts to leverage a popular I.P into a cash making machine. 

I say all of this to demonstrate the bias that the latest iteration of the Turtles on the big screen was up against in my mind. To say that I was cynical about seeing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen again would be a grave understatement. What a lovely surprise it is then to report that the newest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventure, subtitled Mutant Mayhem, doesn't completely suck. In fact, it's actually pretty alright. The team of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and director-co-writer, Jeff Rowe have found a tone and spirit that does well to hide the high level corporately leveraged truth behind its creation. 

Mutant Mayhem is yet another Turtles origin story. We have the back story courtesy of a flashback to the origin of our antagonist, a fellow mutant named Superfly. Superfly was the creation of mad scientist Baxter Stockman. Baxter created the ooze but was killed not long after by an evil organization who wanted to steal his ooze and use it to create their own mutant army. A very young Superfly fought off the baddies, rescued his fellow mutant babies, and fled into the night. He left behind one last tube of ooze which breaks and drips into the sewer. There, it finds the Turtles who are rescued by Splinter (Jackie Chan) who gets into the ooze himself. 

Splinter is rightfully afraid of humans. His first time taking his turtle babies to the surface world nearly ends with them being killed. Thus, Splinter becomes deeply overprotective. He spends the next decade training his Turtles, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) and Raphael (Brady Noon), to fight. Using old, abandoned VHS tapes, Splinter trains his Turtles to be able to defend themselves against humans. As the Turtles grow up into their mid-teens however, they've only become more and more curious about humans. They wonder if humans arent't as bad as Splinter claims. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media

Classic Movie Review Jaws 2

Jaws 2 (1978) 

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc 

Written by Carl Gottlieb, Howard Sackler

Starring Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Keith Gordon, Murray Hamilton 

Release Date June 16th, 1978

Published August 9th, 2023 

If there is ONE movie in the long history of movies that does not need a sequel, it's Jaws. Jaws, as crafted by Steven Spielberg, is a perfect movie. That doesn't mean it's the greatest movie of all time or even my favorite movie. When I say Jaws is a perfect movie, I merely stating that as the story is told and the film is executed, it's perfectly crafted in and of itself. Jaws, as it is, cannot be improved upon and requires no expansion upon its story. The characters, action, and ending, all play out in the best possible fashion for this movie. Jaws, as it plays, doesn't need to be expanded upon nor does it lend itself to being expanded upon. 

Thus, the only reason anyone would be ridiculous enough to make a sequel to Jaws is money. It's a purely mercenary effort to separate audiences from their money. There can be no art, no pure joy of creation to this endeavor, it's only about using something powerful as a brickbat with which to beat money out of audiences. Jaws is a money pinata and greedy Hollywood executives wanted their candy by any means necessary. That means that if they needed to force actor Roy Scheider to star in the sequel by holding him hostage to his contract, they would do it. And they did do that, Scheider didn't want to be in this movie. 

If it meant backing up a brinks truck to try and get Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss back, they would do it. It's a sign of great integrity that both Spielberg and Dreyfuss refused big money deals to compromise their integrity. Studio executives likely tried to drag up the corpse of Robert Shaw's Quint but thankfully stopped short of that. But would you be surprised that the idea was floated? It would not surprise me if that happened. Anything remotely familiar was going to be exploited for the chance of wacking that Jaws pinata. For instance, one person who did compromise his integrity is composer John Williams who did return and provided one of his most forgettable pieces of work for Jaws 2. 

So, why am I ranting about Jaws 2? The movie isn't exactly timely or relevant. Well, Jaws 2 was the classic on our latest episode of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast. We paired Jaws 2 with The Meg 2: The Trench and what we found is that both of these movies stink out loud. Both The Meg 2 and Jaws 2 are miserable, overlong slogs that fail to remotely capture what made the first film something worth watching. The Meg, of course, doesn't compare with the genius of Jaws, it's merely the first of two Meg movies. But, The Meg is certainly better than its sequel and that's where the sequel relates to Jaws 2, which is a vastly inferior film to its original. 

Read my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review The Meg 2: The Trench

The Meg 2: The Trench (2023) 

Directed by Ben Wheatley 

Written by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, Dean Georgaris 

Starring Jason Stathan, Cliff Curtis, Wu Jing, Page Kennedy, Sophia Cali

Release Date August 4th, 2023 

Published August 4th, 2023 

The Meg 2: The Trench is not great. Here we have yet another in a seeming series of mediocre, manufactured sequel/remake intended to nakedly capitalize on a vaguely appreciated Intellectual Property. There isn't a single person working on The Meg 2: The Trench who appears to have enjoyed making this movie. No one appears to be having fun, each is merely going through the motions of an idiot plot, a series of dimwitted set pieces that stack the odds impossibly against our heroes only to have main character powers intervene to protect Jason Statham and the young girl who provides his motivation as a character. 

