Movie Review It Chapter 1

Stephen King's It (2017)

Directed by Andy Muschietti 

Written by Chase Parker, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman

Starring Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgard, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis 

Release Date September 8th, 2017

September 7th, 2017 

To say that the 2017 take on Stephen King’s Magnum Clown Opus IT is better than the 1990 mini-series is an understatement. The mini-series was a punishing nearly four-hour mix of a pretty good kids’ story and a nearly impossible to watch adult story. Jettisoning the adult story in favor of focusing on the far superior kids’ story from King’s novel, the 2017 IT crafts a tightly wound, creepy horror flick that plays on some serious issues about grief and abuse while delivering the kind of machine tooled jump scares that modern audiences go to the movies for.

IT stars Jordan Lieberher as Bill, the ringleader of a group of friends who are often picked on and lean on each other for support. Bill’s friends include Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Richie (Finn Wolfhard), and Stanley (Wyatt Oleff). Along through, the story the core group adds Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a chubby kid who is new in town, Mikey (Chosen Jacobs), a home-schooled farm kid, and Beverly (Sophia Lillis), a young beauty who has an unwarranted reputation around the small town of Derry, Maine.

The story kicks off in 1988 when Bill’s little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) goes outside to play in the rain and goes missing at the hands of the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). In a scene that is actually quite shocking for modern horror film, Georgie’s disappearance sets a tone of fear and dread that director Andy Muschietti, a first-time feature director, does a tremendous job of maintaining over the course of the film’s two hour and fifteen-minute running time. The scene is legit frightening and Pennywise "The Dancing Clown” could not get a better or creepier introduction.

Naturally, the story from there is our group of young heroes battling Pennywise and trying to stay alive, but much like Stephen King’s book, director Muschietti and screenwriters Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga, who was going to direct the film before dropping out, do an exceptional job of introducing each of the kids’ obstacles and fears. While these scenes played like filler in the 1990 mini-series, because it’s TV and there are things you can’t do on TV, the movie is filled with genuine horrors and traumas these kids must overcome and that Pennywise uses to great advantage.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Rememory

Rememory (2017) 

Directed by Mark Palansky 

Written by Mark Palansky, Michael Vudakinovich 

Starring Peter Dinklage, Julia Ormond, Anton Yelchin, Henry Ian Cusick 

Release Date August 24th, 2017 

Published August 22nd, 2017 

Rememory wants desperately to be a deep meditation on memory, grief and loss, and a sci-fi mystery. The film achieves some of that goal thanks to the performances from the stellar cast headed by Peter Dinklage and Julia Ormond. That said, the deep meditation part only skims the surface and the sci-fi mystery movie is achieved only through the use of a Deus Xx Machina, a magic memory machine.

Rememory stars Game of Thrones MVP Peter Dinklage as a deeply wounded man coping with the death of his brother in an accident that opens the film. Cut to several years later as Dinklage's Sam Bloom is sitting in the audience of a lecture being given by an acquaintance named Gordon Dunn (Martin Donovan). Dunn has created a remarkable piece of technology that can extract full length memories from human beings.

The nature of this technology is kept mostly under wraps as it is merely the simplistic set-up for a sci-fi detective story wherein Gordon dies under suspicious circumstances and Sam, because he seems to have no job, or family, or life of any kind, dedicates himself to finding Gordon’s killer. What luck then that he can scam Gordon’s grieving widow Carolyn (Julia Ormond) into giving him the chance to steal Gordon’s magic memory machine from his office.

The other side of that story is that Ben hopes to use the machine to recover his memory of the night his brother died in order to collect his brother’s dying words and uncover their meaning, or so he thinks. Meanwhile, Ben’s investigation leads him to three possible suspects, Gordon’s business partner, Robert (Henry Ian Cusick), Gordon’s mistress and patient Wendy (Evelyne Brochu), and Todd (the late Anton Yelchin to whom the film is dedicated), another of Gordon’s patients and the mystery man who visited Gordon on the night he died.

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Killer Clowns from Outer Space

Killer Clowns from Outer Space (1988) 

Directed by Stephen Chiodo 

Written by Charles Chiodo, Stephen Chiodo 

Starring Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson, Royal Dano, John Vernon 

Release Date May 27th, 1988 

Published May 27th 2018 

The latest adaptation of Stephen King’s IT hits theaters this weekend and with that the Everyone is a Critic podcast needed a clown movie for our classic. Only one movie could fit the bill as a classic movie about clowns: Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This bizarre 1988 horror comedy about murderous, alien Klowns and starring John Allen Nelson and John Vernon both baffles and entertains.

It’s an average night in a southern California suburb where the kids like to gather in spot on the edge of the woods to make out. Two of the kids are our heroes Mike and Debbie, played by Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder. When they see a massive light in the sky they go to investigate and find a giant circus tent. The inside is bigger than the outside like circus Tardis and Mike and Debbie stumble upon dead bodies wrapped in cotton candy and eventually gigantic alien clowns with murder in their eyes.

