Top Ten of 2022

 This was not my best year for posting movies but I did get more than in 2020, 2018, and 2010.  Out of 165 total, I saw 11 from 2022, which is convenient because that's one more than you need for a top ten list!  So let's review my picks.

10.  Top Gun: Maverick - Did we strictly need a sequel?  No.  (I snuck this in literally on the 30th so the full review is forthcoming.)  It is definitely a Top Gun movie, though, and worth a watch, just for the nostalgia factor.

9.  Bullet Train - This was fun but Brad Pitt needs to let go of being an action hero.  Man is 60 years old.

8.  Uncharted - A surprise, but a welcome one.  I liked the buddy aspect between Holland and Wahlberg.

7.  Black Adam - Oh, DC.  You keep trying!

6.  Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - This ended up being lower than I thought it was going to be because it made me sad every time I thought of it.

5.  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - Zombies!  Bruce Campbell!  Sam Raimi sneaking in horror!

4.  Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - This is kind of a cheat, but I did see it over Christmas.  Full review is coming (probably on Monday) but here's a teaser:  it's excellent and you should definitely watch it.  

3.  Weird:  The Al Yankovic Story - I love Al Yankovic and this was a hysterical "true" story that perfectly encapsulated why I love Weird Al.

2.  Prey - Just a great Predator movie.  Solid in every sense.  

1.  The Gray Man - This is particular to me because I am a sucker for assassin movies and I loved the interplay between Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling.  I would watch this a billion times.  

As always, this is completely subjective.  These are just the movies I loved (or at least, saw) this year.  Next year has some gems coming up as well.

M3GAN - killer dolls are always a good time

Shotgun Wedding - This is probably going to be stupid but it may be fun stupid.  Like a cross between the first half hour of The Punisher and Monster-in-Law.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey - Let's get real, this is going to be horrible.  It's a horror take on Winnie the Pooh because the character went into the public domain.  Like next year is going to be wall-to-wall Sherlock Holmes stories because it is also going to go into public domain.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - I'm going to watch it.  Marvel has been very low-key in Phase 4 and I can't tell yet if it's just diminishing returns or if they're respecting the ebb and flow of story hype.

Cocaine Bear - Again, probably going to be stupid but high chance of it being funny stupid.

Creed 3 - Michael B. Jordan is going to direct and star.  Could be good, could be mid-tier.

Shazam!: Fury of the Gods - I am definitely going to have to watch Shazam again to remember what the hell happened but I'll probably watch the sequel.

John Wick: Chapter 4 - yeah.  Already has my money.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - Chris Pine singing?  Dungeons & Dragons?  Yes.

Renfield - I haven't heard a lot about this but it's Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage so I'm down.

Evil Dead Rise - Even if this is just a blasphemous reimagining, that's still pretty on brand.

Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 - Again, I am on the Marvel ship until the inevitable iceberg.

The Little Mermaid - On the fence.  On the one hand, I am anti-Disney making ham-handed live-action remakes to retain copyright, but on the other, I love racist tears, so bring it on.

Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse - YES.

Elemental  - Eh.  It's the new Pixar but the concept just isn't wowing me.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - Maybe this will be good.  I do not have high hopes.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One - Tom Cruise (also 60) is just going to keep making these until a stunt kills him.  

Oppenheimer - the next Christopher Nolan.  

Barbie - I wasn't going to see it, but the 2001 parody trailer kind of sold me on it.

The Marvels - More Kamala Khan!

The Last Voyage of the Demeter - Holy shit, this has been in development almost as long as I have been blogging.

Blue Beetle - new superheroes!

The Equalizer 3 - It's hypocritical but I don't mind Denzel Washington as aging action hero.  

The Nun 2 - The Nun was not great but neither was Annabelle and its sequel was amazing.  Maybe the same magic here.

The Expendables 4 -  Geriatric action heroes strike again!

Kraven the Hunter - Aaron Taylor-Johnson is going to re-invent himself in the Marvel universe from Quicksilver to Kraven.

Dune Part 2 - Space drugs!  Imperialism!  Worms!

The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes -  Nobody asked for a Hunger Games prequel and yet here we are.

Trolls 3 - I fucking love the Trolls movie.  I still haven't seen the sequel but I am already committed.

The Color Purple -  This is a movie version of the musical of the original stage play, which was already a movie.

Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom - this was supposed to come out this year but got pushed.  Maybe they'll fix some of the CGI issues.

So that's next year's upcoming slate.  There will probably be new additions as things get titles and release dates so it's by no means exhaustive.  Happy 2023.

The Spectacular Now (2013)

Happy Boxing Day!  Here's an unrelated movie!  This is in no way perfect, I don't care what that blurb says.  Content warning: alcoholism, drunk driving

Sutter (Miles Teller) is a high school alcoholic.  His girlfriend, Cassidy (Brie Larson), dumps him so while he's waiting for her to come back, he takes up with Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a shy, bookish girl who just needs to live a little.  

This felt like a story I had heard 1000 times before.  Sutter isn't particularly unique, or likable, or sympathetic.  Aimee is a cardboard cutout of a character, with no sense of independent existence outside of Sutter's influence.  Teller and Woodley are fine performers, they're just not given any material to really work with in this instance.  It's a dime-a-dozen melodrama, saved only from being a Hallmark Channel original by centering on Sutter.  That, and the incredible supporting cast of Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Lee, Bob Odenkirk, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

We all know that character dramas are not my favorite.  Maybe they're yours.  Maybe you enjoy the tragedy of wasted potential.  If so, The Spectacular Now is streaming on HBO Max.  Go for it.

Next weekend is my end of year list (along with everyone else's) where we look forward to watching new stuff!  Let's see what fresh horrors 2023 holds!

The Disaster Artist (2017)

 Merry Christmas to one and all (except James Franco.  And probably Tommy Wiseau.  But definitely Franco.)    It took me three years to watch this movie.  I should have just given up after I quit the second time, but I remembered that the fast forward button existed.

Greg (Dave Franco) is trying to break into acting.  He's going to all the classes, reading all the materials, but it's just not clicking.  He wants to be a free-spirit like Tommy (James Franco).  Tommy is seemingly independently wealthy, intentionally ambiguous about his past, and whole-heartedly believes that he will be the next James Dean.  Tommy needs Greg, as a foil, as a confidant, as a toady.  Greg needs Tommy, as a breadwinner, as a cheerleader, as a mentor.  So when Tommy just up and moves to LA and offers Greg a place to live while they both reach for their dreams, why not?  And when LA doesn't immediately offer them fame and fortune, why not write their own movie?  And star in it.  And produce it.

By now, everyone who is the least interested in movies has heard of The Room.  It is a legendarily bad movie that crossed the Rubicon to become a cult classic.  No, I haven't seen it.  Such things must be done with friends in the right mood and the stars have never aligned in its favor for me.  Similarly, I've never seen Plan 9 from Outer Space or any Roger Corman that wasn't through the lens of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I have limits to what I will endure for the sake of art.

The Disaster Artist tests those limits to the breaking point.  Even though it is merely a reflection of the behind-the-scenes and not the thing itself, it is excruciating in its cruelty.  

