Movies and Movies Galore
"The Pact"
starring: Caity Lotz, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Haley Hudson, Sam Ball, Mark Steger, Agnes Bruckner, Casper Van Dien, Dakota Bright
written by and directed by: Nicholas McCarthy
Here's another cliche horror film that goes more for jump scares than really concerning itself with telling a decent story, and then it somehow sets itself up for a sequel.
In The Pact‘s slight but effective opening scene, a young mother chats with her little girl over webcam, walking through the house with her laptop to find a better WiFi signal. The “gotcha” moment here is telegraphed well in advance, but the premise of the scare is clever, and the money shot is nothing more than that eerily open doorway, impenetrable blackness behind it. McCarthy gets a great deal of mileage out of a prop and a shadow—surely an invaluable skill when directing a haunted-house film. But convention dictates that eventually the lights must be turned on, and what was really behind that doorway is inherently less terrifying than the limitless possibilities of what could have been.
The Pact is a traditional horror film littered with contemporary calibrations. Here ghosts haunt laptops as readily as they do hallways, dropping clues as iPhone GPS pins and, in perhaps the gimmick’s cleverest implementation, appearing as a smeared apparition via an approximation of Google Street View.
The film collapses in on itself and it's a slow-burner that just fizzles out towards the end of the film and really isn't as scary as it makes itself out to be.
--------------------------------------------
"Judge Dredd"
starring: Sylvester Stallone, Armand Assante, Rob Schneider, Jurgen Prochnow, Max von Sydow, Diane Lane, Joanna Miles, Joan Chen, Balthazar Getty
written by: John Wagner, Carlose Ezquerra
directed by: Danny Cannon
I found the original '90s Judge Dredd movie, starring Stallone towards the end of his "first" career (before his resurrection with "The Expendables" franchise and "Rocky" reboots) in raw Stallone form, especially with his drawl and tone (perhaps one of the best/worst scenes in film ever when he yells at his brother... "I AM THE LAW!"). This is one of those original, '90s comic book movies, that did not necessarily fare well because back then the graphics were not as stellar as they are nowadays, making superhero/comic book movies as entertaining as they are.
Set in a distant, post-apocalyptic future, this feature debut from director Cannon does a surprisingly adequate job of capturing both the look and feel of Britain's long-running Judge Dredd/2000 A.D. comic series. As 23rd-century lawman Dredd, Stallone is in fine form, using his perpetual scowl and wisecracking, gravelly voice to good effect: It's the one recent role I can think of where these natural Stallone traits haven't acted as a liability. Plotwise, the film sticks closely to the comic book: In the future, the criminal justice system has failed to preserve order, and so the police force of Mega-City 1 has been upgraded to include “the Judges,” who act as judge, jury, and executioners on the spot. When Dredd is framed for murder by a power-hungry rival, he must take the law into his own hands and ferret out his betrayers before the law he loves so much is reduced to anarchy.
Everything seems over the top with this film, but in an entertaining way.
Of course, there's been a remake, aptly titled "Dredd" which focuses more of being visually stimulating than perhaps the original tried to be. You can watch this and appreciate it for the time it was made.
---------------------------------------------
"Cult of Chucky"
starring: Allison Dawn Doiron, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Fiona Dourif, Michael Therriault, Zak Santiago, Ali Tataryn
written and directed by: Don Mancini
This is the 7th film in the series. That's right, I'll say it again- the 7th film in the series about a demonic doll- Chucky. Over 30 years ago, he was introduced as one of those '80s cheesy horror movies that just never seemed able to be killed (or die). I'm looking at you Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St. and even Predator, and nowadays the Saw franchise has followed suit. They've been able to keep this doll alive and terrorizing a variety of people.
I think anyone watching these films does not expect much of a coherent story and is strictly watching to keep with the nostaglia. And perhaps that is part of the problem.
-----------------------------------------------
"Harbinger Down"
starring: Lance Henriksen, Camille Balsamo, Matt Winston, Reid Collums, Winston James Francis, Giovonnie Samuels
written and directed by: Alec Gillis
Do you like '80s era sci-fi/horror films? Do you like "Alien" or "The Thing?"
