DirigiblePulp

Sure the animation is incredible, but at what cost? At what point in the original animated film did anyone find themselves thinking, "Man this would be so much better with real animals?" No one. Not ever. The animals show no facial emotion (it's so real!) leaving all the heavy lifting to the voice acting (it's not real!) and the songs, while as good as ever, feel leaden and dead when played over Planet Earth footage of animals walking in circles and staring at each other. It's not just that the photo realistic CGI is soulless, dead and de-anthropomorphized, it's that it doesn't suit this story at all. The film asks you to suspend disbelief that animals can talk and sing while also asking you to believe they are real flesh and blood animals. It's classic doublethink.

It's just amazing to me how a movie like this can be so boring. The refusal of mainstream horror movies these days to blend horror and comedy is baffling to me. It's like audiences only get horror if it's "scary" or making fun of horror cliches because that's "smart" to laugh at. There's no in-between. Everything is either a big broad obvious comedy or so self-serious it has no room to breathe -- this is the latter.

Funny and brisk enough to make you almost believe this movie has anything remotely interesting to add to the Peter Parker saga. Mysterio is a cool villain, and he's served well here, both by Gyllenhaal and the script. But Spider-Man/Peter is again a whiny brat who learns no lessons. He lucks into doing the right thing and gets everything handed to him. He makes no sacrifices and loses nothing. Imagine you have to make the choice between saving the world and going on a field trip where maybe you kiss MJ (imagine this is a choice that is actually a "real tough choice"). But instead of having to choose one you just automatically get both because choices are for losers. That's the new Marvel version of great power. With great power comes more robots and tech and hey superpowers are kinda lame too now that I think about it. And wow, the Stark Jr/Iron Spider stuff is so thematically unwarranted and completely off base.

Less a full fledged sequel than an epilogue, to bring just a little bit more closure to Woody's arc. Like any epilogue, it's ultimately unnecessary. Does it need to exist? No. But is it ok that it does? Absolutely. The parallels to the first film are constant and intentional. Woody must deal with the new toy on the block. Woody loses said new toy and must go on a quest to retrieve it to keep his owner happy, to do the right thing because his moral compass never pointed nowhere but true. He meets scary toys that aren't scary so much as misunderstood. All is well. Except Woody. The circle of life comes full circle. This isn't 4, this is 1 all over again. But how many times can you repeat the same story, the same mistakes, the same resolutions? Woody takes a different exit this time. He loses his voice in life but gains perspective. And by doing so sets himself free, free to help all others, not just those close to him, to infinity and beyond.

More fun than you think it will be. The premise is solid - how can you tell when a self-learning AI doll has become conscious (spoiler, you don't) - and the fun is there. There's a great early scene in which Chucky observes the kids laughing and having fun watching a horror movie and "learns" that that's what they want in their lives so he grabs a knife and threatens to kill them. Hey, he's just trying to fit in! What a sick society we have here, and hey would you look at that this is a horror movie itself and the audience is all implicated and such. Unfortuantely, it really doesn't stick the landing. The premise is never explored meaningfully and the climax is generic and kinda boring.

Too often settles for the lowest common denominator (meningitis-sploitation is such an apt descriptor of this movie as a whole). But it succeeds more often than not. It has purpose and rhythm and creeps. It works.

Completely insane and utter nonsense. Gloriously over the top and stupid. And knowingly so. Much like Furious 7, this film embraces its cartoon silliness. Though some of the underwater cgi is really clunky and the de-aging of some of the actors is awkward and detracts from the scenes they’re in. At a pivotal point in the film Patrick Wilson growls with sincere intensity, “Call me Ocean Master” and I’ll be damned if I didnt want to laugh and cry at the same time.