This is not a portrait of a tortured-in-his-own-mind, hilariously-inept filmmaker.  But it is also not a lampoon of a raging egomaniac getting his just desserts.  Tommy isn't the villain, even though he does come off as a misogynistic, racist tool.  He's just pathetic.  But not pathetic enough to garner sympathy.  The movie saves all that for Greg, as Tommy ruins both their careers.  I think it's going for a warts-and-all approach but the guy is all wart, no frog.  And yet it still feels like punching down whenever they make fun of him because he genuinely doesn't get it.  This movie is a mean-spirited tragedy with a laugh track.

It's currently streaming on Kanopy (with a library card) and Paramount+ (with a subscription).  Avoid.

Bullet Train (2022)

  Merry Christmas Eve!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!

Ladybug (Brad Pitt) is filling in on a snatch-and-grab in Tokyo.  His instructions were simple:  get on a bullet train, retrieve a briefcase with a train sticker on the handle, and get off at the next stop.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  But the train is filled with assassins, kidnappers, the vengeance-obsesessed, and an extremely venomous snake.  Now Ladybug is stressed depressed lemon zest.  And just when his therapy was going so well.

This is another John Wick/Gunpowder Milkshake clone from director David Leitch.  It's fine.  The action sequences are good.  The trailer made it seem like it was going to be funnier, but it's funny enough.  The psychotherapy-New Age-babble gets a little old but just press mute and all will be better.  Brian Tyree Henry is fantastic, the stand-out performance for me, and Joey King has a very bright future ahead.  The final reveal of the Big Bad was a little anticlimactic and took me right out of my suspension of disbelief, but I don't regret the watch.  It's a decent enough action comedy.  

Bullet Train is currently streaming on Netflix.

Micki and Maude (1984)

  This movie is gross.  It should absolutely be consigned to the trash heap of history.

Reporter Rob Salinger (Dudley Moore) wants a baby in the worst way but his high-powered wife, Micki (Ann Reinking), just got an appointment to the state Superior Court as a judge and doesn't want to put her career on hold.  So Rob begins an affair with a cellist, Maude (Amy Irving), who becomes pregnant.  Rob tells her he'll leave his wife, but then finds out Micki is also pregnant.  So he lies to both women, marries Maude in a bigamist union, and attempts to be husband to both.  

This is the kind of lazy, reductionist crap that was probably supposed to appear progressive.  Like, "look, this man wants to be a caregiver!  Wacky!"  It does not hold up to modern scrutiny, obviously, but it doesn't really even hold up by the standards of its time.  This was not a new or original concept in 1984.  Hell, it wasn't even new in the 1940s.  Look at His Girl Friday.  Almost anything with Cary Grant, really.

The only way you could remake this as a comedy today is if you made it clear that Rob was the villain, a bumblefuck of a man trying to scam two women.  But this movie doesn't deserve a redemption arc. It does feature the American film debut of André the Giant (he was Dagoth the fish god in Conan the Destroyer but was not credited as such) but that's not enough of a reason to watch it.  Just watch The Princess Bride for the 1000th time instead.  Micki and Maude is streaming on Tubi.

Chungking Express (1994)

  This was tied for 88th place with The Shining on Sight and Sound's Best Movie poll, released a couple of weeks ago.  Not sure how that sort of thing gets tabulated as those are two wildly different animals, but that's film nerds for you.

Chunking Express links two separate vignettes of lonely, heart-broken cops (and the deeply problematic women they're in love with) by vibes only.  He (Takeshi Kaneshiro), was dumped by a woman just before his birthday, so he drowns his sorrows in 30 cans of pineapple chunks, and then with alcohol, promising himself that he will fall in love with the next woman to walk through the door.  A blonde-wigged criminal (Brigitte Lin) walks in and He attaches himself to her, desperate for any connection.  Meanwhile, Cop 663 (Tony Leung) is slowly moving on after being dumped by a stewardess, but not fast enough for Faye (Faye Wong), who works at the sandwich shop 663 stops by every night of his shift.  She reads his Dear John letter, pockets the key, and begins letting herself into his apartment when he is out.

Like I said, Deeply Problematic.  Kaneshiro and Leung are incredibly charismatic actors, and probably the only reasons this film works at all.  They both manage a deep vulnerability without seeming weak.  Lin is enigmatic, world-weary, femme fatale all the way, but Wong is a prize away from full Cracker Jacks no matter how Manic Pixie she is.  I kept yelling "RUN, MAN, SAVE YOURSELF" at my TV.

No, I don't think this is equal to or better than The Shining.  And I don't even like The Shining; I think it's overrated as hell.  Wong Kar-Wai is a master auteur but this film used an extremely annoying camera motion where everything looked like it had been dragged through an oil slick.  If you're prone to seasickness, maybe give this a pass.  Otherwise, it's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Flight of the Phoenix (2004)

  Another from the Christy files.  It's a remake of the 1965 film of the same name, which I have not seen, and it is a quintessential 90s movie... made about a decade too late.

Captain Frank Townes (Dennis Quaid) was hired to pick up an oil crew from a site that was shutting down in the Gobi Desert.  The disgruntled engineers, led by Kelly (Miranda Otto), their corporate shill (Hugh Laurie), and a random hitchhiker (Giovanni Ribisi) load up, but the plane is over its weight and Frank unwisely attempts to fly through a sandstorm.  Stranded miles off course with very little food or water, the survivors must decide whether to sit in place and hope to be rescued or follow the random hitchhiker, who claims to be an aeronautical engineer, and cobble together a smaller plane out of their wrecked big one.

You know how I know Mad Max: Fury Road is a phenomenal movie?  It was so iconic that I recognized the desert in Flight of the Phoenix as Namibia.  Probably because the actual Gobi has a lot of scrubland and vegetation which doesn't film so well when you're going for an "abandoned" aesthetic, or maybe for budget reasons.  Doesn't matter.  They didn't shoot on location and that's one of the very few times I've been extremely aware of that.

This isn't a terrible movie.  It's not great, but not terrible.  There's a lot of yelling, a lot of fake philosophizing, some truly random deaths, and a lot of shirtless dudes.  I will give this bonus points for having a woman in a speaking role, not sexually objectifying her, and having people of color, none of the which the original can boast.  I think they leaned too hard on making Ribisi's character "weird" so you would question his motives, instead of allowing the story beats to happen organically.  Like they really wanted a human villain instead of Nature as villain.  It just felt overplayed to me.

The 2004 version is currently streaming through Starz and the 1965 original is playing on Paramount+ so there's multiple chances for you to see sweaty men yelling in a desert.

Tootsie (1982)

  The international poster is much classier than the American versions, which are variants on Man in Dress!  But Still Straight so OK!

After being blackballed for his shitty pretentious attitude, theater actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) throws on a sensible skirt and auditions for the role of Emily Kimberly, no-nonsense hospital administrator on a long-running soap opera.  Wacky Hi-jinks Ensue as he struggles to deal with rampant sexism, incompetent male leads, his burgeoning crush on a co-worker (Jessica Lange), and the sudden fame of "Dorothy Michaels" far eclipsing that of "Michael Dorsey".  

