End of Year 2023 Top Ten

I managed slightly better than last year with 13 entries.  I kind of miss when the Oscars were held in January because it forced me to watch an assload of films from the current year in December.  Now that nominations don't come out until February, a lot of would-be favorites end up not being counted.  Like The Menu and M3GAN would definitely have been on my top 10 for last year if I had watched them in time.  And before you ask, I thought about making it just whatever I saw in a year, but with roughly 180 entries, that feels scattershot.  Anyway, the most obvious solution is for me to just get off my ass and watch more movies.

10.  Matilda: The Musical - I didn't like this when I watched it.  The nicest thing I can say about it is that I forgot pretty much everything.  That's what puts it on the list over Quantumania, which I initially liked but has soured the more I think about how much of a missed opportunity it was.

9.  Totally Killer - The only new horror I watched this year.  Were there better ones?  Almost certainly.  But this was cute.  Mild enough that Tyler watched it and he hates horror movies.

8.  Asteroid City - Quirky Wes Anderson.  Again, fine.  Like soaking your brain in chamomile tea.

7.  Sisu - This will probably get better on subsequent watches but I really expected more.  Still, always a good time to kill Nazis.

6.  Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse - This lost some points because it does feel like half a story but it is a masterpiece nonetheless.  I expect the third installment to be way higher next year.

5.  Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - This series went out on a high note, which just gave it the edge over entry #6.

4.  Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - A goddamned delight. Even if you had no interest in the game it's based on, it was a fun watch.

3.  John Wick Chapter Four - Is there a law of diminishing returns?  Sure.  But I will hang on until they stop making them or it falls out of the top ten.

2.  Polite Society - A total surprise and a welcome breath of fresh air.  In fact, this would have been #1 if not for the complete juggernaut that is...

1. Barbie - You can't fight it.  Everyone I know who saw it, loved it.  Tyler wanted an "I Am Kenough" shirt for Christmas.  Amazing.

Next year is not looking great for upcoming releases.  Lot of sequels and remakes.  I'm hoping a lot more titles get released as the year begins.

Night Swim - a haunted swimming pool.  This is in the great tradition of inanimate objects that somehow manage to kill people.  It's coming out in January so you already know it's going to be crap.  But entertaining crap?  Remains to be seen.

 The Book of Clarence - a religious comedy with LaKeith Stanfield as a forgotten disciple.  Could be the American answer to Life of Brian.

Mean Girls - Ah, the classic movie-adaptation-of-a-musical-adaptation-of-a-movie.  I have the Broadway soundtrack and it's really good.  Not sure how much of an audience it's going to find but maybe.

Argylle - a spy comedy centered on a cat.  Sounds dumb but it's got Sam Rockwell and I love him.

Lisa Frankenstein - written by Diablo Cody and Zelda Williams.  Looks cute.

Madame Web - Sony's next attempt at a Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man.  

Dune: Part Two - the spice must floooooooow.

Kung Fu Panda 4 - I mean, the trilogy ended pretty much perfectly so I don't know why you'd risk that, but I'm not in charge.

Imaginary - Blumhouse horror about what if your imaginary friend was evil.  I feel like that's just demonic possession with extra steps but sure.

Road House - a remake of the legendary Patrick Swayze film.  No reason for it to exist at all.

Mickey 17 - Bong Joon-ho's new film which makes it a must-watch.

Civil War - Get ready for this to make all your right-wing relatives froth at the mouth.

The Fall Guy - Ryan Gosling plays a stunt man who moonlights as a bounty hunter.  Probably going to be hilarious.

IF - a comedy about what if your imaginary friend had a union.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - a prequel to an incredible movie

The Garfield Movie - who keeps asking for these?  Do children today even know who Garfield is?  

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes - another fourth entry to a perfect trilogy.  Did no one learn anything from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

Ballerina - spin-off of John Wick 3 starring Ana de Armas.

Inside Out 2 - et tu, Pixar?

Despicable Me 4 - do I even need to say it?

Deadpool 3 - we'll see if it retains it's foul-mouthed charm under Disney's yoke.

Borderlands - another day, another attempt at a video game movie.

Alien: Romulus - Fede Alvarez is trying his hand at a sequel.

Kraven the Hunter - Another attempt at a Spider-Man villain standalone.

Beetlejuice 2 - milking the nostalgia machine until it's dry

Joker: Folié a Deux - I didn't like Joker but the sequel is a musical with Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn.  That should be hilarious.

Gladiator 2 - /sigh

Wicked: Part One - another Broadway adaptation.  Not entirely sure why it needed to be split into two films.  The book isn't that large and the musical is like 90 minutes.

Nosferatu - Robert Eggers is going the remake route but I love vampires so I will check it out.

The Burial of Kojo (2019)

  Last movie of the year!  This was on my list as horror but it's more like magical realism with a strong folklore bend.  

Kojo (Joseph Otisman) lives in the country, adamantly refusing to move to the city over the wishes of his wife (Mamley Djangmah), until his brother, Kwabena (Kobinah Amissah-Sam), arrives with news that their mother is sick.  Kojo is forced to reveal his secret: he had been in love with Kwabena's fiancée (Zalfa Odonkor) and on their wedding night, Kojo got drunk and wrecked the newlywed's car, killing her.  Kwabena claims to have forgiven him, but Kojo still feels wracked with guilt, which Kwabena uses to push his brother into more and more dangerous money-making schemes until Kojo goes missing.  Only his daughter, Esi (Cynthia Dankwa), can untangle the threads of the story to find him.

This reminded me a lot of Beasts of the Southern Wild.  It has that same quasi-dreamlike feel and meandering pace.  I liked this one more, though.  It felt more cohesive, more tied to a history of people and folklore.  It is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel but probably not for long.

Slackers (2002)

  I'm taking next week off for Christmas so this will be the last movie I post before my year in review.  Sorry it's kind of a shitty one.

Evan (Jason Schwartzman) figures out that Dave (Devon Sawa), Sam (Jason Segal), and Jeff (Michael Maronna) are cheating on their college exams and uses this information to blackmail Dave into helping him win over the girl Evan is stalking (Jaime King).  The plan falls apart when Dave starts falling for her.

This is a gross, lazy "comedy" that has nothing deeper to say.  At least Accepted had a point to make about college curriculums being weighted against free expression.  Slackers is just nihilism with a bouncy soundtrack.  The characters sail through without expending any effort and whatever consequences they receive are handwaved off with more lying and fraud.  This is the generation that came up with NFTs and Stable Diffusion.

Also, who in their right mind picks Jaime King (who I'm sure is nice but let's be real) when Laura Prepon is right there.  RIGHT THERE.  Avoid.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)

  Stressed about the holidays?  Watch manly men dealing with their fear and resentment while being stalked through the seas!

Lieutenant Jim Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster) is pleased to receive his first command of the submarine Nerka, but is stymied last-minute when Commander Richardson (Clark Gable) is announced instead.  Richardson had been desk-bound because his previous sub was sunk off the coast of Japan by a destroyer called the Akikaze.  Bledsoe has a terrible suspicion that Richardson is just looking for revenge and is willing to risk the lives of the entire crew to get it.