The umpteenth rebootquel of the franchise. This time we go all the way back to the beginning, something that is becoming an increasing phenomenon in the moviegoing marketplace. People don't want remakes (the original is too special), but they also don't want sequels (cheap money grabs). But how about both in one? While parts of it are quite good, other parts are downright lazy and woebegone. Although it purports to be a direct sequel to the first film (inexplicably disregarding the 2nd film to get rid of the brother/sister storyline), it homages, and in some cases takes scenes and plot point from nearly every other Halloween film. It's like a mashup, but set to the tune of reboot. Laurie's PTSD storyline is taken from H2O, but cranked up to 11. The first time Michael picks up a knife again in the kitchen with the old lady is taken from 2. The doctor character does his best Loomis. The bathroom kill scene with the podcasters is from both 4 and the Zombie remake. The final shot is from 4. We are asked to take Laurie as as serious character study -- she has PTSD and is estranged from the family she ostensibly loves -- but instead of her learning anything about herself she is ultimately proven right and let off the hook for her years of misplaced paranoia, since in this film Michael was somehow captured right after the first film ended and has been locked up ever since. Why disregard the 2nd film, which could have given her plausible reason to still fear Michael? They never found his burnt body and he could still be out there. H2O knew to do this, but here we get a half-assed Michael locked up storyline for the third time, and yet again he escapes while changing facilities. This film also includes strands of desperate thematic relevance. Michael supposedly represents the patriarchy. While a slasher movie might be a good fit for that kind of exploration, was Halloween really the right platform? If the plan was really to return Michael to his mysterious randomly killing ways, how can he represent the patriarchy? (In another strange twist he doesn't kill a baby when given the chance. I don't want him to kill a baby but why even address that?). It's all just very weird and out of place in the overall context of this film. There are good moments however. Michael's mask is back to its grand evil beauty. It's haunted, aged, worn and sad. Like how this whole movie should have been. Jamie is fantastic, and the climax actually raises some goosebumps, if ultimately underwhelming. The score is appropriately electronic, with a good balance of referencing the original and sprucing it up. Green has a few nifty long tracking shots in this, but they feel like homage pastiche. Both ostentatious and not enough. Atmosphere is mostly lacking, the whole film is edited so fast and no shot lingers for too long. It doesn't have a creeping singular vision, instead its stuck in the past with a few face slaps of modern relevance to make it feel fresh and new.

The Curse of Thorn is put mercifully to rest, but at least these movies were trying to build something new. The theatrical cut of this is immense garbage. I wish I could see the Producer's Cut, if only to say I did (there's no way it can save this), but it's not included in the Scream Factory complete collection, so it can't be that good can it? This movie is seriously so awful, boring, braindead and disjointed. It doesn't work ever, at all for any reason.

More Curse of Thorn and little Jamie, this time with an insanely stupid opening and all sorts of loose ends. That it still kinda works in spite of that is really quite amazing.

Perfectly fine. The police force actually responding to Loomis's insanity right away is a nice and welcome realistic touch. It's a subtle and yet completely innovative plot point. How often do police take the crazy theories in these movies seriously and do something about it?

Holds up fairly well. I'm surprised at how silent this film is. Long stretches of it are borderline boring, with little music and so much "suspense" that it dissipates into nothing, in a lull of disappointment, before screaming back again. This movie looks and sounds great, the ending isn't superb but it works. Mr. Sandman is a near brilliant song choice. I love Loomis. "I shot him 6 times!"

This movie just ****. You can sometimes almost see what maybe the creators were going for - a kind of jaded cynical reality show attempt at the self-aware slasher, a meta commentary on our desensitization to violence. But that's barely present or comprehensible in this mess. The opening is blasphemous, it does nothing to warrant it's presence in this franchise. The rest is an exercise in stupid pointlessness.

I'm not sure why it gets so much undue hate, especially compared to some of the others. It brings Laurie back, deals with her PTSD, retains the Shape's mystique by giving him little in the way of backstory or reason for returning now of all times. The mask isn't great and it's a bit of an awkward mix of a teenage post-Scream self-aware slasher, Halloween film and character study but it's fun and engaging without wearing out its welcome. The ending is fantastic as well. So much deserved catharsis.

Never finds a real reason to exist, and tonally it's a bit of a mess (is it comedy or horror, loving tribute or satire?) but it has charm, and the ending is audacious.