It is shocking how poorly this holds up.  I was expecting a comedy classic, not this wet fart of an essentialism argument.  Setting aside the stench of homophobia permeating every frame, it is insulting that the audience is meant to believe Dorsey can slap on a wig and some eye shadow and instantly pass as femme in public spaces, much less around other actors.  That's all it takes, gents!  Then you too can easily and instantly command respect in your workplace by behaving exactly the way you used to, but this time in heels!

This is not a knock on the makeup and costuming team, which did a phenomenal job.  Hoffman is a great actor and probably spent a large amount of time studying and prepping before taking this role.  There are still some jokes that land, enough for me to see why this would have been a hit 40 years ago, but not enough to make it bearable in this cursed year of 2022.

Actually, this would make a fascinating double feature with The Danish Girl.  Both are flawed but you can see the progression of ideals as they blunder along.

I will say this was a showcase for George Gaynes, an underrated character actor.  His delivery of the line "Does Jeff know?" was perfect comedic timing and inflection.  Tootsie is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and Hulu, if you must.

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

  My mom recommended this one ages ago and I tried to watch it last year but I got to the part where Madame Mallory incites a hate crime and had to turn it off.  I finally went back to it yesterday and finished.

The Kadam family move to a quiet village in France as political refugees and potential restauranteurs.  They set up their traditional Indian cuisine across from the other restaurant in town, a Michelin-starred establishment run under the gimlet eye of Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren).  Hassan (Manish Dayal) tries to win over their prickly neighbor (and her pretty sous-chef (Charlotte Le Bon)) by mastering French cooking while his father (Om Puri) is happy to fight fire with fire.  Can food build a bridge after it's been burned?

Despite the fact that it took me a year to finish, this is a very sweet movie about overcoming bias and prejudice, sure to be a hit with older relatives in case you're looking for something non-threatening and safe to watch over the holidays.  

It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime and Hulu.

Ant-Man (2015)

I think I've seen this now at least four times.  It remains one of the most fun entries in the MCU.  Quantumania is coming out in a couple of months and re-watching the original has renewed my interest in this series.  

The de-aging still blows me away,  but what really stood out to me this time was Cory Stoll as Yellowjacket.  He took a very formulaic villain and made him stand out.  Darren Cross was written as a soulless corporate megalomaniac and it would have been easy to just let the character be flat, but Stoll really added a layer of twisted joy and I think it made all the difference.

10/29/17  This is the first time I've rewatched this film and I still think it works well as a standalone.  I didn't really like Evangeline Lilly's character the first time I watched it but she has grown on me.  Especially since I've seen some of the behind-the-scenes shots of her getting ready for Ant-Man and the Wasp, which should be coming out next year, I believe.  I'm really excited about that one.  Best of all, it should be coming out after I graduate, so I might actually have the time and strength to go see it.  Originally posted 25 Jul 2015.    I actually saw this the Friday it was released.  Christy and her mom came up for her commencement ceremony and we went out the night before.  I had really mixed feelings going in.  This was a difficult production to get off the ground and the internet buzz surrounding the months leading up to its premiere was worrisome.  But initial reviews were glowing with praise so I decided to give it a chance.  It's not the best film Marvel has produced but it stands on its own.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a convicted thief.  Recently released, he struggles to find a stable enough job that will allow him to get back on his feet and convince his ex (Judy Greer) to give him visitation rights to his daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson).  His former cell mate, Luis (Michael Pena), has a line on a safe just begging to be cracked and Scott reluctantly agrees, only to find a weird suit inside.  This introduces him to the suit's creator, Dr. Henry Pym (Michael Douglas), who wants Scott to help him keep the technology out of the hands of his dangerously unstable protegee, Darren Cross (Cory Stoll).  Scott must learn to master the suit's powers in time to stop Cross selling the Pym particles to HYDRA.

As a heist movie, it's only okay.  As a comedy, it's hilarious.  Michael Pena steals every scene he is in and rapper T.I. is surprisingly charismatic.  Paul Rudd has the same sense of humor he has had since Clueless, which is not a bad thing.  It is a known quantity.

The movie weaves into the Marvel universe but feels a little forced, especially since they telegraph Ant-Man's involvement in the upcoming Captain America sequel with all the subtlety of a neon sign. On a completely unrelated note, the digital mapping they did to make Michael Douglas look younger for a flashback to the 80's was un-fucking-believably good.  The man is 71-years-old and he looked on the young side of 40.  That's amazing.

The Danish Girl (2015)

  This is technically the book cover, but it functions just as well as a movie poster if you just ignore the bits at the bottom.  Content warning:  dysphoria, transphobia

Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) is a portraitist in Copenhagen.  As a lark, she helps her husband (Eddie Redmayne) transform into an alter ego named Lili for a party.  Lili seizes the chance for freedom and begins pursuing surgical options to have her physical body changed to match her conception of herself.  Gerda is supportive but struggles to hold on as Lili distances herself from all aspects of her deadname.

I get that this was attempting to be sympathetic and sensitive.  But it ultimately relegates Lili into being a side character in her own story.  **SPOILER**  I don't know if it technically falls under the Kill Your Gays trope because Lili does get a version of happiness, but she does die in the film, so I can see how it would be triggering for people.  **END SPOILER**  The best parts of this movie are the costumes.  They are incredibly sumptuous.  The rest is gloomy and glacially paced.

This is based on a real person, Lili Elbe, whose journals were turned into a book in 1933.  Elbe was one of the very first people to receive gender confirming surgery, an extremely dangerous and experimental procedure at the time.  Her medical records were destroyed in the Allied bombing of Dresden, which is an unfortunate loss to history.  Other historical records of her contemporaries were destroyed by the Nazis.  

Trans men are men.  Trans women are women.  Full stop.  Let people be who they want to be.  There is a current rise in transphobia and stochastic terror directed at the LGBT+ community and a concurrent rise in fascism.  Don't be on the wrong side.  

Annie (1982)

  This is the version of Annie that I grew up with.  It's been remade several times since then but this is adaptation that sticks with me.

Annie (Aileen Quinn) is an orphan chosen at random to go live for a week with war profiteer and billionaire, Oliver Warbucks (Albert Finney).  Warbucks comes to care for the plucky youngster, but an unscrupulous con man (Tim Curry) hatches a plot with the orphanage owner, Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett) to pose as Annie's parents and claim her for the reward money.

Ah, my favorite sub-genre of fiction:  billionaire suddenly stops viewing relationships as transactional, puts others above himself.  Always a classic.

More than other adaptations, this one feels like a cartoon from the 1920s, complete with ridiculous racist caricatures.  The music is the best part of it, with performances from Burnett, Curry, Ann Reinking, and Bernadette Peters.  It's campy, syrupy, and shallow in its declarations of hope but sometimes that's all you want.

The Mexican (2001)

  It's been a minute since we've had a Christy movie but this is definitely one.

Jerry (Brad Pitt) is a perennial fuckup and his girlfriend, Sam (Julia Roberts) has had it.  A chance accident led Jerry to be indebted to a mobster and as a final repayment, Jerry is told to go to Mexico to retrieve an antique pistol rumored to be cursed.  Every single thing that could go wrong, does and Jerry fumbles his way back and forth across the countryside.  Meanwhile, Sam is taken hostage by Leroy (James Gandolfini) as an incentive for Jerry to get his shit together.  

