Jakob’s Wife (2021).

2/22/2022

Directed by Travis Stevens

Written by Mark Steensland, Kathy Charles and Travis Stevens

Starring Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden, and Bonnie Aarons

The Stage.

Anne is married to a small-town minister named Jakob. She plays the role of housewife, but feels like her life has been kind of shrinking over the past thirty years. When an old flame comes into town, they go to check out a local real estate deal and encounter a strange creature in the basement. When she emerges, she’s got a new sense of power and an appetite for life. Unfortunately, she’s also got an appetite for blood.

The Review.

In terms of horror sub-genres, vampire films are among my least favorite because there’s only so much you can do with the subject. Very rarely do vampire films work for me, but I really had fun with Jakob’s Wife and there’s really three reasons why. First, the actors are really great in these roles, second, the film goes in a different direction than you might think, and finally, even with all of this crazy shit happening, it never takes itself too seriously and has moments of genuine comedy.

Larry Fessenden plays the minister and horror legend Barbara Crampton plays the titular wife. They’re both cast perfectly and are able to have a lot of fun with the roles. As Anne started turning into full-fledged blood sucker, I thought for sure that the rest of the movie was going to be about Jakob being suspicious about her activity, thinking that she was being unfaithful, as she was trying to hide it while only drawing suspicion to herself. It’s a plot we’ve seen done a million times. Fortunately, it subverts expectations and he finds out almost instantly. It’s this reveal that turns the film in a direction that I didn’t see it going and I really enjoyed how everything played out. As Anne turns, she also exudes uncharacteristic sexuality and at 62, Barbara Crampton is still hot. Jakob’s journey from straight-laced weenie into something totally different is really fun to watch as well.

Being a vampire movie, there’s got to be gore, and although the moments of bloodshed are few and far between, when they do happen, blood is shed. When necks are bitten in this, blood doesn’t trickle out, it fucking sprays, even going so far as to have someone’s head just completely torn off so that a vampire can use the stump as a literal drinking fountain. And there’s nothing quite like hearing someone say, “I’m going to tongue fuck a hole in your neck until you puke blood.”

The End.

Jakob’s Wife isn’t without it’s faults, it’s a little long in the tooth (pun definitely intended) and could have used another edit, but the camera work is solid, the performances are fantastic, the gore and effects are cool, it’s funny, and in terms of vampire movies, I had a really good time with it. If you’re looking for a horror film with just a touch of lore and a dash of comedy, check this out. I think you’ll have a good time.

You’re Next (2011).

2/16/2022

Directed by Adam Wingard

Written by Simon Barrett

Starring Sharni Vinson, Joe Swanberg, AJ Bowen, and some pretty scary masks

The Stage.

A family heads to their summer home in the middle of nowhere to celebrate mom and dad’s 35th anniversary. The gathering is interrupted by a few madmen wearing animal masks and all hell breaks loose.

The Review.

I haven’t seen this film since I watched it on a plane ten years ago and it’s movies like this that make me thankful I have a short “movie-memory” because I only remembered a few small pieces of it (like the blender…oof).

After a very well done opening murder, we get to the crux of the film - a gathering at a huge mansion in the middle of the woods. There are a bunch of people who come to celebrate this anniversary of the parents Aubrey and Paul, which - as I’m watching it - made me think that the body count was going to be immense. The first to arrive are their son Crispian and his Australian girlfriend Erin. Next is his big brother Drake and his wife Kelly. Then their daughter Aimee and her boyfriend Tariq, and finally, their other son Felix and his mysterious girlfriend Zee.

The strength of You’re Next lies in its characters and the way those characters subvert typical genre expectations. The core of this is Sharni Vinson’s character Erin. In a typical horror film, the ‘final girl’ is either running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off for the whole film or, in the last third of the film, finally musters up the strength to fight back. It’s a tried and true formula we’ve seen in horror films for decades. In You’re Next, when the shit hits the fan, Erin jumps into survival mode feet first. Close the windows, grab something sharp, know your exits, set up traps, and when you have a bad guy down, you bash his fucking brains in until you know he’s dead. It’s a refreshing change of pace for a horror “damsel” and this switch almost makes it feel like a thrilling action film vs. a true horror picture.

The movie is really well made. It was shot mostly with handheld cameras to get you into the action. Sometimes this bothers me, it didn’t here. I also thought the sound design was great. From thumps on the floor to the crushing of broken glass, everything sounds fantastic. The set design is really cool and we get a decent knowledge of the space (although the house appears a lot bigger from the outside than what we actually get to see on-screen). The character design of the intruders is really great too - these black militia outfits with blank, white animal masks was very unsettling. And what’s a horror film without gore? This film has a big body count, and some of them die in pretty brutal ways. Axes to the head, throats cut, arrows, knives, there are plenty of creative deaths here.

The End.

You’re Next isn’t going for a serious tone - it’s having fun with it’s premise, something that is terribly apparent once a blender enters the mix. You’ll probably see some of the twists coming, but it’s so much fun that you probably won’t care. It successfully plays with your expectations of a home invasion movie and blends horror, action, and traps into a fulfilling hour and a half.

Shang-Chi (2021).

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

Written by Dave Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton, and Andrew Lanham

Starring Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Leung, and ten rings

The Stage.

Xu Wenwu, owner of the famed Ten Rings, starts hearing the voice of his wife, asking him to come rescue her from an ancient civilization in a different dimension. Obsessed with setting her free, he involves his children, Xailing - a Chinese underground fighting legend, and Shang-Chi, a San Francisco parking valet with a mysterious past.

The Review.

I should start by saying although I’m a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and was a fan of comic books as a kid, I’m unfamiliar with Shang-Chi. I had no idea who he was until this film was announced, so this review will come from fresh eyes. If you’re a fan of the character, you’ve probably seen this film already, so I guess that doesn’t really matter, but I didn’t have a connection to the source material.

Overall, I liked this movie. There are a lot of good things going here. First, it’s very cool to see a Chinese protagonist in a huge Marvel movie and I’m glad to see some more representation on display. I hope that it has the same impact that it seems like Black Panther did with young folks itching to see some positive role models on screen. Part of that representation is Tony Leung, who I’m such a huge fan of from his previous Hong Kong work. He was acting his ass off and was a strong villain, which is often a problem with Marvel films. I bought his motivation and his arc and I was satisfied with how everything unfolded.

Of course when you head into a Marvel movie, you’re looking for some great action, and this film had a lot of it. The bus fight that you’ve probably already heard about was absolutely fantastic - I loved the brutality of it along with the beats of genuine humor. The downside to a fight scene like this is that it happens within the first twenty minutes of the film and then nothing else compares to it. There’s a scaffold fight that’s pretty cool, but as you might expect in a film that deals with magic rings and mythical beasts, the final fight scenes feel so large and fantastical that it can turn into sensory overload with the amount of CGI on screen. The smaller-scale fight scenes resonated a lot more with me because seeing throwback kung-fu moves mixed with a dash of Marvel magic was really fun.

As for the plot, I thought it was fine, but as I’ve said before, I’m kind of over the whole, “…and if we don’t stop the bad guy, the entire world is doomed!” kind of stories. As Marvel films usually go, the final battle is full of faceless creatures fighting an expendable army with the hero in the thick of things going up against the big bad. There’s a pretty great call back to a character from Iron Man 3 that I didn’t see coming, and that rectification was pretty great, especially for those who left Iron Man 3 disappointed in the way that plot played out. The rings were way cooler looking than they deserved to be which is a testament to the spectacular VFX crew that worked on this. The graphics were not nearly as bad as they were in Black Panther.

The End.

Shang-Chi was funny, charming, and had a ton of great special effects, but the story didn’t really leave me wanting more from this part of Shang-Chi’s life. As a character, I think he and his powers are pretty cool - I’m excited to see him as a bigger part of whatever the multi-verse arc brings. I’m also excited to see what his sister does with her new venture as well. I liked Shang-Chi overall but didn’t love it - it’s definitely entertaining, and I can see myself gladly watching it again when my kid is old enough to comb through the Marvel catalogue with me, but I’ll probably wait until then to see it again.

Ninja III: The Domination (1984).

“I don’t use soft drinks.”

Directed by Sam Firstenberg

Written by James R. Silke

Starring Lucinda Dickey, Jordan Bennett, and Sho Kosugi

The Stage.

A young telephone company employee is infused with the spirit of an elite ninja warrior. Now she’s killing the cops responsible for the ninja’s death and she doesn’t even know it. It’s up to another ninja and a bonehead cop to get rid of the spirit so that she can get back to aerobics class.

The Review.

