Movie Review In the Land of Saints and Sinners

In the Land of Saints and Sinners (2024) 

Directed by Robert Lorenz

Written by Mark Michael McNally, Terry Loane

Starring Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon, Colm Meaney, Ciaran Hinds

Release Date March 29th, 2024

Published March 27th, 2024

The opening moments of the Irish thriller, In the Land of Sinners and Saints is a breathtaking piece of suspense. Members of the I.RA have just planted a bomb outside of a pub. But, just as they are about to make their escape, a family, with very young children pauses in front of the pub so that one of the children can tie their shoe. One of the bombers screams in an attempt to get the family to move but they appear confused by the screaming one and stay rooted in place. The bomb goes off and it's clear that this family has been killed. 

It's a principal laid out by Alfred Hitchcock, the explosion isn't nearly as exciting as the ticking bomb itself. The tension isn't the damage that the bomb will do, it's heated seconds until the bomb does what we know a bomb can do that matters in a movie. We don't see this family get murdered and we don't need to, the horror is greater in our mind by implication than it would be if we saw blood and body parts splattered on pavement. 

Don't get me wrong, gore and bloodshed has its place and, in the right hands, it has been effective, but that's a different genre of film altogether than what In the Land of Sinners and Saints is going for. This is a cerebral thriller that builds its emotional tension underneath, allowing it to simmer and grow into a boil before exploding. As directed by Robert Lorenz, that simmering is compelling and the boil is riveting. Then, we wait with our breath caught and our hearts pounding as we anticipate the explosion to come. 

Liam Neeson stars in In the Land of Saints and Sinners as Finbar, a hitman who comforts himself with the notion that he only kills bad people for money. Finbar has killed a lot of people, hiding their bodies under freshly planted trees in a forest near his small cottage. Finbar has reached a point where he'd like to retire, give up killing, and take up a hobby like gardening. He also has his eye on a neighbor at a nearby cottage who is soon to be a widow. The pair have a sad chemistry that could become love. 

But, this is a world of consequence and the consequences of Finbar's choices are that happily ever after is highly unlikely for him. His potential happily ever after is soon threatened by the arrival of four newcomers in his village. Remember the terrorists from the opening sequence, they are hiding out in a nearby farmhouse. One of them has taken to abusing and harassing a young girl whose mother runs Finbar's favorite pub. Seeing that the girl is afraid to go home at night, Finbar intervenes. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s Child's Play 3

Child's Play 3 (1991) 

Directed by Jack Bender

Written by Don Mancini 

Starring Brad Dourif, Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers 

Release Date August 30th, 1991 

Box Office $20.5 million 

The first 15 minutes of Child's Play 3 is a brief meditation on corporate greed. After nearly a decade away from making their Good Guy dolls, the Play Pals company have re-opened the factory and inadvertently, rebuilt Chucky, the malevolent doll body inhabited by the spirit of serial murderer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif). We watch as corporate titan, Mr. Sullivan (Peter Haskell), ignores the warnings from his underlings about re-starting the Good Guys line. Sullivan's greed will be his downfall. 

As Sullivan is alone in his office, after the rest of the staff have called it a day, he's attacked by Chucky and brutally murdered. Though his death at the plastic hands of Charles Lee Ray is based more in Ray's single-minded obsession with killing Andy (Justin Whalin) and taking Andy's youthful body for his own, the underlying anti-capitalist message is clear. Without the dedicated greed of Sullivan and his corporate lackeys, the Good Guy doll would have languished, perhaps have been destroyed, and with it, the final vestiges of Charles lee Ray. But, because of their greed, evil flourishes and shows no mercy, even when confronting the evil that gave it back its life. 

That is perhaps, far too deep a reading of Child's Play 3, but it's a satisfying read. The idea of Chucky as the anti-hero of the socialist set is kind of fun. The notion that a corporately owned and crafted vehicle like Child's Play 3, itself a product of greed and avarice would, even accidentally, call out and punish unchecked corporate greed, is part of the naive charm of Child's Play 3. It's a vague sort of self-awareness that makes the movie just a little more interesting than the average third sequel to an ATM style franchise intended on mining nostalgia for profits. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media  

Movie Review Late Night with the Devil

Late Night with the Devil (2024) 

Directed by Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes 

Written by Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes 

Starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss 

Release Date March 22nd, 2024 

Published March 21st, 2024 

Late Night with the Devil stars David Dastmalchian, forever an actor out of time, as 1970's talk show legend, Jack Delroy. In 1971, Jack Delroy left the world of morning radio for the chance to compete next to Johnny Carson in the realm of late night TV as the show of Night Owls with Jack Delroy. For a time, it appeared that Jack might just eclipse the King of Late Night, Carson, but by 1976, things were no longer going Jack's way. Jack's beloved wife, played by Georgina Haig, died of cancer, not long after he had her appear on the show to share their struggle for ratings. 