Gandolfini is the best part of this movie and he's not in it nearly enough.  Pitt and Roberts have zero chemistry together so the romance aspect falls a little flat for me.  Mr. and Mrs. Smith this ain't.  It's fine as a comedy of errors.  It kind of reminded me of Pure Luck with Martin Short and Daniel Glover in that respect.  It didn't blow me away and I felt like the first half dragged along interminably, but once it got going I was content enough.  It is streaming on Paramount+ if you're interested in a time capsule from the turn of the century.

Danny Collins (2014)

  This is a cute, middling film.  It's not terrible, it's not great.  It's very middle-of-the-road, especially for actors of this caliber, but work is work, right?

Danny Collins (Al Pacino) achieved rock star status after starting as a humble folk musician.  As a birthday present, his manager (Christopher Plummer) gives him a letter written to Danny from John Lennon in 1971 but never delivered.  The letter was sold to a memorabilia collector instead.  Forty years later, Danny finally reads what was written to him and vows to make changes.  He cancels his "greatest hits" tour, gives up booze and drugs, and camps out in a New Jersey Hilton to write original songs for the first time in forever, much to the consternation of the hotel manager (Annette Benning).  New Jersey is not just as far away from L.A. as he can manage, it's also the home of his estranged son (Bobby Cannavale), daughter-in-law (Jennifer Gardner), and granddaughter (Giselle Eisenberg).  

There is nothing really new in this variant of an aging-rocker-mid-life-crisis tale except the John Lennon letter, which was based on a real story.  Steve Tiltson, a Welsh folk rocker, actually got a letter from Lennon 34 years too late, because someone at the magazine it was sent to sold it instead of delivering it.  Tiltson never reached the Barry Manilow-esque levels depicted in the film, but he has had a 40-year career in the music, so he's doing all right.

This feels like a small, indie film that inexplicably has a cast full of Oscar and Emmy nominees and winners.  Like Barack Obama delivering a middle school book report.  Nice, but a little overkill.

It's currently streaming on Kanopy.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

  Content warning:  suicide, war violence, domestic violence, animal death (deer), homophobic slurs, Russian roulette, compound fracture

Three small town friends, Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Steve (John Savage) are excited and happy to serve their country in Vietnam.  One comes back with a chest full of medals, one comes back with one working limb, and one comes back in a metal box.  

So here's what we're not going to do:  we're not going to do a think piece about the horrors of war, the particular willful blindness of patriotic jingoism, or PTSD.  This movie has been out for over 40 years and smarter, better people than I have written those pieces.

What we are going to talk about is Christopher Walken.  He won an Oscar for this and it was probably the most well-deserved Oscar for a film role in history.  He out-acted Meryl fucking Streep.  Do you know how hard that is?  Now, if you're like me and you've mostly ever seen him as the villain or as a dancer or comedian in silly, supporting roles, this movie may well come as a shock to you.  (I mean, most of the movie is designed to shock and appall you.  Look at those content tags.)  Walken is the beating heart of this film.  

We can also talk about Michael Cimino's direction here.  The symmetry, the foreshadowing, the nature-as-religion overtones of Heaven and Hell.  Beautiful.  He also won an Oscar.  

Is this, as the original film poster says, "one of the most important and powerful films of all time"?  Mmmm.  Powerful, certainly.  Important?  Ehhhhh.  I think the documentaries of the time, the news footage, and the historical background and global context are probably more important.  But this is an incredibly well-made, harrowing film that I personally will never watch again.  Images from this film are seared into my brain now.  I can't fix that.  

But you can join me in viewing those images!  The Deer Hunter is currently streaming on Peacock, but only at their Premium level.

Red Hill (2010)

  Have you ever wanted to watch a movie from the POV of the evil townspeople from Hang 'Em High?  Good news!

It's Constable Shane Cooper's (Ryan Kwanten) first day on the job in the town of Red Hill, Australia (I don't know what state and I'm too lazy to look it up).  It's not going well.  He's misplaced his gun in one of the moving boxes, his new boss (Steve Bisley) is kind of a hardass, he doesn't know where anything is, there's no extra car so he has to ride Old Beth, and oh yeah, an escaped convict named Jimmy Conway (Tommy Lewis) has come back to wreak vengeance on the town that sent him to prison.

This was a damn good revenge Western.  If you've only ever seen Kwanten in True Blood, he's much more than just a pretty face, but this movie belongs to Tommy Lewis.  He says precisely seven words in the entire runtime.  Everything else is conveyed through his facial expressions, no easy feat when half of it is burn scar prosthetics.  It's streaming for free on Tubi but it's absolutely worth buying if you're into Westerns at all.

Footnote (2011)

  Thanksgiving is this week.  Maybe your family loves each other and you'd like to know what it's like to be dysfunctional.  Here's the movie for you!

Professor Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) is thrilled to have finally won the prestigious Israel Prize for Talmudic Studies after having dedicated 30 years of his life to reconciling minutiae.  The only problem is that the actual winner was his son, Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), also a Professor Shkolnik, also a researcher in Talmudic Studies, and also with the same first initial (in Hebrew).  Uriel learns of the administrative error and is paralyzed with indecision.  He knows exactly how much it would mean to his father, but he also desperately craves the recognition from his peers.

This film is set up as a comedy but I failed to find any humor in it.  Both Professors Shkolnik are fragile narcissists and bad fathers and I could not feel any sympathy for either of them.  Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine having my head so far up my own ass that I would be professionally jealous of my child.

It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and for free on Tubi.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

  While suffering a little from sequel-itis, the follow-up to Black Panther is a worthy entry to the canon.

After the sudden death of T'Challa, the kingdom of Wakanda is feeling the pressure.  Outside interests have seen the monarch's passing as an opportunity to strike against the nation for its vibranium, but Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is a stalwart defender, even as she struggles with her grief.  Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) has thrown herself into her work, trying to synthesize a replacement for the heart-shaped herb that gives the Black Panther its power, but is intrigued when the king of an underwater empire, Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), offers an alliance and a threat.  His kingdom, Talokan, also has vibranium and an American scientist, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), developed a machine that detects it, putting Namor's people at risk for discovery.  He wants Wakanda to join Talokan and wage war against all the surface nations, starting with Williams' death.  Shuri and Okoye (Danai Gurira) go after the young woman to get to her first.

The filmmakers and cast made a point of treating late star Chadwick Boseman's role as T'Challa with absolute respect.  There are no cheap tricks, no deep-fakes, or re-used footage to make it look like he's still there.  He is gone and the film acknowledges that.

But all is not doom and gloom.  The story is good, Namor is just sympathetic enough to be a really good villain, and there's a sense of tragic inevitability that adds to the mythological feeling.

Honestly, Namor is so much better than Aquaman it's not even funny.  I almost feel bad comparing them but the costumes, the underwater sequences, the CGI, and the makeup are So Much Better in Wakanda Forever.  Ruth Carter should probably get another Oscar for costumes.  We'll see if she does.  And hey, maybe Aquaman 2 will fix all the things that were cheap and tacky about the first film.  I'm not holding my breath, but maybe.  