You will really dig this film. It all comes across as a bit of a rip-off of those films.
The plot, which owes much to “Alien,” John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and dozens of knockoffs spawned by both, pivots on the discovery of a downed Russian spacecraft in the Arctic wilds by researchers tracking whale migrations while aboard a fishing vessel christened Harbinger. Graff (Lance Henriksen), the grizzled sea dog who captains the good ship Harbinger, allows his granddaughter Sadie (Camille Balsamo), one of the researchers, to store the retrieved spacecraft, and the frozen cosmonaut corpse inside it, in the ship’s hold.
The corpse contains some nasty surprises. Specifically, long-dormant extraterrestrial parasites who are very mean, very hungry, and ruthless capable of transforming their hosts (i.e., human bodies) into sharp-toothed and gruesomely icky blobs of multi-tentacled slime.
After about a half-hour or so of portentous exposition and sketchy character development, Gillis gets down to the serious business of gradually elevating the body count. Sometimes, the unfortunate victims end up looking like figures in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Little wonder, then, that one character with an especially itchy trigger finger is ready to aim a flare gun at anyone displaying telltale symptoms of infection.
-------------------------------------------------
"Wes Craven's New Nightmare"
starring: Heather Langenkamp, Miko Hughes, Matt Winston, Rob Labelle, David Newsom, Wes Craven, Marianne Maddalena, Tracy Middendorf, Robert Englund
written and directed by: Wes Craven
Back in 1994, I had been obsessed with reading movie-tie-in books and I remember reading this one and just loving it. It was so campy and cheesy, even though I was too young to watch the actual film. Books were different, I guess.
Back in 1994, it had been a decade and 5 films since Wes Craven and his own film studio had released his "Nightmare on Elm Street" horror films.
Over the course of the series, the character of Freddy Krueger has grown into a horror film and cultural icon, trading in his ominous silences and rusty blades for supposedly witty one-liners and convoluted backstory, not to mention talking dolls and even a board game available from Toys `R' Us (which makes it a bit unnerving to recall that the character started out as a razor-appendaged child molester with third-degree burns).
Craven's conceit in the new film is that once the original film series ended, the spirit of Krueger's character actually comes to life in the “real world” and begins to wreak havoc for stars Langenkamp, Englund, Saxon, and Craven himself (all of whom play themselves in the film). “How to get rid of Krueger once and for all?” Langenkamp asks Craven at one point. “That should be obvious. Make another movie,” is the deadpan reply. The self-reflexive nature of New Nightmare is a twist we haven't seen before, and it works well, up to a point. It's bizarre to see Craven, agent Marianne Maddalena, New Line president Robert Shaye, and others playing themselves up there on the screen -- it gives you the feeling that this is the horror genre's version of The Player.
This is a bit of a failure in terms of a film turning and looking in on itself, almost literally, and instead becomes an enemy of itself, falling fast for the cliches and bloody mess that Krueger has always been known for creating. It falls short of what Craven accomplished with "Scream" only a couple years later, but it's interesting to see where his mind was going in the mid-'90s.
--------------------------------------------------
"Finding Vivian Maier"
written and directed by: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel
This was an incredible and engaging documentary about an otherwise seemingly "regular" woman who nannied for several people, had a few odd habits and ways of living (potentially could've been labeled or diagnosed with some kind of mental illness, perhaps), and harbored a secret hobby of photography. The interesting thing about her hobby was the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, was an incredible photographer. The film opens with a few interviews of people that knew her or grown-up-now kids that she'd nannied years ago. But, also we see the narrator and director of the film, John Maloof, himself an interesting character in the telling of Vivian Maier's story.
In 2007 at a Chicago auction house, John Maloof purchased a storage locker crammed full of photo prints and negatives. Struck by their quality, Maloof hunted down as much of the photographer’s work as he could find – at one point, he counted in his collection some 100,000 negatives, and nearly another 3,000 roles of film still undeveloped. He was also intrigued by the mystery of the photographer, and so Maloof began piecing together the backstory of Vivian Maier.
