Oh, I'm sorry, did you think that just because Christmas was over I'd stop reviewing holiday movies? Well fuck that! There's still two updates left for December, and I'm queuing up things early! Today we take a detour from Christmas movies to "vaguely Christmas-related holidays," such as the very important Life Day! It's a day where you... dress in red robes and... grab your light up snow globe and... travel to some weird void... where you scream? Whatever, it's The Star Wars Holiday Special. It doesn't matter, not like it's canon or anything.
surreal
ThanksKilling 3 (2012)
Have you ever watched something so bad and/or dumb that you can actually feel your brain cells killing themselves so they don't have to retain anything from it? A movie so awful you walk away a dumber person? WELL ON THAT NOTE, let me try to talk about ThanksKilling 3 without screaming too much!
Mandy (2018)
Man, remember when I used to talk about good movies? I don't! According to my lovely archives, the last movie I talked about that was generally considered "good" was last month. Watching two weeks of Mothman movies does horrible things to a person, so I need to take a break from the suck. So let's talk about Mr. Nic Cage killing a cult while high on megadrugs!
The Room (2003)
I think we all knew that I would review The Room at some point. I own two copies of it because I lent a copy to a friend, forgot, bought a replacement, and then she gave it back. I’ve seen it well over two dozen times, both with the RiffTrax (the guys from MST3K providing an audio file you sync yourself) and without. I’ve read The Disaster Artist, the book Greg Sestero wrote about what a nightmare making the film was, and I’ve even seen the solid 3 out of 5 movie adaptation of that book. So I feel a bit of obligation to review this.
Cats (2019)
Everything that needs to be said about Tom Hooper’s Cats has already been said, but that’s not going to stop me from adding my own two cents, pointing out some things I haven’t seen other people talk to death. The plot of Cats is… notoriously thin. Cats appear, sing about themselves, get kidnapped by Mr. Idris Elba, and at the end Ms. Jennifer Hudson is chosen to be reincarnated by the leader of the death cult. A tale as old as time, really. The movie adds some new elements, but I’m not all that familiar with the stage musical so I won’t open that can of worms. Now that we have the requisite “summary” out of the way, here are some of my notes.
Ink (2009)
It’s kind of hard to review your favorite movie. When I hate something, oh my god, I have to force myself to stop ranting about it. And with a mix of schadenfreude and impassioned writing those posts are usually pretty fun to read (I have been told). But a movie I love? It’s kinda rough to get the ball rolling…
Detention (2011)
I like describing this movie to people. I tell them about the time-travelling bear that was abducted by aliens, the Freaky Friday switch that also goes across time, a masked serial killer inspired by a lame movie starring “Moscow Hyatt,” a jock infused with fly blood, subdued Dane Cook… “Isn’t there detention in a movie called Detention?” Yeah yeah, I was getting to that.
The Endless (2017)
From an very, very outside perspective, I can kind of see the appeal of a cult. The world is especially shitty right now, and in my mind I don’t see it getting significantly better any time soon. A little too dark to start this post? Well I just recently got out of COVID-19 quarantine and then went right back to the filthy world of retail. If someone were to come to me and say that following them would make everything better… well, okay, I wouldn’t believe them because that sounds culty as fuck, but I’d be a little bit tempted.
Final Flesh (2009)
Where do I even begin with this… thing? Well first off this was written by Mr. Vernon Chatman, a writer who worked on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and the creator of Xavier: Renegade Angel (if you’ve heard of that, you have an idea of the weirdness that is coming). Chatman split the script into four parts, sending each one to a different porn site–specifically the ones where the actors perform what you sent them, getting a tailored porn/fetish experience. But it couldn’t be a normal story! Oh no, this was a borderline dadaist drama about a family (a father, a mother, and a daughter) dying in an atomic blast and reincarnating over and over, or something. With a lot of bizarre, nonsensical sequences throughout.
Under the Silver Lake (2019)
Every so often a movie crosses my path that just leaves me baffled, and this is certainly one of those movies. From the writer/director of It Follows (which now seems like the odd movie out of his filmography), we have Andrew "the second Spider-Man" Garfield as Sam in a neo-noir, conspiracy thriller about... um... Huh. I'm not really sure what this movie is about.
Chwineka Watches 