Tim's Vermeer (2013)

  As far as Rich Guy Vanity Projects go, recreating a Vermeer from first principles is harmless, verging on useful.  Unlike, say, tanking a microblogging platform because people made fun of you...

Tim Jenison is a millionaire inventor of 3D computer imagery software.  He becomes interested in/obsessed with determining how Johannes Vermeer, 17th century Dutch painter, created photographic quality oil paintings.  Conventional scholarship dictates that Vermeer was a savant, but Jenison believes that Vermeer was an innovator and inventor.  Tim goes on a multi-year journey to meet with experts, build his own replica of Vermeer's studio, and learn a half dozen disciplines from carpentry to glazing to grinding his own paints and lenses, in order to paint a copy of Vermeer's The Music Lesson with no artistic training.

It's almost more impressive to see the single-minded devotion (and accompanying funding) to proving a theory than seeing a non-artist paint Vermeer.  Is it world changing?  No.  Is it interesting?  If you like the intersection between art and science.  Produced and directed by professional skeptics Penn & Teller, Tim's Vermeer is light, engaging, and funny.  It's currently streaming on Starz.

Jem and the Holograms (2015)

  I was an 80s girl who loved the cartoon Jem so please believe me when I say this movie is a soulless piece of nostalgia bait that vanishes like sea foam.

Jerrica Benton (Aubrey Peebles) is painfully shy, so she uploads a video of her singing to YouTube while wearing a disguise.  The video is an overnight sensation as people try and figure out the "mystery" of Jem, Jerrica's alter ego.  A record executive (Juliette Lewis) finds her and convinces her to sign to Starlight Records, but Jerrica won't go without her band consisting of her three sisters.  The four arrive in Los Angeles and discover that Jerrica's dad (Barnaby Carpenter) had left her a scavenger hunt to find pieces of his unfinished robot, Synergy, that coincidentally take her on a journey of self-discovery.

This is a movie based on a toy property so it was already going to be a shameless cash grab but that didn't have to be a negative.  Jem commits the cardinal sin of pandering.  It desperately wants to be cool and effortless but misunderstands its target audience.  Probably because it was written, produced, and directed by middle-aged dudes.  Not a single woman was involved in this.  All the characters are shallow caricatures, a lot of the creative content is ripped straight from YouTube (which feels icky and exploitative), and the original music is saccharine generic pablum that sounds like pop but isn't.  Like someone said "how hard can it be to write a pop song?" and then proved exactly how hard.  Pop music is pop because it forges a universal (hence, popular) connection between artist and listener.  These songs didn't do that for me.  As always, your mileage may vary.  But based on the Rotten Tomatoes score  (22% for critics, 40% for audience), I'd say I'm in the majority.

I have no idea if the original cartoon still holds up.  I remember watching the VHS over and over when I was like 7, but I don't actually remember anything about it other than colors and music.  The series is apparently streaming on Tubi if you want to check it out. 

The movie is available on Netflix but is not worth it.

Henry and June (1990)

  I don't know anything about Anaïs Nin, except what I just read on Wikipedia.  I've never read any of her books/diaries so I have no idea if any of this movie is based on fact.  Content warning:  sexual assault

Anaïs Nin (Maria de Madeiros) is living in Paris with her husband, Hugo (Richard E. Grant), when she is introduced to American writer Henry Miller (Fred Ward).  She and Miller have a torrid affair, exacerbated by Nin's attraction/obsession with Miller's wife, June (Uma Thurman).  

That's it.  That's the plot.  I was trying to think of anything else the movie is about and I'm coming up completely blank.

There is a lot of sex in this movie, but none of it is really explicit.  I don't know why it got an NC-17 rating as opposed to just a hard R unless it's because of the LGBTQ angle.  Or maybe the naked contortionists.  Whatever.

In between all the sex scenes, there are musings on what it means to be an artist, a writer, accepting criticism, translating feelings into words, and the sheer impossibility of truly capturing someone else's personality or spark.  Medeiros plays Nin with a wide-eyed doe-like quality, an enduring naïveté contrasting sharply with Ward's growly bluster.  Thurman vamps it up like a 40s noir, alternating hot and cold with both main characters.  She is easily a scene-stealer but her accent kept throwing me.

This is not available on any streaming service (probably because of the rating) and I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend tracking it down on disc unless you have a burning interest in Nin, Miller, or Weimar-era period flicks.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

  I love Weird Al and I cannot think of a better way to portray a parody musician than with a parody biopic.  

Alfred Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) had a dream: to become famous for changing the lyrics to popular songs.  Success was overnight, thanks to his genius and the help of his mentor, Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson), but the fame and money could never fill the yawning void of Al's need for his father's (Toby Huss) approval.  Then Al met the Princess of Pop, Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), and their torrid affair was the stuff of legends.  Over the objections of his band and his mentor, Al devoted himself to Madonna, becoming a raging alcoholic and international assassin.  But was the Material Girl just using him to boost her own record sales?  

This movie is completely bonkers.  Just know that going in.  There are a lot of very famous comedians sprinkled throughout, some in blink-and-you-miss-it cameos.  Radcliffe understood his assignment here and looks like he was having a great time while Wood brings a calculating sinisterness to her crimped hair and acid-washed denim.  

It's currently streaming on the Roku channel.  Don't bother trying to figure out what's true and what isn't, just let the insanity wash over you.  

The Gray Man (2022)

  This wasn't even on my radar but Tyler wanted to watch it.  I thought it came out like two years ago, but apparently it released in July??

Six (Ryan Gosling) is one of those shadowy operatives that has no background, no personnel file, no presence so he can do the morally gray work required by the U.S. government.  When he finds out that his division is being systematically eliminated by the new CIA chief, Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), he goes off-grid.  Annoyed, Carmichael dispatches psychopathic independent contractor Lloyd Hanson (Chris Evans) to find Six.  Lloyd immediately kidnaps the niece (Julia Butters) of Six's previous handler (Billy Bob Thornton) and unleashes every mercenary he can find to run Six to the ground.

Is this a cliched action movie with every trope from John Wick to Jason Bourne?  Yes.  Is it still watchable?  Absolutely.  Gosling is funny and charming while still trying to be stoic, Evans and his terrible facial hair gleefully chew scenery, Ana de Armas and Jessica Henwick sigh in exasperation, then get the job done.  It's fun and explode-y and stabby.  There is also an underlying subtext about generational wealth and the corruption of legacy institutions but we don't have to go into that.  It's a summer popcorn flick (from this summer, who knew?) and it's streaming on Netflix.

Sing (2016 short)

  This is not the animated animal singing competition movie.  This is an Oscar-nominated short from Hungary about a school choir.

Zsófi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi) is a new student very excited about joining the school's prestigious choir, until the teacher (Zsófia Szomsi) pulls her aside and tells her that her singing isn't good enough and she should just mouth the words.  Zsófi's best friend, Liza (Dorottya Hais), notices the change and confronts the teacher, finding out that fully half the choir has been instructed not to sing.  On the day of the national competition, the children make their voices heard.

I'm conflicted here.  On the one hand, fuck that teacher for being a condescending, gatekeeping bitch and yay to those kids for understanding collective action, but on the other hand, choir is a competition.  A lot of them have actual auditions before you can get a slot, even in school.  Is it more or less cruel to tell a kid they're not good enough and can't join, or let them in so they can pretend?  I don't know.  I guess it depends on the kid.  