We learn just about everything we could want to know about the very private woman. John Maloof clearly did his homework. But then, also, there is the moral implication of should we know everything about a woman that clearly wanted to keep her private life private? Is John Maloof breaking an unspoken protocol by revealing everything he learned about her to us, the audience, just because he believes she should get the recognition, in death, that she clearly deserved while she was alive. And then there is also the theory that artists only become famous when they've died.
Born in 1926, Maier made a living as a nanny and housekeeper, but her true passion, it seems, was street photography, taken mostly with a Rolleiflex camera, which allows the photographer to maintain eye contact with the subject and shoot from below, a perspective that informs the mood of the photographs. Her curious and unsentimental images of mid-century America are deeply striking.
She was profoundly private, cagey (she often used aliases), and, possibly, mentally unstable. Even as her biographical details come sharper into focus, there are still big gaps, bleary grays overwhelming the black-and-white facts, and notable discrepancies in the accounts of some interviewees. As several interviewees suggest abusive behavior in her past.
This is an absolutely engrossing and engaging film/story of a potential national treasure, so to speak. One with her own flaws, of course, which in essence makes her quite human.
----------------------------------------------------
"I, Anna"
starring: Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne, Eddie Marsan, Jodhi May, Ralph Brown, Max Deacon, Honor Blackman, Hayley Atwell
written by: Elsa Lewin
directed by: Barnaby Southcombe
A great film noir, with a slight hint of nepotism in that the director happens to be Charlotte Rampling's son. Rampling has been an incredible actress for years now, though, so the role was earned and well-played.
Gabriel Byrne and Charlotte Rampling star in this atmospheric noir thriller, a debut feature from Rampling’s son Barnaby Southcombe. Sixty-six year-old Rampling is a glamorous, mysterious presence as Anna, a single woman finally hitting the London dating scene. The plot intensifies considerably when detective Bernie Reid (Byrne) meets her near the scene of a crime and an undeniable attraction develops as he investigates the case. Byrne and Rampling are on top form and Hayley Atwell appears against type as Anna’s stressed single-mother daughter. The conclusion won’t please everyone, but it’s refreshingly restrained for a thriller set in today’s capital.
------------------------------------------------------
"The Babysitter"
starring: Judah Lewis, Samara Weaving, Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Bella Thorne, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, Doug Haley, Leslie Bibb, Ken Marino, Samuel Gilbert
written by: Brian Duffield
directed by: McG
Do you like those late-'90s videos from- Smash Mouth, Barenaked Ladies, Sugar Ray, Korn, and the Offspring? Did you like the reboot films of Charlie's Angels? Or even the TV series Chuck?
Did you know they were all under the helm of McG? Does that change your opinion? Do you hate yourself just a little bit? Have no fear, worry not reader, I really dug "Chuck" as a series. It was witty, action-packed and just very well-written.
McG redeems himself with this Netflix-produced campy, horror-comedy that allows him to work within a very tight genre (re: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cabin in the Woods). He seems to have also taken some much-need, very necessary notes from Joss Whedon, who is well known for writing great teenage or twenty-something characters who seem all-too-real, yet fully aware of themselves as caricatures.
Centered on the dynamic duo of the super talented Weaving and the pubescent Lewis, The Babysitter will play to the same crowds that dug the other horror comedies. When the friendship between the younger nerdy lad and the uber sexy vixen goes sideways, things spiral out of control with a creative piece of escapist cinema that's high on silliness and great kills. Unlike most typical slasher flicks, this McG release relies heavily on unique deaths, hilarious characters, and tons of references to popular genre movies.
I don't want to ruin too much for you, instead I urge you to watch this film as immediately as possible. just prepare for a good time as the nerdy kid sudden realizes how crazy his uber-sexy babysitter/crush really is as he discovers she is part of a demon-worshipping sort-of cult of which is searching for its next sacrificial lamb.