This is the third film in a trilogy of Cannon ninja films from the early 80’s, none having anything to do with the others aside from featuring ninjas, and to be honest, this one feels like the script started as a simple exorcism script and was then modified to include a ninja…a choice that probably made it better.

The film starts off with a fucking salvo as this dude in a business suit walks into a cave, dusts off some hidden ninja gear, and then carries out an assassination on a golf course. Now I’ve always associated ninjas with being silent assassins, killing from a distance but if up close and personal deaths are necessary, they’re able to do so with nary a trace…but not this ninja. This ninja gives no fucks. He scampers across the golf course, crushes the ball with his bare hands, and instead of just chucking a few ninja stars from the brush, he comes out swords swinging, killing a whole golf party of this important scientist that we never hear about again. This, of course, leads to the cops coming out in droves. Then we get to see him slice up almost all of these cops, and I mean it is a massacre. Cops on foot, cops on motorcycles, cops in cars. At one point he cleverly shimmies up a palm tree and is completely hidden, it was actually a great hiding spot, and I thought to myself, “I guess he’s just going to chill up there until they give up and leave.” NOPE. He jumps from the palm tree to a helicopter to murder those cops too! In the end, the police are too much for the ninja, and they circle him and blast him to death three times because he’s some kind of supernatural force who simply cannot be stopped…but just when you think he’s dead, he drops a smoke bomb and disappears into the Phoenix desert. He probably could have just used that trick from the start, but who really cares?

We then see his shambling, bullet-ventilated corpse stumble into the path of Christie, a telephone repair agent and fitness nut who doesn’t, in her words, ‘use soft drinks’. She’s drawn the short end of the stick and has to repair a phone line in the middle of the fucking desert. I hope she brought a lot of water. Anyway, he gives her his ninja sword and dies. Then we get to meet Officer Billy Secord, one of those responsible for blowing away the ninja. He’s just…the worst, continuously trying to pick up on Christie as she sits at the station for questioning, going so far as to try to bribe her with a pocketful of loose, lint-ridden candy, like he takes his hand out of his pocket and candy just goes pouring onto the floor. Never trust a police officer who walks around with a pocket full of Runts. Anyway, you’d think he’d be the first to die, but he actually ends up being her love interest in the film and it’s the one major criticism I have here. Christie seems like a pretty well put together, strong woman and to introduce this chode as her savior seemed really stupid. He doesn’t have a redeeming quality about him.

The rest of the film sees one cocaine fueled encounter after the next. Christie is harassed by some thugs outside of her Jazzercise class as fifteen people just stand back and watch. What an embarrassing group of onlookers, not moving a finger when four bodybuilders are harassing and physically assaulting someone. Luckily, Christie’s new ninja spirit takes over and she beats the shit out of them. We get a lot more of Christie going full ninja, but also get a scene in her apartment that sees an arcade machine shooting lasers into her eyes and talking to her and an exorcism scene gone wrong inside of a Japanese massage parlor. We also get this other ninja who sports an eyepatch and inserts himself into the hijinks later on in the film.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the “sex” scene between Christie and Officer Chud. After he drives her home one night, she says, “I don’t have coffee because it’s bad for you, but I’ve got V8 if you want to come inside.” and I know Secord’s thinking, “Cool, I’m definitely down to come inside, but I will absolutely decline that stupid vegetable juice.” Then when they start getting freaky, she legit pops open a can while on top of him and pours it all over her chest like it’s hot…and it kind of is.

The End.

Ninja III: The Domination is a stupid, nonsensical blast from start to finish. In terms of action and sheer ridiculousness, it never really tops its opening scene, but that banger opening will have you on a high well into the film anyway. It’s got ideas that outweigh its budget and awful production value - to the point that in the background of one scene, a gaffer drops his sunglasses into frame and they just left the shot in and there are continuity issues left and right - but in terms of pure “how did this get made?” entertainment value, it doesn’t get much better than this.

I’m thirsty, I think I’m going to grab a V8.

Higher Learning (1995).

“One's primary purpose at university level is to learn how to think.”

Directed by John Singleton

Written by John Singleton

Starring Kristy Swanson, Omar Epps, Michael Rapaport, Ice Cube, Lawrence Fishburne, and more

The Stage.

In this true ensemble drama, Higher Learning follows three very different journeys of three freshmen as they start college at the fictional Columbus University in Los Angeles.

The Review.

Back when I saw Crash in 2005, my critique of it was that it felt like it was adapted from a racism pamphlet you might see in a college guidance counselors office. Higher Learning feels like Crash, but a little bit cooler and packed with as many other social issues as possible.

Our first stereotype is Kristen, played Christie Swanson. She’s the naive white girl, whose family was once rich but now has to deal with gasp her dad being laid off. She’s the “why can’t we all get along” person who also has to deal with a rape at the hands of a frat boy and has to reckon with her sexual confusion once she meets Taryn, a young Jennifer Connelly. Kristy Swanson had such an odd Hollywood career, now that I think about it - she was the female lead in a lot of films in the early 90’s - The Chase, Hot Shots Part Deux, The Program, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and then after the combination of The Phantom in ‘96 and 8 Heads in a Duffle Bag in ‘97, her career just fell off a cliff, netting her roles like ‘Woman In Car’ in One Tree Hill and the voice of ‘female scientist’ in the video game Crysis. Looks like she’s still acting today though which is great.

Our second is Malik, played by Omar Epps. He’s at CU on a track half-scholarship and at first, takes his educational opportunity for granted. He starts a romantic relationship with another track star at the school, Deja, played by Tyra Banks. His internal struggle is caught between taking advantage of his opportunity to earn an education, something that Deja is pushing him towards, and a violent proclivity brought on by hanging out with another college student named Fudge, played by Ice Cube. Fudge is probably the most perplexing character here - by all accounts, he hates school and resents the establishment, but is also said to have been there for six years. For all of his yapping about knowing how things work and posing as a smart dude, it seems like there are some evident cracks in his logic.

The third is Remy, played by a young Michael Rapaport. He’s an out-of-towner from Idaho who slides way too easily from being kind of socially awkward to going full Nazi. Out of all of the transformations of thought in this film, his was easily the least believable and felt the most rushed, as a skinhead recruits him from the steps of the school by inviting him for a beer and then just talking about white power stuff, and then seemingly the next day, he’s a skin head reading Hitler literature.

Finally, the lone adult in the film is Professor Phipps, played by Lawrence Fishburne. He’s a political science teacher who’s kind of the voice of reason, if you can figure out what voice he was going for. He has one of the weirdest accents I can remember listening to on-screen which sounds like a mix of Jamaican and African at times. He serves as kind of the grounded touchpoint for the audience, spouting moral guidance like, “One's primary purpose at university level is to learn how to think.”

Higher Learning is a mess. The film tries to tackle so many different things at once that a lot of it feels really rushed and half-baked. The characters don’t feel fleshed out and appear as caricatures based on stereotypes. Even the side characters like “bigot security guard” and “frat guys” have zero depth. It’s not without it’s merits though - the acting from Epps, Swanson, and Rapaport are engaging and Ice Cube is great as Fudge. The soundtrack bangs and it’s well shot. It’s even more interesting if you think of this film as a companion piece to Clueless, the other, grittier side of the coin.

As things come to a close, you’ll realize that Higher Learning doesn’t really have any surprises - as the melting pot that is Columbus University turns from a simmer to a boil, you know that, just like in Boyz N The Hood, there’s going to be some major explosion of violence during the climax and you’ll have a pretty good idea of who’s going to be delivering said violence and who’ll be on the receiving end.

The End.

HIgher Learning is one of those instances where the parts are greater than its sum. The cast is terrific - there are other small roles I haven’t even mentioned, like Busta Rhymes and a young Regina King - and aside from Fishburne and Banks, the actors are tremendous.

I think the main thing I took away from this film is that since this was made in 1995, nothing has changed in this country. Looking at it as a microcosm of the United States - clearly the intent as we open on an American flag and see them repeatedly through the film - we still face the same issues today with the same lack of accountability. There’s a scene in which a black man is beating up a white man who had just delivered a devastating act of violence in the school and the security guards rush up and start beating down the black man with nightsticks, and it really just made me sad. Nothing has changed. The film ends with one word on-screen - “Unlearn.”

Will we? Ever?

Malice (1993).

“Playing God? I am God.”

Directed by Harold Becker

Written by Aaron Sorkin, Jonas McCord, and Scott Frank

Starring Bill Pullman, Nicole Kidman, and Alec Baldwin

The Stage.

Andy is a college dean and is married to Tracy, an art teacher. When Jed, an egotistic surgeon who used to go to school with Andy shows up, things get pretty weird. Oh, there’s also a serial killer going around killing women and stealing locks of their hair.