But seriously, fuck that teacher.  Also, as a kid who was in school choir, we were told that judges could hear if people weren't singing, but also that if we forgot the words we should sing the word watermelon instead.

It's streaming on Kanopy and it's less than half an hour long.

Black Adam (2022)

  Okay, so I actually saw this a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't want it to get lost in the 31 days of horror.

Adriana (Sarah Shahi) attempts to recover a priceless relic of a demonic-infused crown before the criminal consortium occupying her country of Khandaq and also releases Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), a near-mythic hero imbued with the powers of Shazam.  This triggers Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to send a response team led by Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) to subdue Teth-Adam as he is a disruption to global security.  But when actual, literal demons get involved, everyone has to pull together to fight for the greater good.

This movie actually makes a really good point about how Western influences don't give a shit about predominantly brown countries being raped for resources until something occurs to disrupt those influences.  Like, the Justice Society (clearly an American-led force if it's being directed by Waller, using American resources) didn't care that Khandaq was illegally occupied for multiple decades.  They only got involved when Black Adam started killing occupiers.  The movie doesn't spend a lot of time belaboring that point, but it is there and I haven't seen a lot of reviews mention it.

Mostly because they are too busy dissecting the cameo in the post-credit sequence.  Which I don't care about at all.  I did notice Agent Harcourt from Peacemaker, though.  That was nice.

It is pretty paint-by-numbers as a superhero movie.  Two things it does have going for it:  good lighting and a moderately lighter tone.  I found it to be an enjoyable experience and it renewed my interest in Shazam 2, coming out next March.  

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 31 - The Hallow (2015)

  Happy Halloween, everyone!  

Adam (Joseph Mawle) and Claire (Bojana Novakovic) have moved with their infant to a house on the edge of Ireland's last remaining public forest.  Adam is surveying for a logging company and has already felt the resistance of the locals, who warn him not to anger the spirits living in the woods.  He dismisses it as superstition until a weird fungus starts trying to steal his baby.

This turned out to be a much more traditional take on Halloween.  Actual fey!  Not warm and fuzzy, twinkly light Disney fairies, either.  Dark, red-in-tooth-and-claw, pitiless Nature.  You love to see it.

It's hard to ignore the conservationist overtones here.  Mess with Nature, feel Nature's wrath.  But I'm not mad at it.  The horror itself is good, well-crafted, with just enough lore that it feels inevitable.  I've talked before about how horror has consequences.  There's a morality to the mortality.  This is Right and True.  The creature effects are practical, animatronic, and some CGI for flavor with only a couple of moments where they look like dried apple dolls.  This would actually make a great double-feature with Pumpkinhead.

It's currently streaming on Shudder.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 30 - Christmas Evil (1980)

  Also known as You Better Watch Out, not to be confused with Better Watch Out, a different shitty Christmas horror movie.

Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart) has modeled his entire life around Santa Claus.  He works in a toy factory, spies on the neighborhood kids, and keeps a book of who's naughty and who's nice.  His brother (Jeffrey DeMunn) thinks he's crazy but Harry just wants to spread a little joy and mete out a little punishment.  

Mostly, this movie is boring and sad.  It very much paints Harry as deluded but sympathetic, kind of the Arthur Fleck of his day.  He is constantly disrespected by his subordinates at work, dismissed by his superiors, and treated like a burden by his brother.  When he finally gets around to killing people, it's the cynics and the liars that he targets.  But even the killing is lackluster.  He mainly just wants to deliver toys and be Santa.  It's all wrapped up in this weird repressed sex thing because he saw his mom getting freaky with his dad dressed as Santa.  That one instance of awkward role-play ruined any chance he had of living a normal, heterosexual, consumer-driven, 1980s life.

It's lazy and reductive, wanting to bemoan "kids these days" and their perceived lack of innocence and purity.  Give it a miss when you're scrolling through Shudder.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 29 - Candyman (1992)

  I always like to have at least one major classic on the list.  Yes, I will get around to the remake.  Probably next year.  You know how these things go.  Content warning:  dead dog

PhD candidate Helen (Virginia Madsen) is doing research for her thesis on urban legends when she comes across the tale of the Candyman (Tony Todd), a hook-handed apparition that appears if you say his name five times in the mirror.  She traces the stories to a serial killer who stalks the housing project of Cabrini-Green, preying  unchecked in an area cops won't go.  Undaunted, she investigates further, finding a small shrine of razor-bedecked candy amidst the graffiti and a neighbor (Vanessa Williams) to one of the victims.  Helen dismisses the legends as fear-soaked folklore until she blacks out and wakes up branded a murderer and kidnapper.  Now, the Candyman may be her only hope for redemption.

It's kind of a love story?  Like, a toxic one, but still.

Candyman and Hellraiser are both based on Clive Barker stories and have a lot of similar points but Candyman resonated so much more for me.  Maybe because it felt more like a seduction, like the Phantom of the Opera leading Christine through her naïveté.  But with meat hooks instead of opera.

Anyway, it is a classic for a reason and holds up extremely well.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 28 - The Ranger (2018)

  This movie was neon garbage.  Punk deserves better.

Five young adults head up to a cabin in the woods after assaulting a police officer.  Chelsea (Chloe Levine) inherited the cabin after her uncle was killed there.  The death was covered up by the local ranger (Jeremy Holm) who developed an obsession with Chelsea.  Now that she's returned, he'll stop at nothing to make her his.

The only way this movie works is if you consider it an unintentional comedy.  It wants to be Green Room so badly and doesn't even make it past the bouncer.  The villain is pure camp, the dialogue is lame, the kills are mostly off-screen (except for the Black kid.  Hmmm.) and everything in it has been done before and more competently.  Hell, even Tourist Trap did a better job establishing dread.  At least he had creepy-ass mannequins.  This guy just has a wolf pelt and a lot of free time on his hands.  If your movie could have been fixed by someone getting a Netflix account, you should rewrite your script.

It's on Shudder.  Avoid.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 27 - Threads (1984)

  British documentary-style Cold War fearmongering about nuclear armageddon.  Content warning:  rape, starvation, execution, burned bodies, dead animals

A narrator (Paul Vaughn) takes us through the breakout of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States of America over Iranian oil fields and its effect on Sheffield, an industrial city in Great Britain.  Spoiler alert:  it doesn't go well for Sheffield.

Now that we seem to be speed-running the 20th century over again, maybe it is a good time to dust this off.  It's not going to help, mind you.  In fact, it will probably make you feel worse about the increasing tension and threats from autocratic strongmen with their fingers on the Launch button but at least you'll know what to expect when you see that mushroom cloud.

