Review

I spent most of Fiend Without a Face trying to decide if I was amused or annoyed by its budgetary workaround of making its monsters invisible. When we do finally get to see them, they’re rendered with a disarming panache that almost pays off, but at the end of the day, there’s not much to set this apart from the other B movies of the ’50s.

Canoa: A Shameful Memory tells the true story of a group of mountain climbers in 1968 who were terrorized by a small Mexican town in thrall to a corrupt Catholic priest. It begins by plainly stating the facts of the event, followed by a mix of faux documentary footage (giving background on the town’s economic woes and poorly-educated populace) and a dramatization of the 48 hours leading up to the event. This context—plus one hell… See more →

After seeing three of his films, I have yet to undertake a thorough appraisal of Yorgos Lanthimos’s skewed visions, but for now, I’ll just say I’m still really enjoying living in his weird world.

Once again, death has a nonsensical plan that its victims-to-be generously recite aloud to the viewer in simple declarative sentences as they somehow piece it all together. As with the other Final Destination movies, this is recommended for folks who love to see the Mouse Trap board do its thing but are too lazy to set it up.

Whatever it is that appeals to me about so many of the satanic-panic-inspired schlock horror flicks of the ’80s, this one doesn’t have it.

If you were like, “We’ve got to see this hybrid The Thing / Terminator / buddy cop movie from 1987 starring Kyle MacLachlan,” I’d be like, “Um, yes, we certainly do.” And our decision to see it would indeed be a wise one. But as we might have expected, the product is not quite the sum of its parts.

The most engaging slasher films tend to be the ones that continue the whodunit tradition of their giallo forefathers. Not only do you get to enjoy amusing innovations in grisly murder, you get to guess which unlikely suspect is responsible for them. Happy Birthday to Me is arguably the best of the whodunits in the first wave of slashers, and its crazy finale is my favorite kind of preposterous.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is the rare treat that happens when the right people go all-in on the right ludicrous concept (or at least as all-in as a couple million bucks would allow). The hideous clowns and their imaginative misdeeds are rendered so vividly and with such care that any skeptic the film fails to disarm is truly a lost cause.

A disparate handful of travelers take shelter from a storm in a creepy house with a creepy family. The plot, a collection of vignettes running the gamut of comical, spooky, and romantic, seems designed more to highlight the strengths of the cast and the set than to advance a cohesive narrative, but it works as both a celebration and satirization of creaky-old-house tropes. The ensemble cast is terrific, as is their staging on the expansive… See more →

An anthology of four shorts directed by women, XX’s preoccupation with maternal horror is the opposite of the crappy brodown that was V/H/S, but it’s ultimately just as disappointing. The shorts are all equally unsatisfying, but Sofia Carrillo’s Švankmajer/Quay-inspired dollhouse-of-horrors interstitials are pretty cool.

I shudder to think what Freaks would have been if it were helmed by a director without a circus background, especially given how difficult its 1932 audience apparently found it to empathize with the performers. Despite his cast’s dramatic shortcomings, Tod Browning’s look behind the sideshow curtain is deeply human, and its cathartic revenge sequence is rightfully iconic. I so wish we could see the original 90-minute version.

Owing to the central relationship between a kindly antiques shop owner and his granddaughter, as well as the enchantingly mysterious mechanical device that upends their lives, Cronos feels kind of like a Jean-Pierre Jeunet stab at horror, which I guess could be said of several of Guillermo del Toro’s films. That said, Cronos’s imagination and balance of sickly and sweet make for a strong debut. The villains (Claudio Brook and Ron Perlman) aren’t nearly… See more →

For better or worse, Vampyr prioritizes the lyrical over the logical. Its surreal visual poetry is mesmerizing, though it doesn’t quite make a full meal.

While Itay Tiran’s incredible performance as the possessed bridegroom is the standout component of Demon, the film is largely driven by a morbid fascination with patriarchy. As the father of the bride works frantically to ensure that his new son-in-law’s disturbing ailment doesn’t reflect poorly on him, the groom is hidden rather than helped, the bride’s devastation is ignored, and the wedding reception drags on compulsorily. The father’s pride benefits no one and hurts everyone.… See more →

A scorching condemnation of capitalism. As the armed-and-dangerous hitchhiker reminds his captives, their concern for each other is what keeps them under his thumb, while he is empowered by his selfishness. When competition trumps collaboration, compassion is a liability.

Sumptuous visuals with atmosphere to spare, but I wish there were more of a story to hang them on. Simple tales of vengeful ghosts are common and often satisfying, but I found this one repetitive and shallow.

Zombieland’s towering self-satisfaction is inversely proportionate to its ingenuity and wit.