After taking a month away to recover from the loss of his wife, Jack returned to the stage to try and salvage his show and his career. It's Halloween night and Jack has an idea that he hopes can get him back on top. Jack has booked a pair of guests with supposedly supernatural talents. Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) is a mentalist with a talent for speaking to the dead. He will demonstrate this talent on the show and then face off with a skeptic, a former magician turned debunker, Carmichael the Conjurer (Ian Bliss). Carmichael is based off of real life magician turned debunker, and 70s celebrity, The Amazing Randi. 

Christou may or may not be a charlatan, one that Carmichael can debunk with relative ease, but a greater challenge to the skeptic and the talk show host is booked next. Author and para-psychiatrist, Dr. June Ross Mitchell is bringing her patient, Lily (Ingrid Torrelli) on the show. Lily was the only survivor of a death cult that worshiped a Devil adjacent demon known as Abraxas. Dr. Ross-Mitchell has written a book about Lily's demonic possession by a demon that Lily calls "Mr. Wriggles." On tonight's show, Dr. Ross-Mitchell is set to place Lily in a trance and bring the demon out of her in front of the world and prove that demonic possession is real. 

What we know, and these characters do not, is that what we are seeing is recovered footage thought lost forever. The concept behind Late Night with the Devil is that this is footage of the most controversial live television broadcast in history, a test footage that was thought lost forever. The entirety of the story of Late Night with the Devil, aside from an opening prologue introducing us to the host, Jack Delroy, is portrayed a recovered recording directly from 1976 and being played back for the first time since it was broadcast. The look of the movie is a near perfect recreation of a 1970's television broadcast, right down to the grainy quality indicative of a live to tape broadcast from nearly 50 years ago. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein (2024) 

Directed by Zelda Williams

Written by Diablo Cody 

Starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse 

Release Date February 9th, 2024 

Published February 12th, 2024 

Lisa is an awkward teenager who has been through terrible trauma. Lisa's mother was murdered by an ax murderer. Now, as we join her story, she's living in the suburbs, her father has remarried to a shrewish, bitter woman, played by Carla Gugino, and Lisa is struggling to fit in. At the very least, her new sister, Taffy (Liza Soberano), is sweet and supportive, to a point. Where Lisa is awkward and an outcast, Taffy is a popular cheerleader with everyone at school fawning over her. Of course, Lisa doesn't make fitting in easy for herself. Lisa's favorite thing to do in her new hometown is to hang out in a decrepit cemetery. 

There, Lisa makes art and chats with the dead. One gravestone in particular, that of a man named Frankenstein, featuring a marble bust of the man's handsome face, catches Lisa's attention more than the others. She decorates this grave and leaves gifts including her late mother's rosary. Thus, when Frankenstein's grave is struck by lightning and the man in the grave bursts back to life, he comes searching for his new friend. Lisa is perhaps the only person who could take this sort of development in stride, after a brief comic chase around her house as she thinks The Creature, as he's known in the credits, played by Cole Sprouse tries desperately to explain who he is without words. 

Click here for my review 

Classic Movie Review Opera

Opera (1987) 

Directed by Dario Argento 

Written by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini 

Starring Christina Marsillach, Urbano Barberini, Daria Nicolodi

Release Date December 19th, 1987

Published February 6th, 2024

The most captivating moment of the new Shudder documentary on director Dario Argento comes during an interview with his former leading lady, Christina Marsillach. Marsillach starred in 1987's Opera for Argento and the two had a deeply fraught relationship. In her interview in Panico Marsillach starts out talking about Argento as a father figure before taking her reminiscence in a decidedly different direction. Slowly she begins to talk about Argento's passive aggressive style in which he would not give her direct instructions but would have other members of the crew speak to her. 

Marsillach goes from painting a picture of a shy fatherly figure to portraying Argento like one of the villains of his movies, a tyrannical figure bent on getting his way at all costs. She appears to want to speak kindly of the director but then, in recalling her actual experience on the set of Opera, we get a short term psychodrama, a battle of wills between actress and director that she was not winning. It's captivating, there is no other way to describe it. I believe everything Marsillach is saying, based on what we see of Argento in behind the scenes footage, and yet her account of her work on Opera is oddly dramatic, not unlike an Argento movie, serene on the surface until everything comes to a boil.

Opera unfortunately is a wildly inconsistent piece of work. It's a slasher film set in the world of Opera with all of the pomp and circumstance of that world. The film stars Marsillach as a young diva who gets a shot at the big time after a big star walks out on an Avant-Garde take on Verdi's MacBeth. It's portrayed as a temper tantrum but it become quite serious when the Opera diva is struck by a car and is most assuredly not returning to the stage. Thus, a call is made to Betty (Marsillach), the diva understudy who now must step up and become a star. 

