Film and television

In case you missed this over the weekend and could use a little distraction today. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

I avoided seeing Rocky Horror forever, mostly because throughout high school and college, I found all the attention-starved theater kids who worshipped it to be so irritating. Decades later, I can’t help but be charmed by how giddily transgressive it is.

Every October, I make a schedule of dozens of horror films, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. I call it Robtober, only half-ashamedly. It’s fun! For the past few years, I’ve announced the schedule’s contents via blog posts with increasingly elaborate designs, effectively dressing my site up for Halloween. This year, I wanted to harness some of my favorite visual themes from horror movie marketing (such as posters and trailers), and distorted hand-lettering… See more →

When Melanie says to Sgt. Parks, “It’s not over, it’s just not yours anymore,” I so badly wanted Sgt. Parks to be Mitch McConnell.

Like all Dahl adaptations, this pulls its punches more than it should, but Jim Henson’s magic and the crazy camera work manage to make it truly special, and it’s miles beyond the atrocious Zemeckis version that came 30 years later. The experience was also elevated for me by watching it with my partner, whose lifelong idolization of the titular witches is morbidly adorable.

The office politics themes and serial killer plot may be uninspiring, but Office Killer’s overall craft is very enjoyable. Though it doesn’t noticeably echo the self-portraiture Cindy Sherman is best known for, the cinematography is deliciously and unselfconsciously skewed, which, in tandem with the chamber ensemble score, lends it a peculiar elegance. The whole thing is pretty firmly dated by its pre-Y2K anxiety and the ostentatious graphic design of its titles (courtesy of Bureau),… See more →

Tales from the Hood’s vengeful ghosts aren’t nearly as scary as the real-world racism and cycles of violence that provoke them. The film’s portrayals of those social ills are anything but subtle, but they are nevertheless undeniably horrific.

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 →

The terrifying title lettering is a handmade @jenmussari special. I’ll share details soon about the super fun process of working with her. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

It doesn’t look like it, but this is a blog post! Personal sites are fun and I wish everyone had one. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. It’s usually a mix of home viewings and public theatrical screenings, and the schedule is published both for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me. This year, sadly, the pandemic will keep me out of theaters, and guests won’t be able to join me for home viewings. But… 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 →

COVID-19 has made much of the U.S. a remote workforce for 28 weeks now, prompting the obvious question, “How does this pandemic stack up against the one depicted in the 2007 horror film 28 Weeks Later?” In the film, a solid sequel to Danny Boyle’s classic 28 Days Later, the world is besieged by the Rage Virus, which launches everyone it infects into a mindless, murderous frenzy. (Some filmgoers might refer to the infected as … See more →

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

Pizza acquired. Bill and Ted imminent.

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 →

RIP Carl Reiner 💗 youtu.be/wyinJyWUhas

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 →

It’s gonna be this kind of night.

Since we’ve all been stuck at home since mid-March, my friend Sequoia has been hosting delightful trivia nights for friends on Zoom. In Philadelphia, pub trivia is known as “quizzo,” so Sequoia’s weekly event is cleverly dubbed Sequizzo (or, if you don’t have time for all those syllables, Squizzo). This week’s theme was rock and roll, and when I was asked to commandeer a round, I decided to focus on fictional bands. My questions are… See more →

Was the USSR’s indoor lighting really as uniformly drab and depressing as TV shows like The Americans and Chernobyl would have us believe?

Gene Tierney carefully assembling the perfect outfit for throwing herself down the stairs to force a miscarriage is just about as good as movies get.

Collected some favorite animated shorts for today’s socially distant Saturday morning cartoon session with friends. youtube.com/playlist?list=…

If Robo Vampire has a script, it reads like something a 6-year-old wrote, which makes it a compelling argument for child labor. Somehow this is my first exposure to the hopping vampires of jiangshi folklore, and only the second Godfrey Ho movie I’ve seen. It won’t be the last.

The premise is a bit too clever for its own good, and its foundational recontextualization of horror cliches sees fit to bask in said cliches for far longer than is tolerable, especially considering its satirical scares are blander than much of their source material. Cabin in the Woods is at its best during its early peeks behind the curtain, before Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins’ charming rapport is displaced by a too-thorough accounting of the… See more →

I’ve never watched Schitt’s Creek, but this is the kind of internet I signed up for. twitter.com/lynnandtonic/s…

This movie is so goddamned good, I’m not even mad that it neglects to incorporate Van Halen’s “On Fire.”

Gentle but not slight. Didn’t know how much I needed that right now. Extra points for the quick hit of what is probably the best bookbinding porn ever to grace a major motion picture.