Visually breathtaking to the last, and another reminder that I really need to get more German Expressionism under my belt. The endless invention and confident hand behind Faust’s sets, cinematography, and special effects are entirely stunning, and Emil Jannings’ Mephisto is appropriately otherworldly.

I admire the chutzpah it takes to acquire a Spanish werewolf/vampire movie, slap a Frankenstein title on it, and sell it in place of (the unwatchable) Dracula Vs. Frankenstein you originally promised to American theaters, which is what distributor Sam Sherman did in the early 1970s with Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror. The movie is terrible, but at least it introduced me to Paul Naschy, who is apparently Spain’s barrel-chested Boris Karloff.

Perverse camp expertly dialed to 11.

Mostly an excuse to bring to life a collection of steampunk Nazi monsters that probably began as notebook doodles, and to take advantage of access to some marvelously dilapidated industrial locations. The creatures are fun, but the halfhearted found-footage format is distracting enough to sink the whole thing, flaunting its artifice with English-speaking Russian soldiers and supposed 16mm footage from the 1940s rendered in crisp HD. I know I’m taking this all too seriously, but… See more →

My 13th @AndrewWk bangover hurts so good.

A documentary on witchcraft in seven parts, incorporating a vintage PowerPoint presentation, delightfully grotesque dramatizations of occult folklore, and semi-rational hypotheses of what drove the paranoid, superstitious frenzy of the Middle Ages. Nearly 100 years after its release, Häxan’s preoccupation with female “hysteria” is also an unintentional indictment of its own time’s shallow thinking, and parallels are easily drawn to the modern era’s persistent misogyny and crooked notions of criminal justice.

A subpar backwoods survival slasher with a modest body count and zero mystique. Notable for featuring several cast and crew who would go on to much bigger and better things (Daryl Hannah, Joe Pantoliano), but if Hollywood stars’ humble horror beginnings are the primary draw for you, you’d be better served by The Burning (Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter), or, hell, Friday the 13th (Kevin Bacon). The Final Terror is mostly a snooze.

Lush, invasive, viscerally unsettling, and tender in every sense of the word. I was rapt for the duration.

I had to bail on this halfway through because the shaky cam was gonna make me barf. From what I saw, the effects are impressive and all of the characters are irritating, with the possible exception of Lizzy Caplan, who does her usual good job of playing Lizzy Caplan.

A paranoid conspiracist (John Goodman) keeps a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) captive in his underground doomsday bunker to protect her from what he claims is some kind of nuclear fallout above. Goodman’s reliably excellent performance works in concert with a smart script to keep you guessing about the truth of the matter, and Winstead’s charisma is rooted in a persistent resourcefulness that stops just short of Macgyver. I was frequently distracted by the big… See more →

Prompted by the 2017 film adaptation of It, I revisited the 1990 miniseries version for the first time in more than two decades, and it holds up about as well as expected. The kids are decent, the adults are laughably melodramatic, and the finale is pretty embarrassing. Even at a runtime exceeding three hours, this adaptation can barely scratch the surface of King’s sprawling novel, and the questions it leaves unanswered hurt more than they… See more →

Many a movie sports a protagonist who sucks at life, and you’re like, “Hey, I suck at life, too! I am invested in seeing this character succeed, for truly their success is a success for us all.” In The Void, however, it’s more like, “This guy doesn’t seem to have any good excuse for sucking as much as he does, and this warmed-over Lovecraft nonsense is exactly the dull fate he deserves.”

A serviceable (if blandly presented) documentary with about a zillion variously-credentialed talking heads discussing Psycho’s iconic shower scene. The scene’s cultural context and lasting influence are 101 stuff, but 78/52 is at its best when it digs into the minutiae of the storyboards, staging, cinematography, sound design—casaba!—editing, symbolism, etc. Even the most dedicated Hitchcock scholar will probably learn something new. The interviews’ steady fawning tone gets a bit grating (only one person… See more →

One of my favorite takedowns of all time is a single sentence in the San Diego Union-Tribune, in which David Elliott refers to Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream as “less filmed than assembled by an MTV task force committed to the final obliteration of subtlety.” Seventeen years later, subtlety continues to elude Aronofsky, and Mother!’s environmentalist/biblical allegory may be his most heavy-handed work yet.