This is a good movie to put on if you're laying on the couch taking a break from wrapping gifts or doomscrolling or just hungover on a Sunday.  The black and white is very soothing, there's a lot of talking interspersed with some torpedo explosions, and Don Rickles is in it.  It's not the best WWII movie --hell, it's not even the best WWII submarine movie-- but it's good enough.  Appropriately melodramatic.  There is precisely one (1) woman with a speaking role and the pin-up poster in the sub gets more screen time than she does, but you can't have everything.

It's currently streaming for free (with ads) on the Roku Channel.

The Star (2017)

  It is Christmas time so here's a movie about the Biblical origin story that eventually syncretized to become the holiday we know today.  

A miniature donkey (Steven Yuen) dreams of life doing something more important than walking in circles grinding grain.  He escapes the miller and hides out in the yard of a young newlywed couple.  The very pregnant Mary (Gina Rodriguez) names him Bo and plans to take him when they leave for a census being conducted in Bethlehem.  Bo plans to escape this admittedly nicer confinement with the help of his friend, Dave (Keegan Michael-Key), a dove, and join the royal procession, but when he learns that King Herod (Christopher Plummer) has dispatched a hunter to kill the pregnant woman, he decides it's more important to save her than follow his dreams.

This is aggressively Christian.  Your mileage will vary on how much of a plus or minus that is for you, but I thought it worth mentioning.  

If you are pro, this is a cute re-telling of a story you know extremely well through the point of view of adorable animated animals.  There are winks and nods to other Bible stories, the soundtrack is all Christmas carols, and the voice cast is A-list.

If you are con, this is some serious propaganda meant to de-secularize a popular holiday.  But still with cute talking animals.  This is the kind of movie for people who unironically use the phrase "War on Christmas" and don't tip.

I'm trying not to draw conclusions based on who chose to be in this, because sometimes a job is a job, but mega-pastor/amoral grifter Joel Osteen is one of the "wise men" and that should tell you pretty much everything you need to know.  It's streaming on Freevee, the Amazon ad-supported service.  More importantly, the second season of Reacher dropped on Friday and you should watch that.

The Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

This is one of the last few good theater experiences I had before the pandemic hit.  That's mostly what I remember about it.  People openly gasped, laughed, and cried.  I still remember hearing a girl scream when Spider-Man got Blipped.  People were invested.  It was a titanic (pun intended) undertaking that took almost a full decade to build up to one of the most depressing endings in popular entertainment.  Now it feels like this was a lifetime ago.  I suspect people who lost family in the first wave of COVID-19 might see the Snap a little differently now.  And of course, the Time Stone hits a little more after season two of Loki thanks to a fan theory I read that lives in my brain forever now.  You know the one.  This is streaming on Disney+ with all the other Marvel content.  At some point, I'll take a week or so and watch everything (including all the shows) as a full retrospective but it won't be soon.   Originally posted 26 May 2018.    Has everyone seen this?  Can we talk about it yet?  I saw it almost a month ago and I have been waiting so as not to inadvertently spoil it for people.  A friend of mine had that happen to her on Facebook.  Some asshat posted every single death and then shrugged and said "it's been five days.  You should have seen it by now," like people don't have jobs or child care or any other time conflicts.  I don't want to be like that guy.  Nobody likes that guy.

Thanos (Josh Brolin), the Mad Titan, has arrived to claim all of the Infinity Stones.  Only by combining forces with the most unlikely of allies can our heroes have a chance.  Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) try to protect the Time stone while Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) join Bucky (Sebastian Stan) in Wakanda to protect Vision (Paul Bettany) and the Mind Stone while Shuri (Letitia Wright) tries to safely remove it from Vision's head.  Meanwhile, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Rocket (Bradley Cooper), and Groot (Vin Diesel) head off to find a replacement for Mjolnir that has a chance of fighting Thanos even with the Infinity Gauntlet and Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), and Mantis (Pom Klementioff) head to Knowhere to try and keep Thanos from getting the Reality Stone from The Collector (Benecio del Toro).

ZOMG you guys.  EVERYONE* is in this movie.  This is what phases I-III have been building up to show.  It was a huge undertaking and it came together so much better than it had any right to.  I was so worried that Thanos was going to be a boring villain.  Honestly, the bad guys are usually the weakest links.  But the Russo Brothers actually gave him a really compelling storyline of his own, especially his interactions with Gamora.

Look, you know by now that not everyone makes it to the post-credits.  I'm not saying who does or doesn't.  Yes, some of them are going to be permanent deaths.  Contracts end, actors get tired, and writers have to keep you on your toes.  But you also know that Avengers 4 is coming in 2019, so don't lose hope.  They're definitely going to bring some of these characters back.  Most likely.  Probably.  They just have to.  Right?



*except for Ant-Man and Hawkeye.  One has a movie coming in July and I'm betting the other is  going to have a huge emotional scene in Avengers 4 and swear vengeance against Thanos.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

  This is my second pick for Movie Club this week and it almost didn't get posted because the day completely got away from me.

The Smith family are eagerly anticipating the 1904 World's Fair to be held in their hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.  Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland) are boy-crazy teens scheming to get engaged because it's 1903 and what else are they going to do, work?  Younger sisters Agnes (Joan Carroll) and Tootie (Margaret O'Brien) are semi-feral and death-obsessed, but you know, in a cute way.  The only brother, Alonzo Jr. (Henry H. Daniels, Jr.), is mostly away at college and missing the day-to-day shenanigans as Esther sets her cap for the boy next door (Tom Drake).  But when the patriarch (Leon Ames) announces that he's moving the whole family to New York City at the turn of the year, all the girls' plans come into conflict.

I cannot overstate how colorful this movie is.  It is vibrant.  The costumes, the sets, the food, everything is gloriously Technicolor.  This film is most famous for Garland's absolutely mournful "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" but I love the frenetic energy of "The Trolley Song".  It spans 3/4 of a year and I personally feel the pacing drags a little towards the middle, but there are so many great moments it balances out.  

This is a hard time of year for a lot of people so if you just want a little Christmas, not a whole lot, this might be a good choice.  People find it cathartic.  It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1996)

  It's my turn to pick for Movie Club and I am continuing the trend of picking movies I love, regardless if they are appropriate or not.  Grosse Pointe Blank is my absolute favorite movie hands down.  I was obsessed with it for years and it has held up to multiple viewings.

Martin Blank (John Cusack) is an assassin and a damn good one.  He has fully embraced the persona but recently finds himself dealing with some ennui.  A couple of jobs have gone bad, he's getting pressure from a loud-mouth rival (Dan Aykroyd), and his personal assistant (Joan Cusack) will not stop reminding him of his ten-year high school reunion.  His reluctant therapist (Alan Arkin) thinks he should go; it will remind him of life and maybe convince him to stop killing people for money.  But Martin knows that it also brings him back to the girl he abandoned on prom night, Debi (Minnie Driver).