-----------------------------------------------------
"That's Not Us"
starring: Sarah Wharton, Mark Berger, Nicole Pursell, David Rysdahl, Elizabeth Gray, Tommy Nelms, Angela Vitale
written by: Derek Dodge and William Sullivan
directed by: William Sullivan
A great semi-improvised indie film about relationships through the eyes of three different, yet similar couples. It does not matter that one couple is heterosexual, one is a lesbian, and one is a two gay men. They are all struggling with relationships issues, new and old. In the same vein as "Brokeback Mountain," as I've theorized before, it is a similar story about love if you replaced the two gay men main characters with a heterosexual couple. The struggle is the same, regardless of genders. It is about human relationships, any way you choose to dissect it, which makes it real and authentic, as well as relatable.
All relationships have their troubles, irregardless of your gender or sexuality. Jealousy, guilt, competitiveness, disappointment, confusion, and the list goes on — the problems that the three young couples experience in William Sullivan’s That’s Not Us have been experienced by everyone. Most importantly, these issues are often intensified by lack of communication or misunderstanding. The title suggests that some people might be in denial of their interpersonal dilemmas, but these issues seem to be an integral part of humanity. No matter what we look like or who we are attracted to, we all experience the same basic emotions at one time or another.
The narrative trope of putting a bunch of people in a house together has proven to be an effective way to really hone in on human emotions, so that is precisely what Sullivan does. He sends three young couples to a practically abandoned Fire Island (it is late September, so all of the summer vacationers are all long gone) for a weekend vacation. Alex (Sarah Wharton) and Jackie (Nicole Pursell) are a lesbian couple; James (Mark Berger) and Spencer (David Rysdahl) are a gay couple; and Liz (Elizabeth Gray) and Dougie (Tommy Nelms) are a straight couple.
starring: Caity Lotz, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Haley Hudson, Sam Ball, Mark Steger, Agnes Bruckner, Casper Van Dien, Dakota Bright
written by and directed by: Nicholas McCarthy
Here's another cliche horror film that goes more for jump scares than really concerning itself with telling a decent story, and then it somehow sets itself up for a sequel.
In The Pact‘s slight but effective opening scene, a young mother chats with her little girl over webcam, walking through the house with her laptop to find a better WiFi signal. The “gotcha” moment here is telegraphed well in advance, but the premise of the scare is clever, and the money shot is nothing more than that eerily open doorway, impenetrable blackness behind it. McCarthy gets a great deal of mileage out of a prop and a shadow—surely an invaluable skill when directing a haunted-house film. But convention dictates that eventually the lights must be turned on, and what was really behind that doorway is inherently less terrifying than the limitless possibilities of what could have been.
The Pact is a traditional horror film littered with contemporary calibrations. Here ghosts haunt laptops as readily as they do hallways, dropping clues as iPhone GPS pins and, in perhaps the gimmick’s cleverest implementation, appearing as a smeared apparition via an approximation of Google Street View.
The film collapses in on itself and it's a slow-burner that just fizzles out towards the end of the film and really isn't as scary as it makes itself out to be.
--------------------------------------------
"Judge Dredd"
starring: Sylvester Stallone, Armand Assante, Rob Schneider, Jurgen Prochnow, Max von Sydow, Diane Lane, Joanna Miles, Joan Chen, Balthazar Getty
written by: John Wagner, Carlose Ezquerra
directed by: Danny Cannon
I found the original '90s Judge Dredd movie, starring Stallone towards the end of his "first" career (before his resurrection with "The Expendables" franchise and "Rocky" reboots) in raw Stallone form, especially with his drawl and tone (perhaps one of the best/worst scenes in film ever when he yells at his brother... "I AM THE LAW!"). This is one of those original, '90s comic book movies, that did not necessarily fare well because back then the graphics were not as stellar as they are nowadays, making superhero/comic book movies as entertaining as they are.