The Review.

Malice goes in all kinds of directions, so let’s start with the cast first. Alec Baldwin may be the third-wheel character here but he steals the show as this surgeon with a God complex. In his very first scene, he’s operating on a patient who has just suffered a brutal attack and a resident surgeon says, “We’re going to lose her, doctor.” After the surgery is over, Jed confronts him in the locker room, saying, “If you ever again tell me we’re going to lose patient, I’m gonna take out your lungs with a fuckin’ ice cream scoop.” with a cadence that made me believe that he was sent to this hospital by Mitch and Murray. And this really is the perfect introduction to this character - a damn good surgeon with a chip on his shoulder. At the hospital, Andy and Tracy run into Jed, which leads to Jed coming around and eventually moving into their empty loft on their third floor.

But wait, let me back up. The girl is in surgery because she was attacked by a serial killer who’s whacking women who go to Andy’s college. At first, you have to be thinking - okay, it’s either Andy, Jed, or Tracy who’s killing these women…and then Tobin Bell, the janitor, walks into Andy’s office and it’s like…alright, he’s the guy, and Andy’s going to be a suspect, and the rest of the movie is going to be some twisted tale that puts this college dean into a web of lies that he’s got to get out of, but that quickly evaporates when the serial killer plot abruptly stops after a young Gwenyth Paltrow is killed about 45 minutes into the film. By the way, casting department - great choice casting GOOP as a young New England liberal arts student. I bet she majored in candle making.

We also get some surgical drama, because Tracy has some kind of stomach pains that incapacitate her. Jed performs the surgery, but takes out one of her good ovaries in the process, which leads to a big lawsuit against the hospital Jed works for. And from there, the film turns into this twisty grifter noir story. It’s a pretty wild ride, if I’m being honest. Nicole Kidman is in top form as Tracy, a woman who has a lot more going for her than meets the eye. Bill Pullman is our everyman surrogate, someone getting fleeced in every direction until he gets wise and takes some advice from someone’s drunk mother. I like Pullman, but in this role he was outmatched by the Kidman/Baldwin duo and really just felt like a wet blanket.

Now, I noticed a certain crackle in a lot of the dialogue scenes, and while I watched the credits roll, I realized that it was written by Alan Sorkin. Looking back, I can absolutely see the parallels between his more recent films and the egotism at play, especially during a scene in which Alec Baldwin walks on a beach correcting grammar and staking his claim that he’s the fuckin’ man definitely feels like a prelude to Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg character from The Social Network.

The End.

Malice is an interesting film and definitely one that could have made the list of ‘Top 5 Mid-Film Genre Switches’. It’s filled with red herrings, has more twists than Lombard Street, and boasts some amazing talent (and many other cameos I didn’t mention, like Peter Gallgher, Anne Bancroft, and George C. Scott). It wasn’t the erotic thriller I assumed that it was based on the cover art and the talent involved, but it’s a pretty engaging hour and a half of mid-90’s trash. If you’re interested in seeing it, Kino Lorber put out a pretty decent looking Blu-ray, albeit with zero extras.

John and the Hole (2021).

“I found the hole.”

Directed by Pascual Sisto

Written by Nicolas Giacobone

Starring Charlie Shotwell, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Ehle, and a hole

The Stage.

A kid finds a big 20 foot cement hole in the woods by his house. He then puts his family in the hole. That’s it.

The Review.

It’s not very often that I watch a movie and stay utterly confused by what I just saw, and John and the Hole confused me on so many levels. There’s very little to this movie. John is a teenager who lives in what seems to be a pretty normal upper class family. One day while flying his drone, he finds an old bunker dig that was going to be used for something by someone at sometime, but has since been abandoned. He comes home, drugs his family, and wheelbarrows them to the edge of the hole to lower them down. In the morning, he tosses them some food and water, and then just does some teenage shit like playing video games and eating ice cream. He does this for a long time and then just lets his family out and they pretend nothing happened. There’s also a really fucked up wrap around story about a twelve-year-old girl who’s mom just says, “I’m leaving, there’s enough money in a shoebox there to last you about 10 months. You’re twelve, you’re ready.” that has absolutely no connection to the rest of the story. Or does it? Because the mom tells the little girl two stories - Charlie and the Spider (Charlie is the gardener who finds and trusts a spider, and is promptly bitten by it) and John and the Hole, which both are true stories.

This movie seems like a really interesting interpretation of a teenage psychopath at first and the tension is built to uncomfortable levels, but it stays in that gear until you’re tired of it and then finally fizzles out like a fart in a blizzard. The actor who plays John puts on a chilling performance, but does nothing with his newfound “freedom”. I guess maybe that’s the point. I think that the main story of John in the Hole is literally just a story and the wrap-around is reality. The mother is telling her these stories to somehow prepare her for what’s coming - her eventual abandonment. Unfortunately, it isn’t presented clearly enough - or with a sharp enough lesson - to matter. What’s the message? Maybe the whole movie is just about how that mother is a terrible story teller.

The End.

I thought about clever titles for this review - John is an Asshole, or John and the Hole Waste of 2 Hours, but I’m just going to say that I disliked this movie. I thought it was shot well, made some interesting choices (the film is presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio to simulate the square hole, I suppose, and the opening title card doesn’t hit until thirty minutes into the film), and had some quality acting, but it’s tiring and goes absolutely nowhere.

Tiger Claws (1991).

“This is not a sport for every bozo with fifty bucks.”

Directed by Kelly Makin

Written by J. Stephen Maunder

Starring Jalal Merhi, Cynthia Rothrock, and Bolo Yeung

The Stage.

Martial arts masters are showing up dead, their insides crushed but bodies unscathed aside from a scratch on the face. Linda and Tarek, two cops who know martial arts take to the streets to find the person responsible.

The Review.

Welcome to early 90’s NYC, where people are dressed like they actually live in Los Angeles and good police work is virtually non-existent. The film starts with Linda (played by Cynthia Rothrock) and her partner, credited on IMDB as, “Linda’s Partner” trying to bust a rapist. This consists of tossing a wig on Rothrock and walking around until some chop-licking psychopath follows her and tries something. In real life, this would seem about as easy as finding a fart in a jacuzzi, but everything goes according to plan here - Linda walking slowly, the rapist tailing behind just waiting for his moment to pounce, and her partner, maybe 15 feet back, rigidly running around like a wet cat just got out of the bathtub with his badge dangling from his neck. Hidden in plain sight indeed. He’s keeping an eye on his partner until he takes his eyes off of her for a split second to catcall a passerby, letting us know that, not only is he a piece of shit partner, he’s just a piece of shit in general. In the moment he checks out someone’s ass, both Linda and rapist are gone. Now in real life, they couldn’t have gone far, but as far as this partner is concerned, they walked into an alternate fucking dimension because they’re gone. Now, had this been real life, the smart thing to do if you’re Rothrock is to pause in the middle of the crowded sidewalk or walk into one of the many stores she passes by. This was the 90’s, after all, a time when people might help a woman being assaulted, a time before everyone would just pull out their phone to record it. Of course she does the dumbest thing she could do, which is walk down a vacant alleyway, only to smack the guy up once he makes a move, dropping him just in time for Linda’s Partner to come in and cuff the limp noodle.

She coerces her way into investigating the murder of martial arts masters along with Tarek, a displaced police officer involved in another police work fuck up that left a bunch of bad guys dead and some other cops whining. Turns out Tarek is involved in the martial arts world, and when one of his friends ends up dead, he gets so mad he destroys a sign at a park with his bare hands. I’d say that’s pretty mad. He gets in undercover at a Tiger Style Kung-Fu school and from there, it’s only a matter of time before the bad guy is revealed. In fact, he’s revealed pretty early on, and Bolo Yeung was buff as hell, an absolute Chinese unit who can crush apples with his bare hands and vanish when it’s convenient for the plot. The only other real recurring characters are two bumbling idiot cops who literally just get in the way and fuck things up whenever they’re around.

Released now, I feel like this would get a PG-13 rating. There’s no nudity, no over-the-top violence, and there wasn’t that much swearing. The fight scenes were really quite tame and bloodless, which I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed in. Each encounter is filled to the gills with cutaways and alternate takes, so it was hard to appreciate the skill of a martial arts master like Cynthia Rothrock. Her skills have been better showcased in so many other films, and she’s honestly not even the main focal point here. Even the final fight between Tarek and the big slab of broccoli beefcake Bolo is disappointing, as both men face off in a room full of the scariest movie prop known to man - empty cardboard boxes. The sound effects sure play things up though, with Shaw Brothers-like sounds whooshing and zipping all over the place as our heroes move around with the urgency of Jim Halpert trying to save Michael Scott from falling into the koi pond.

