Tag: mystery
“I suspect foul play. I have eliminated no suspects.”
-Knives Out (2019)
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The Exorcist III (1990)
I hold a special soft spot in my heart for The Exorcist III (my doctor is very worried, but there it remains). I can’t say it’s better than the original The Exorcist, but it’s miles beyond whatever the fuck Exorcist II: The Heretic was. But through some warts I can see the movie III wanted to be and might’ve been. Which is a roundabout way of saying I watched the theatrical cut, not the director’s Legion cut. Come on, I’m not going to watch the same Exorcist franchise movie twice for Paranormal Octoberty! That would be crazy.
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Glass Onion (2022)
I need to take a break from Star Wars media for a minute after rewatching Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. I think a lot of people did. But when I started 2024: A Star Wars Event I said I’d sometimes do Star Wars-adjacent things, and when you really think about it, that’s a really vague term, right? So I’m kicking off this week with Glass Onion, the sequel to Knives Out, written and directed by Mr. Rian Johnson. Say, didn’t he also write and direct Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi? Adjacent!
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Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
Saw-mhain is starting to wind down, meaning we’re almost at the end of the Saw franchise. We’ve had the highs of the first Saw and the lows of Saw 3D, and everything in-between. So where does Spiral, AKA Spiral: From the Book of Saw–again, not to be confused with the queer horror movie Spiral from 2019–fit in? I’m contractually obligated to say it’s good. Thumbs up! This is definitely a genuine smile!
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Jigsaw (2017)
We’re officially done with Hostel movies, so it’s all Saw from here on out for Saw-mhain! Saw 3D was billed as “The Final Chapter,” and that was a laugh. I mean, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the fourth movie out of tenish, so it’s no surprise that another Saw entry was made. Granted there’s a 7 year gap between the movies, but still. Was a pause all it took to make these movies good again? I mean, not really, but improvements have been made!
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Saw (2004)
You didn’t think a little thing like a hiatus would stop me from celebrating the entire month of Halloween, did you? My tradition of a yearly October event lives on with Saw-mhain, a pun that works best if you know Irish /Gaeilge. Oh yes, the syllable break of Samhain (SAH-win) is Sa-mhain, because fuck you, that’s why. Gaeilge is a bastard language.
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Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)
Sometimes it’s hard to put into words why a movie didn’t resonate with me. Using a recent example, Antlers was a perfectly fine movie with a pretty basic ending, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations. And that’s the case with Broadcast Signal Intrusion. The creepy atmosphere is on point, but the ambiguous ending just didn’t land. And I’m usually a huge fan of ambiguous endings! So let’s analyze what I think didn’t work.
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Old (2021)
Saying you’re not a fan of Mr. M Night Shyamalan’s later work is a pretty basic opinion these days. No one enjoyed The Last Airbender; and while The Happening is generally pointed to as his worst film, I will go to my grave saying Lady in the Water is objectively worse. So I did not have high hopes for Old when I first heard about it. And now that I’ve seen it, I can say that it’s another disappointment from a man who had so much potential. What a twist.
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Butt Boy (2019)
So, uh… hey. How you doin’? Well, I’m doing just fine! Sorry there hasn’t been a post on this blog since… October? Holy hell. I burned out real hard, got super stressed at work, and now I’m in the process of moving! So sadly there hasn’t been that much time or energy to keep this blog up to date. I’m hoping once the move is done things will change, but I make no promises. All I can say now is that every so often a movie will stun me in such a way that I’ll have no choice but to…
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A Karate Christmas Miracle (2019)
Man, I have been watching some absolute garbage movies lately. Under ConTroll tried way too hard for such a lackluster “sequel,” the Blood Freak remake was cheap on every level, and Joker’s Poltergeist took the real life tragedy of the Aurora theater shooting and turned it into a lame horror movie. In fact, A Karate Christmas Miracle is from the same wrier as Joker’s Poltergeist and reused footage from that horror flick. While I knew this would be yet another bad film, I at least assumed it’d be more coherent than Poltergeist. Oh, how wrong I was.
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Joker’s Poltergeist (2016)
I just don’t understand Joker’s Poltergeist, AKA Joker’s Wild. Arguments could be made for it being pro-gun, anti-gun, and also some weak ass middle ground just “trying to start a discussion.” I’m afraid the answer may be the third option, which makes the movie being obviously inspired by the 2012 Aurora, Colorado theater shooting incredibly distasteful. Like, the main character’s name is Aurora and she survives a shooting in a theater done by people in clown masks. Fuckin’ yikes.