Set in a distant, post-apocalyptic future, this feature debut from director Cannon does a surprisingly adequate job of capturing both the look and feel of Britain's long-running Judge Dredd/2000 A.D. comic series. As 23rd-century lawman Dredd, Stallone is in fine form, using his perpetual scowl and wisecracking, gravelly voice to good effect: It's the one recent role I can think of where these natural Stallone traits haven't acted as a liability. Plotwise, the film sticks closely to the comic book: In the future, the criminal justice system has failed to preserve order, and so the police force of Mega-City 1 has been upgraded to include “the Judges,” who act as judge, jury, and executioners on the spot. When Dredd is framed for murder by a power-hungry rival, he must take the law into his own hands and ferret out his betrayers before the law he loves so much is reduced to anarchy.
Everything seems over the top with this film, but in an entertaining way.
Of course, there's been a remake, aptly titled "Dredd" which focuses more of being visually stimulating than perhaps the original tried to be. You can watch this and appreciate it for the time it was made.
---------------------------------------------
"Cult of Chucky"
starring: Allison Dawn Doiron, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Fiona Dourif, Michael Therriault, Zak Santiago, Ali Tataryn
written and directed by: Don Mancini
This is the 7th film in the series. That's right, I'll say it again- the 7th film in the series about a demonic doll- Chucky. Over 30 years ago, he was introduced as one of those '80s cheesy horror movies that just never seemed able to be killed (or die). I'm looking at you Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St. and even Predator, and nowadays the Saw franchise has followed suit. They've been able to keep this doll alive and terrorizing a variety of people.
I think anyone watching these films does not expect much of a coherent story and is strictly watching to keep with the nostaglia. And perhaps that is part of the problem.
The biggest coup is having Alex Vincent back as Andy. He played Andy in the first two movies, but was too young to play the character in 3. He’s now back, and it’s great to see this character again. This return ties up loose ends that fans of the original three films have always had, and offers a glimpse into what life after Chucky was like for him. Also back is Jennifer Tilly, insane and psychotic as always. Finally, Nica is back as our final girl.
Haunted by the events of Curse, Nica is now living out her days in an asylum; her reputation as a mass murderer causes much unrest amongst her fellow inmates. In a bid to help Nica come to terms with her past, the resident shrink, Dr. Foley (Michael Therriault) orders in a Good Guy doll. Paying extra to get one called Chucky (what could go wrong there?) he starts to use the doll in group therapy sessions, but then members of the group start turning up dead. Then a second doll arrives, is Chucky real after all?
It's fun, entertaining, predictable, and formulaic. But you should know that after 6 films.-----------------------------------------------
"Harbinger Down"
starring: Lance Henriksen, Camille Balsamo, Matt Winston, Reid Collums, Winston James Francis, Giovonnie Samuels
written and directed by: Alec Gillis
Do you like '80s era sci-fi/horror films? Do you like "Alien" or "The Thing?"
You will really dig this film. It all comes across as a bit of a rip-off of those films.
The plot, which owes much to “Alien,” John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and dozens of knockoffs spawned by both, pivots on the discovery of a downed Russian spacecraft in the Arctic wilds by researchers tracking whale migrations while aboard a fishing vessel christened Harbinger. Graff (Lance Henriksen), the grizzled sea dog who captains the good ship Harbinger, allows his granddaughter Sadie (Camille Balsamo), one of the researchers, to store the retrieved spacecraft, and the frozen cosmonaut corpse inside it, in the ship’s hold.
The corpse contains some nasty surprises. Specifically, long-dormant extraterrestrial parasites who are very mean, very hungry, and ruthless capable of transforming their hosts (i.e., human bodies) into sharp-toothed and gruesomely icky blobs of multi-tentacled slime.
After about a half-hour or so of portentous exposition and sketchy character development, Gillis gets down to the serious business of gradually elevating the body count. Sometimes, the unfortunate victims end up looking like figures in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Little wonder, then, that one character with an especially itchy trigger finger is ready to aim a flare gun at anyone displaying telltale symptoms of infection.
-------------------------------------------------
"Wes Craven's New Nightmare"
starring: Heather Langenkamp, Miko Hughes, Matt Winston, Rob Labelle, David Newsom, Wes Craven, Marianne Maddalena, Tracy Middendorf, Robert Englund
written and directed by: Wes Craven
Back in 1994, I had been obsessed with reading movie-tie-in books and I remember reading this one and just loving it. It was so campy and cheesy, even though I was too young to watch the actual film. Books were different, I guess.