The Meg of the title is a Megalodon, a theoretical construct of an ancient shark that lives in a trench heretofore unexplored and unmapped by human eyes. Or so we think. In reality, a heartless group of mercenary capitalists who managed not only to map and navigate The Trench, they managed to build an entire mining colony on the ocean floor, completely under the noses of our heroes. A spy in the operation of Jonas (Jason Statham) and his pal, Mac (Cliff Curtis), has helped steal proprietary equipment from their boss, Jiuming (Wu Jing). 

Now that the team has traveled to The Trench for an exploration of the area, the spy sets about a game of sabotage, attempting to make sure that no one finds out about the illegal mining operation and the risk it provides to potentially allowing deadly Megalodons to escape from their undersea home and into the inhabited waters of nearby islands. Naturally, of course, The Meg's get loose and the mining operation was a mistake, and you know all of this before you ever get to this point in the movie. 

The trailer has already told you that Jonas has a fight against Meg's in which he's trying to spear them. Thus, there is no tension or suspense, the movie has promised this fight at if it hasn't happened yet, then why should you worry that our characters might not survive the underwater fight sequence we suffer through for most of the second act of The Meg 2: The Trench. Not that the movie was ever going to place Jason Statham in a context where he might not survive, that's silly, he has main character powers. The only minor suspense in The Meg 2: The Trench is who, other than Statham and Jonas' step-daughter, have main character powers strong enough to never be in danger. 

Spoiler alert, most of the characters you see in The Meg 2: The Trench, have main character powers. This means there is incredibly little tension or excitement in the movie. The danger feels forced and perfunctory. Each action set piece lacks in pacing and believability. It's all very silly but not silly in a fun way, silly in a fashion that leads to eye rolling. The makers of The Meg 2: The Trench needed to lean into the silliness and respect the fact that they are making a big dumb blockbuster. Sadly, there is a dour, dispirited quality to The Meg 2: The Trench that prevents camp, ironic appreciation of the film from setting in. 

I did laugh during The Meg 2: The Trench but I don't get the sense that I was laughing at something intended to be funny. These weren't the kind of tension breaking cathartic laughs that a movie like this should inspire. Rather, this was derisive laughter, laughing at the movie rather than with the movie. It's not so much laughing at the ballsy absurdity of the film, something the Fast and the Furious franchise thrives on. No, this was more of a 'wow, this is really dumb kind of laugh that accompanies an eye roll and a check of your phone to see how much longer the movie is. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review So I Married an Ax Murderer

So I Married an Ax Murderer (1993) 

Directed by Thomas Schlamme 

Written by Robbie Fox

Starring Mike Myers, Nancy Travis, Anthony LaPaglia, Brenda Fricker, Alan Arkin 

Release Date July 30th, 1993 

Published August 4th, 2023 

I feel like I should like the movie So I Married an Ax Murderer. I have the impression of the movie as a light hearted romp with a true crime twist. It sounds charming in description: Nice guy meets a woman who happens to have a bad history with men who disappear after marrying her. There are things about it that sound like a fun twist on the true crime and rom-com genre. And yet, every time I try watching So I Married an Ax Murderer, the film sets off the pedantic, cranky side of my personality. I like to think of myself as a pretty chill, relatively relaxed guy, but when I watch So I Married an Ax Murderer, my skin crawls and I get easily irritated. 

So I Married an Ax Murderer stars Mike Myers as Charlie. Charlie is a poet in San Francisco. Is being a poet in a coffee shop his job? He doesn't appear to have any other means of support so I guess that's what we are supposed to believe. Through Charlie's poetry, set to the beat of improvised jazz, we learn that Charlie is finicky about women. His most recent break up was dubiously related to his belief that his ex-girlfriend stole his cat. Charlie's best friend, a police detective, Tony (Anthony LaPaglia), believes Charlie is too hard on the women he dates and too picky about minor flaws they may or may not have. He thinks Charlie is simply afraid of commitment. 

This notion will be put to the test when Charlie meets Harriet (Nancy Travis), a beautiful woman who seems to speak his strange comic language. The two vibe over Charlie helping Harriet on a tough and busy day at her family Butcher Shop. Charlie's Dad, also played by Myers, was also a Butcher back in the day so Charlie volunteers to work for Harriet as a way to get the chance to hit on her all day. The two flirt mercilessly, mostly via various cuts of meat, I am in cringing just thinking about this scene. I can't help it. I kept thinking, this is her place of business, she's busy with a line of customers, and this guy is doing meat based schtick. She encourages it, but I only find that equally frustrating. 

The meaty flirtation leads to the two spending the night together and helps Charlie locate the first red flag about this new relationship. Harriet has a habit of talking and moaning in her sleep while talking about someone named Ralph. When confronted about Ralph, Harriet doesn't want to talk about it. Nor does Harriet want to talk about any aspect of her past, especially the number of times she's previously been married. By coincidence, Charlie's mom (Brenda Fricker), shows him a copy of the Weekly World News tabloid which has a story about a marrying serial killer who seduces and kills husbands. The pattern matches with some of Harriet's backstory and Charlie begins to end the relationship. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze (1991) 

Directed by Michael Pressman 

Written by Todd W. Langan 

Starring Paige Turco, David Warner, Vanilla Ice, Ernie Reyes Jr. 