The End.

Tiger Claws is alright. It falls into the unfortunate category of definitely not being a good movie, but not being bad enough or goofy enough to love in that regard. As I mentioned, there are better showcases for Rothrock and it’s hard to feel like you’re on the case with anyone in this film because everyone is so bad at the basics of police work, which is a shame because that’s what most of the film is. Find a dude with his face scratched, go somewhere to investigate, fight someone, rinse, repeat.

I look at films like this and wonder if I could rewrite them for a modern audience, but even the set up is clunky and isn’t all that interesting. For Tiger Claws to be more interesting, you’d need Bolo to seem more formidable. Less crushing apples, more crushing skulls. Show us how dangerous the character was, because he was built like a brick shithouse and he could have felt like so much more of a threat. Hardly the man who could be topped by a few empty Tide boxes.

The Matrix: Resurrections (2021).

“I still know Kung fu.”

Directed by Lana Wachowski

Written by Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon

Starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, and plenty of clips from the last three films

The Stage.

This is normally where I write about the plot of the film, but the whole entire thing is so bogged down and convoluted that I don’t even know if I want to attempt it, but here goes nothing. In the final Matrix film, Neo agrees to die to kill Agent Smith in a truce with the machines. When that happened, the Analyst, basically a new Matrix architect, saw that Neo was an anomaly based on how he interacted with Trinity, so he kept them both alive somehow. Some of the machines went to help the human race in the real world, but others were not having that, so there was also a machine vs. machines and humans war, which the all machine team won. So there’s a new Matrix that is run on fear and desire. Neo is in this matrix as a video game programmer. I think that’s pretty much the crux of it. Oh, and, there’s also a new Morpheus who was programmed into the game and real life or something, and he’s also part Agent, but there’s also a different looking Agent Smith who’s also an Agent and he doesn’t like the Analyst I guess. Honestly, I don’t even know, and I don’t care, because this movie is fucking terrible.

The Review.

I think that the original Matrix film is an absolute masterpiece. The fight scenes and innovation on display were breathtaking in 1999 and they still hold up. There is genuine emotion, surprise, incredible sequences and the film may have the most exciting third act ever made. The second wasn’t great, but the Chateau fight to the freeway chase is exhilarating and still holds up as one of the better action sequences in the 00’s. The third movie sucked, and still sucks, but it doesn’t kill the preceding films. It’s safe to say that I have a pretty decent knowledge of how the world of The Matrix works, but even so, in preparation for this film I watched the first two again and then watched a recap of the entire series so I wouldn’t have to spend two hours of my life watching the third. Now I wish I’d spent my two hours watching this one watching that one.

As usual, I have to start with the good. There’s a cool idea buried in here somewhere in that there were machines and humans co-existing. There’s also an interesting scene in which a new Agent move called The Swarm is used and people start dropping out of buildings. Now, I’m trying really hard to pull other positives out of this new Matrix film, and to be fair, I could be forgetting some of them because it took me four tries to watch the entire movie as I stopped thirty minutes in the first time because I was bored and confused, fell asleep a second time, and had to stop the third time because of kid stuff (which, if we’re being honest, was more fun anyway), but I don’t think I liked anything else.

As for the bad stuff…first of all, it’s confusing. And don’t toss this, “You’re not smart enough to get it.” shit at me, because like I said, I got the Matrix mythology up to this point. It’s a non-stop barrage of incoherent monologues and plot points that go absolutely nowhere. “What happened to Zion?”, Neo asks. Guess what, we never find out. What happens to new Agent Smith? Who knows. Zion is gone, so we get to head into Io, a city with what looks like ten residents who either grow strawberries with the help of virtual assistants or light candles at the base of a deformed Morpheus statue. The city is run by Niobi, who now looks like Grandma Jack Sparrow and has basically all of the ‘get off my lawn’ traits minus the dish of hard candy as you walk in the door. Then there’s some stuff about swapping Trinity’s body with another person but if things go wrong, who knows what’ll happen and the world as we know it hinges on something, oh and there’s Pokemon like creatures too.

If you were confused by the first Matrix trilogy, the good news was that there were some kick-ass fight sequences every so often to kickstart your stupid brain. Unfortunately, the action scenes in this film are tired, boring, and lazy as fuck. We barely see any hand-to-hand fights from Neo, who’s relegated to using his forcefield power over and over again. The choreography was bad and the absence of the original fight choreographer, Yuen Woo-Ping was sorely missed. I’ve seen better fight choreography in Frankie Muniz films. And don’t even get me started on the gun play, which was horrendous. There’s a scene in which six Agents are three feet away from a character named Bugs and she’s able to run a good twelve feet to get around a corner as they’re all unloading their clips at her, but she miraculously escapes without a scratch. I could arm six random kids from my child’s day care with Nerf guns and they’d at least graze a limb.

Like most modern sequels, this has an element of meta commentary around, “BLAH BLAH BLAH, SEQUELS SUCK, WHY DO STUDIOS KEEP WANTING TO REHASH THE PAST, MERP” while doing exactly what it appears to be lampooning. This film is worse, however, because it literally keeps showing clips from the first three movies. The only thing the film is missing is a voiceover by Hugo Weaving saying, “Last time on The Matrix…”. We’ve all seen the movies, we don’t need you to literally show us dozens of clips from that movie just to show them. Within the first act, it’s already reduced the movie into a joke, so how do you expect us to take the last two thirds seriously? It feels like the Wachowski’s version of Gremlins 2, except Gremlins 2 rocks and this sucked.

The film ends with an air of misplaced female empowerment that clearly mirrors the Wachowski sisters’ journey since making the first film. Since they’ve transitioned into females, we see this switch to a female version of ‘The One’, complete with a female led Rage Against the Machine cover playing over the final shot that feels as out of place as the rest of the film. Listeners should realize that I’m all about strong female characters by now but the transfer of power didn’t feel earned and it certainly didn’t feel epic. There’s a shot in which our female character kind of…learns she’s The One, but the moment feels so stale, and instead of just zooming out of there, the character just sort of…floats away like my kid letting go of his balloon at the zoo. The big difference is that I’d feel a lot more emotion from my kid losing his balloon.

The End.

I wish that, presented with the red and blue pills, I’d stuck with the blue one. The Matrix: Resurrections is a steaming mess with sub-par visuals, and despite a few good ideas, nothing comes together like it should. Everyone looks kind of bored on screen, there’s never a sense of danger for anyone, no stakes, and everything about it just rubbed me the wrong way. If you’re disliking it thirty minutes in, you can turn it off because it only gets worse.

There’s a thirty second post-credits scene that shows our tech-bros sitting around a table lamenting that “Movies are dead, video games are dead, narratives are dead.” and then pitches an idea for a cat video collective called ‘The Catrix’. Yep, that’s part of this film. Was the entire thing a ‘Fuck you.” from Lana Wachowski to Warner Brothers? Because it felt like it.

Last Night in Soho (2021).

Directed by Edgar Wright

Written by Edgar Wright

Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, and Diana Rigg

The Stage.

Ellie moves to London’s West End to enroll in fashion school. After her dorm room setup doesn’t work out, she rents a room from an old woman…but upon hitting the sack, finds herself in the head of a 1960’s nightclub singer named Sandie. As things in the past start getting worse, Ellie has to figure out if what she’s going through is a dream and unravel a mystery from the past.

The Review.

This film is a visual feast. The feel of 1960’s London is so meticulously crafted and looks amazing. From the cars to the garb, it really roped me in. There’s also a lot of great lighting effects and some wizard-like camera work on display here. Part of the “dream sequences” as we’ll call them have Ellie and Sandie living in the same headspace, so we might see Sandie in the present, but see Ellie in the mirror, and it’s all done so masterfully. I’d love to see how this was done on the Blu-ray special features, although I know that kind of insight is a bit of a rarity these days in physical media. The craft that went into the making of this movie is top notch from every aspect. Every frame truly felt like a painting. I don’t think I’ll ever see a shot as cool as the giallo-esque shot of a knife plunging into someone’s chest as we see someone’s reflection in the steel.