This movie is hilarious and endlessly quotable.  Cusack and Driver are perfect, neurotically compatible.  Aykroyd is playing way against type, and Arkin is incredible as Dr. Oatman.  And the soundtrack is great.  I don't know why this isn't more widely popular.  It's only available to rent or buy but it's absolutely worth your money.

Happily N'Ever After (2007)

  This was... not good.  I'm pretty sure I added it because I thought it was Queer Friendly, but it turns out that was just a product of bad animation.

Cinderella (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is destined to end up with a Prince (Patrick Wharburton).  That's the way the story goes, enforced by a wizard (George Carlin) and his two assistants, Munk (Wallace Shawn) and Mambo (Andy Dick).  But an evil stepmother (Sigourney Weaver) seizes power while the wizard is on vacation and it's up to Ella, the two assistants, and the kitchen dishwasher (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) to make things right.

This is the Fairy Tale of the Nice Guy.  Rick the dishwasher lives in the shadow of the prince, pining over Cinderella, and has convinced himself that she would be better off with him.  He gets pissed every time she mentions that she'd prefer the prince and takes every opportunity to drag that guy, who doesn't seem bad or even mean-spirited, just a little dumb and sheltered.  Because how dare she?  He's in love with her so she owes him her love in return.  There is no indication that she knows Rick beyond a passing acquaintance and zero real interaction.  She's polite, friendly, but never shows that she has a moment's feeling for Rick.  

It would be one thing if Cinderella and Rick were in love and she found out she was going to marry the prince anyway and needed to get out of it.  That I could see.  But she's excited for her future and Rick acts like a total asshole about it.

So plot-wise, this is not awesome, but it's mostly watchable thanks to Sigourney Weaver absolutely hamming it up as the evil stepmother.  She gives an A+ performance to a D- script.  Gellar is absurdly boring and spends most of her time just saying people's names over and over.  I don't want to hate on the animation too much, because it's clear that this was a small company and it was in 2007.  It does have a very specific style; it's just not one I care for.  I found it plastic and stiff.

It apparently did well enough to garner a sequel but I will not be adding it to the queue.  The original is streaming on Starz currently.

Sisu (2023)

  I have been waiting to see this since John Wick 4 came out.  I'm glad I made it before my end of year wrap-up.  

A lone prospector (Jorma Tommila) strikes gold in the far northern reaches of Finland in the last days of WWII.  On his way to deposit it, he crosses trails with a platoon of Nazi soldiers on a scorched earth campaign.  The Captain (Aksel Hennie) realizes the gold could be his ticket out of a war crimes tribunal and orders his men to attack, only to lose time and again.  A background check reveals that the grizzled old man is actually a Finnish war hero nicknamed after Koschei the Deathless.  

At 88 minutes, this wastes no time in getting straight to the Nazi-killing.  It manages to fit six whole chapters in, which is a feat of screenwriting.  Yes, it is a little exposition heavy, a little over-explanatory, but it calls back to movies like First Blood.  It is The Man, The Myth, The Legend.  I get it.  However, this is the rabbit meat of action movies:  so lean it's basically malnutritious.  I'm looking for wagyu.  I want lore marbled in with the action so it feels sumptuous.  Give me gourmet violence.  Nazis need killing, obviously, but let me savor it.

Sisu is currently streaming on Starz and if you're looking for a pairing, I would suggest Dead Snow as a chaser as it also involves Nazis and gold.

Absolutely Anything (2015)

  Another Tyler pick!  I hadn't even heard of this one.  

Self-styled Galactic Supreme Beings (John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Terry Gillam) give a random human (Simon Pegg) the power to do absolutely anything as a test of whether humans can join their ranks or be annihilated.  Neil, a thoroughly average British school teacher, immediately gives his dog the power of speech (Robin Williams), makes his boss (Suzy Izzard listed as Eddie Izzard) more agreeable, and tries to make his hot neighbor (Kate Beckinsale) like him.  But when her psycho ex (Rob Riggle) finds out, Neil must use his unexplained powers for evil.

This was mostly cute.  I found parts annoying and there was a dick joke that made me roll my eyes so hard I think I sprained one, but it was pretty entertaining on balance.  Pegg has always excelled at the Everyman Forced to Deal with Things role and Riggle plays Insane American very well.  It was nice to see Beckinsale just kind of relaxed and not running from werewolves or whatever.  Could have used more Izzard and more Joanna Lumley.  I feel like if you're going to have them in the cast, they should get more than three lines each.  

It's currently streaming on Starz if you want a low-stakes comedy and also to feel sad about Robin Williams again.

Innerspace (1987)

  This was recommended to me by my friend Hollie five or six years ago.  I finally got around to it!

A test pilot (Dennis Quaid) is miniaturized in a top secret experiment but an attack on the lab sees him injected into the body of a hypochondriac (Martin Short) instead of a rabbit.  Now he has to guide his unwitting host to avoid corporate espionage, attempted murder, and falling in love with the pilot's ex-girlfriend (Meg Ryan).  

Short does most of the work in this film.  Basically, Quaid sat on set and talked into a mike for almost all of his screentime.  Also, his character kind of sucks.  We're supposed to root for him to get the girl in the end but he's an alcoholic with a death wish and that really doesn't change by the time the credits roll.  It would be much more compelling if the romance were between the two men but in 1987 that was probably a bridge too far.

Innerspace was directed by Joe Dante.  In a hilarious bit of coincidence, I found out the Movie Club picks for this weekend include Gremlins, also directed by Joe Dante.  And, one of the people I visited with over Thanksgiving has never seen Gremlins.  So now I have to force *ahem* introduce her to this most magical Christmas classic.

Fantastic Voyage is the better "shrunk inside a human body" movie but it's not currently streaming except for rent.  Innerspace is a fun, mostly kid-friendly watch that is streaming for free on Kanopy.

The Gold Rush (1925)

  This spans like three holidays so it's pretty good for this transition period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Unless you are a godless heathen who already has a tree up.  You sicken me.

A gold rush brings prospectors of all stripes up to the harsh wilderness of Alaska to try their luck, including an intrepid Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin).  He faces starvation, attempted murder, frostbite, and heartache pursuing his dreams.

It is wild watching this movie from damn near a century ago portraying only a generation back.  It's set in 1898 which was less than 30 years from when it was filmed.  Imagine how modern they thought they were.  And now we're looking back three times as much distance and it seems insanely far away.  

Also, everyone in this movie is wearing real fur.  And there's a real bear.  Insane.  

Story-wise, this isn't great.  It's very simple, more a series of vignettes than a throughline.  The love story in particular didn't work for me.  The technical aspects of film-making and the setups of the physical comedy gags, however, are astonishingly good.  They are why Chaplin is so highly regarded despite being a d-bag.