35mm film print at the Alamo Drafthouse in Tempe. The print was fairly worn - lots of scratches, constant popping, faded colors, the works. And yet, still a fantastic experience. Apparently film is still the only way to show this theatrically. How cool. Makes sense considering the lack of a proper home video release. The wrongly formatted DVD doesn’t count. I forgot how much fun this film is. It’s a broad, mainstream, crowd-pleaser and as good as this stuff gets. The crowd I was with loved it. You wanna groan, but you laugh and cheer instead.

It was an absolute joy, visually and aurally, to see one of Cattet and Forzani's films on the big screen proper. Unfortunately, this one felt their least essential. It is, at times, almost a parody of their previous work, lacking innovation and evolution from what they've done previously.

Definitely disappointed with this. All the elements are present, but they never add up to anything. The plot never coheres, the effective scares, tension and atmosphere all feel like disparate elements instead of a complete whole. This is simultaneously a supernatural haunting, demonic possession and a killer doll movie without any of the pleasing genre mishmash you hope would occur. The film seems driven by whatever a particular scene needs to happen to be "scary" without actually earning it. You want to embrace nightmare logic while watching this, but ultimately this goes exactly where you would expect, playing with expectations only within a scene, at random, without rules, not in an anything goes madness kind of way, but in an arbitrary lackadaisical one. It's borrowed parts, borrowed well, welded together at random.

A work of absolutely perfect tonal control. The humor so dry, so bone deep, it doesn't need underlining. Horror so in your face, so over the top, it doesn't need "scares". One tone or the other always picks up the slack, always drives a scene, in a seamless flowing rhythm. Jeffrey Combs is the epicenter of it all.

Everyone loves when the is or isn't he alive aspect of the movie is played out through the beginning of the movie. That thing always works for these kinds of movies and Holland is quite good at it. It's more than just a way of teasing the audience, it's a prolonged sense of foreplay because we know it's going to happen eventually, goddamn it. And it lasts just long enough to suggest it's all in the boy's imagination. The second half is good enough. There's a sense of motion without cause to it, a couple of set pieces spontaneously set up to get to the quick hitting ending. It's too bad it doesn't have a little more fun along the way. There's a tonal break in this that's almost kind of brilliant, and very similar to Fright Night. It's all played straight until the reveal actually happens -- then it becomes preposterous and ridiculous. It's that ironic mixing of tone and plot happenstance that gives this move it's unique edge. And Brad Dourif is a big part of that.

A strong premise about painting and "evil miracles" leads to an arrhythmically paced slow-burn that forfeits tension whenever it starts to get something good going. The climax in particular is promising but is over so abruptly it's ultimately not worth the wait.

I absolutely applaud this film for not attempting to be “2001”, it’s the opposite in most respects. But it’s also pointless as a result. It’s a plot driven retread for the majority of it, and while the finale is interesting, it’s too little too late.

This is a bit of an old fashioned horror movie. Something that plays as a dramatic movie first and then slowly becomes something else. Like "Rosemary" or "Exorcist" but without the high profile clout of those directors. This is two hours of an exploration of family tragedy and grief through characters struggling to cope. To say much of this film is to ruin it, so lashing praise onto certain aspects of it is the best one can do. Not to say this is a film with a big twist, it isn't. Toni Collette is fantastic as is no surprise at this point in her career. All the performances carry their own, including one I was unsure of at first but grew on me throughout -- Alex Wolff. The cinematography, rhythms and pacing, sense of place and space, and sound design are all superb and work in conjunction to create atmosphere and dread -- like a pit in your stomach that continues to grow and grow throughout. It turns into a genuine nightmare that absolutely worked for me. See it blind, see it as a movie first and foremost (not as a horror show with jump scares), but just see it.

The format that shouldn’t work still kind of does with this anthology-esque sequel. Being locked to a computer screen creates a sense of unknown and claustrophobia even if it isn’t visually exciting. But the rest... The characters are annoying and the dialogue cringe inducing at times. Story tries to be a bit too twisted and clever for its own good. It’s ok.