As for the mystery itself, unfortunately I have to say that I didn’t love it, and the sweater only unravels as you start thinking more and more about it. Something about the trips to the past and the rules of said trips just didn’t hit for me. I also didn’t buy a lot of the character actions because in that regard, the script felt a bit lazy. For example, there’s a character named John (that I was calling Young Cheadle because of his resemblance to the man, Don Cheadle) that has the hots for Ellie. Seems like a good dude. Now, from the minute he starts hanging out with her, she starts freaking out, having panic attacks, going crazy while he’s trying to make out with her, etc. Of course, we as the audience knows what’s happening, but he doesn’t. Any time he asks her to just talk to him, she’s running out of the room screaming bloody murder…so why would he be sticking around? A lot of the things in this movie could have been solved by not just running out of the room screaming. There’s a man walking around the neighborhood named ‘Handsy’ that, again, could have been wrapped up with one short conversation. There’s also a weird subplot with this band of art school Mean Girls run by their own little Regina George named Jocasta. Jocasta is seemingly a bitch just for the sake of being a bitch and has zero redeeming qualities. If you’d left Jocasta and her subplot out of the film, it would really have made no difference. I also thought the end, while kind of clever, was also badly executed.

The End.

This is a film that I’m definitely at odds with. The performances are fine and the film looks fantastic, but I really didn’t like the story and the characters all seem kind of dumb. The third act finally delves into the more horror-centric side of things and I didn’t think that part worked at all.

A lot of the negative reviews I’ve read online play into two categories - either they thought the film was sympathizing with rapists (it wasn’t) or the plot was “too woke” (it wasn’t). Also, if you describe anything as “woke”, please promptly fuck off. The film did not sympathize with rapists if you were paying any attention to the ending. I’ve heard a lot of really weird takes on the film, and it makes me wonder if a lot of people are just stupid, or if it really could be interpreted in many ways. I was under the impression that the theme was really trying to shatter the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia and show you that things in the past weren’t any better than they are today, but I’m a simpleton so what the hell do I know.

Silent Night (2021).

Directed by Camille Griffin

Written by Camille Griffin

Starring Kiera Knightley, Roman Griffin Davis, Matthew Goode, Sope Dirisu, and Lily Rose-Depp

The Review.

I normally have a variation of the IMDB plot summary at the top of the review, but this time, I’m going to eshew that because I went in blind to this film and I think it’s worth being surprised. See, all I knew about this movie going in was that it went off the rails at some point, and boy does it.

The opening of the film sees a family and some of their close friends descending on a beautiful country home for Christmas dinner. Nell is making potatoes, her husband, Simon, trying to wrangle the chickens in the yard. Their twins are playing video games and their oldest son, Art, is doing what he can to help. Nell’s sister Sandra arrives along with her boring husband Tony and their daughter Kitty, who no one seems to like. Their sister Bella arrives with her wife, and then finally, their family friend James and his girlfriend, Sophie. As the group converses, we can see that there are cracks in each of these relationships - secrets untold, grudges held. There’s just something…off about the situation. Finally, they sit down for Christmas dinner, and through some off-the-cuff comments, we learn about what’s really going on and a lot of what happened and what was said in the first twenty minutes starts to make a lot more sense.

The rest of the film is a darkly comedic film - like pitch black comedy - with some moments of genuine terror and emotion all wrapped up in a big, fat, political socio-economic commentary with a nice little satirical bow on top. There are some moments that really made me laugh out loud - most delivered by Art, played by Jojo Rabbit’s Roman Griffin Davis. He’s fantastic as the inquisitive kid who seems more mature than most of the adults in the house, but there isn’t a weak link in the cast. Kiera Knightley, Matthew Goode, Sope Dirisu, Lucy Punch, and Lily Rose-Depp all put forth brilliant, layered performances. A late film scene of frustration that Matthew Goode’s Simon portrays will be relatable to all parents just trying to make their kids happy.

The End.

It’s really tough to end a movie like this and although I don’t love the final shot, it’s also obvious that we don’t know what happens after that. In interviews with writer/director Camille Griffin, she’s said that what’s on screen wasn’t her original ending, and that vibes. Sometimes directors need to compromise their vision a bit to get their stuff on-screen. I hope that on the eventual Blu-ray release, we’ll see those scenes. Overall, I don’t think that it ruins the film. There are also a lot of ways to read the theme of the film, but I’m not going to get into that in this review because if I discuss the politics and allegories within, it’ll ruin the crux of the film for those going in blind.

I really enjoyed Silent Night. It’s a Christmas movie unlike anything I’ve seen before. It made me laugh, it made me tear up, and it gave me legitimate anxiety…not because of what I was seeing on-screen per se (although one scene involving a car really did make me want to look away), but because it begs the question - much like in films like Gone Baby Gone - what would you do? After I saw the film, I went and talked to my wife about it (because she sure as hell wasn’t going to watch this with me)…and there’s no easy answer.

Whatever it Takes (1998).

“I heard it makes your dick fall off.”

Directed by Brady MacKenzie

Written by Jack Capece and Raymond Obstfeld

Starring The Dragon, The Diceman, and The Hammer

The Stage.

After a drug bust goes terribly wrong, the DEA sends Neil Demarco and Dave Menardi on a makeup assignment to go undercover to investigate a super steroid that’s making its way through the world of wrestlers and body builders.

The Review.

We start off with Neil, played by Don The Dragon Wilson, painting while shirtless. He smashes his painting and throws a tantrum and then tries to kill himself, leading us to wonder, “Was the painting really that bad?” Fortunately, we’re then introduced to the real reason he’s suicidal. During an undercover operation at a warehouse conveniently filled with soft bags and empty cardboard boxes, we meet a greasy, drug dealing maniac named Roland. Neil and Dave, played by Andrew Dice Clay and his revolving closet full of leather jacket variants, have been staking this lunatic and his boss out for eight months. Now, I’ve seen a lot of scumbags in movies, but Roland is definitely up there with the worst of them. One of his highly irresponsible exes comes to his drug warehouse looking for a score with her 13-year-old daughter. He agrees to hook her up, if he can deflower her kid, and the mom is just like…”Take one for the team, kiddo.” Of course The Dragon isn’t going to let that shit slide, so he breaks cover and causes a huge shootout. Unfortunately during the ruckus, the little girl takes a bullet, and he’s pretty broken up about it. And rightfully so, because he definitely got her killed, but to be fair he was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

We fast forward two weeks, and Neil is back on the job because in the late-90’s, no one cared about mental health. The feds stick these two goobers on a case to go in deep to find out who’s distributing a new human growth hormone that’s three times more powerful than your normal steroid. The bad guys are Uncle Paulie, played by blaxploitation legend Fred “The Hammer” Williamson and Kevin, the town’s source of the great parachute pants shortage of ‘98 who looks like the Goofus version to John Cena’s Gallant. We’ll call him John Weena. As Neil embeds himself into the steroid crew, we get to see some typical direct-to-video fight scenes that would feel right at home on the set of a TV show like Lorenzo Lamas’s Renegade - a lot of body shots and broken tables, but no blood and no broken bones. Of course while he’s on the job risking his neck, Andrew Dice Clay is watching everything from the back of a van because the only thing he’s fighting is his wardrobe and the urge to smoke another cigarette.

As the film goes on, highlights include Don “The Dragon” Wilson trying to play basketball in jeans to impress a girl, plenty of shots of oiled up men and women, double and triple crosses, a smattering of racist and homophobic jokes, Uncle Paulie’s obsession with comfortable shoes and delivering a monologue about George Bush going into Panama, and a good old fashioned junkyard shootout.

Finally, we have got to talk about Andrew Dice Clay for a minute. There are certain actors who take a bad role and just kind of get stuck in Hollywood jail, but this dude landed in that jail immediately after his first movie, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane in 1990 absolutely bombed. That’s basically why his filmography consists of shit like Brainsmasher…A Love Story and Master P films. in 1995, he kind of denounced his Diceman persona so he could move onto other stuff, but clearly he did not. I don’t know what the fuck he was doing in this movie. After the initial shootout, in which, while being shot at, he improvs by yelling, “Are you hungry?” to The Dragon, who yells back what the audience is thinking - “What?”, he yells, “Well I’m starving!” and jumps into a forklift and instead of barreling into a strategically placed hotdog stand or something that would have to do with food, he just runs into some cardboard boxes. It’s absolutely puzzling. He goes from an outfit that looks like a half-Fonzi, half-mercenary doll stuffed with packing peanuts to literally the same jacket but with no sleeves so he can class it up over a purple turtleneck. Then, the Diceman just disappears for 45 minutes in the middle of the movie and reappears towards the end of the film dual wielding pistols like a fat Chow Yun Fat while sliding down an actual slide. Honestly, it’s the most entertaining part of the movie, but not the whole coming down the slide part. It’s the part when he gets to the end of the slide and falls through the floor, but just can’t get himself up from the hole. So he is comically hanging there in a position that any normal person could have lifted themselves out of while the shootout goes on for literally minutes.

