Movie Review Sunrise

Sunrise (2024) 

Directed by Andrew Baird

Written by Ronan Blaney

Starring Guy Pearce, Alex Pettyfer, Crystal Yu 

Release Date January 19th, 2024

Published January 18th, 2024 

You know that modern trend of movie musicals that don't want you to know that they are musicals? You know? Wonka, Mean Girls, The Color Purple, movies that downplay the fact that they are centered on characters breaking into song? Sunrise is that as a Vampire movie. Sunrise does little to communicate the fact that it is a vampire movie. Even while watching Sunrise you have to work hard to determine that what you are watching is a vampire movie. The vampire in question walks around in daylight, though its set in the Pacific Northwest so that could just be a function of lack of sun, but truly few of the vampire movie tropes are visible in Sunrise, engendering a deep and abiding confusion over what this movie is supposed to be. 

Sunrise stars Guy Pearce as Reynolds, a bully and a tyrant, ruling over a pacific northwest town with an iron fist. With his mother, Ma Reynolds (Olwen Fouere) imperiously at his side, Reynolds uses intimidation and fear to get what he wants and what he wants is the property of a recently arrived Asian family. Yan Loi (Crystal Yu) has survived seeing her brother murdered and is now facing threats to her own life and the life of her son Edward (William Gao), as she works to maintain her land. It's at this point that an unlikely stranger enters her life. 

Alex Pettyfer co-stars in Sunrise as Fallon, a former cop who was forced to watch as Reynolds' thugs murdered his wife. Fallon himself was also left for dead but something saved his life. For the past several years he's stalked the forest living off the land and perhaps plotting revenge. When he's found on the land owned by Yan Loi he's in bad shape and is nursed back to health. In secret, Fallon asks Edward to get him blood to drink. This begins to restore Fallon's strength and as he comes back to health, he begins to look out for the Loi family, preparing for a showdown with Reynolds. 

It's more coherent in my retelling here than it is in the actual movie, Sunrise. For one thing, my description doesn't account for the fact that Pettyfer, though credited as the co-lead of the movie alongside Guy Pearce, spends most of the movie in a bed, in darkness, occasionally rising to drink blood. Pettyfer already isn't the most expressive actor on the planet. Leaving him to mumble a few words while lying down in a dark room is not exactly the best use of his talents. Pettyfer is a handsome dude whose best features, cheekbones, abs, are visual. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s Bride of Re-Animator

Bride of Re-Animator (1991) 

Directed by Brian Yuzna 

Written by Woody Keith, Rick Fry

Starring Jeffrey Combes, Bruce Abbott, Kathleen Kinmont 

Release Date February 22nd, 1991 

Box Office $2.5 Million

The original Re-Animator, based on an H.P Lovecraft story, and directed by visionary sci-fi horror director Stuart Gordon, was a genuine shocker. Re-Animator posited a Dr. Frankenstein scenario in which a pair of doctors are working together to solve death. Dr. Herbert West, iconically portrayed by Jeffrey Combes, was a true creep even as his goal was to alleviate death. His arrogance and awkwardness drove him to try and play God with horrific consequences. Many people died others were robbed of their dignity in death and forced to walk the Earth as slobbering, slippery zombies. 

Stuart Gordon used Re-Animator to explore his visionary dark humor and darker talent for staging and effects. The practical effects of Re-Animator create a series of horrific scenes of body horror that remain memorable to this day. With Jeffrey Combes leaning into the mad scientist character and Gordon at the top of his talents, Re-Animator earned its status as a cult classic and a must see movie for fans of deeply transgressive horror movies well outside of the mainstream. 

Sadly, the cult success of Re-Animator piqued the interest of producers who, desiring to capitalize on popular intellectual property, decided to make a sequel despite not having Gordon's genius to guide it. Instead, the far lesser talented Brian Yuzna stepped in for Gordon and delivered the kind of lazy sequel you only get when the principal partners are merely interested in their return on investment. Despite getting both Jeffrey Combes and the blandly handsome Bruce Abbott to reprise their roles, Bride of Re-Animator is a pale and failing attempt to recapture the horror magic that was Re-Animator. 

A mere 8 months after they caused multiple deaths and allowed a man's severed head to commit horrific crimes, Dr. Herbert West (Combes) and Dr. Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) are laying low in the worst place imaginable. The two are working for Doctors Without Borders in a Central American warzone. Here, Dr. West finds a series of suitable bodies he can experiment on. Freshly dead and relatively intact despite the wounds of war, Dr. West thinks he can bring the dead back to life, if given enough time. Unfortunately for Dr. West, the war is raging out of control and he and Dr. Abbott are forced to flee before they can try any more experiments. 

Back in the United States, the doctors make the unexpected decision to return to their old hospital. Somehow the two have managed to not be blamed for what happened at their former medical school and no one seems at all bothered by them being back at their former hospital. Well, no one except a disgraced Police Detective, Detective Chapham (Claude Earl Jones), who claims to have lost his partner to the massacre 8 months earlier. Also the detective's wife is among those that were left behind as zombies. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review House Party 3

House Party 3 (1994) 

Directed by Eric Meza

Written by David Toney, Takashi Bufford 

Starring Christopher 'Kid' Reid, Christopher 'Play' Martin, Bernie Mac 

Release Date January 12th, 1994 

Published January 17th, 2024

A third film in the charming and funny House Party franchise should have been an open goal kick. It should have been a sure bet to a sweet, funny, silly, celebration of fun and hip hop. And yet, somehow, they managed to muck it up. Whether stars Kid N' Play felt they need to prove how 'hard' they are after being labeled as soft based on the first two movies or the rappers got bad advice from the creative team of Eric Meza, David Toney, and Takashi Bufford, who went on to not work in feature films again, House Party 3 turned a charming franchise into a curdled exercise in toxic masculinity and male insecurity. 

House Party 3 centers on a bachelor party for the soon to married Kid (Christopher Reid). Having moved on from his college girlfriend, played in each of the first two films by Tisha Campbell, Kid is set to marry Veda (Angela Means). This is despite the protests of Kid's pal, Play (Christopher Martin), who can't stop talking about how Kid is giving up his freedom and will miss out on sleeping with an unending number of women he's been taking advantage of via their mostly failing music management company. 

That's truly the one joke that repeats throughout House Party 3, getting married is a mistake because there are so many other women to sleep with. It's the same pathetic joke over and over again ad nauseum. I've never understood these jokes about what a burden being married is. Do married men understand that getting married is a choice? You can choose to not get married. I've done it for 47 years. I've managed to go all of my life without being married. It's really not that hard. And yet, there are numerous movies, television shows and viral videos about men complaining about what being married prevents them from doing. 

But this lame joke isn't the only lame joke in House Party 3, it's merely the most prominent. The other jokes center on the memory loss that can come with old age as it appears Kid's grandmother is developing alzheimers and this is somehow a very funny joke to the filmmakers. She can't remember her grandson's fiancee, ho ho! She can't remember where the stairs are in her home, ha ha! She can't remember where she is when she's not home. Will the hilarity ever begin? It's not merely that the joke is insensitive, it's that this joke is never done in a way that's actually funny. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media