This feels like anyone could have made it. It was probably the only thing Romero could get funded, and he liked the idea, but the passion wasn't there. It's a bit cheap, slapdash and conventional -- a B-side.

I couldn't figure out if this was Asylum level self-aware awfulness for its own sake or an earnest zombie flick with serious social commentary. Whatever it is, it did not work at all.

Some novel ideas in this, but not enough is done with them. Martin Freeman is quite good. I have a strong feeling I won't remember this very well in a few months.

Charlize Theron has somehow become an underrated actress if you ask me. Yeah she's been a badass action heroine over the last few years, but I mean more than that. She is incredible in this - emotionally complex, alive, real in a way that doesn't feel like acting. The script is funny and poignant, it suggests that writer Diablo Cody has grown into a mom much like the title character, and her trademark hip witty dialogue is suppressed, only showing up as the occasional zinger from Marlo in what feels like a sudden upsurge of life for her, a part of who she used to be. The movie is undone a bit by its "twist", a twist that's not really a twist if you have any wits about you, and one that doesn't make or break the movie but does hamper the middle third I feel. Too much time is spent examining the weird night nanny situation instead of Marlo being in a self-reflexive dialogue with her younger self.

I don't remember thinking this was especially novel when it came out, although I did have cheap fun with it. Watching it now I had almost the complete opposite experience. Romero was clearly on to something here, and somehow even ahead of the time (to think the iPhone wasn't even out yet and Facebook nowhere near popular) but instead of the subtle social satire lying under the surface a great zombie movie, Diary is a one-note in your face social commentary movie with fine zombie action, basic plotting and mostly boring characters and dialogue.

I hadn't seen this since it came out and I had been looking forward to revisiting this ever since James Gunn exploded with the Guardians movies and I had became more familiar with Troma. I enjoyed it more this time around even if it still feels a bit slight. It's an amalgamation of a bunch of different horror movies, Gunn interests and lessons learned with Troma. What should be an explosively great time is more intermittently exhilarating with some of its more interesting edges sanded down by what can only be studio interference. It too often settles for "my first cult horror" movie, mainstreaming and going broad instead of weird. Michael Rooker is stellar as always, the practical effects fantastic (the CGI is distracting and bad but forgivable) and the creature design "looks like something that fell off my d**k during the war", as they say.

An intriguing premise about a lone zombie chasing a woman through the desert. A ripe metaphor that serves its obvious purpose and little more. It's amusing if ultimately not as inspired or memorable as one would hope.

Very much "inspired" by The Last of Us. Or ripped off more like. Which is fine, if it at least felt inspired by that story. Instead it feels rote. Even the twist of the climax isn't earned, it feels like it's done for its own sake.

This film is basically "Robocop" meets "Death Wish", with less satire than the former and more humor than the latter. And it's a B movie blast. An unrelenting pace, fantastic fight choreography that doesn't skimp on the gleeful blood and gore, and never not fun or interesting to look at. Yeah some of the one-liner dialogue as delivered by Logan Marshall-Green feels a bit forced and the plot isn't exactly clever or unique, but damn it, it all works and it makes it's own beautiful alchemy out of a bunch of borrowed parts. This is cheap genre filmmaking done damn right.

As amusing as it is, I kept waiting for something more. There are some semi-inventive kills (one truly great one with a balloon pump), grins, and modest interest. Little more unfortunately.

Good fun in spite of the myriad of problems you would expect in a movie of this magnitude - namely plot holes galore, clunky dialogue, and a relentless exhausting pace. It ultimately doesn't satisfy that itch for dramatic heft, and it doesn't tickle the imagination in any wondrous way, but in spite of that you can't help but smile ear to ear throughout.

A one-note one-joke premise ad nauseum. Killing kids has never looked so banal. Needed more humor, more insanity, more creativity, more anything.

This movie is somehow slightly worse than the sum of its parts. There is a genuine sense of direction and theme to this film, even if it doesn't really go anywhere all that interesting. The plain story belies the adept filmmaking and strong central performances. The two leads have really believable chemistry. The story just isn't up to snuff with the rest of the film and the beast metaphors are applied way too thickly for something so obvious.