This is a miserable, fact-based slog (Carl Sagan was one of the technical advisers) filled with dire warnings about the future should thermonuclear war occur.  Everyone knows that would be bad, but this movie goes to great lengths to show you exactly how bad.  It's like the Sarah McLachlan animal shelter song but for nuclear disarmament.  Proceed with caution.  It's on Shudder.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 26 - Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

  This is one of the worst sequels and worst entries to the Halloween franchise.  It has nothing to do with the previous installments and has been relegated to errata for a reason.  Content warning:  flashing lights, photosensitivity, annoying music

Deadbeat dad Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) takes a break from drinking and sexually harassing the nurses to investigate a weird murder-suicide.  An assassin (Dick Warlock) kills a hardware shop owner (Al Berry) before setting himself on fire in his car.  Dan partners up with the owner's hot daughter, Ellie (Stacey Nelkin), to travel to the company town of Santa Mira, home of Silver Shamrock Novelties.  Silver Shamrock makes the masks dear old dad was clutching and raving about when he was admitted to the hospital.  Posing as potential buyers, Dan and Ellie take a closer look around the factory and its creepy CEO, Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy).

Dan is a disgusting pig of a man.  The script is stupid and makes zero sense.  Some of the gore is decent practical effect work but there's not enough of it to warrant watching this.  Might be a so-bad-it's-funny with the right atmosphere.  I can't condone it, though.  Peacock has every entry in the franchise.  Skip this one.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 25 - Bones (2001)

  The only thing keeping this from being a Halloween staple is the dodgy special effects, partly from budget and partly because it was 2001.  

1979, Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg) was a local gangster and godfather of the community until he was murdered just as the crack epidemic began.  Over 20 years later, a handful of young adults buy Jimmy's building, planning to turn it into a nightclub.  Patrick (Khalil Kain) remembers very little about growing up in the area because his father (Clifton Powell) moved them to an affluent suburb and remarried.  He doesn't put much stock in local legends, but he is willing to listen to Cynthia (Bianca Lawson), the daughter of a psychic (Pam Grier), mostly because she's really hot.  He is therefore not prepared for Jimmy Bones to arise as a revenant and seek his revenge on the people who killed him.

This is admittedly uneven in tone, and I think the filmmaker could have made a stronger point with the social commentary about drug profiteering in predominantly Black communities, but I love a good revenant story.  The early 00s slang dates it tremendously so it does feel a bit like a historical object.  Whether or not that's a deal-breaker for you, only you know.  Pam Grier is A-list and Snoop has moments but Michael T. Weiss and Ricky Harris are pure cheese.  Somebody on Rotten Tomatoes compared it to Mario Bava but I think they were just being pretentious snots.

Bones is streaming on Tubi.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 24 - Silk (2006)

  I realized I hadn't gotten any Asian horror so far this year.  I had Iranian, Italian, and Finnish, but nothing from Korea, Japan, or Thailand, despite the absolute richness of the genre there.  Clearly, an oversight.  Silk isn't my favorite horror film (a little too sad for me) but I think it might be the first one from Taiwan I've seen.

A government research team has cracked the barrier for antigravity but the creator, Hashimoto (Yôsuke Eguchi), won't give it up without a final experiment.  Hashimoto believes that the Menger Sponge can also make ghosts visible.  He pulls some strings to have Detective Tung (Chang Chen) assigned to his team because of Tung's superior eyesight and ability to read lips.  Tung has no interest in Hashimoto's experiments; he is more concerned with his mother (Chi-Chen Ma) who is comatose and dying of ALS.  But when the team manages to isolate a ghost boy (Kuan-Po Chen), Tung is drawn in despite himself.

This covers a lot of genres.  It's horror, sci-fi, drama, little romance, revenge, redemption, but mostly it boils down to an examination of grief, of holding on and being afraid to let go, of mothers and sons, and what connects us to other people.

It's definitely the only film I've seen recently that shows realistic consequences of firing a gun into a space with civilians.  Tung is a reckless maniac trying to shoot the fucking ghosts even after it becomes abundantly clear that it doesn't work.  He shoots a cop, two civilians, a flower shop, and a subway train, terrorizing a whole bunch of people.  

Silk is unfortunately unavailable for streaming.  I got it on disc from Netflix.  

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 23 - Prevenge (2016)

  Pregnancy is already a horror show but what if your unborn also told you to go on a killing spree?

Ruth (Alice Lowe) wants what any mother wants: to have her baby grow up in a loving, supportive environment.  So when Baby tells her to systematically hunt down and slaughter every single person involved in her daddy's (Marc Bessant) tragic death, Ruth complies.  But as Baby demands more and more blood, Ruth realizes that sometimes children need discipline as well as treats.

This dark comedy hails from Wales.  Alice Lowe wrote and starred in her directorial debut and while I might quibble about style choices, it's a solid film with good pacing and tone work.  It makes excellent use of quick edits for jarring visuals.  

It's only available on Shudder but if you're looking for some fun revenge-flavored body horror, you can do much worse.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 22 - Hush (2016)

  Mike Flanagan has become a Halloween staple in his own right.  I'm only doing movies this year or I'd probably have watched The Haunting of Bly Manor.  I'm definitely planning on watching The Midnight Club since I loved those books as a kid but you guys know how long a time commitment it is to watch a season of anything and it's way far down on the list.

Maddie (Kate Siegel) lost her hearing and voice when she was a teen but has successfully pursued her independence and even made a career as a novelist.  So it's extremely disheartening when she is trapped in her home by a serial killer (John Gallagher, Jr.).  No way of escaping, calling for help, or hiding, Maddie must channel her inner Kevin McAllister to survive the night.

You can read Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Julius Caesar but Home Alone provides excellent principles for preparation of the battlefield.  Bonaparte would have wept.  Hush isn't nearly as elaborate, modeling itself after Wait Until Dark instead, but Maddie is tenacious and highly motivated, sparing the audience (me) from screaming about making dumb decisions.  That's always nice in a slasher.  And the cat lives.  

Hush is currently streaming on Netflix.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 21 - The Addams Family (2019)

  I love the Addams, in all their incarnations.  

Tired of being run out of every town, Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia Addams (Charlize Theron) finally find the home of their dreams: an abandoned insane asylum in the marsh of New Jersey.  For thirteen years, they are able to raise their children at peace until an overeager home improvement maven named Margeaux Needler (Alison Janney) decides the Addams are not picture-perfect enough to be part of the town of Assimilation.  To complicate matters, Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Parker Needler (Elsie Fisher) have become friends, both teenagers committed to rebelling against their repressive mothers, while Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) is struggling with the Addams' rite of manhood: the saber mazurka.  

This adaptation hews much closer to the 60s TV show than the 90s live action film in spirit, but the essential Addams-ness of it is just as true.  It is aggressively wholesome, once again modeling an uxorious dynamic (I never get to use that word!) and cheerfully macabre trappings (Gomez's cufflinks are molars) to tell a story about the trap of protecting children too much and not allowing them the freedom to express who they are, even if that means *shudder* pink unicorn barrettes.

It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 20 - The Beast Must Die (1974)

  It's not Halloween without at least one werewolf movie, although the poster looks more like the Revenge of Benji.

Six guests are invited to the country estate of rich magnate Tom Newcliffe (Calvin Lockhart) for a dinner party, only to find that they've been lured under false pretenses.  Tom is convinced one of the houseguests is a werewolf, though all of them have credibly been accused of murder.  His goal is to expose the beast and then hunt it, for the ultimate thrill.  His wife (Marlene Clark) thinks he's lost his mind.  As the body count begins to rise, Tom comes to realize that being hunted is no laughing matter.

