Film diary

Why in the world did it take me so long to see Street Trash?! It might be the most grotesque film I’ve ever seen, and its gleeful commitment to thorough vulgarity wouldn’t be a virtue if it weren’t made with such flair. It’s several steps above what I remember of the Troma movies, but doesn’t quite reach the bravura heights of Sam Raimi’s and Peter Jackson’s early splatstick gems. Street Trash is apparently also the… See more →

Neither the trailer nor writer/director Leigh Whannell’s bonafides in the Saw and Insidious franchises gave me much confidence that this Invisible Man remake would be any good, so its overall high quality is a very pleasant surprise indeed. Its loudest moments are its weakest, but thankfully it spends much of its time quietly plumbing the depths of Elisabeth Moss’s crippling PTSD. If there is to be a modern version of the scream queen, may Moss’s… See more →

I wasn’t able to make my annual trip to Ottawa this year for obvious reasons, but thankfully, in lieu of canceling the festival, they took the whole thing online, so I was still able to get my animation fix. Since all kinds of events have had to rapidly move online this year with wildly varying results, I kind of expected it to be a shit show, but with the exception of a few hiccups, I… See more →

Sweet, dumb, fun. No more than I needed from it, and no less.

A handful of the adults in this are written and performed with noticeably more warmth than is typical of mainstream fright flicks, and Aubrey Plaza in particular is given real latitude to employ her considerable talents. Unfortunately she’s sidelined after the first act in favor of her kid and his friends, all of whom are pretty stock, and nu-Chucky doesn’t hold a candle to the original. All in all, though, this is slightly better than… See more →

Charming but exhausting. The action is too quick, the plot is too slow, and at 65 minutes, it runs at least four times longer than it needs to. Also, given the abject poverty constantly on display, I was distracted for most of the movie wondering how the profit sharing works when a no-budget DIY flick like this gets international distribution. Oh, and having not set foot in a movie theater in four months, the Alamo… See more →

First things first: no, Verotika isn’t the new The Room. Maybe this is splitting hairs, but it’s more Ed Wood than Tommy Wiseau, which is fitting given that Wood is the poster boy for the kind of 1950s schlock that shaped much of Glenn Danzig’s imagination.

Like Wood’s films, Danzig’s Verotika is obliviously, bewilderingly badly conceived and made, often comically so, but it’s ultimately a slog. Of its three segments, the first is by far… See more →