The End.

Whatever It Takes is a brand of stupid that is just slightly entertaining. Andrew Dice Clay is all but worthless in the film and solely exists to make a few wise-cracks and shoot a few bullets at the end, so if you’re here for him, you might be disappointed…but then again, let’s be honest, you’re not here for him. Don “The Dragon” Wilson does the heavy lifting here, and he barely lifts. He displays about a thousand jump kicks, but they all look slow as molasses. We also don’t see a fitting end to John Weena and the final fight that the film works up to between the two of them was unsatisfying to say the least. On the plus side, we get to see a character sacrifice themselves by spearing someone down an elevator shaft for no reason.

I can see why Vinegar Syndrome tossed this one in their VSA line - it’s a silly, DTV action film, but it’s not as entertaining or as action packed as this line typically is. If you’re looking for an entry point to the series, L.A. Wars is probably a better starter, although you’ll have to pay insane prices at this point. In typical VS fashion, the picture looks pretty good, but oddly, the extras are really lacking on this one with only two interviews by The Dragon and The Hammer. This was the only film directed by Brady MacKenzie and really the only thing written by the screenwriters, so it’s safe to say they either abandoned or were run out of Hollywood, which I guess isn’t surprising as you see the credits roll. I blame Andrew Dice Clay.

Midnight (1982).

“It’s midnight. Time to begin.”

Directed by John A. Russo

Written by John A. Russo

Starring Melanie Verlin, John Hall, C. Anthony Jackson, Lawrence Tierney, and David Marchick

The Stage.

Fleeing her sexually abusive stepdad, Nancy hitches a ride with two guys heading west. Her goal is to get to California. At some point, the trio decides to stop and camp out in a town they were warned about, and run into a family who sacrifice people for satanic purposes.

The Review.

After watching Vinegar Syndrome’s release of The Laughing Dead, I decided I wanted to watch some more satanic cult films and someone on Twitter recommended the recently released Midnight from Severin, also released in certain low budget theaters as The Backwoods Massacre. This was written and directed by John A. Russo, writer of the classic Night of the Living Dead, and with a tagline of “A Startling & Shocking Adventure - As Three College Students Take a Strange Detour to the Land of the LIVING DEAD!”, how could it disappoint? Well…it found a way. It’s slow, mean-spirited, and just generally uninteresting. The main draw for me watching this one was that Tom Savini had done the special effects for the picture, choosing the opportunity to work on this instead of Friday the 13th Part 2 which had me intrigued. Unfortunately, the bulk of the gore is machete throat cuts that look great, but are few and far between.

The opening scene in this extended cut is pretty promising - we hear some screams over an open field, only to discover a girl who’s been overpowered by a group of youngsters. Their mother looms over them, approving of their actions. Soon we cut to a satanic sacrifice, and I was legitimately intrigued. Unfortunately, that initial excitement will soon fade, as over half of the movie is a bland road trip. We spend an interminable amount of time with Tom and Hank, two guys who have clearly never seen a map of the United States because they agree to take Nancy from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania towards California on their way to Florida, barely tolerate her and duck local law enforcement because they’re stealing food from grocery stores along the way. The trio of bumpkins consists of two typical Deliverance yokels, a normal looking woman, and a rotund guy who does nothing but laugh as he saunters around the forest like a demonic Hamburglar possessed with the soul of a hyena. There’s really nothing that makes any of them stand out aside from Cyrus’s annoying cackling, although the reveal of their mother was pretty effective late in the film.

As a ‘final girl’, Nancy really doesn’t do much aside from tag along until she’s captured. Near the end she finally gets to fight back, but by then it was too little, too late, especially considering who comes to her rescue. For most of the movie, she’s either in the back of a van or in a dog cage. She leaves town after her drunk stepdad, played by Lawrence Tierney, tries to rape her. The scene is unsettling but it’s also backed by this low key, upbeat tune that you might hear in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, as if we’re not supposed to take it too seriously. She gets out of the situation by hitting him in the head with a portable radio with less force than it takes to loosen the lid on a jar of pickles. It was just a bad scene all around but perfectly sets the stage for the mediocrity ahead.

The End.

The film is full of stupid characters playing overt stereotypes and isn’t good enough to sit with the upper echelon of backwoods psycho films. Deliverance, The Last House on the Left, Southern Comfort, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were all obvious influences, but it never does anything new, fun or interesting with the premise. What we’re left with is a bland road trip movie that never gets as wild as it should have. This one is an easy skip.

The Severin disc looks nice (it was pulled from a fresh 4K scan of the original negative) and I think this is the first time this film has been released uncut in the United States (if anywhere). There are a few interviews included with the disc that I haven’t seen. Unfortunately it lacks any commentary tracks.

Honeydew (2021).

Directed by Devereux Milburn

Written by Devereux Milburn and Dan Kennedy

Starring Malin Barr, Sawyer Spielberg, Barbara Kingsley, and Jamie Bradley

The Stage.

A bickering couple heads out into the woods on a camping trip. When they are kicked out of their camp site in the middle of the night, they are forced to walk through the remote wilderness and stumble upon an old woman’s house. She invites them in for what could be their last supper.

The Review.

I’m going to try to be as vague with this as possible because if you’re interested in seeing Honeydew, it’s best to go in blind. This stars Malin Barr as Rylie, an aspiring botanist. She and her boyfriend Sam, an aspiring actor played by Sawyer Spielberg - yes, Steven Spielberg’s son, head out to the wilderness to check out an area that has been plagued by a wheat spore.

After some shenanigans, they find themselves at an old house in the woods, one reminiscent of the Hewitt’s in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Once inside, they meet the old woman’s son, Gunni, an invalid who suffers from seizures and watches a fuzzy black and white TV all day. The woman offers to call a neighbor to give them a lift to fix their car, but he never shows, so they have dinner and get ready to stay for the night…and as you can infer, things get weird.

Honeydew has some really great elements - the editing is exotic and the sound design is haunting. The sound queues and purposeful cuts add a fantastic layer of tension and just generally made me feel uncomfortable. The camera also moves in interesting ways. The craft behind Honeydew was top notch. Unfortunately, as you start to get used to the filmmaking techniques, the story we’re left with isn’t that interesting. It’s like watching the Hewitt family on their day off. It goes to some pretty weird places, but it’s not that unexpected if you’re paying attention. Someone online had mentioned a ‘twist’, and I just never saw that aspect of the film. The last act kind of drags on a bit and promises some insanity but then never delivers.

The End.

I think Devereux Milburn is a really talented guy, he certainly has an eye for atmosphere…but atmosphere can only get you so far. I think this film started out much stronger than it ended, but I’m looking forward to what he does next. Oh, and if you’re avoiding this because Lena Dunham is in the cast, don’t worry about her - she’s only in the film for like 2 minutes, and you probably won’t recognize her anyway. I think Honeydew is a pretty safe skip.

Home Sweet Home Alone (2021).

“Never as good as the originals.”

Directed by Dan Mazer

Written by Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell

Starring Archie Yates, Ellie Kemper, Rob Delaney, and Aisling Bea

The Setup.

A kid is left home alone when his parents go on vacation. Across town, a family is going to be forced to sell their house because they can no longer afford it. All of them cross paths because of a doll with an upside-down head.

The Review.

There’s a moment in Home Sweet Home Alone when a completely unnecessary side character exclaims, “Uh, this is garbage. I don't know why they are always trying to remake the classics. Never as good as the originals.” as he watches what we can only assume is an in-film sci-fi remake of the original film’s film within a film, “Angels with Filthy Souls”. He says it with a wink to the audience, but jokes like that only really work if the film is good…and Home Sweet Home Alone isn’t good. In fact, it’s terrible.

I’d love to see the original script for this, because it feels like there was a pretty decent premise originally that later morphed into what we saw on screen. My theory is that the film started as kind of an anti-Home Alone, with antagonists that you kind of like and a rich kid who you really dislike, but what we got was a film that wanted us to like both the antagonists and the kid because of a misunderstanding, and I ended up just hating everyone. It just kind of tries to be a remake of the original with added empathy for the villains, and that doesn’t work.

The gist of this one is that there’s an extremely unlikeable kid named Max and his rich family goes to Japan for Christmas for some reason, but they leave him behind. The day before, he was at an open house and eyed a doll, which the owners, Pam and Jeff, later find out is worth nearly a quarter of a million bucks. This money would really help them out, because Jeff is out of work and their house is reluctantly on the market…but after Max leaves, the doll is missing. They think Max stole it, which pits them head to head with the little shit and a bunch of violent as fuck traps as they try to get their doll back.