The Criterion Channel has the restored 1925 version as well as the 1942 re-release Chaplin re-edited.  

SPL - Kill Zone (2005)

  One of the things I really love about Asian cop stories is that they don't even pretend they're not corrupt.  They're just like "what if the corruption occasionally works out?" which is great.

A dying cop (Simon Yam) is desperate to take down a mob boss (Sammo Hung) before he is forced into retirement.  He is supposed to turn over his team to an incoming go-getter (Donnie Yen) but keeps side-stepping to enact a rougher form of justice.

The plot is just shy of nonsensical and mostly serves to string together action sequences, of which there are many and awesome.  Donnie Yen is obviously the modern big name but Sammo Hung is an OG and absolutely whips ass here.  

(BTW, this is the sluttiest role Donnie Yen has ever played.  Whoever in the costume department decided he should do the final fight in a shirt with only one button deserves a gift basket.  Like a really nice one.  And a gourmet chocolate assortment for that white tank.  Mwah!)

If you're trying to catch up on Yen's back filmography or just want something kind of dumb but action heavy to lull you while you're processing your turkey leftovers coma/Black Friday bruises, Kill Zone is streaming on Tubi.  Just drink water every time there's a commercial break.

Unfriended (2015)

  This almost made it onto my 31 days of horror feature this year but just missed the cutoff.  But it's Black Friday so a movie about the dangers of mob piling feels very appropriate.  Content warning:  suicide, bullying

Five teenagers find themselves stuck on a video call with an avatar using the account of a dead girl.  One by one, they are forced to reveal their secrets or die, seemingly by their own hand.  

This was better than I thought it would be.  I had never seen a "screen life" movie, where everything plays out like it's showing on a computer, but it's increasingly popular.  Makes sense.  It has limited application but it worked here with such a self-contained story.  Especially because everyone who used Skype ten years ago is very familiar with the freezes, trails, and pixilation you got with a bad connection.  I never would have thought to mine that for horror, but good job.  It also helps that all the kids in this are unlikeable.  You believe that they would have dogpiled a girl to death so their comeuppance feels righteous.  

Bullying is bad, kids!  Just because you can make an anonymous account and say awful shit to a person doesn't mean you can't be found and punched in the mouth and/or harassed by an invisible entity of revenge.

Unfriended is streaming on Criterion but only until the end of November, so hop on it.

Land of Mine (2017)

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans!  Be grateful you're not clearing a beach full of land mines!  Content warning:  amputations, blood, some gore, dead animal (dog), hazing/bullying

In 1945 Denmark, German prisoners of war are assigned to clear the thousands of landmines they laid on beaches.  Sgt. Rasmussen (Roland Møller) is given a squad of ten POWs, all of them teenaged boys.  

Yeah, this movie is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.  Schoolboys conscripted when Germany knew it had already lost, left behind to bear the brunt of the ire of the invaded.  It's, uh, not a fun watch but it is really engrossing.

Don't actually watch this on Thanksgiving.  Maybe give yourself a couple of days.  Or do.  Fuck it, I don't know your life.  It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

Monsoon Wedding (2001)

  This delightful rom-com is also brought to you by Movie Club and is one of the reasons I'm glad I joined.  I would never have watched this in a million years otherwise.  Content warning:  past CSA (discussed, not shown)

Aditi Verma (Vasundhara Das) is getting married.  But only her favorite cousin, Ria (Shefali Shetty), knows that she's still hung up on her married ex (Ishaan Nair).  Meanwhile, the event planner (Vijay Raaz) has fallen head-over-heels for Alice (Tillotama Shome), a servant in the Verma household, and the father-of-the-bride (Naseeruddin Shah) is taking out loans to pay for the wedding and dealing with the influx of guests from around the world, in addition to meeting his arranged son-in-law's parents for the first time.

It's very My Big Fat Greek Wedding in terms of scope and lively characters, but a little earthier and with less fish-out-of-water.  It's about half in English, half Hindi and I had a bitch of a time finding a way to get closed captioning to not cover the subtitles.  Being hard of hearing is annoying.  That being said, I very much enjoyed this movie.  It was joyful but not frothy; there was a substance to it that made the emotional payoffs work.  A lot of that comes down to the performances from Shetty, Shah, and Raaz.  

If you're looking for an intro to Bollywood but don't know where to start, this is kind of like wading into the shallow end.  A primer, if you will.  It's only available for rent but it's worth it.  Also, would probably make a good post-Thanksgiving-crashed-on-the-couch family movie, as long as your family is cool with somebody occasionally getting called a motherfucker.

Brigsby Bear (2017)

  Weirdly, this is a very good representation of what Autism feels like courtesy of Movie Club from last week.  

James (Kyle Mooney) has lived his whole life in a bunker thanks to an unspecified catastrophe.  His parents, Ted (Mark Hamill) and April (Jane Adams), have done their best but James is really only living for the weekly installments of The Adventures of Brigsby Bear, his favorite TV show.  Then the cops show up and it turns out James was kidnapped as an infant and Ted and April are kidnappers who invented the whole thing to keep him from being curious about the outside world.  At 25, James is suddenly "reunited" with his birth parents, Greg (Matt Walsh) and Louise (Michaela Watkins), and teenage sibling Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins).  The world is vast and incomprehensible and worse yet, no one has ever heard of Brigsby Bear.

When I saw that this was produced by The Lonely Island comedy group, I thought it was going to be cringe/slapstick comedy.  It is not.  It is stunningly earnest, sweet-hearted, and pure in its intentions.   James is trying his hardest to adapt to a world that seems alien and filled with strangers and everyone else is trying their best to meet him on, if not the same, a complementary wavelength.  It's nice???  Mark Hamill is obviously a complete standout but everyone involved did a great job.  

I felt so seen by this movie.  And that's the highest compliment I can give.  It is only available for rental (or LookMovie.to) but it's worth it.

Life, Animated (2014)

  Whoo boy, I hated this movie so much.  Yikes.  

As a child, Owen Susskind started becoming increasingly withdrawn and non-verbal.  His parents took him to specialist after specialist and finally one diagnosed him with Autism Spectrum Disorder.  The communication breakthrough occurred when the Susskind's realized they could relate to Owen through animated Disney movies.  Now at 23, Owen is ready to move into a halfway house designed to gently introduce him to the overwhelmingly neurotypical world.  

As an autistic adult, this was the most sanitized, coddling infantilization of neurodivergency that I have ever seen.  It was fucking infuriating.  Everything revolved around the parents and how tragic their struggle has been dealing with an autistic child and how brave and understanding they are for everything they've done to improve his quality of life.  

Now, every single autistic person is different.  Sometimes wildly so.  Spectrum.  And there seems like a lot this documentary is leaving out in order to focus on its feel-good message.  We don't see Owen struggle, break down, lash out.  We only see him awash with wonder and repeating lines from Disney classics.  Good PR for Disney, bad for anyone with ASD hoping to be taken seriously.  It's an incomplete portrait that has been massaged into a roughly 2-hr commercial for a megacorp.  Avoid.  