First things first -- it's kind of fun and there's thrills to be had and all that. It drags at times and is manic but hey aren't most expensive tentpoles nowadays. This movie somehow was able to take highly advanced virtual reality combined with an insane amount of pop culture nostalgia reverence and manage to put those things in a dystopia!, revel in it a bit (like we all do), and then somehow refuse to make any kind of meta-commentary on what that means for contemporary society or modern film/art/etc. I mean, turn off the video games for 2 days a week and meet a girl? That's all we get? I really hated the 2nd sequence. Not homage, not fun, not clever, just perversely misguided and completely ruining a masterpiece that deserves to be seen on its own terms for new generations. I can't believe Spielberg would do that to a friend... It's so blatant it almost feels intentional. At least with the book you put it off as bad writing by an author clearly unaware of the implications of his premise but more than ready to treat it as pseudo-paradise unironically. I have no idea what Spielberg wanted to do with this. "Look on my works ye mighty and despair!" I guess?

A lot of great comedians in this and yet woof. This is so slapdash there’s no way this wasn’t more than some contract obligation for most involved.

A good old-fashioned late night B movie thriller, elevated by dedicated lead performances and Soderbergh's playful, tinkering filmmaking. The whole film has the feel of a docudrama shot on a phone (because it was) that leads to extreme close-ups of faces that distort and distend the actors. This creates a kind of surrealism and unraveling reality to the whole enterprise, though ultimately it's a bit mute. The is she or isn't she sane question doesn't seem to last very long - at least for this particular viewer.

The most underappreciated of horror films, the ugly step-child of the Halloween franchise that doesn't deserve its ill reputation. When I think of Halloween (the holiday) I think of children wearing the masks from this film and that incredible, indelible, iconic shot of trick r' treaters silhouetted against the sunken sun, the sky orange going on black, looking out over the low lights of Phoenix from the hills above. Damn that's nice. Oh and that insanely catchy Silver Shamrock song. So much memorable from such a strange, casually plot irrelevant movie. It doesn't really do one thing exceptionally well - besides presentation. The plot is fine, silly verging on nonsensical. The blood and gore are mostly pedestrian but with glimmers of imagination (if only the family murder scene didn't devolve into snake bites). The main characters are likable ciphers - there are a few insights into them but it's mostly matter of fact without much more than a passing interest. Without a better way to put it and hating this turn of phrase - they don't make them like this anymore, whatever the hell that means.

Beyond the Gates is very uninspired. It wants to be a piece of 80's kitsch, capturing the director’s childhood or whatever and that's so in vogue right now. The titular board game doesn't provide any imaginative elements to the film, it's mostly a macguffin for things to happen at random in order to propel things along and capture a certain air of time gone by. Nothing fun, unique or imaginative comes of the board game's challenges and they don’t really "play" the game in the traditional sense. The whole thing is lackluster.

Man this was **** Whatever the hell this was supposed to be - comedy, horror, sentimental growing up claptrap - it failed miserably. Not one joke lands. The whole thing feels written by adults trying to write as their childhood selves but being so good at it that they think literally every single thing they think of is just so clever and couldn't possibly be bad. This movie literally has a scene where the hot babysitter and the geeky 13 year old kid watch a vintage western in the backyard on a projector while acting out the whole thing in front of it. No irony intended. It's just meant to be a bonding moment I guess? I mean, wtf is this?

1922 lacks the polish and all around cred of Gerald's Game, but it still can hold its own as a nice piece of dark and seedy moralizing late at night. Thomas Jane is kinda terrible in this, but not in a way that ruins the movie necessarily. He's a good enough actor, but his accent is not held in check, he chews every word of every sentence as if it's fried and corn fed and his dirt limned constantly makes him seem like a mud man - it constantly takes you out of the movie. This is a fairly straightforward story for the most part, but these stand out as egregious compared to the rest. The whole film could have used a touch more of the surreal, more psychology from the imagery and the presentation, but it still works and its minor flourishes are fine. The rats are all professional, and do their parts with aplomb. Not much CGI detected. That's always a win.

