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.
Becky (2020)
I feel like I usually have a fairly good idea on what a movie is about just from the premise. Not specifically every twist and turn, but for the most part I can watch a trailer and figure out if the movie's going to be a trainwreck or not. And I absolutely expected Becky to be a disaster. All you have to do is look at Mr. Kevin James and the swastika tattoo on the back of his head! Paul Blart as a neo-Nazi, trying a serious role? Bound to be a disaster. So imagine my surprise when this movie was not only not bad, but actually kind of good...
Twisted Pair (2018)
I honestly don't know what to say about this movie. Neil Breen is an auteur with a specific vision on the merging of humanity and advanced technology, and he wants to share that vision with us. Doesn't matter that he's an awful filmmaker and his movies are utterly incomprehensible, I guess.
Life (2017)
I will never not be amazed at how some movies just... sneak past me. Like sure, movies come out all the time and sometimes I'm just not paying attention, but how did a movie from 5 years ago starring Mr. Jake Gyllenhaal and Mr. Ryan Reynolds slip by? And it's a sci-fi horror? This feels like an intentional slight and I will not stand for it.
Run (2020)
Trailers lie all the time. Sometimes it's for good reasons, like Avengers: Infinity War hiding how many Infinity Stones Thanos had when he fought Captain America. And sometimes it's for bad reasons, like Slender Man cutting a bunch of scenes that would explain what the hell was going on while apparently forgetting that they were left in the trailers. Then you have a movie like Run which lies like a fucking pro.
Red Christmas (2016)
I had the option to watch something good for today's post. Friends have recommended Make the Yuletide Gay to me for a while now, but for whatever reason I just wasn't feeling it at the moment. No, I was in the mood for something absolutely awful. Just some utter dogshit. But because it's December--Christmas Eve today, in fact--it has to be festive. Well good thing there's Red Christmas, a movie about an aborted fetus that survived and seeks revenge on his mother (Mrs. Dee Wallace). No, this isn't the only "survived being aborted" movie, and yes, I'll get to Hanger someday. But today we talk about Cletus the fetus in this movie that's barely about Christmas.
The Cabinet of Caligari (1962)
It's December, which on this blog means... more Caligari movies? Hm. Last year, December was nothing but Christmas and/or winter holiday movies, but this year I'm breaking that pattern up a bit. See, I've been meaning to do these three Caligari movies for months now, so I'm forcing myself to do them now. Santa and all that will be coming eventually, but so will at least two breaks from the format since Spider-Man: No Way Home is coming out this month and there's another, non-winter movie I watched that I want to talk about. With that out of the way, let's dive into The Cabinet of Caligari, a movie hampered by its title.
Virus (1999)
Every movie is somebody's least favorite movie. That's just the law of averages, in my mind. I can look up just about any movie generally regarded as "good" or "a classic" and find 1 star reviews saying it's boring, or just sucks. But while most people can safely ignore idontknowiknowthatidontknow's review of The Shawshank Redemption, "if this film is #2 of all time, then i am Jesus Christ returning to burn this trash," big names saying they hate a movie they actually were in is worth noticing. Case in point, Mrs. Jamie Lee Curtis has said on multiple occasions that Virus is the worst movie she's ever been in, which is a bold claim to make about a fairly okay movie.
When They Cry: Kai – Season 2, Episodes 10-13
Normally when covering Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Kai, AKA When They Cry: Kai, I talk about an entire arc in one post. Well, Mass Slaughter is eight episodes long, so welcome to part two! Let's start with a brief recap of what happened in the first four episodes: Rika is aware she's stuck in a neverending time loop of the same days over and over until her eventual murder. After around a hundred years of this, morale is in the dumps. Doesn't help that her invisible friend, the horned Hanyu, is a pretty big fatalist as well. Moping about the inescapable nature of fate to Keiichi, Rika is surprised when the boy stands up and forcibly changes how things are supposed to happen. Bolstered by new hope, she rallies her friends to save Satoko, her best friend who is trapped with an abusive uncle. And that's basically where we start this second half of episodes.
Chwineka Watches 