Nope?  Want to see for yourself how bad it is?  Streaming on Kanopy and the Roku channel.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Nice Guys (2016)

This held up exactly as well as I thought it would.  Another Tyler pick that I saw in theaters.  He kept saying "This is like a D&D game." so take from that what you will about the chaos inherent within.  It's currently streaming on Netflix and if you missed the original run, you should definitely check it out.  Originally posted 23 May 16.    This isn't necessarily a film you should rush to see on the big screen but I'm coming off of a couple of bad theater experiences so I was really looking for something to wash the taste of those out of my mouth.  Luckily, The Nice Guys delivered.

Private eye Holland March (Ryan Gosling) and local fixer Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) start on opposite sides of a problem.  One has been hired to find Amelia (Margaret Qualley) and the other has been hired to discourage anyone from finding her.  Once Healy realizes that Amelia's life is in danger, he teams up with March to locate her and keep her safe.  The two quickly realize they have stumbled into a much larger conspiracy involving the Detroit auto industry, a porn kingpin, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

You have probably heard the name Shane Black in connection with the Iron Man films and the Marvel Universe in general.  What you may or may not know is that Shane Black is the godfather of the buddy film.  He paired Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer, Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson, and now Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.  The man shits comedy gold.  I have a feeling that this film is just going to slide directly under people's radar and disappear in the night and that will be such a shame.  It is absolutely the kind of comedy that is only going to get better with successive viewings.  By all means, wait for the rental but see this film.

The Fifth Musketeer (1979)

  This has been on my list for ages.  No one had it.  Not a single streaming service.  Not even Netflix disc.  I had to use LookMovie.to to find it.  But I did!  You can run, movies, but you can't hide!

Philippe (Beau Bridges) has been raised pretty happily in Gascony by the famed Musketeers D'Artagnan (Cornel Wilde), Athos (José Ferrer), Porthos (Alan Hale, Jr.), and Aramis (Lloyd Bridges) without ever knowing his true identity as twin to the spoiled, cold-hearted King Louis (also Beau Bridges) until he is kidnapped and put in the Bastille in an iron mask.  Philippe is meant to be the target of a faked assassination while the king is safely away with his mistress (Ursula Andress).  Well, the assassination part was supposed to be real, just set up by the king's advisor, Fouquet (Ian McShane).  But Philippe survives, thanks to the training from his four dads, and ends up meeting Marie Theresa (Sylvia Kristal), the Spanish Infanta who is supposed to marry the king.

Yes, this is The Man in the Iron Mask under a different title.  The camera tricks used to show the "twins" are the only truly interesting things.  Beau Bridges does a great job in the dual role, and McShane and Rex Harrison are excellent supporting players.  According to IMDb, I watched the American release of this movie, which excised all the nudity and cut sixteen minutes of run time.  So if you were hoping to see all of Andress, you are shit out of luck.  But it happily does cut an extended version of the attempted rape scene, so mixed blessings.

The 1998 version remains my favorite interpretation of the story, but this wasn't bad.  Just hard to find.

Looper (2012)

Tyler made a list of movies he wanted to watch (so proud!) and this was one of them.  I hadn't seen it since the theater run.  According to him, the only things that could have made the movie better would be a hot redhead and a spaceship.  Otherwise, he thought it was a great time travel movie.  And I agree.  It's currently streaming only for rental so we watched it on blu-ray.  Originally posted 09 Oct 12.    This is one of the movies I was most looking forward to seeing this fall.  I love JGL in just about anything but his previous work with director Rian Johnson, Brick, was an absolute tour-de-force.

Living thirty years before the invention of time travel, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper, a hit man who disposes of problems sent back through time.  His boss, Abe (Jeff Daniels), runs the Loopers and the Gat Men, a private security force.  Every Looper knows that they will eventually have to close their own loop and murder their future selves.  When this happens, they get a payment in gold bricks and released from their contracts to live the next thirty years in peace.  Unfortunately, the future existence of a new boss, the Rainmaker, starts closing all the loops.  Joe (Bruce Willis) knows that his time is up, but instead of letting himself be killed by his younger incarnation, he decides to let his loop run in the hope of finding the Rainmaker before he can ruin everything.

It's a well thought out, beautifully executed movie.  I wish the theater audience I saw it with would have had a higher appreciation for it but I guess you can't have everything.  Some of the reviews I read called it an instant sci-fi classic but I would go even further and just call it an instant movie classic.

Jane (2017)

Happy Veteran's Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!  Having just come off a month of horror movies, this was the kind of quiet palate cleanser I was looking to see.  Unfortunately, it feels like only half a story.

Jane Goodall dreamed of going to Africa from a young age.  When famed scientist Louis Leakey was looking for an unbiased research assistant, Jane jumped at the chance.  She had no training, no degree, but boundless enthusiasm, patience, and interest in studying chimpanzees in their natural habitat.  She became a pioneer in the field, the foremost expert on chimp behavior, and a global ambassador for conservation.

This documentary, produced by National Geographic and Disney, was so sanitized and watered down it was basically pablum.  It focused on Jane: Wife and Mother instead of Jane: Scientist, which feels a little one-sided and patriarchal.  It glosses over any and all negative experiences, barely touching on the polio epidemic that wiped out a number of her original subjects, or the war that took out a second wave, or even her divorce.  The result is a fluff piece for a trailblazing woman who frankly deserved better.

It's currently streaming on Disney+.

Better Off Dead (1985)

  It's the return of Movie Club!  This was actually one of the picks for October but it's a classic any time of the year.

A young man (John Cusack) finds himself with nothing to live for after his girlfriend (Amanda Wyss) dumps him for the local ski jock (Aaron Dozier) but his half-hearted suicide attempts just cause more trouble than they're worth.  

This is a strange teen movie, as in it is for strange teens.  Maybe you can't relate, but I found the horror-adjacent maximalism on display to be highly enjoyable.  This is one of my favorite Cusack movies, even if some of its elements haven't aged well.  The entire "ha ha, you're under constant threat of sexual assault" sub-plot with Monique, for example, plays more callously than cute.  Nonetheless, if you are interested in the filmography of young Cusack, this is a great entry point.  It's currently only available for rental, but keep an eye out.  It comes back around periodically.

Night Hunter (2018)

  A rare Tyler pick!  Too bad it wasn't very good.  Content Warning:  blood, torture, suicide

A cop (Henry Cavill) teams up with a judge-turned-vigilante (Ben Kingsley) and an FBI profiler (Alexandra Daddario) to track down a killer who has been kidnapping and torturing young women.

This is a lot of noise, a lot of flashing lights, and a very grimy Cavill for no decent payoff.  Worse, it's painfully predictable.  Everyone in it is wasted, maybe especially Minka Kelly who gets maybe four lines of dialogue.  There's no style or originality to any of it and the whole things feels like a bad throwback to the early 00s.  

It's streaming on Amazon but don't do it.  All of these people have much better performances on offer.  Avoid.  