Philly’s biggest arthouse theater is closing and I’m not OK with it. inquirer.com/entertainment/…

How I became so attached to the songs in this movie when it came out the same year I fell in love with thrash metal is anybody’s guess, but “Part of Your World” and “Poor Unfortunate Souls” are the bedrock of my karaoke game. Decades later, no other aspect of The Little Mermaid does much for me, although Scuttle is pretty delightful and Ursula is the shit. Can’t believe I only just learned that she… See more →

My immune system didn’t do me many favors in 2019. I was sick on five or six separate occasions in the first half of the year, including an obnoxious bout of bronchitis that lasted the entire month of February. Luckily that didn’t stop me from having an adventurous and fulfilling year, and for the first time in my four years at ProPublica, I used every single one of my vacation days.

Projects

My first three… See more →

Quite possibly the best-looking Disney film.

Modern fandom is little more than ravenous consumerism, and more than any other Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker’s blockbuster maximalism is calibrated with this in mind. When I rewatched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi the night before, it felt mostly like homework, and trying to summon anything else to say about The Rise of Skywalker feels about the same. Anyway, I’m done. Thanks for the memories, Star Wars, if not… See more →

Keeping this in mind for the next time I do something with color changing/fading over time: youtube.com/watch?v=hH_yvD…

Sometimes I really miss making stupid movies over sleepless weekends with my friends. /cc @iancorey @jasonsantamaria @joel_haddock @mSutters @skycommando

I’ve never shared the average cinephile’s effusive fascination with Scorsese’s brand of pathologically dishonest men, but I’ll give said men credit for consistency: their demands for much more than they’ve earned are always reflected in how much time the audience is made to spend with them.

I only just learned of this Friday’s NYC premiere of Glenn Danzig’s Verotika and it is sold out and I’ve never felt like more of a failure.

Like many ghost stories, Lake Mungo is about grief, its apparitions manifestations of its characters’ inability to accept their loss; and like many ghost stories, its emotional core is overshadowed by its spook factor. And that’s fine. Lake Mungo’s misstep is in its approach to being a mystery thriller, loaded with nonsensical twists and arbitrary red herrings, none of which coalesce into a remotely satisfying resolution. At one point, a woman who has spent… See more →

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Films and dates (all subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me, and ticket links are included for public screenings.

This year, I’ve set aside a weekend to plow through the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series (I’ve only ever seen the first three). I’m also finally finishing off (the current version… See more →

I made my annual voyage north this past weekend for the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Forsaking any notion of downtime, I made it to 12 screenings in the space of 48 hours this year. Below are my notes on each of the 56 films in the short film competition, as well as four of the features in competition, and a handful of other screenings. Links are provided to films and trailers when available, with embeds… See more →

Well, the age of streaming services was fun while it lasted. Back to the cave I go. twitter.com/TwitterMoments…

Behind the Curve is an examination of the growing community of people who fervently believe the earth is flat. While the film doesn’t support their cause, it doesn’t ridicule them either, and I had hoped its genuine curiosity might shed some light on the nature of conspiracist thinking. In speaking with psychologists and other scientists, it does offer cursory explanations of how confirmation bias and logical fallacies factor into the intractability of misbegotten beliefs. But… See more →

Bad script. Bad cast. Bad direction. Closing credits set in Arial.

I haven’t seen the Invader Zim TV show in many years, so it’s hard to say if I was underwhelmed by the movie because a) it’s not as good as the show was, or b) my brain is just no longer calibrated to enjoy Invader Zim. Maybe both?

Veronica Mars S04: Unsatisfying, but better than S03 and the movie, and hopefully we can assume Piz’s absence means he’s dead, so overall 👍🏻

While I can’t speak from experience, I’m pretty sure that a person getting hit by a train/bus/car/etc is unlikely to result in a blood explosion, as if the victim were an overfilled water balloon primed to coat bystanders with viscera upon impact. I get that hyperbole is a thing and bloodying a bystander is a handy visualization of the trauma they incurred from witnessing a terrible accident, but come on, actors get paid to act.… See more →

If this game had existed when I was still in school, I wouldn’t have even come close to doing anything with my life. youtu.be/lU3YdqFo1QU

The plot is a pretty big pill to swallow—a bank teller is somehow threatened into robbing her workplace by a psychopath who clearly has no leverage—but the exquisite cinematography and score make it go down a lot easier. I would watch a feature-length documentary on how Glenn Ford’s spectacularly terrible haircut found its way to the screen.