another classic DIVORCE HORROR! (along with The Brood, Vacancy, Secret Window, and probably a lot of others I can't think of off the top of my head). small town setting, desolate winter wasteland, vampires, one of those delightful destruction machines now used mostly on the weird corner of ASMR YouTube - this movie has it all. So why is it so boring? as a certified Ben Templesmith enjoyer I of course have the original comic on the shelf, and I bet that slaps - but it doesn't seem like the story lends itself very well to film (something not uncommon to comic book movies, which I have spoken about elsewhere). add it along with The Crazies (2010) to the pile of "great concept, mid execution". I will say that the monstrous vampires thing rarely does it for me, though - give me my gothic melodramatic aristocrats lamenting the loss of their souls while basking in decadence.

a movie that would be entirely forgettable if not for sassy Patricia Arquette and the Blade style aesthetics and The Matrix style soundtrack. They're really trying their best here, but everything even slightly interesting about this plot has been done far better elsewhere so the end result is a film that feels like a mishmash of the past 30 years of Christian possession horror in the style of a metalcore music video. would be great background noise for a house party though

feeling really conflicted about this one because apart from one element, this is basically everything I would want out of an '80s horror comedy. it's a great concept, peak Tim Burton weirdness with excellent monster design, delightfully camp without being overly goofy. Winona Ryder's teen goth Lydia Deetz is adorable, and Geena Davis and baby Alec Baldwin are a charming couple. I love all the Stuart Gordon-esque afterlife/hell stuff bathed in deep green and pink lights, I love the reggae soundtrack. there's only one part that I do not care for and that, unfortunately, is Beetlejuice himself. the character is exactly as annoying as I suspected I would find him (ie the reason I haven't watched this film until now). I'm sorry Michael Keaton. You're doing your best gross-out Al Pacino impression but I just think it's not very funny. it's probably for the best that he ended up this way rather than being a racist caricature, but it still detracts from what is otherwise a deserved classic. sidenote: are we meant to see the Maitland's redesigned new wave postmodern art house to be like, hideously garish? because I think it rules...

took a chance on this because it was directed by Hideo Nakata but boy did it disappoint. very basic shitty mid-2000s horror sequel, very nothing, basically has nothing to do with the Ring lore at all - if it wasn't Hideo Nakata I would assume just another case of changing the name of an original project to fit into a franchise, except maybe it still was. supposedly this is very reminiscent of Dark Water which makes sense because that's one of the classic J-horrors that I have never had any interest in watching (along with The Grudge). seems like I watched the theatrical release rather than the unrated cut but it doesn't look like I missed much.

Decided to take a break from the slop and watch something with a chance of actually being good for a change, which I guess is sort of a funny thing to say about an Amicus movie but the shoe fits. If Hammer can produce the first postmodern film, Amicus can give us the best werewolf movie (sorry Ginger Snaps. Sorry Dog Soldiers!)

this movie was a delight. it opens with a cheesy still frame of a werewolf (note: not the actual werewolf in the film, which is just a big black dog with some added fur - seemingly the only place where they obviously skimped on the effects) informing the viewer that it's YOUR JOB to be the detective and suss out the werewolf before the WEREWOLF BREAK later on in the film. it then launches into a The Thing style opening, with a helicopter stalking our hero big game hunter Tom Newcliffe (played by Calvin Lockhart, who after this film has joined the ranks of potential Bruce Wayne fancasts for the black Batman movie nobody in Hollywood will ever be brave enough to make) through the massive woods behind his mansion (shades of Petri's The Tenth Victim here as well). As the chase draws to a theatrical close, the curtain on this Agatha Christie style whodunnit rises and the game is afoot. Who is The Beast that Must Die?

I won't spoil the surprise - it's a great reveal! - you'll have to watch for yourself to find out. I'll only say that it is definitely not the flamboyant artist with the weirdly hairy hands (but he's definitely killed somebody). well-plotted, with beautiful sets and a great cast, this is a classic gothic mystery story and will surely be a comfy fav of mine for years to come. just please, when you do watch it, try to find one of the DVD copies (preferably Image Entertainment) and avoid the horrible Indicator blu-ray remaster.

well, they didn't learn in 2019.

if I didn't know going into this film that it was a communist propaganda movie, I would have assumed it was some sort of right-wing satire deliberately taking the piss out of communist propaganda - the filmmakers seem just as confused as to what the message is as Baharat and Goreng are. I'm not usually the type of person to complain about unbelievability of concept but this one stretches credulity in so many ways that even I was rolling my eyes at certain scenes. credit where credit is due, the acting is strong (using a comedic background to ride the line of "funny" tension vs "scary" tension is one of the things I really enjoy about Jordan Peele's work as well) and the imagery of the platform itself is great, decadence descending into a bloody bottomless pit. should I watch the sequel coming out in a few days? no. will I? Well

happy 31 days of Halloween! I'm going to try to watch and review a horror movie every day this month. some of the reviews may be shorter than normal if I don't have a lot to say, but I'm going to try to say something for each one.