That’s fine, as far as it goes; subtext doesn’t always… See more →

Though my feelings on the subject are unambiguous, I have a curious habit of seeking out reminders that I don’t ever want to be a teenage boy again, and Super Dark Times is an effective one. Its backwards gaze is largely unvarnished (apart from Ben Frost’s overly atmospheric score), but many moments are richly observed—I could practically smell the dead leaves that decorate those short, aimless hours in late autumn between the school day’s final… See more →

I’ve just returned from my ninth Ottawa International Animation Festival since 1998, and my first since 2010. I only got a weekend pass this time, rather than doing the full five days, but I still managed to cram in 10 screenings. This is also the first time I’ve attended the fest by myself, which enabled me to document it in greater detail than I have in the past. What follows are my notes on nearly… See more →

Steven C. Stewart, a man with severe cerebral palsy, made himself the antihero in a self-penned screenplay for an erotic revenge thriller, and Crispin Glover went pretty far out of his way to commit Stewart’s catharsis to film, co-directing and funding the sexually explicit project with his own money. It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine is unforgettable; I commend the effort, and welcome the challenge to broaden the range of unfiltered perspectives we accept from… See more →

Imagine the crew nervously looking over their shoulders while shooting one of the small handful of scenes that aren’t dominated by the clown crawling all over the screen, knowing that at any moment, a producer will storm onto the set demanding to know why the fuck this scene has no clown.

A very engrossing, unromantic portrait of NYC in the twilight of punk’s first wave, a palpably grimy dystopia populated almost entirely by down-and-out scammers of various stripes. Susan Berman is extraordinary as Wren, a deeply unlikeable opportunist who nevertheless inspires empathy. Her desperate energy propels the film, whose plot is essentially a catalog of her bad decisions. Pair with Midnight Cowboy for the consummate feel-bad double feature.

Needs about 100% more Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock, but naturally the finale is worth the price of admission.

Obviously the music is great, and I like that Richard Lester was able to make something so formally daring out of what would otherwise have been rote idolatry. Its kinetic energy simultaneously encapsulates early Beatlemania’s rapture (for the kids) and chaos (for everyone else). That said, the movie, which is essentially plotless, lives and dies by the band’s offstage antics. Their irreverence may have been revolutionary at the time, but its presumed charm was almost… See more →

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Tonight I’m finally seeing @IronMaiden for the first time. All it took was for them to play two blocks from my apartment.

A strange homage/parody of occult and hippie films from the ’60s and ’70s, overloaded with wishy-washy neopaganism and boneheaded musings on heterosexuality and patriarchy. My best guess is that it wants to be some kind of feminist Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but apart from offering an excuse for the wardrobe department to go for broke, I can’t really figure out why this film exists.

An interesting profile for the uninitiated, but in its cursory understanding of chess, it makes little effort to understand Magnus’s genius, which remains enigmatic as ever. While Magnus the man has had an outsize role in inspiring a new generation of young chess players, Magnus the film fails to depict the game as anything but arcane.

Though it does little to distinguish itself from the untold thousands of horror cheapies that litter the streaming landscape, The Evil Within has a certain undeniable flair, even if you don’t know it was the singular obsession of a millionaire meth addict who spent 15 years and vast sums of his own money to make it. “Outsider art” doesn’t quite do it justice. Unlike the bewildering writing of Neil Breen or Tommy Wiseau, writer/director Andrew… See more →

Plot-wise, Hounds of Love is in many ways a fairly by-the-numbers kidnapping / serial killer movie. But after a first act that hews uncomfortably close to crass, skin-crawling exploitation, its character development and attention to style are able to set it apart from less compelling grindhouse fare. Its success in those departments is noteworthy: Emma Booth’s fragile performance has rightly received a lot of praise, and the cinematography and score work well together to create… See more →

At the end of In a Lonely Place, when Capt. Lochner calls to announce Dix Steele’s vindication and (needlessly) apologize for his persistent investigation of Dix as a murder suspect, Laurel Gray tearfully responds, “Yesterday, this would have meant so much to us. Now it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.” This suggests that the strain of the murder investigation was the catalyst for her love affair with Dix unraveling, as if it might… See more →

To be a good character animator, one must also be a good actor, and animation, typically an exaggerated abstraction of reality, tends toward appropriately exaggerated performances. Though they’re often capable of exuding enough warmth and humanity to inspire genuine empathy, their reliance on gestural extremes usually keeps them from being as relatable as a skilled actor made of flesh and blood. Kubo and the Two Strings, whose every frame boasts a visual imagination – both… See more →

If any kids out there want to know about white America in the ’80s without the burden of understanding white America in the ’80s, The Wraith is your delightfully dumb one-stop shop.

A Metallica concert in 2017 is pretty unnecessary but I went anyway and my main takeaway was that Lars’s drums were purple and sparkly.

Wall-to-wall joy at the Revolution show tonight. I never got to witness the man himself, but I’m so glad I got to at least do this.

Absent its jaw-dropping stage performances, Purple Rain is a weak film. And yet, there is something about the stilted drama of its narrative that elevates those stage performances, giving Purple Rain the peculiar distinction of being stronger for the inclusion of its weakest moments. Its otherwise clunky character development is lent a certain cohesiveness when expressed musically. The unconvincing relationships and turmoil established in various poorly-staged, non-musical moments somehow manage to make the already-amazing songs… See more →