Audience participation!  Peter Cushing!  A Black male lead!  Michael Gambon!  Very good dogs!  Any and all of these are reasons to watch the film.  It's not scary, there's no real violence even depicted on film (although there is one scene implying a dog is put down), and there's very little blood or gore.  It's like a whodunit but with a werewolf.  There's even a 30-second break about 15 minutes before the end so you can guess who it is.  It's a light, British thriller and well worth digging up.  Except you don't have to go far; it's streaming on Shudder, Tubi, PlutoTV, Plex, PopcornFlix, and Shout Factory TV.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 19 - Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel (2018)

  As a sequel, this isn't terrible.  I still hate found footage with every fiber of my being, but this isn't nearly as shaky as other entries in this sub-genre.  It is very reliant on jump scares, but it's not a bad film overall.

Nine years after a documentary crew and a bunch of haunted house patrons died at the Abaddon Hotel, mysteries still surround it.  Bodies were never recovered, people have since gone missing, and families are tormented by messages from their loved ones long after they gave them up for dead.  An investigative journalist (Jillian Geurts) contacts the lone survivor (Vas Eli) and convinces him to go back to find supposed tapes in the basement of the house's founder, Andrew Tully, performing rituals with his cult.  A noted TV psychic (Kyle Ingleman) joins the group.  

The first two-thirds of the movie are good, if a little like a retread of the first, and the additional lore isn't much of an addition, but the last third does nothing but set up the third installment of the franchise and that always feels lazy.  I'll probably still end up watching it next year.  It started out as a Shudder exclusive but now it's available on Tubi.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 18 - Night of the Comet (1984)

  Like, omigod, you guys.  This is totally rad.

A comet last seen by the dinosaurs is making its way past Earth and everyone in Los Angeles is lined up outside to see it, except Reg (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Larry (Michael Bowen), who are holed up in the theater projection room waiting for a film print to be returned from bootleggers.  They are the only ones not affected by the comet's tail, which turns 90% of Angelinos into fine dust and the other 10% into crazed psychos.  Larry finds out about the latter the hard way.  Reg gets home to discover her little sister, Samantha (Kelli Maroney), also survived by virtue of hiding in the steel storage shed after a fight with their bitchy step-mom (Sharon Farrell).  Now the two teens must navigate the wasteland of the city looking for other survivors with only their wits, 80s fashion sense, and the martial arts and weapons skills drilled into them by their Green Beret dad (Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film).  

If I said "Valley Girl horror comedy" you'd probably think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Jennifer's Body, and you wouldn't be wrong.  But you should also consider this the progenitor of those films.  Night of the Comet is funny, very dated, kickass, not scary, and even has moments of pathos along the way.  I watched it on YouTube but I would pay real dollars to see it in a better format.   

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 17 - Voodoo Island (1957)

  I like the idea of following horror movies I hated with old-school creature features but this one should probably remain on the scrapheap of history.  

A hotel magnate (Owen Cunningham) hires a noted skeptic, Philip Knight (Boris Karloff), to investigate a Polynesian island rumored to be cursed.  The only survivor of the previous expedition (Glenn Dixon) was found washed up on a neighboring island in a catatonic state.  Knight's team includes Cynical Boat Captain Who Secretly Cares Too Much (Rhodes Reason), Corporate Shill (Murvyn Vye), Ice Queen (Jean Engstrom), Spineless Greedy Sellout (Elisha Cook, Jr.), and Career Girl Who Needs to be Shown the True Meaning of Femininity (Beverly Tyler).  Their investigation is plagued with problems, but Knight perseveres in his quest for logical explanations.

Voodoo Island serves as a shining example of why diversity in film is so important.  Voodoo is West African and Caribbean, not Polynesian or East Indian.  The leader of the "natives" is a French guy with bronzer.  Coconut crabs will eat a person (RIP Amelia Earhart), though the one in the film is a taxidermied Alaskan King crab.  The same extra shows up at the airfield and then later on a separate island, both times as Vaguely Menacing Brown Guy.  Sure, some of this could be chalked up to budget constraints, but most of it is just '50s racism.

Karloff is a horror icon but he is not enough of a reason to seek this movie out.  However, this is the debut of a baby-faced Adam West (!) playing the radio operator.  I didn't even recognize his face (when too many white dudes are on screen, I find it hard to tell them apart) but his voice cannot be mistaken.  It's on video sharing site dailymotion.com if you're interested, but I would watch only until you see West, then turn it off.  There's nothing else salvageable.  

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 16 - Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)

  It wouldn't be a horror marathon without at least one shitty sequel, right?  This year's installment comes to you from the distant, forgotten land of 1992.  Content warning: moderate gore, a scene reminiscent of lynchiing

After the bodies of the murdered adults are found in Gatlin, Nebraska, news crews swarm the town looking for answers.  The surviving children are sent to foster with sympathetic families in nearby Hemingford.  Tabloid reporter and deadbeat dad, John Garrett (Terence Knox), and his angsty teenaged son, Danny (Paul Scherrer), show up last but manage to score a room at the local bed-and-breakfast, run by way-too-hot-to-be-from-this-town Angela Casual (Rosalind Allen) - ugh - along with orphaned teen Micah (Ryan Bollman).  Micah makes overtures of friendship towards Danny after seeing the hostility between him and his father, but Danny would rather run with way-too-hot-and-desperate-to-leave-this-town Lacey (Christie Clark).  Sure enough, the kids start killing again after Micah is possessed as the new prophet of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

More than the casual misogyny and racism, this film suffers from Trying Too Hard.  Tried too hard to top the first film.  Tried too hard to assign more blame.  Tried too hard to be funny.  Sure, having a house crush a mean old lady with just her legs sticking out is kind of funny.  But you can't have her say "What a world, what a world," as well.  That's the Wicked Witch of the West.  And then have a second old lady (both played by Marty Terry) named Mrs. West be her sister?  That's egging the pudding, my good sir.

We're not even going to talk about the White Savior narrative nonsense.  Yikes.

Anyway, this dreck is streaming in its entirety on YouTube, should you feel so inclined.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 15 - Rare Exports (2010)

  There are so many Christmas horror films.  This one is pretty cute, though.  I would double-feature it with Krampus.  

A shady businessman (Per Kristian Ellefsen) is funding an excavation on Korvatunturi Mountain and insists that it be completed by Christmas Eve.  Two local boys are spying and one, Pietari (Onni Tommila), is convinced the crew is digging out the original Santa Claus, long buried by the Sami people.  No one believes him but on Christmas Eve, every child in town goes missing, a strange, inhuman man is caught in Pietari's father's (Jorma Tommila) wolf trap, and the reindeer herd they depend on for export is slaughtered in the snow.

There are a few inconsistencies (like how Pietari has the world's most specialized library on Santa Claus somehow) but overall, this is a fun delve into the darker side of Kris Kringle.  It has a very Hogfather feel to it, which is damn near the highest praise I can bestow.  I wouldn't call it scary but there is some mild gore and a whole bunch of naked dudes.  It's Finnish and I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't have heard of it, but it's well worth the watch.  It's streaming on Hulu, Shudder, Kanopy, Tubi, and PlutoTV.