Narrowly escaping the craft, Mike and Debbie go to the police where Debbie’s ex-boyfriend Dave (John Allen Nelson) is a local cop. Dave is skeptical but after encountering one of the Killer Klowns himself, he quickly joins up with Mike and Debbie while the Killer Klowns wrap the townspeople in cotton candy as if they were snacks for a long trip back to their home planet.

Trust me when I tell you that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is even crazier and more fun than my description. It’s a work of remarkable imagination from a pair of brothers who are better known in Hollywood for their puppet work than for having directed this film. In fact, Killer Klowns from Outer Space is the only film directed by brothers Stephen and Charles Chiodo though they have worked consistently in Hollywood for the past 30 years, mostly in puppetry.

That may be due to the fact that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. The film was a relative failure upon release but slowly but surely it developed a cult following. It makes sense, anyone in their right mind would dismiss a movie called Killer Klowns from Outer Space as some ludicrous, unwatchable drive-in movie which it most definitely is but I urge you to look closer.

Find my full review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Horror in the 90's Brainscan

Brainscan (1994) 

Directed by John Flynn 

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker 

Starring Edward Furlong, Amy Hargreaves, T. Ryder Smith, Frank Langella 

Release Date April 22nd, 1994 

Published April 29th, 2024 

When I saw that the sci-fi horror movie Brainscan was written by Andrew Kevin Walker, famed screenwriter of David Fincher's Seven and the credited screenwriter on several famous Blacklist screenplays, I got a little excited. Walker is a brilliant, risky, and unpredictable screenwriter with a lurid edge to his work. I went from having exceedingly low expectations to curious and hopeful. Then, I watched Brainscan and my hopes were dashed. It turns out, Andrew Kevin Walker wrote and sold the screenplay seven years before it arrived in theaters as a very, very different movie. 

Brainscan stars Edward Furlong, fresh off his blockbuster role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as horror movie junkie, Michael. Michael's life revolves around horror movies. Alongside his best bud forever, Kyle (Jamie Marsh), Michael runs a horror movie club at school. The club has even attracted Michael's crush, his next door neighbor Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), who we first meet as Michael is spying on her with a telescope as she undresses in front of her bedroom window, which is completely open. This is so the screenwriters can cheat and have dialogue indicating that Kimberly wants Michael to spy on her. 

See, he's not a creep, it's a weird fetish thing. It's totally okay. Not hard to tell that men wrote and directed Brainscan, is it? Anyway, getting past what a little creep Michael is, let's get back to his horror movie obsession. While reading Fangoria Magazine, in a bid for free coverage from the magazine, yay corporate synergy, am I right, anyway, Michael finds an ad for a new CD-Rom horror game called Brainscan. The game promises an immersive experience as you go inside the perspective of a serial murderer as he carries out a murder. 

As the title and plot indicate, Michael orders the game and sets about playing it while his friend's are having a party next door. Once the game begins, the outside world fades away and Michael finds himself inside a stranger's bedroom. There is a knife in his hand and Michael watches helplessly as the man is stabbed to death. We watch everything from the killer's perspective, as if Michael were the killer and we were in Michael's head. Waking up the next morning after playing the game, Michael is deeply disturbed. 

It turns out, spoiler alert: Michael was the one killing this guy. It turns out that the guy who got murdered is from Michael's neighborhood and the cops, headed up by Detective Hayden (Frank Langella) are crawling all over the place. When Michael runs home, having discovered that he was a killer, he encounters the breakout character of 1994, The Trickster (T. Ryder Smith). The Trickster is the host of Brainscan leading Michael through the four stages of gameplay. First up was the murder. Next, Michael has to play the game again if he wants to destroy the evidence that he's the killer. 

Find my full length review on Vocal's Horror Community 

Movie Review Boy Kills World

Boy Kills World (2024) 

Directed by Moritz Mohr 

Written by Tyler Burton Smith, Arend Remmers 

Starring Bill Skarsgard, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Famke Janssen, Sharlto Copley 

Release Date April 26th, 2024

Published April 29th, 2024 

We are at a tipping point when it comes to ultraviolent revenge thrillers. The John Wick movies created a brief and shiny new genre in movies so violent they border on parody. Films with more bullets than words of dialogue became a fashion after Keanu Reeves killed the people who killed his dogs. Naturally, the results have been a copy of a copy ever since. And the diminishing returns are only now becoming clear. Boy Meets World is one of the movies demonstrating that we may have fully tired of the blood and bullets invincible hero genre. 

Boy Kills World stars Bill Skarsgard as the titular Boy. Rescued as a pre-teen from a fascist group of criminals who were in the process of hanging his family, the Boy is raised in the forest by a crazed Shaman (Yayan Ruhian). The Shaman teaches Boy to become a warrior and trains him specifically to kill the Vander Koye Family, the leaders of the fascist government and the people directly responsible for killing Boy's family. Boy especially wants revenge for the killing of his beloved little sister, Mina (Quinn Copeland), who often appears to Boy as an apparition from his own imagination and subconscious. 