Growing up I was always attracted to horror-adjacent things but rarely got exposed to any proper horror until I hit my 20s. this I remember being one of the first horror movies I ever watched, and boy was it formative on my taste - this style of movie is something I will always have time for, no matter how bad the acting, thin the premise or garbage the execution. We got a bit of Saw, we got a bit of Cube - reviews mention Exam, which I remember being kind of boring (but might be worth revisiting...) and the ending directly parallels Hellevator (intentionally or unintentionally, who's to say). uh, wait, hold on, review paused, they made a Hellevator TV show? Jason Blum made a Hellevator TV show? With the Soska sisters? Okay, I mean Gusha no bindume (2004), not the Jason Blum Soska Sisters game show.

of course, none of these are cited as the main inspiration for this film by the directors in their Reddit AMA - it's actually meant to be an homage to 12 Angry Men. supposedly the movie was meant to explore current social issues and the different ways we value and devalue groups in society, and with that in mind I get why this has a bunch of 2 and 1.5 star reviews on Letterboxd. nothing gets discussed for more than a few minutes, nothing new or nuanced is touched on - just a bunch of people reciting the most basic arguments for either side, and of course everyone makes the correct (liberal) decision in the end. yawn. the more interesting read (and this is the more interesting read of 12 Angry Men, as well) is in exploring how for most people morality is entirely situational (and often contradictory) and decision-making has less to do with one's upbringing or supposed values than it does the strength (or otherwise compelling nature) of the argument. even this, though, is thin - for the same reasons stated above (it's thin in 12 Angry Men, too).

I like this movie, I really do - but this is just another one of many such cases where aspiring genre film directors either intentionally or unintentionally (who's to say) reject their genre roots in favor of more prestigious forms of film to the end of elevating their project to something "better" than horror - only for whatever they've made to fall far short of the genre classics they view as lesser art. Cube, a movie that is literally "what if some guys woke up in a Cube," does a much better job of exploring similar philosophical concepts than this, a movie explicitly designed to explore said concepts. The same goes for Saw (and we'll get into that later in the month). using film to explore concepts is great, but a film intended as polemic will never beat a film that's just trying to tell a good story. when will they learn?

decided to indulge my early onset seasonal depression by dipping my toes into the world of streaming services again and buying a month of Netflix. I don’t know if I’ve just grown as a person in the past 4 years or if the world has just gotten worse or both, but pretty much everything on Netflix is garbage of some sort, film and TV as mindless entertainment rather than art. and that's fine of course, it's what I want right now, I'm not really complaining - it's probably more accurate to define film and TV as primarily vehicles for mindless entertainment, and art only incidentally. what I mean to say is that I have been watching a LOT of movies lately but nothing that would really inspire me to review…until now.

but first, a little more about Netflix. when you first open Netflix on your shiny new account you will be hard-pressed to find anything older than 2021 in your recommendeds, other than some binge-worthy classics like Breaking Bad or The Office. if you do happen to find a rare gem from the mid-2000s, the "more like this" section is only useful for the first couple of films, and then just becomes a list of "stuff you've already got on your watchlist/marked as liked" or completely unrelated popular bullshit, sometimes appearing multiple times for some reason. I was pretty confident after the first day that I would only be using it to watch the couple of things I specifically wanted it for in the first place (the Justice League animated series, Batman: TAS, and the Monster anime) and maybe a few random movies before cancelling.

but then. lo and behold, on the second day - the algorithm changed! it caught on! more mid-2000s stuff, even some stuff from the 90s! a few days in I even stumbled across a treasure trove of black and white films from the '50s and '60s (mostly Swedish, for some reason). Netflix was specifically hiding these things to dole out slowly and keep you on the hook. pretty smart of them. I've got a watchlist pushing 100 now, which means I will probably keep Netflix for more than a month (provided I don't suddenly lose interest) (strong possibility).

why am I talking about any of this? because the only reason I watched Law Abiding Citizen in the first place was because it was recommended to me only after I watched (and enjoyed) The Negotiator, another classic F. Gary Gray joint. it did not show up beforehand, nor did A Man Apart (or Lift, surprisingly, despite it being a 2024 film…it's possible I simply didn't notice it before, though, as all current movies mostly look the same to me). riding the comfy high of The Negotiator, I put on Law Abiding Citizen, thinking I'm going to get another fun classic action thriller.

it is…sort of that. but also: this film could have been called "Law Abiding Citizen: From the Book of Saw". it's in the Demolition Man camp of "cinema that tries to have a nuanced take on morality, justice, power politics, and the role of punishment in society and doesn't really have anything to show for it at the end". it's in the TDK camp of "cinema that offhandedly mentions paranoia-inducing technology that the CIA definitely has, in the late 2000s, which means they have even scarier shit now". it's the best Punisher movie never made (FGG Daredevil adaptation when?). it is a weird fucking movie. it's also nowhere near as plot-hole ridden as people pretend, unless I'm a complete moron - most of these complaints seem to be either people just not paying attention to the film or CinemaSins tier nitpicks, like yeah man I don't know what kind of lawyer Jamie Foxx was supposed to be either but who cares.

the critics consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads that Law Abiding Citizen is "unnecessarily violent and unflinchingly absurd" and "plagued by subpar acting." what does this mean. is it too violent because it's a detective thriller? would Se7en be considered unnecessarily violent to these people? no, it's a "brutal, relentlessly grimy shocker" with "slick gore effects". Everything Everywhere All At Once won 7 Academy Awards in 2022 and Poor Things was named one of the top films of 2023, so I don't think "absurd" is something we hate in movies. subpar acting I'll grant, personally I thought Jamie Foxx's Lance Reddick impression was spot-on but different strokes.

the point of this review is not to say that if you don't like Law Abiding Citizen you're stupid. nor is it to say that Law Abiding Citizen is a secret masterpiece. yes I'm a Michael Bay fan, no I'm not going to try to sell you vulgar auteurism. Paul W. S. Anderson is not a genius just because Apocalypse is the best Resident Evil movie. the point of this review is nothing. there's no point! I'm just bored! but I do think it's weird that Kurt Wimmer described Salt as "very much about me and my wife." is this one of those classic "babe these two slugs in a bowl in the 7/11 parking lot are so us" moments or is this some kind of confession. we'll never know