The Westerner (1940)

  Hope everyone had a good Halloween month.  We are back to our regular programming.

Drifter Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) finds himself caught in the middle of a dispute between self-appointed Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennen) and a group of homesteaders led by Jane Ellen Matthews (Doris Davenport).  Judge Bean is firmly on the side of the cattle ranchers and heavily opposes the homesteaders fencing their lands, imposing draconian penalties against them tantamount to murder.  

Gary Cooper always chose such interesting roles.  Cole could have been sly or sniveling but Cooper plays him so nobly.  It might be his name on the poster but Brennen walks away with this show.  Such a good character actor, even here when he's basically the villain.  He's so likable it's hard to root against him.  

I should probably have waited until closer to Thanksgiving because this would be perfect for a post-turkey family viewing, but I actually watched it a month ago and I was worried I would forget about it.  It was streaming on Kanopy but that might have changed.  If you can find it, give it a shot.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 31: The Pack (2015)

  Happy Halloween!  We are ending this mostly-low month with another creature feature, this time from Australia.  Content warning: dead animals (sheep, dogs), blood

A remote sheep station (is there any other kind?) is menaced by a pack of feral dogs with a taste for human flesh.

I added this to the list without reading anything about it --which is pretty much how I add everything-- so I thought this was going to be a werewolf movie.  Nope.  Just some Good Boys gone bad.  That being said, it's not bad, even if you have to check your basic animal knowledge at the door.  It maintains the tension throughout, doesn't show too much too early, and uses all the appropriate tropes.

It still would have been better as a werewolf movie.  

Or if the family at the center would have been camping or something.  It's hard to take a pack of dogs seriously when you have a whole ass house with locks and doorknobs.  They're dogs.  They don't have thumbs.  The fear is the pack nature, but all the dogs that break in do so singly.  It's not like they're overrunning the place.  Plus, the mom (Anna Lise Phillips) is supposed to be a vet.  You'd think she would have some kind of insight, but no.  

If you're not into the supernatural and you're looking for an easy movie to throw on that you don't have to worry about missing stuff while you're handing out candy tonight, The Pack is streaming on Tubi.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 30: The Invisible Man (2020)

  Well, this made me scream but not in an aah-so-scary way, more like a burn-down-the-patriarchy way.  Content warning: abuse, blood, attempted suicide

Cecelia (Elizebeth Moss) planned for weeks to escape her abusive boyfriend, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen).  She should feel free when she learns that he is dead.  But she still feels hunted, watched.  And soon, things begin happening:  misplaced portfolio that costs her a job interview, harsh email sent to her sister (Harriet Dyer) pushing her away, even physical violence against the teenaged daughter (Storm Reid) of the cop friend (Aldis Hodge) that she's living with.  A pattern Cecilia recognizes.  But who would believe her claims that she's being stalked by an invisible psychopath?

This made me so angry.  Just immediate soul-scorching rage from opening to closing credits.  Nothing I have watched this year has made me wish so much that I could spray acid from my mouth like a Jurassic Park dinosaur as this movie.

But fine.  Horror movie.

This was Universal's last gasp at trying to make their "Dark Universe" a thing and it's pretty successful because it does not do that at all.  It is an updated take on the 1933 Invisible Man and correctly remembers that the eponymous character is the villain.  No longer content to just be a mad scientist (cost of living, probably), the 2020 version also makes him a rich, abusive narcissist.  But the real horror comes from how readily the system allows him to use his money as a leash and then a cudgel, warping concepts of fairness to force Cecilia into smaller and smaller boxes.  It is very well done, tightly paced, and well-plotted by writer-director Leigh Wannell.  I'm just really angry that (minus the invisibility) this happens to women all the time.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.

In fact, if you want to watch basically the exact same plot but without the sci-fi, there's Jennifer Lopez's Enough and the entirety of Lifetime's programming.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 29: Hagazussa (2019)

  We have a winner!  Finally!  Content warning: blood, CSA, boils, vomit, sexual assault (off-screen), dead animals (goat, rat), infanticide, cannibalism

As a child, Albrun (Celeste Peter) knew she and her mother (Claudia Martini) were shunned by the villagers, so when her mother becomes ill, Albrun is left to care for her alone.  As an adult, Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen) just wants to live a peaceful life, tending her goats, and raising her infant daughter.  A local woman (Tanja Petrovsky) offers friendship, but the superstitions of the age cling tightly.

This is so much better than The Witch it's not even fair.  Just miles better in terms of atmosphere, cinematography, supernatural elements... even the goats are better.  If you only have time for one medieval witchcraft folklore movie, make it this one.  

That being said, this is not for the faint of heart, especially the last 40 minutes.  Things go off the rails very quickly and the ending is completely left-field.  Like, makes no logical sense but that contributes to the unsettling nature of it.  Be ye fore-warned.  

I have had a lackluster month with horror picks this year but this makes up for everything.  Ugh.  So good.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 28: The Leftovers season 1 (2014)

  Is this horror?  Is it just sci-fi?  I don't know, but I do know it sucked.  Content warning:  blood, dead animals (deer, dogs), burned bodies, some gore

Three years after a global event that saw the disappearance of 2% of the population, a small New York town struggles to find meaning.

I gave this three episodes but I just couldn't finish it.  I didn't care about any of the characters, their motivations were unfathomable to me, and I was bored when I wasn't outright disgusted.  Maybe slow-burn mystery-box shows are your thing.  If so, all three seasons are streaming on (sigh) Max.  I couldn't get into it.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 27: One Cut of the Dead (2017)

  This was really cute but I wouldn't necessarily call it a horror film.  It's a movie about making a zombie film, not really a zombie film.  Content warning: blood, severed limbs, vomit

A mediocre director (Takayuki Higurashi) is approached about directing a zombie show for a brand-new TV channel.  The constraints are 1) it is shot live and 2) it is filmed in one take.  His male lead (Kazuaki Nagaya) constantly second-guesses the script because he is a "serious" actor, his female lead (Yuzuki Akiyama) is a pop idol with massive constraints on her image, his fake Director of Photography (Manobu Hosoi) is a drunk, his real DP (Yoshiko Takahara?) has a back injury, and his fake sound engineer (Shuntaro Yamazaki) has IBS.  It is a literal and metaphorical shitshow.

All the zombie action is in the first 1/3 of the movie, which does look like every shitty zombie movie you've ever seen.  The rest of it is a behind-the-scenes movie-within-a-movie type film that centers on the director trying to connect with his daughter (Mao) before she leaves for college.  It's very cute, very heart-warming, plucky underdog stuff.  With buckets of fake blood.  If that is your jam, it's currently streaming on Shudder.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 26: Summer of 84 (2018)

  Another day, another disappointment.  Content warning: gore

Teenaged conspiracy theorist Davey (Graham Verchere) becomes convinced that his neighbor, Mr. Mackey (Rich Sommer), is the Cape May Slasher, a serial killer targeting young boys.  He talks his three best friends into helping him investigate (AKA spy) on Mackey, and the more they uncover, the worse it looks.

The last 15 minutes of this are pretty good but the hour and a half preceding are a total snooze.  It's like bad B-roll of Stranger Things without the D&D.  I guess if you are or were a teenaged white boy who grew up in the suburbs it might be more meaningful.  I don't know.  I didn't find it funny or endearing and I thought all four boys were annoying.  Sommer gives a great performance, however, and Riverdale fans will recognize Hot Inappropriately Aged Neighbor Girl as Polly Cooper.  

It's streaming on Shudder if you're more into suspense over blood.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 25: Let the Right One In (2008)

  This was the pick for Movie Club but I wasn't going to re-watch it because I thought I had already posted about it.  Turns out, I had only written about the American remake.  An oversight I have corrected.  Content warning:  blood, some gore, bullying, burned bodies

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is trying to work up the nerve to stand up to the bullies at his school, when he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), a strange new tenant who looks about his age.  Eli needs fresh blood to survive and her adult (Per Ragnar) is supposed to provide that by harvesting from healthy specimens.  Unfortunately, he is terrible at it and gets caught, leaving Eli in a pickle.  Can her and Oskar's new friendship survive the demands of her diet?

This is one of the best vampire movies made in the last thirty years.  It is honestly riveting and a fresh take on behavior and abilities.  Eli is much more of a cryptid than vampires derived from Western Europe (the Stoker kind).  She is an apex predator in that she is deadly but also very sensitive to her surroundings.  She uses terrain and ambush instead of enthralling her victims, and seems very aware of how removed she is from humanity.

I cannot overstate how gorgeous this is.  It is cold in a way that is hard to describe, but you will feel it down to the bone.  It is currently streaming on Kanopy, Amazon Prime, Tubi, Peacock, and PlutoTV.  Don't miss out.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 24: The Terror season 1 (2018)

  I tried to watch this last year but I ran out of time.  Content warning:  gore, body horror, dead animals, cannibalism

In 1843, two ships of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, Erebus and Terror, disembarked on a journey to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic and promptly disappeared.  Aboard the ships, a combination of bad luck and hubristic decision-making sees them encased in pack ice and hunted relentlessly by an Inuk monster of legend, the Tuunbaq.  Captain Crozier (Jared Harris) of the Terror urges that they should flee south as soon as possible, having survived an Antarctic expedition previously, but Captain Franklin (Ciaran Hinds) will not have it, until of course, it's far too late.

If you're feeling a little too warm and cozy, throw this on for a weekend.  It doesn't emphasize the horror the way a movie would; at ten episodes, it has time to focus on the characters, to really make you feel for these men and how they suffered.  And oh boy, do they.  By episode 10, you'll know more about scurvy than you ever wanted.  It used to be on Hulu but they took it off.  You might have to search for a free copy, but it's worth a rental if you're going to binge it. 

For added context, I also suggest the book The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Max Brodsky.  It features an Inuk protagonist and goes much more into depth about their culture.  It filled a lot of gaps for me while watching this.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 23: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

  This was a Movie Club pick and coincidentally, I didn't have any family-friendly choices so far this month.  Content warning: headless horseman?

The Adventures of Mr. Toad (narrated by Basil Rathbone) sees the rich but irresponsible Mr. Toad (Eric Blore) lose his ancestral home after trading it away for a stolen car, which lands him in jail.  Over Christmas, he escapes and runs to the riverbank where his friends Mole (Colin Campbell), Ratty (Claud Allister), and MacBadger (Campbell Grant) help him steal back the deed from the weasels currently in residence.

Disney nerds will immediately recognize the weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (narrated by Bing Crosby) tells the story of a schoolteacher in a rural New York community who challenges the town hotshot for the hand of the town flirt.  At a Halloween party, after losing to the schoolteacher on every front, the hotshot decides to scare him out of town by recounting the local legend of the Headless Horseman, a ghost that roams the road on Halloween looking for a head to replace his pumpkin one.

This story is kind of the definition of Everybody Sucks Here.  Ichabod is a fortune-hunting lothario, Brom Bones is kind of a dick, and Katrina von Tassel is a vain bitch looking to stir trouble to feed her ego.  The Headless Horseman song still slaps, though.  

Animation fans will note Ub Iwerks' name in the credits, a mark of quality.  Katrina was obviously an early model for 1950 Cinderella, having the same face and hair, complete with the blue bows on the ends of her braids.  Fortunately, someone calmed down a little with regards to the rest of her proportions by the next year.

It's annoying that the Mr. Toad story is first, both because in the title Ichabod is listed first and chronologically Halloween is before Christmas.  I meant to pay attention to the minute mark where the second story starts so you could just skip right to it, but then I didn't.  The combination is currently streaming on Disney+.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 22: The Wailing (2016)

  I knew we were missing some K-horror!  Content warning: gore, dead animals (crows, dog, chickens, deer, cow's head, pig's head), body horror, vomiting, blood

Policeman Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) is called to investigate a string of brutal murder-suicides in a sleepy Korean village.  Suspicion falls on a Japanese man (Jun Kunimura) recently arrived.  When Jong-goo investigates, he finds a creepy shrine and photos of the afflicted townspeople, along with some of their personal belongings but he really goes spare when he discovers his daughter's (Hwan-hee Kim) shoe among them.  Sure enough, the little girl comes down with a fever and a rash.  Jong-goo calls a shaman (Hwang Jung-min) to perform a ritual exorcism.

I found the ending to be really abrupt and a little confusing so I had to go to Wikipedia and apparently there's a deleted ending that would have made it more clear but the point of the film is ambiguity and fear, so they cut it.

A+ for atmosphere and effects, though.  You can feel the hysterical desperation peeling off Jong-goo as the movie progresses and he understands less and less of what's going on.  There's zombies, ghosts, and demons (oh my!), an old shaman and a young shaman, hell, even Catholic priests.  You would think a kitchen-sink approach like this would be muddled but at every step it feels like the completely right choice.

It is streaming on Shudder.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 21: The Gift (2000)

  Content warning:  domestic violence, racial slur, anti-semitism, blood, child molestation (discussed, not shown)

Local psychic Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) has enough to deal with raising three boys by herself without redneck wife-beater Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves, yes, really) harassing her for telling his wife, Valerie (Hilary Swank), to leave him.  So when she sees a vision of missing socialite Jessica King (Katie Holmes) floating and wrapped in chains in Donnie's pond, it's a relief to put him behind bars.  Except Annie's gift is telling her he didn't do it.  So now she has to find the real murderer before she becomes the next victim.

For a low-budget ghost movie, this has an incredible pedigree:  Blanchett, Swank, Holmes, J.K. Simmons, Giovanni Ribisi, Greg Kinnear, and the Internet's sweetheart, Reeves, playing way against type.  It was written by Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Sam Raimi.

And it's not bad!  The middle courtroom scenes drag but contain the underrated Michael Jeter so I tolerated them, but the rest of it is perfectly decent Southern-fried dread.  I wouldn't call it kid-friendly by any means but it's definitely suitable for people who don't like gore.  It's streaming on Paramount+, Amazon Prime, or on Kanopy with a library card.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 20: Totally Killer (2023)

  Content warning:  blood, bullying, discussion of drunk driving fatality

In 1987, a trio of murders rocked a small town.  Thirty-five years later, the killer returns to finish the job, attacking Pam Hughes (Julie Bowen).  Pam's teenaged daughter, Jamie (Kiernan Shipka), uses her friend Amelia's (Kelsey Mawema) science fair time machine to go back to 1987 to hopefully stop the killer and prevent her mom's murder.  Jamie is stunned to find that the Pam that would become her mom, Pam Miller (Olivia Holt), is a bitchy mean girl who runs a clique called The Mollys, and all three original victims were her best friends.  Jamie must figure out how to save them while also not disrupting the future.

This is the newest Amazon Original under their recently acquired MGM heading.  It wears its influences very proudly on its sleeve, and your enjoyment is entirely dependent on how much you like those influences.  I mostly did, so I thought this was cute and fun.  I don't find Shipka to be a particularly compelling actress and I think she's a little lackluster here, but Holt more than made up for it, as did Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, who plays the teenaged version of Amelia's mom.  

So if you like Back to the Future, but wish it could have had a murder mystery sub-plot featuring the Heathers, this is for you.  It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 19: The Ruins (2008)

  Content warning:  body horror, amputation, self-mutilation, death of a child, blood

Four American tourists meet up with a German guy (Joe Anderson) who offers to show them a newly discovered Mayan pyramid in the jungle.  Things don't go well and the Spring Breakers realize they are being quarantined by the locals, who are willing to kill to keep what's in the pyramid contained.

Once again, don't go to another country and disrespect cultural locations.  Also, having a local guide who speaks regional dialects is very helpful.

I kind of enjoy movies about dumb people Fucking Around and Finding Out, especially if it's karmically funny, but these characters weren't stupid, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The med student, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), especially kept his head on straight the entire time, trying to stay calm and reasoned and make the best decisions available.  I appreciate that.  We love to see competence and heroics.

Also, what is this, like the fourth or fifth vacation horror I've seen this month?  Maybe I need a vacation.

Anyway, The Ruins is streaming on Paramount+.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 18: Revenge (2018)

  Well, we made it over half the month before we hit a film featuring sexual violence against women as a plot device.  *deep sigh*  Content warning:  rape, blood, gore, self-surgery, dead animal

Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) thought she was getting away on a luxury vacation with her rich, married boyfriend, Richard (Kevin Janssens), until his asshole hunting buddies show up.  Raped, pushed off a cliff, and left to die, Jen must re-evaluate her life choices and oh yeah, kill some motherfuckers.

Can we please just not with the entire Rape-Revenge genre?  I don't care that this was written and directed by a woman.  It is still incredibly male-gazey and gross.  Nearly naked heavily-armed hot girls are a surprisingly wide-spread fetish, although I will give this movie credit for showing more dick than T&A.  

My biggest complaint, however (besides just all of it), is that it makes zero sense.  The 40-gallon tank Range Rover runs out of fuel but Richard can cruise around on a dirt bike for two days and be fine on gas?  Jen is barefoot in the desert with no food or water, covering miles like a Maasai warrior?  Cauterizing a wound with a beer can gives you a cool ass tattoo and also stops internal bleeding after being impaled? Peyote is an anesthetic?

It is insultingly stupid and the fact that it was lauded by critics is infuriating.  It is exclusively streaming on Shudder and they can fucking keep it.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 17: The Devil's Doorway (2018)

  We have our found footage entry for the year. Also, kind of a weird prequel to Philomena, but there you are.  Content warning:  blood, childbirth

An old priest (Lalor Roddy) and a young priest (Ciaran Flynn) are sent to investigate a potential miracle at a Magdalene Laundry, one of the houses for "fallen women" in Ireland.  The statue of the Virgin Mary has been seen crying blood.  Tests reveal that the blood is from someone female, O-negative, and pregnant.  Coincidentally, the nuns have been keeping a young lady (Lauren Coe) chained in the basement who fits those exact parameters.  Meanwhile, young Father John is plagued by visitations of children running around outside his room in the middle of the night, leaving bloody handprints, and singing creepy songs as children are wont to do.

You really can't go wrong with creepy kid ghosts but this trips overs the hem of The Exorcist and face-plants.  It would have been fine if it had stuck with the corruption of the Magdalene Laundries angle, which were real and real fucked up, instead of tacking on a possession sub-plot.  

The shaky-cam makes me want to burn down a building and the light leaks, burn-ins, and other film tricks were overused.  If that doesn't bother you, it's available on Tubi or Plex for free, and Shudder if you really hate commercials.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 16: Return of the Living Dead (1985)

  Content warning:  gore, blood, suicide

A pair of medical supply company employees accidentally release a toxic gas that causes the deceased to become zombies.

This was a bitter disappointment.  I had heard really good things, that it was hilarious, a punk classic, and it's just... not.  There's not a single joke in the whole film unless you count "ha ha, those kids are into punk sub-culture!" as a joke.  And even if that were the joke, it's not funny.  Nothing in this is played for laughs, not even the zombies.

They are a massive improvement evolutionarily from the Night of the Living Dead zombies as they can a) speak, b) use tools, c) solve problems, and d) run.  All of which could have been mined for comedy and wasn't.  It takes 45 minutes to even get to the zombies and that's over half the runtime.  

It's streaming for free on Tubi but you couldn't even pay me to watch this again.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 15: Rebecca (1940)

  Our first (and probably only) Oscar winner for the list.  Content warning:  bullying

Everyone knows Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) is distraught over the death of his wife, Rebecca.  They were the most beautiful, wealthy, accomplished couple, after all.  But he remarries only a year after her accidental death to a paid companion (Joan Fontaine), no less.  The new Mrs. de Winter finds it intolerable living in the shadow of her predecessor, especially with the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), constantly comparing and criticizing.  Was Rebecca's death a tragic accident or is something more sinister afoot?

I remember trying to read this book in high school and giving up after the first page.  I barely made it through the movie.  Maxim is a total dick and the story doesn't come together until the last ten minutes, leaving the two hours before that full of nothing happening except Fontaine being relentlessly bullied.

And I know thematically why she doesn't get a name but it is super irritating in practice.  Even the fucking dog got a name (Jasper, a Very Good Boy).  Despite her character being a total drip, Fontaine is luminous here, matched only by Anderson being a creepy bitch.  Olivier is good, as is George Sanders, but this is Fontaine's movie.  

This won Best Picture in 1941 and was the only Alfred Hitchcock film to ever win.  It's part of the Criterion Collection but isn't currently streaming right now.  If you're into moody, atmospheric dread instead of gore, this might be for you.