After years of training, Boy finally decides to set his revenge in motion. Witnessing a massacre overseen by members of the Vander Koye Family, Glen (Sharlto Copley) and Gideon (Brett Gelman), who bicker like children before directing their top henchwoman, June 27 (Jessica Rothe) to execute anyone resisting them. The Vander Koye's were in the midst of selecting poor people to be executed on live television as part of 'The Culling,' an annual event overseen by the Vander Koye leader, Hilda Vander Koye (Famke Jannssen). Boy especially wants to kill Hilda as she directly oversaw the killing of his family. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Documentary Review Fallen

Fallen (2017) 

Directed by Thomas Marchese 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Michael Chiklis 

Release Date September 1st, 2017

Published August 29th, 2017 

How do I write fairly about a documentary about police officers? It’s harder than it seems. Police officers have become polarizing figures in our culture and writing about them inevitably leads to arguments on all sides. If I don’t write critically of police officers I will be accused of ignoring the terrible traumas that police officers have inflicted upon the innocent and guilty alike. If I write negatively of police officers I am accused of not understanding the difficulty of their job and having some leftist political agenda.

So, how do I write about the new documentary Fallen and serve both the masters of being truthful and being respectful. Just by saying there are two sides to this I’m already in trouble with one side or the other so maybe whatever I write here doesn’t matter. Those of you who believe the police are corrupt bullies and those of you who believe police are being persecuted likely stopped reading this to argue after the first paragraph.

That’s a shame because the new documentary Fallen is one of those that deserves to be seen by anyone with a beating heart and not just those for whom it fulfills a side of an argument. Narrated by Michael Chiklis, Fallen takes us to the homes and families of police officers who were killed in the line of duty. The documentary aims to humanize the loss of a life, not just the death of a police officer, and it is a powerful and moving message about grief and loss.

Directed by former LAPD officer Thomas Marchese, Fallen tells five specific stories, including Thomas’s own brush with death which enters the narrative just as the film is being made. Fallen contains some very disturbing footage of actual encounters where police officers are shot or otherwise assaulted and had their lives threatened or taken. The footage is shocking for its visceral, Faces of Death level violence and its complete, uncompromising reality.

The shock footage thankfully is only a portion of Fallen, though a necessary one. The bulk of the film takes us to the hometowns of officers who’ve been killed to talk about the human and specific impact of these people’s deaths, from a pair of police officers murdered in a coffee shop while doing paperwork to the stunning story of a motorcycle cop who simply stopped to aid what he thought was a broken down motorist and wound up being shot and killed.

Read my full length review at Serve.Media 

Classic Movie Review Hamburger Hill

Hamburger Hill (1987) 

Directed by John Irvin 

Written by James Carabatsos

Starring Michael Boatman, Don Cheadle, Dylan McDermott, Courtney B. Vance 

Release Date August 28th, 1987 

Published August 29th 2017 

There are those who claim that Hamburger Hill is the least remembered of 80s Vietnam movies, a niche genre all its own in that decade, because it was a right wing, reactionary movie intended to defend soldiers. Time has a way of changing perceptions and now that Hamburger Hill is turning 30 years old, it’s interesting to look back on the film and talk about the perceptions of the film and how they’ve evolved over the years and the ways in which guilt, shame and history have altered the way many view Vietnam.

Hamburger Hill tells the story of one company in the midst of a battalion ordered to take a single hill from the North Vietnamese. The hill would come to be called Hamburger Hill because meat may be all that’s left of a soldier after he gets blown away while climbing this ungodly, muddy, and eventually blood-soaked hill. It’s grisly and part of the film’s reputation comes from what the title implies, a gruesomeness that put audiences off just from the title.

The film is gruesome as director John Irvin doesn’t hold back on the blood and guts but where the film’s reputation is somewhat misguided is the notion that that is all Hamburger Hill was, just blood and guts. The film actually takes time to build toward the blood guts. Hamburger Hill has a slow build where you take the time to get used to the young faces and personalities preparing to die on the hill. It’s not until the film’s remarkable third act that the gruesomeness moves to the foreground.

Until the third act the film is relatively tame in terms of violence. Instead we get a warts and all look at these soldiers whom we watch become more and more detached from life back at home and unmoored from the reality around them because death seems so close. The film shines a harsh light on the reality of Vietnam, the way the soldiers were mistreated to the point where us against the world was the only mentality that made any sense.

While people back home accused these soldiers of being bloodthirsty killers, the reality was so much more complicated than that. These were men who were abandoned in Vietnam. Whereas people like Patton, McArthur, and Eisenhower had the weight and experience to give soldiers courage and purpose, the soldiers of Vietnam are rudderless, tools of the government abandoned by a society crumbling from the optimism of the 50s into the greed infested era to come where the divide between rich and poor was often defined by those who went to Vietnam and those rich enough not to have to.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media