Back in 1994, it had been a decade and 5 films since Wes Craven and his own film studio had released his "Nightmare on Elm Street" horror films.
Over the course of the series, the character of Freddy Krueger has grown into a horror film and cultural icon, trading in his ominous silences and rusty blades for supposedly witty one-liners and convoluted backstory, not to mention talking dolls and even a board game available from Toys `R' Us (which makes it a bit unnerving to recall that the character started out as a razor-appendaged child molester with third-degree burns).
Craven's conceit in the new film is that once the original film series ended, the spirit of Krueger's character actually comes to life in the “real world” and begins to wreak havoc for stars Langenkamp, Englund, Saxon, and Craven himself (all of whom play themselves in the film). “How to get rid of Krueger once and for all?” Langenkamp asks Craven at one point. “That should be obvious. Make another movie,” is the deadpan reply. The self-reflexive nature of New Nightmare is a twist we haven't seen before, and it works well, up to a point. It's bizarre to see Craven, agent Marianne Maddalena, New Line president Robert Shaye, and others playing themselves up there on the screen -- it gives you the feeling that this is the horror genre's version of The Player.
This is a bit of a failure in terms of a film turning and looking in on itself, almost literally, and instead becomes an enemy of itself, falling fast for the cliches and bloody mess that Krueger has always been known for creating. It falls short of what Craven accomplished with "Scream" only a couple years later, but it's interesting to see where his mind was going in the mid-'90s.
--------------------------------------------------
"Finding Vivian Maier"
written and directed by: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel
This was an incredible and engaging documentary about an otherwise seemingly "regular" woman who nannied for several people, had a few odd habits and ways of living (potentially could've been labeled or diagnosed with some kind of mental illness, perhaps), and harbored a secret hobby of photography. The interesting thing about her hobby was the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, was an incredible photographer. The film opens with a few interviews of people that knew her or grown-up-now kids that she'd nannied years ago. But, also we see the narrator and director of the film, John Maloof, himself an interesting character in the telling of Vivian Maier's story.
In 2007 at a Chicago auction house, John Maloof purchased a storage locker crammed full of photo prints and negatives. Struck by their quality, Maloof hunted down as much of the photographer’s work as he could find – at one point, he counted in his collection some 100,000 negatives, and nearly another 3,000 roles of film still undeveloped. He was also intrigued by the mystery of the photographer, and so Maloof began piecing together the backstory of Vivian Maier.
We learn just about everything we could want to know about the very private woman. John Maloof clearly did his homework. But then, also, there is the moral implication of should we know everything about a woman that clearly wanted to keep her private life private? Is John Maloof breaking an unspoken protocol by revealing everything he learned about her to us, the audience, just because he believes she should get the recognition, in death, that she clearly deserved while she was alive. And then there is also the theory that artists only become famous when they've died.
Born in 1926, Maier made a living as a nanny and housekeeper, but her true passion, it seems, was street photography, taken mostly with a Rolleiflex camera, which allows the photographer to maintain eye contact with the subject and shoot from below, a perspective that informs the mood of the photographs. Her curious and unsentimental images of mid-century America are deeply striking.
She was profoundly private, cagey (she often used aliases), and, possibly, mentally unstable. Even as her biographical details come sharper into focus, there are still big gaps, bleary grays overwhelming the black-and-white facts, and notable discrepancies in the accounts of some interviewees. As several interviewees suggest abusive behavior in her past.
This is an absolutely engrossing and engaging film/story of a potential national treasure, so to speak. One with her own flaws, of course, which in essence makes her quite human.
----------------------------------------------------
"I, Anna"
starring: Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne, Eddie Marsan, Jodhi May, Ralph Brown, Max Deacon, Honor Blackman, Hayley Atwell
written by: Elsa Lewin
directed by: Barnaby Southcombe
A great film noir, with a slight hint of nepotism in that the director happens to be Charlotte Rampling's son. Rampling has been an incredible actress for years now, though, so the role was earned and well-played.
