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 



Movie Review What Comes Around

What Comes Around (2023) 

Directed by Amy Redford 

Written by Scott Organ 

Starring Summer Phoenix, Kyle Gallner, Grace Van Dien, Indiana Affleck 

Release Date August 4th, 2023 

Published August 1st, 2023 

What Comes Around is a deeply divisive and boldly abrasive drama. Director Amy Redford and writer Scott Organ, adapting Organ's own novel called The Thing with Feathers,' are playing with some big emotions and big themes. The film is about age inappropriate relations that border on criminality. The film skirts close to the line of exploitation in how it uses inappropriate sexual relationships for melodrama. That the film doesn't tip over into an overwrought parody is some kind of miracle that can be credited to a group of terrific actors. 

Grace Van Dien stars in What Comes Around as Anna, a teenager, 17 to be precise, who has begun a dangerous online flirtation with an older man. She thinks he's only college aged, but the reality is that Eric (Kyle Gallner) is 28 years old. He started this online flirtation on a message board for people sharing poetry, when Anna was 16. Then, on the day Anna turns 17, Eric, whom Anna believed lived several states away, shows up at her door. Though she's initially creeped out by Eric, she soon comes around and is eventually sneaking him into her house, under the nose of her mother, Beth (Summer Phoenix) and her soon-to-be stepdad, Tim (Jesse Garcia). 

If this were the only lying going on, it might not be so transgressive. However, Eric has a very, very big secret that threatens to blow up not just Anna's life but her entire family. Eric has a connection to Anna's mother that he has failed to mention in the time they've been connecting via poetry and Facetime. Similarly, Beth has not talked about a traumatic part of her past, Anna was 4 years old at the time and Beth had not met Tim by this point. She'd hoped that her past would stay in the past. That was until Eric arrived. 



Movie Review Dreamin' Wild

Dreamin' Wild (2023) 

Directed by Bill Pohlad 

Written by Bill Pohlad 

Starring Casey Affleck, Zooey Deschanel, Walton Goggins, Beau Bridges 

Release Date August 4th, 2023 

Published August 1st, 2023

The story of Donnie Emerson is a remarkable one. In the 1970s, he and his brother, Joe, made a record. It got recorded and it was made available on vinyl and everything. It appeared that Donnie, if not Joe, had a bright future ahead of him as a singer songwriter. Circumstances conspired and Donnie never found stardom. Then, in 2008, a copy of Donnie and Joe's album was found by a man in Spokane, Washington. He made it his mission to get the record to as many people as possible. The efforts of this man, Jack Fleischer, brought the record to the attention of Light in the Attic records, an indie label that managed to track down Donnie and Joe. 

In an improbable twist of fate, Dreamin' Wild, their 1978 record, found a new life. Donnie began a second act as a respected and revered singer songwriter and now, writer-director Bill Pohlad has brought the amazing story of Donnie, Joe and their family to the big screen in Dreamin' Wild. It's an inherently cinematic underdog story but the typical elements aren't as interesting to Pohlad as the inner turmoil of Donnie Emerson, a man who was racked with guilt over the failure of his music career and struggled with intense mistrust, insecurity and fear over trying to once again live his dream. 

Casey Affleck stars in Dreamin' Wild as Donnie Emerson. A father of two, Donnie's recording studio is struggling to stay afloat. Donnie and his wife, Nancy (Zooey Deschanel) support their family and business by playing covers at weddings and other small venue events. Donnie is facing an uncertain future when this random phone call changes everything. Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina), a record company flack for Light in the Attic Records has moved mountains trying to find Donnie and his brother, Joe (Walton Goggins). 

Somewhere in Montana, someone found a copy of a record called Dreamin' Wild. The record was recorded by the Emerson Brothers in 1978 and it had been mostly a failure. It did lead to Donnie briefly getting a record deal and traveling to Los Angeles, but he soon ended up back home. That's a story that we will eventually uncover as Dreamin' Wilde lays out its story. For the moment, it's nothing but good news for Donnie's family, including his loving and supportive father, Don Sr. (Beau Bridges). The only one who seems reticent about this sudden new discovery is Donnie. 



Horror in the 90s Gremlins 2

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) 

Directed by Joe Dante 

Written by Charles Haas

Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, Robert Picardo, Christopher Lee 

Release Date June 15th, 1990 

Box Office $41.5 million dollars 

I'm convinced that the only cultural reputation that Gremlins 2: The New Batch has comes entirely from the cache earned from Key & Peele. The brilliant minds of Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele performed a sketch on their Comedy Central series in which Peele as a Hollywood Sequel Doctor, played by a flamboyant Jordan Peele, enters the writers room for Gremlins 2 and proceeds to take suggestions for wild ideas to add to the Gremlins 2 story. What he comes up with are actual characters from Gremlins 2 that are so outlandish and dumb that they seem to have been made up. It's a brilliant sketch but it sets a standard that the movie simply cannot match. 

As wild as this Hollywood Script Doctors ideas for Gremlins 2: The New Batch are, the movie never feels that wild or outrageous. Instead, it feels deeply disjointed, often desperate, and unfunny. Gremlins 2: The New Batch has the feel of a sequel that was thrust upon director Joe Dante who responded to the burden by trying to sabotage his own movie. Dante comes up with several bad ideas, executes them poorly, and delivered a final cut that I can only imagine left everyone mortified but unable to not release the movie. Trying to cull a plot description together seems like a fool's errand but here we are. 

Gremlins 2: The New Batch returns Zach Galligan as everyman Bill Pelzer. Billy is now working and living in New York City with his small town gal-pal, Kate, played by an also returning Phoebe Cates. Also having moved to New York City is Gizmo, the cutest of the Gremlins. How and why Gizmo is now in New York City is a plot contrivance. He's needed in New York for this dimwitted plot to unfold. A Trump like developer named Daniel Clamp (John Glover) is eager to buy the shop owned by Mr. Wing, a returning Keye Luke, so he can continue to reshape the New York skyline in his tacky image. 

When Mr. Wing dies, Clamp gets his wish and Gizmo is left homeless. By coincidence, Gizmo is found by a pair of twin scientists who work for Daniel Clamp's top scientist, played in utterly bizarre fashion by Christopher Lee. He's eager to experiment on Gizmo but a further series of coincidences, including Billy happening to work in this building and offhandedly hearing about the cute creature in an upstairs lab, leads to a Billy/Gizmo reunion. Naturally, things go off the rails pretty quickly as Gizmo gets wet from a malfunctioning water fountain and dozens of new Gremlins are born and wreck havoc. 

Not a single one of the new Gremlins, who use the chemicals in Christopher Lee's lab to genetically alter themselves to vary the species design, are funny. A Gremlin with Spider Legs is a pretty good horror visual but since Gremlins 2 is clumsily straddling the line between horror and family friendly, kid friendly, comedy, the horror elements are drearily watered down. That all of the Gremlins described in the Key & Peele sketch are indeed real provides a semblance of fun but that's coming from the absurdity of Key& Peele's comedy magic and nothing that the movie is doing. 

Read the full length review at Horror.Media 



Movie Review Megalopolis

 Megalopolis  Directed by Francis Ford Coppola  Written by Francis Ford Coppola  Starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito...