Captains Courageous… or not. CAPTAIN PHILLIPS details the real-life hijacking of the freighter ship Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates on April 8, 2009, and how its captain was taken hostage. And gaslights him into an undeserving hero. Amongst his own officers, opinion was that the real Captain Richard Phillips was an arrogant, self-righteous prick. He was no selfless hero. So … Read More
I SEE YOU
The Horror of Being Human. The scariest thing in this movie is Helen Hunt’s face. Hunt is Jackie, married to Detective Harper (Jon Tenney), with a teen son Connor (Judah Lewis). And she’s just had an affair that has driven her family apart irreconcilably. And something supernatural is going on in her house. I SEE YOU starts as a generic … Read More
NOPE 2022
Probing your mind, not your anus. A renowned horse trainer and his sister experience strange happenings on their farm. They soon discover the horses are being spooked by something Not Of Planet Earth. Writer-director Jordan Peele subverts our expectations with such an original story in NOPE that it catches us off-guard. Yes, there is something extra-terrestrial prancing around in the … Read More
TROLL 2022
Norway’s Godzilla. There was the Norwegian thriller TROLL HUNTER in 2010, an enjoyable modern take on the ancient fairy tale legends. Now Norway blasts out TROLL, an even more grounded, more thrilling, more gargantuan meshing of ancient legend with modern warfare… So… Is Norway cornering the market on troll IP? During an excavation through a mountain in Dovre, Norway, a … Read More
TROLL HUNTER 2010
Trolling Norway. Students making a documentary follow what they think is a bear poacher, only to discover he is a trolljegeren (a TROLL HUNTER), systematically ridding the Norwegian countryside of rogue trolls destroying property, while his governmental gaslighters continue the ruse to news stations that “bears” are responsible for all the havoc. Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud) as interviewer leads a … Read More
LAST SEEN ALIVE
Goes from Very Real to Somewhat Hollywood. A movie where the lead character does everything that YOU would do in a dire situation – at least in the first two acts, before he must bow to Action Movie Protocol and shoot the bad guys, rescue the girl and take down a redneck meth lab all by himself… LAST SEEN ALIVE … Read More
13 SINS
Sinful Crim-ful. Thirteen challenges. That will either get you killed, jailed, or set for life with a fortune. 13 SINS is, like all movies of its ilk, not about what the man onscreen would do to acquire the Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of riches, but what YOU would do. In this American thriller/black comedy that exudes a British feel, Elliott … Read More
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
No Plan. Hubcaps terrorize process shots of Los Angeles, while aliens try to save humanity from itself by turning dead people into bad actors. PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is filmwanker Ed Wood’s love letter to science fiction plagiarism, its premise stolen directly from 1951’s THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL – that of aliens warning Earth to stop advancing … Read More
JOKER 2019
Wanna know how I got these (O)scars?… Joaquin Phoenix is unpredictable, funny, disturbing, and when you meet him, he might just kill you. In JOKER, he won the 2020 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor… But was he really acting? JOKER, like STEPHEN KING’S IT, shows clowns for what they really are: insecure, unbalanced, traumatized sociopaths. Again, was Joaquin … Read More
ANNIHILATION
Invasion of the fittest. A military biologist treks to an extra-terrestrial landing site, and discovers that one life form’s expansion means another life form’s annihilation. ANNIHILATION is about nothing less than the dissolution of the human species. I love it already. An extra-terrestrial species insidiously “invades” our planet, not via rockets and lasers, but through DNA, mimicking and overrunning every … Read More
I AM MOTHER
Big Brother Mother. A young girl is raised by a robot in a biosphere, to believe that the outside world is annihilated, and all that’s left of humans are embryos in this facility. And that robots are her friend. Until a human outsider appears and tells her exactly the opposite. I AM MOTHER is a well-written science fiction thriller that … Read More
DEATH NOTE 2017
Justice, Tween Dream Style. Can a demon really be scary if it has a name and speaks English? And sounds like Willem Dafoe? I mean, really, if a demon terrorized me with that voice that sounds like he’s biting a teacup in half, first thing I’d do is laugh. Then – maybe terrorized. I’ve always said, entities that you cannot … Read More
THE PERFECTION
Classical music is torture. Lust, jealousy, lesbianism, diarrhea, rape, dismemberment, torture, body horror and classical cello. No wonder this movie is called THE PERFECTION. Perfection – it’s what young cellist Lizzie now has, under the tutelage of mentor Anton, from the prestigious Bachoff Institute. It’s what Charlotte once had, under the same tutor whom she left a decade ago, to … Read More
WOLF CREEK 2
Oz goes La La. Greg McLean’s WOLF CREEK (2005) was a good movie for a number of reasons, one of them being, it was a body-horror thriller removed from the “Hollywood” system. It oozed Made in Oz. But WOLF CREEK 2, even though helmed by the same director-writer, looks and feels like La La Land. Maybe because it took eight … Read More
WOLF CREEK
Tourist hotties. Psycho ocker. Unconscionable Strine. Three young backpackers visit WOLF CREEK meteorite crater in Western Australia, on a killer vacation. Two British girls, Liz (skinny, square-jawed Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy (blond busty Kestie Morassi) team up with low-education-taut-abs Sydney surfer-boy Ben (Nathan Phillips), to drive across Australia in a shitbox he just purchased, hitting tourist hotspots along the way. … Read More
KILLING GROUND
KILLING GROUND is killing it. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has tainted American storytelling so badly that even in a brilliant movie called UNFORGIVEN (1992), though all the characters do in fact remain unforgiven, yet the lead character finds redemption. So foreign movies, unbound by the juvenile strictures of the contradictory MPAA, are like a cold bucket of … Read More
14 CAMERAS
America’s Perviest Home Videos. The story of the pervert landlord installing hidden cameras to spy on his tenants in 13 CAMERAS may have been disconcerting, but its sequel, 14 CAMERAS, is disturbing on a visceral level. Gerald the Landlord (Neville Archambault, reprising his sickening, remarkable role as the loose-lipped sex pervert) has taken his voyeur pastime to the dark web. … Read More
13 CAMERAS
He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake… His carriage tilts forward when he waddles like a human-hippo hybrid, his breathing labored, his face the pallor of a fetid corpse, his loose-lipped maw hanging open in licentious drool, his stench overwhelming; he looks like the missing link between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon Man. And he’s watching you. But … Read More
EMELIE
Babysitter bitter. The babysitter showing the kids a VHS sex tape of their parents is not the true crime here – it’s that the parents are still using VHS tapes in 2016! Babysitter thrillers are kinda like romantic comedies, in that there is only one objective; with romcoms, it’s pairing the two leads; with babysitter thrillers, it’s killing the kids. … Read More
US 2019
Comes at us with wild rabbit teeth. Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them. — Jeremiah 11:11, King James Version A vacationing family find themselves terrorized by another family, whom they discover – is … Read More