Release Date March 22nd, 1991 

Published August 3rd, 2023 

If you don't realize that Hollywood studio executives are blood sucking snakes eager to suck the life blood out of anything that appears remotely like a hit, I have just one sequel for you, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. Pumped out in less than 12 months after the original and without director David Barron, the man responsible for the charming first live action Turtles adventure, is as nakedly commercial and mercenary as Hollywood can possibly be. I'm sure that Barron's director's chair still had his name on it when he was already being replaced by the cheaper, less experienced but very eager Michael Pressman. 

Barron dodged a bullet, for sure. Had he stuck around to make a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, he would have been blamed either for not giving the fans what they wanted, more Turtles, and, more than likely, he would be blamed for the film's mediocre performance in the rushed wake of making the first film and the studio bean counters urgency in making a second film in a hot, of the moment franchise. Naturally, not at all unexpectedly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lacks for not having the steady, ingenious hand of Steve Barron guiding the sequel. 

Instead, what we get is a movie that was made cheap and fast and not at all satisfyingly. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze isn't bad, but it is kind of cheap and ugly due to the nature of it being rushed into production simply to capitalize on the success of the first film. There is always going to be an icky quality to a sequel that exists purely as a way to wring a little extra cash out of an existing intellectual property. It's always going to feel like a movie that only exists as a product to be used as a flail slapped on to the moving going consumer with the sole purpose of separating people from their cash. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) 

Directed by Steve Barron 

Written by Todd W. Langan, Bobby Herbeck 

Starring Judith Hoag, Elias Koteas, Sam Rockwell, Corey Feldman 

Release Date March 30th, 1990 

Published August 2nd, 2023 

There is a joy in discovering something that is almost indescribable. It's a kind of unmatched euphoria that becomes less and less available to adults as your sense of wonder morphs into an inability to find many things surprising through age and experience. When you are struck with that moment of discovery, that realization of seeing something that you have not seen before, you need to grab it and ride it out for as long as you can as these moments tend to be fleeting. I experienced the joy of discovery when I saw the 1990 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. 

That sounds bizarre as this was a major blockbuster movie from my relative youth. I was 14 years old when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived in theaters and I was most assuredly aware of the film's existence. I likely would have seen the movie in 1990 but I genuinely do not recall it. I may have caught it on home video or cable television in the ensuing three decades before I actually sat down to watch it for my podcast, the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast. And yet, when I did watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as an obligation to my podcast partner, Bob Zerull, I experienced what I can only describe as a euphoric sense of discovery. 

Having deemed myself too old at 14 years to enjoy anything related to a kids movie, I had spent three decades dismissing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a movie for fans whose brains weren't fully developed. I had made up my mind that only a child could watch and enjoy a movie about guys in rubber turtle costumes spouting canned catchphrases intended to pop the tiny masses of children around the globe. Nevertheless, I did sit down to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for its 30th anniversary and I came away shocked at how lively, funny, and rich the experience was. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review The Hand

The Hand (1981)

Directed by Oliver Stone

Written by Oliver Stone

Starring Michael Caine, Bruce McGill

Release Date April 24th, 1981 

Published August 2nd, 2023 

The Hand is a truly bizarre idea. Writer-Director Oliver Stone, directing only his second feature, sets out to have us be genuinely afraid that a severed hand might be killing people. Forgetting the fact that watching people wrestle with a severed hand that they are holding to their throat is a very, very funny visual, Stone is deathly serious in how he presents The Hand. Eschewing the 60s B-Movie, Drive-In aesthetic more suited to this idea, Stone seems to think that he can convince us that a severed hand is a frightening monster on par with the greats of MGM's murderer's row. 

Stone is undermined in his effort by his choice of star. Michael Caine may be an all time beloved actor but when he's in a bad movie, he gets into the bad vibe. Caine has famously said of The Hand that the film helped put a new garage on his home. That about sums up Caine's level of commitment to this silly, silly movie that only the writer-director seems to think is genuinely scary. Caine hams it up in the role of cartoonist, Jon Lansdale. 

The contempt with which Caine discusses his character's profession is unintentionally hilarious. The idea is that he's become wildly successful and famous for writing a manly superhero character. But when Caine tries to defend the integrity of his creation, his art, he sounds as if he were mocking the very concept of comic strips all together. There is simply nothing about the actor Michael Caine that screams comic strip auteur. It's easy to sense that Caine simply doesn't care about this back story, it's what he's been asked to deliver and he's doing it. 

The plot of The Hand centers on an accident in which our cartoonist protagonist loses his hand. The hand is cut clean off and then simply vanishes from the field where it most certainly had landed. The hand then begins a reign of terror that begins with menacing the family cat and graduates to a legit body count. The question hovering over all of the action of The Hand however is: Is the hand killing people or is it all in Jon Lansdale's mind? 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media