In any remake, especially a remake of a film with as much reverence as Home Alone, there are going to be moments of what they call ‘fan service’ - callbacks to the original that tell you, “Hey, we like the old movie, and we’re guessing you do too, so here’s something to make you hit the person next to you and say, “Hey, remember in the original when they did that too?” They ape a lot of the original here but it just feels weird, less like the filmmakers are nudging fans of the original, and more like, “Something like this happened in the original, so I guess we need to put it in this one.” The worst example of this happens when a kid named Ollie (who was just the worst) at the end of the movie does the good ol’ Kevin McAllister face that felt absolutely fucking painful. Or the fact that McAllister Security is their security company, as if nearly getting murdered twice as a child while fending bad guys off with flame throwers and Hot Wheels somehow translated into becoming a competitor to ADT.

In order for this film to work, they needed to have a villain, and it should have been the kid. Make him a dick. Make him a thief. Give the McKenzies a reason to get into the house to get what they need and make them work to avoid the traps instead of falling for every single one.

The End.

Me, the whole time I was watching this movie.

This film just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. This feels like a blatant cash grab with no heart and no soul and it’s just not fun. When it’s over, the film’s message is essentially, “As long as you have money, everything will be fine and you’ll be happy!”, which is a lot different when contrasted against the previous film I watched, Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas. It’s fails as a remake and bombs as an homage. It’s the worst of both worlds, and I cannot recommend this to anyone, especially fans of the original Home Alone and it’s first sequel.

I’ll end with a quote from Chris Columbus, director of the first Home Alone film who was never contacted about this one, because I cannot agree more. He said, “It's a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. What's the point? I'm a firm believer that you don't remake films that have had the longevity of Home Alone. You're not going to create lightning in a bottle again.” Lightning in a bottle? More like shit in a bottle.

Jingle All The Way (1996).

“It’s Turbo Time.”

Directed by the guy who dared direct A Christmas Story 2

Written by Randy Kornfield

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Jake Lloyd, and Turboman

The Stage.

Howard Langston, a guy who would rather sell mattresses than hang out with his family, struggles to snap up a Turbo Man action figure on Christmas Eve in the pre-eBay world. Now he’ll do whatever it takes to get the elusive doll, including assaulting people, breaking and entering, infiltrating a counterfeit toy ring, and performing dangerous stunts that could have killed dozens of innocents, and yes…this is a kid’s film.

The Review.

I had seen Jingle All The Way before when I was a teen. I always thought of it as a fun turn for Arnold Schwarzenegger essentially playing Harry Tasker from True Lies, but only the boring part of his persona and it was also really the only Sinbad movie I could ever sit through from start to finish, as he’s a supporting character and a pretty entertaining one at that. Watching it as an adult, it’s funnier, but it’s also way more disturbing.

The setup is that Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a guy named Howard who is so busy selling merchandise that he doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with his kid. He leaves early, is home late, and is generally disconnected from his family. When he misses his kid’s Karate belt ceremony, the only way he sees to make it up is to find this Turbo Man doll, one that he was supposed to pick up two weeks ago but forgot. Now he’s scouring the city of Minnesota for the action figure. Sinbad plays a mailman, a divorced father who’s trying to get the same doll for his kid, and the two keep clashing at the locations where the doll might turn up. Phil Hartman adds another fun wrinkle to Arnold’s neighborhood, another divorced dad whose goals include giving his son a good Christmas and fucking all of the women on the block.

The film’s message is a condemnation of consumerism - allowing us to laugh at the ridiculousness of holiday shoppers as they trample each other in the search of the season’s hottest ticket. We’ve all been there - from the Tickle Me Elmo to the Playstation 5, as supply deplete and demand soars. Of course it heads towards an ending in which the kid is the one who teaches everyone a lesson about sharing and what’s really important during the holidays, and everything seems fine when it’s all said and done - Howard realizes the most important thing in the world isn’t actually the mattresses of strangers, but rather his own family, and Sinbad gets to check a Turbo Man action figure into the police that hopefully retains it’s value when he gets out of prison.

If that last part sounds strange, believe me…it is. As Arnold and Sinbad try to get the upper hand on each other in search of Turboman, each commits felonies that would undoubtedly get them sent to the big house for a very, very long time. These include faking a mail bomb inside of an occupied radio station building, giving the police an actual mail bomb which blows up in the hands of an officer who, had this been real life, would have spent Christmas in a fucking grave, and co-opting a Christmas parade in a dangerous display of violence, one that sees Sinbad chase a child up a giant Christmas tree decoration on top of a building which topples and probably should have killed them as Arnold throws uncontrollable projectiles and flies around the crowded streets with an out of control jet pack, even sending him through an apartment window, nearly killing a family as they sit down to eat Christmas Eve dinner. Side note, the jetpack scene has some of the funniest looking late-90’s CGI this side of The Lawnmower Man.

As the film crawls to a close, Turbo Man finally reveals to his wife and son that it was mild mannered mattress salesman Howard Langston all along in a scene that will leave you thinking, “How did they not know that it was him, considering he has a very distinctive face and voice - maybe he doesn’t want to be at home because his family is just really stupid.” Anakin Skywalker decides that Sinbad’s kid might need the toy more than him, so he hands it over. Sinbad is happy that his kid will have a good Christmas, but his joy is short-sighted, as without a doubt, he’ll be spending the foreseeable future behind bars for his various crimes. At least his kid will get an action figure under the tree as a reminder of why his dad can’t join them for Christmas until he’s got a family of his own.

The End.

Lampooning aside, I like Jingle All The Way. Sure, it’s ridiculous, but a lot of kids movies are (I mean, any of the traps in Home Alone would kill a human being). Arnold is having fun and really hamming up his role, Sinbad is pretty funny, and Phil Hartman knocks it out of the park like he always did. If you somehow haven’t seen this and are looking for a holiday movie that your kids will like (my kid has spent a considerable amount of time acting like he’s Turbo Man today) and that you’ll be able to laugh with…or at, this is a solid entry to your Christmas watchlist.

The Laughing Dead (1989).

“I’m not a monster anymore Ivan, you gotta help me.”

Directed by Somtow Sucharitkul

Written by Somtow Sucharitkul

Starring Tim Sullivan, Wendy Webb, Premika Eaton, Patrick Roskowick, and the Aztec god of death

The Stage.

A bunch of weebs on an archaeological trip to Mexico visit some Mayan ruins and get more than they bargained for when they encounter a zealous group of Mexicans attempting to revive a deadly ancient ritual of their ancestors.

The Review.

Pound for pound, this is one of the weirdest, wildest movies I have ever fucking seen, and I watch a lot of bizarre stuff.

We start out at a church in Tuscon, Arizona, where a group of people are meeting up for a bus ride into Mexico, led by a disenfranchised priest, Father Ezekiel O’Sullivan. He’s got a few secrets, including an affair that he had with a nun named Tess a while back. That’s not a secret for very long, because they come to join the pack on the bus trip. She is a horrible mother and the kid is just an absolute piece of garbage. Also on the trip are a young Asian woman who’s father is dying and a few hippies just trying to get away for the weekend.

On their way, they stop at a hotel and cross paths with a cult leader named Um-Tzec, who really just wants to be a Wall Street stock broker. From there, the film gets absolutely insane. Some of the highlights include a person getting their head whacked off, which flies out the window and gets stuck in a basketball hoop, a woman who tears her own heart out, then tears the priests heart out, and swaps them, the possessed priest punching through someone’s head and then ripping a person’s arm off and shoving it down their throat while the hands are still moving inside the throat, and the whole thing culminates with a Mayan basketball game that pits the tourists vs. zombies while a man who turned into a giant horned slug fights a man who turned into a dinosaur. I’m not kidding, this all happens.

The first half is pretty sluggish, but once we get to the second half, all hell breaks loose. You can tell the film isn’t trying to be serious and I think that helps things, because the plot is absolutely bananas and the dialogue is horrendous. A highlight includes a woman who’s clearly possessed and the priest is like, “It’s just Tourettes, nothing to worry about.” It’s obviously low budget - most of the end of the film was probably filmed in one small warehouse, the walls of a rock cave are clearly made out of crumpled up paper and a woman gets tossed into a 'stone wall’, only to have it shake like flimsy cardboard upon impact, but the special effects are actually pretty great considering. Like really, legitimately great. The human-to-creature transformations and the different gore effects really work, and that scene I mentioned with the hand in the dude’s neck was straight up awesome, as was another as a guy gets his head crushed by a bus and we see an eyeball pop out.

The End.