Click here for my review 

Classic Movie Review Bird with the Crystal Plumage

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) 

Directed by Dario Argento 

Written by Dario Argento 

Starring Tony Musante, Suzi Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno 

Release Date June 24th, 1970 

Published 

I find the simple tools of visual filmmaking to be incredibly moving. When used in the right way something as simple as a good edit can excite my love of film. Case in point a very early, very simple edit in Dario Argento's 1970 thriller Bird with the Crystal Plumage. The film is a thriller about a serial murderer in Italy. The simplicity of this moment, mere minutes into the film, demonstrates that you do not have to have the biggest budget or the showiest of modern camera technology to make a great movie. Sometimes, you just have to show the audience a pair of images next to one another to tell them all that they need to know. 

In this case, we've seen a man make a note to pick someone up and follow them to a particular location. Cut to a woman walking alone along a busy street. A light, airy soundtrack, she's oblivious to everything but her attendant location. She's unaware that anyone is following her. Cut to, a darkened room. Hands covered in black leather gloves, a man in a black leather jacket. A striking red handkerchief is lifted to reveal a set of knives of different shapes and sizes, displayed in a red velvet case. The implication is clear yet subtle, these knives are special, they hold a specific purpose. The gloved hands select one, examine it, and the scene changes. 

The visual link from the woman walking down the street, unaware that she is being watched and photographed and the man with the dangerous looking set of knives is made simply by the edit. Unconsciously, from this simple visual link, you know that this unnamed woman is in grave danger. The man with the knives has ill intent and the next steps in this story may or may not include her being attacked and possibly killed using this chosen implement of death, a long, lovingly caressed steel blade. The simplicity of this visual filmmaking is its secret genius. Great directors like Dario Argento understand this kind of simplicity. 

It's a shame the rest of Bird with the Crystal Plumage isn't quite as strong as the opening moments. The biggest flaw is the fact that this is murder mystery in which a witness and potential victim is given all the tools to investigate the murder that he witnessed. Tony Musante stars in Bird with Crystal Plumage as Sam Dalmas, an American writer who is finishing up his time in Italy. Or, at least, he was finishing up. When Sam witnesses a woman being attacked in an art gallery, and nearly watches her die after he becomes trapped between two glass walls, Sam is first a suspect and then, through convoluted means, becomes the lead investigator. 

Sam first becomes interested in clearing himself so he can recover his passport from a suspicious detective. But soon, he becomes obsessed with the case, even as he is nearly killed while heading home from an early investigation. Strangely, the actual lead detective, Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno), encourages Sam's investigating, even helping him with access to a victim and a currently jailed potential witness. Sam even locates a piece of evidence about one of the first murders in this killer's series that the cops failed to find. 

Click here for my review 

Movie Review Argylle

Argylle (2024) 

Directed by Matthew Vaughn 

Written by Jason Fuchs 

Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, John Cena, Ariana Debose, Dua Lipa, Samuel L. Jackson, Catherine O'Hara

Release Date February 2nd, 2024

Published February 1st, 2024

The high concept premise of Argylle is relatively simple: what would happen if the spy novels written by an unassuming, shut-in, bestselling author, became a reality that forces the writer into the real life world of espionage, violence, and betrayal. Bryce Dallas Howard stars as the hapless best selling author Elly Conway. Elly's high flying spy adventure Argylle has become a worldwide phenomenon all while Elly lives a peaceful, slightly lonely, existence at a lakeside home far from the crowds of admiring readers. Elly's idyllic life of writing and spending time with her beloved cat, Alfie, is upended when she can't think of a final chapter for her fifth book in the Argylle series. 

Suffering from severe writer's block, Elly boards an Amtrak train headed to see her mother, Ruth (Catherine O'Hara) who she hopes will help her snap back into writing mode. Unfortunately, Elly is not going to make it home to mom. On her train ride, Elly finds herself in the company of Aiden (Sam Rockwell), a real life spy who saves Elly's life from a series of attempted assassinations aboard this moving train. Bodies pile up fast as Aiden whipsaws about the train snapping necks and shooting baddies right in the heart while he saves Elly and Alfie from assassination. 

As Aiden will eventually explain, Elly's books are somehow mirroring real world, geo-political situations in which a rogue spy agency is trying outwit a group of good guy spies working to protect the world. Caught in the middle, Elly doesn't know who to trust, Aiden and his CIA pal, played  by Samuel L. Jackson, or the head of a rival group of spies who Elly may or may not already be familiar with. It's a terrific premise and it's all building to a pretty nifty twist until director Matthew Vaughn twists us one too many times leading to a flat finish for an otherwise fleet footed action flick. 

Click here for my review