A really solid flick that will grip you and hold you and tells a compelling story with really good acting. The whole thing is presented quite nicely. The moonlight man is haunting. The story is thematically sound. It won't change your life, or maybe even hang with you for all that long, but it's well told.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Day 24: Morgue fest continues, this time with one that comes somewhat touted and recommended. Emile Hirsch and Brian Cox make up the cast and they're both good dependable co-leads. This film begins with a nearly suffocating claustrophobic atmosphere, one in which the outside world can't possibly exist and there's only the starkly lit mildewy wooden paneled interior of an old family morgue. The mystery mounts and the two leads examine an inexplicable body, one in which they can't find a cause of death. The body is untouched and yet her insides show unbelievable trauma. The mounting atmosphere and tension of the first half is unfortunately mishandled in the second half. The film becomes a rather bare-bones spooky jump scare exercise that leads to a shocking revelation that really does deliver (it's genuinely intriguing and so much more could have been done with it) on the first half's tension. There's no follow through. There are great ideas here but a lack of focus in the middle, or maybe a fear that if jumps in the night didn't start happening soon the audience would get bored. It's the complete opposite.

The most recent incarnation of the classic Djinni premise, though this one eschews that entirely in favor of a magic Chinese box with a backstory all its own not involving Djinn. I'm not sure why the locality and myth had to change or where this story even comes from - it's not nearly interesting enough to warrant changing up the formula and it's not like anyone cares all that much anyway. Just get to the mangling of wishes already! Then again, as a result of the changing of the mythology, there are now 7(!) wishes to be granted - 4 more for your guilty watching pleasure. Except that this time, wishes aren't always twisted around. They're applied strongly but hardly in a completely backwards way. The twist is that someone dies every time a wish is granted. That's it. It takes a lot of the fun out of the classic granted wishes premise. The PG-13 rating neuters it (I watched it unrated but it still felt PG- 13). It's just alright with a solid, interesting cast led by the natural and unassuming Joey King, an unrecognizable Ryan Phillippe and Sherilyn Fenn just for ****

Groundhog Day as a slasher flick is such a ripe premise that I'm surprised it took this long to make a film of it. We get to watch the main character get butchered a whole bunch of times in a bunch of different ways by a masked psycho all while trying to solve the mystery of whom is doing it. It's perfect really. The film definitely has its fun with this too, and has a game performance from the lead actress Jessica Rothe. Unfortunately it's a bit of a neutered affair, what with the PG-13 rating and fairly rote storytelling mechanics. Death scenes are less Final Destination levels of fun - where the surprise is how she will die while trying to avoid death - and more stalk and slash and quick cut away from any good gore. The plot has a twist, and it's not bad, but there were a lot of areas where the film could have become even twistier. It also could have laid off the moralizing about becoming a better woman stuff a bit - this is slasher Groundhog Day, not actually the real thing. We already have that.

Two women who are aspiring actresses and lifelong friends decide to take a retreat to a beautiful house overlooking the woods and the ocean in Northern California to reconnect after time has started to move them in different directions. One is becoming more famous everyday and is close to her big break, while the other is stuck in neutral. That the woman who is close to making it is also a passive woman, with little of interest to add to any conversation and little in the way of personality, who is prone to saying yes to any man asking her any thing (whether to take her clothes off or to go to dinner with a man her friend clearly likes even though she has a boyfriend she likes) and the other is stubborn, outspoken and "feminist" with a strong personality, is the real crux of the film though. This is a movie about what it takes to make it in Hollywood, but also just as a woman in any walk of life. The prevalent constant sexism under the hood of everyday expectations of being female. There's a naturalness to both performances that works well, and the tension mounts from meaningful dialogue exchanges and the actor's faces. Then the twist happens and while it's interesting in theory, it also sort of halts the movie's progress and momentum. Outside of the clearly labeled theme there isn't enough exploration or insight.