The Laughing Dead will play great with a crowd. It’s got that weird late-80’s batshit charm to it with some killer special effects. It stars a bunch of horror and fantasy authors in the cast, some in their only role and I think this helps with the pulpy, worn paperback nature of the film. If you’re into wacky stuff and that ‘so bad, it’s good’ quality, this should be right up your alley. Hang in there for the first thirty minutes, you’ll be rewarded as the film progresses.

Vinegar Syndrome once again does a bang-up job with the print, especially for a film that had never had an American video release. It also includes a feature length commentary from the director as well as a mini-documentary that features many of the people involved in the film. This is another perfect example of how much effort Vinegar Syndrome puts into their releases, tracking these people down and convincing them to be on camera was probably no small feat.

Red Notice (2021).

“All’s fair in love and eggs.”

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

Written by Rawson Marshall Thurber

Starring Ryan Reynolds, The Rock, Wonder Woman, the camera guy from The Office, and some eggs

The Stage.

Okay, here we go…when an art thief sets up another art thief and the FBI agent looking for both of them, they bond over their shitty dads and become best friends. Oh, and also there are some big eggs involved.

The Review.

On paper, Red Notice seems like a movie I should love. I love The Rock. I love Ryan Reynolds. I don’t dislike Gal Gadot. A treasure hunting, globe hopping adventure film with wisecracking protagonists, big set pieces, and a whole lot of fun. It sounded like Oceans 11 meets Indiana Jones. And to be fair, it has most of that. People are making dick jokes while making daring escapes from Russian gulags and having comedic arguments while driving through an abandoned mineshaft. Unfortunately, what it lacks is the fun.

Obviously, I like movies that are big, dumb, and loud, but they’ve got to have heart or some emotion to them. It’s the reason why I love 1995’s Bad Boys so much. How can a movie with this kind of on-screen talent feel so vapid and soulless? The Rock normally oozes this bizarre asexual charisma while playing the exact same character in every movie he’s in, but he’s almost always fun to watch. By now, you should know exactly what you’re getting when you watch Ryan Reynolds, since outside of Voices and Mississippi Grind, he’s essentially been Berg from Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place while just changing jobs and hairdos for each role, but again, he’s almost always fun to watch. Then there’s Gal Gadot, who has doesn’t have any charisma, but looks nice in a dress. She got paid twenty-million dollars to put her name on the poster and play a slightly more cheerful, edgy version of Diana from Wonder Woman. No one here looks like they want to be here, and I think that’s the big problem with this film. The charisma that we’re used to seeing from the male leads is mysteriously missing, and you can’t force that. It feels like we’re watching robots from Westworld before they knew they could do cool shit on their own. When you have The Rock and Ryan Reynolds sharing so much screen time and an Ed Sheeran cameo is the funniest thing about your movie, it’s a problem.

Another problem is that with a budget of $200 million, how did the action feel this stale? There’s nothing new here and the stuff you’ve seen before wasn’t done better. Parkour scenes, car chases, shoot outs, foot chases, they all feel so bland. There’s one scene late in the movie that sees our characters and the police racing through an abandoned mine shaft and I just felt bored. On that note, how could the CGI look this bad? There’s a scene that features a bull that looks absurd, like Escape From L.A., how to make computer graphics on this $300 budget laptop YouTube tutorial level CGI.

The End.

I wanted to turn the movie off after 20 minutes and it never got better. In post-release promotional Instagram posts, The Rock ignores the critics and looks to the Rotten Tomatoes +90% audience score (an audience filled with people who benefited from a second telling of an early plot point being described, in detail, just minutes after we’d heard about it the first time, just in case you were too stupid to pick it up initially), but this movie is bad, and not in a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of way. This is just forgettable bad, and with a $200 million price tag, it rounds the corner from boring to infuriating.

Never once did I care about any of the characters or the stupid eggs they were looking for. The end of the film sets us up for a sequel, which of course we could all see coming as I don’t think there’s one death in the movie. Any time something explodes, people dive out of the way just in time to avoid being charred like my inevitable attempt at a deep fried Thanksgiving turkey ala G.I. Joe. This is an attempt by the filmmakers to avoid making your brain say, “Wait, I can’t like these people anymore because they murdered an Interpol agent over a golden fucking egg.”, not realizing that your brain is already thinking, “I don’t like these people because they’re just plain unlikable.” I think it goes without saying that I could not care less about a sequel.

One Shot (2021).

Directed by James Nunn

Written by Jamie Russell and James Nunn

Starring Scott Adkins, Ashley Greene, Waleed Elgadi, and a really good camera man

The Stage.

An elite squad of Navy SEALs on a covert mission to transport a prisoner off a CIA black site island prison are trapped when insurgents attack.

The Review.

One Shot could be used to describe the soldiers predicament - one shot to complete their mission and get off of the island with the prisoner, but it most certainly refers to the gimmick used to make the film - the entire thing is one shot. I know there are a lot of people that are absolutely against gimmick films - meaning the only appeal of the film is said gimmick, and that without it, the film doesn’t really work. Past examples are films that are only really interesting when seen in 3D, or 1981’s Polyester, which introduced the scratch and sniff “Oderama” to theater-goers. One take films (or ‘oners’) aren’t new - films like 2014’s Academy Award winning Birdman was made to appear like one take, and a year later, the film Victoria was made legitimately only using one take. When you watch a film like this, the real measure is, “is it as good without the gimmick?” In this case, the answer is no, which makes One Shot all the more impressive.

When looked at from a script perspective, it’s a pretty standard DTV action flick. It’s got a pretty contrived script - the one man who can stop a bomb from going off is locked in a compound, so it’s up to the SEAL team to get him out before Washington DC detonates. It’s filled with eye-roll-worthy dialogue and pretty stock characters. Shot in a traditional sense, this would probably be a forgettable little siege film with pretty basic action, but the real charm of One Shot lies in the craft it would take to create something like this.

I feel like I’m pretty adept at finding the cuts in sequences that are supposed to look like one take, and I only noticed one moment in here where it was a definite cut. The rest looked pretty seamless unless I just missed it. We start on a helicopter and land on the island base. The rest of the film takes place in and around the base, as a transport truck doubling for a terrorist clown car rams through the front gate and then expels dozens of disposable NPCs. The film is then wall to wall action as Jake, played by Scott Adkins, works with his team to hold off the terrorists until help arrives. The thin story moves along at a brisk pace as they stop every few seconds to put down bad guys. The camera then floats between SEAL and terrorist, and we spend some time with the maniacal Hakim Charef (played by Jess Liaudin) who’s running the insurgents. He’s brutal and shows absolutely no mercy. A scene in which he walks with a youngster, explaining the honor of having a bomb vest strapped on so that he can destroy a hallway blockade is particularly chilling, and because of the gimmick, we get to see the entire conversation as they enter the hallway up through the attempt, certainly giving the actors playing the SEALs a breather at the same time.

Because it’s all done in one take, there’s not a whole lot of time for backstory or personality, but somehow I still ended up caring about several of the Navy SEALs, particularly Brandon Whitaker (played by Emmanuel Imani). To the film’s credit, there are some surprising deaths as well, and again, because of the way it’s shot, there are no sentimental moments, no slow motion shots, no flashbacks or montages. Characters you’ve spent a significant amount of time with get a bullet to the head and just…die. It’s unceremonious and cold, and I actually really liked that aspect of the film. Adkins does the heavy lifting and the amount of cardio that goes into a film like this boggles the mind. His performance comes with some neat small touches, like changing a mag when it’s still half-full and putting it back into his pocket instead of chucking it onto the ground like so many cinematic soldiers do.

The End.

One Shot is a film that falls into so many standard action movie cliches, but this is one of those cases where I didn’t care because of its gimmick. It’s an entertaining ride with superb levels of technicality that deserve to be seen. The actors put on solid performances and you can’t help but think of how stressful it must have been to perform in this movie, as one small fuck up could have ruined the entire movie up until that point. Instead of distracting from the action, the camera puts you right in the middle of it, and because of that, you form relationships with the soldiers involved. One Shot is a very fun action flick and aside from the cast and the cover art, a typical movie-goer might not even know it was a direct to video flick. I have no problem recommending this to action movie fans.

Holiday Horror: The Ultimate Guide to Christmas Evil (159 Films).

Christmas-themed horror has always been a favorite of mine. Something about the juxtaposition of the holiday cheer and bright white snow with the dark of night and stained red ice.

In the spirit of the holidays, I put together a list of 159 (!) Christmas/holiday themed horror films.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK to Holiday Horror: The Ultimate Guide to Christmas Evil

I’m going to be updating this bad boy, so if I’m missing one, let me know and I’ll add it.