Gabriel Byrne and Charlotte Rampling star in this atmospheric noir thriller, a debut feature from Rampling’s son Barnaby Southcombe. Sixty-six year-old Rampling is a glamorous, mysterious presence as Anna, a single woman finally hitting the London dating scene. The plot intensifies considerably when detective Bernie Reid (Byrne) meets her near the scene of a crime and an undeniable attraction develops as he investigates the case. Byrne and Rampling are on top form and Hayley Atwell appears against type as Anna’s stressed single-mother daughter. The conclusion won’t please everyone, but it’s refreshingly restrained for a thriller set in today’s capital.
------------------------------------------------------
"The Babysitter"
starring: Judah Lewis, Samara Weaving, Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Bella Thorne, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, Doug Haley, Leslie Bibb, Ken Marino, Samuel Gilbert
written by: Brian Duffield
directed by: McG
Do you like those late-'90s videos from- Smash Mouth, Barenaked Ladies, Sugar Ray, Korn, and the Offspring? Did you like the reboot films of Charlie's Angels? Or even the TV series Chuck?
Did you know they were all under the helm of McG? Does that change your opinion? Do you hate yourself just a little bit? Have no fear, worry not reader, I really dug "Chuck" as a series. It was witty, action-packed and just very well-written.
McG redeems himself with this Netflix-produced campy, horror-comedy that allows him to work within a very tight genre (re: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cabin in the Woods). He seems to have also taken some much-need, very necessary notes from Joss Whedon, who is well known for writing great teenage or twenty-something characters who seem all-too-real, yet fully aware of themselves as caricatures.
Centered on the dynamic duo of the super talented Weaving and the pubescent Lewis, The Babysitter will play to the same crowds that dug the other horror comedies. When the friendship between the younger nerdy lad and the uber sexy vixen goes sideways, things spiral out of control with a creative piece of escapist cinema that's high on silliness and great kills. Unlike most typical slasher flicks, this McG release relies heavily on unique deaths, hilarious characters, and tons of references to popular genre movies.
I don't want to ruin too much for you, instead I urge you to watch this film as immediately as possible. just prepare for a good time as the nerdy kid sudden realizes how crazy his uber-sexy babysitter/crush really is as he discovers she is part of a demon-worshipping sort-of cult of which is searching for its next sacrificial lamb.
-----------------------------------------------------
"That's Not Us"
starring: Sarah Wharton, Mark Berger, Nicole Pursell, David Rysdahl, Elizabeth Gray, Tommy Nelms, Angela Vitale
written by: Derek Dodge and William Sullivan
directed by: William Sullivan
A great semi-improvised indie film about relationships through the eyes of three different, yet similar couples. It does not matter that one couple is heterosexual, one is a lesbian, and one is a two gay men. They are all struggling with relationships issues, new and old. In the same vein as "Brokeback Mountain," as I've theorized before, it is a similar story about love if you replaced the two gay men main characters with a heterosexual couple. The struggle is the same, regardless of genders. It is about human relationships, any way you choose to dissect it, which makes it real and authentic, as well as relatable.
All relationships have their troubles, irregardless of your gender or sexuality. Jealousy, guilt, competitiveness, disappointment, confusion, and the list goes on — the problems that the three young couples experience in William Sullivan’s That’s Not Us have been experienced by everyone. Most importantly, these issues are often intensified by lack of communication or misunderstanding. The title suggests that some people might be in denial of their interpersonal dilemmas, but these issues seem to be an integral part of humanity. No matter what we look like or who we are attracted to, we all experience the same basic emotions at one time or another.
The narrative trope of putting a bunch of people in a house together has proven to be an effective way to really hone in on human emotions, so that is precisely what Sullivan does. He sends three young couples to a practically abandoned Fire Island (it is late September, so all of the summer vacationers are all long gone) for a weekend vacation. Alex (Sarah Wharton) and Jackie (Nicole Pursell) are a lesbian couple; James (Mark Berger) and Spencer (David Rysdahl) are a gay couple; and Liz (Elizabeth Gray) and Dougie (Tommy Nelms) are a straight couple.
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