Recent Viewings, Part 2

[lester1/2jr]

Valentine (2001) - forgettable and forgotten holiday horror attempt from Hollywood. Denise Richards hit her peak in Wild Things (1998) making out with what's her name in the pool and does a serviceable job here, but it's just not that good of a movie, although blandly watchable. Scream and I know What You Did Last Summer (which I'm not sure if I've actually seen) are the targets they are trying to aim their slingshots at.

An oft-rejected nerd begins to stalk mean girls years later when they are all adults and It's a big whodunit. Is it this one's new boyfriend? This one's old boyfriend? some other guy? Besides of the gory murder aspect, it's pretty much a big budget Lifetime movie. The only character I liked was the frustrated police detective. He would say funny, obvious sort of things.

"Do you have any more recent pictures?"

"If I did, wouldn't we be looking at them right now!"

Besides of that, it was a slick, but ultimately pretty poor showing.

3.25 /5

edit: Brought it down a quarter of a point because i remembered that there was a scene where a woman ties a man up in bed and leaves him there. Might have been funny in 1934, but not anytime after.

[lester1/2jr]

Fortress (1992) - Not my usual side of the sci fi genre here. Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator) directs this dystopian action sort of deal. It's certainly not gonna make me forget They Live or Demolition Man, but I enjoyed going outside of my cinematic comfort zone.

Most of it takes place indoors on these very claustrophobic prison sets that I didn't like. A guy gets arrested and sent to jail. He wants to get out, well, so he can not be in prison obviously, but also because his wife is pregnant and being held captive by...the guy who runs the prison. Having the one woman in the whole movie be pregnant might have helped them create tension, but combined with the sets, it doesn't leave the viewer with much to view. It feels more like a late night Syfy channel tv show than a film.

The guy who plays the main evil guy is very good. I truly forgot he was an actor and really thought of him as an evil robot thing. I liked the weirdo science expert prisoner, the holographically weird special effects, and the strong action aspect. Can't wait to get back to black and white crime stories and found footage horror, though.

3.99/5

[HappyGilmore]

Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmares.

Caught this on Peacock. It's a modern day horror film about Peter Pan and Tinker Bell. Peter works as a clown with a circus in England, and is shown to be seen as a child abductor who ends up kidnapping a child, but gets badly disfigured by the child's mom.

15 years later, he tells Tinker Bell that he needs to take more lost boys to Neverland. He ends up kidnapping Michael Darling on his birthday. He takes him to some dirty old house in the woods. Wendy feels guilty because she was supposed to watch her brother and got distracted by her boyfriend. A few days pass, and a bunch of boys riding the bus home are brutally murdered by Peter after he kills the driver.

Peter promised to being Michael back a friend from school, and finds a picture of one of his friends, who's the younger brother of Tiger Lily. Wendy finds a father of a young boy named Tommy who disappeared 15 years prior. Tommy's dad feels immense guilt, because Tommy was a bit sensitive, and always 'felt like a girl.' Wendy goes back to Lily's home for the night. Peter shows up, kills Lily, her parents, and kidnaps the brother. Wendy hid, but follows in a car.

Michael and Tinker Bell grow a bit close, and she keeps Peter Pan from harming him throughout the movie. Peter hooked Tinker Bell on heroin...or magic pixie dust, and we see them using throughout.

Wendy gets inside the house after Peter comes back. Tink has been suspecting that Peter was never taking the kids to Neverland, and confronts Peter. He berated her, and gets high. While he's out, Tink talks with Wendy. Wendy figured out that Tinker Bell is the abducted Tommy, and informs her that her dad never stopped looking for her.

Peter takes Michael's friend away, there's a skirmish and Peter places him in a coffin in the basement. He fights with Tinker Bell in the kitchen, heard Wendy's phone ring on a charger and panics. He runs into the room where Michael is, and Wendy distracts Peter so Michael can escape. Michael takes a knife and Wendy's phone and hides in the kitchen under the table and tablecloth. He calls the police but doesn't talks Peter won't hear him. Tinker Bell and Peter have another fight, and Peter attacks her, and cuts off her arms. He sees Michael, who stabs him with a knife and runs to the basement.

Wendy is already there, as she got their friend out of his coffin, and helped him escape from the house and told him to run and send help. As she's headed back upstairs, she encounters a very pale guy who seems to be in his 20s, with pasty skin, long hair, emaciated, and is missing a hand replaced by a hook. She figured out he was the boy James kidnapped at the beginning and promises to come back after she gets her brother. Peter sees her and chases her and her brother upstairs. They double team Peter but he gets in some shots. Michael goes ballistic on Peter, bloodies him pretty good, but Peter starts to get the upper hand. Suddenly James appears from the basement and grabs Peter with his book down to the basement. We hear a few screams as the police arrive.

One year later, we celebrate another birthday. As it's happening, the phone rings, and it's Peter calling.

The movie is from the same people behind Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Parts 1&2. They are making the Twisted Childhood Universe, horror flicks based on children's stories who are in the Public Domain. They came out with Bambi recently, and Robert Englund is voicing Jiminy Cricket in the upcoming Pinocchio. They're live action with a bit of gore, and a crossover similar to the Avengers is planned.

I haven't seem Winnie the Pooh yet, but I was surprised how good Pan was so I'm gonna check out the Pooh films and Bambi.

The actress who played Wendy was great, as was the man playing Peter.

[chainsaw midget]

I watched Armed and Dangerous.  Then I watched Delirious. 

Just can't go wrong with John Candy.

[lester1/2jr]

The Sniper (1952) - One of those film noir things that is basically exactly like an episode of Law and Order. A guy is weird and can't deal with the fact that skanky seeming brunettes in their 20-30's reject him. Who knows what his deal is. Unfortunately, he is also an excellent shot, so it's a bad day for San Francisco when he decides to start snipering.

Directed by Edward Dmytryk this thing comes off without a hitch. He is very in to showing how all the different aspects of a police investigation unfold and I'll be damned it it isn't mostly compelling. Nice b and white photography (obviously).

4.65 /5

[M.10rda]

UORC (1988):
This is 30 minutes of Argentinian nightmare fuel that defies cogent description, but imagine if you will the Blue Man Group turning fascist and going on a torture-crazy rampage and I suppose that will suffice. The director filmed an environmental live performance by the "Organizacion Negra" troupe, which includes some impressive FX and fabulously moody lighting; and he took care to frame a lot of the action in a painterly manner which makes one forget they're watching a document of a "theatre production" as opposed to a "film". There are passages during which the audience is seen, clearly milling around the action instead of separated from it by a fourth wall, but honestly this only contributes to the unheimliche havoc: the audience generally appears unnerved or even panicked to be in such close proximity to moving vehicles, fireworks, fire, and random acts of violence... as anyone would be!

On one hand it all feels very much "of its time", but with an '88 vintage one must consider it predates TETSUO THE IRON MAN, HARDWARE, DEATH MACHINE, NIN's "Happiness In Slavery", Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS, Ralph Fiennes' makeup as Lord Voldemort, ad infinitum. I don't know that any of the creators responsible for that stuff had seen UORC, mind you - I wouldn't have ever heard of or seen this if not for my endless Letterboxd rabbit-holing in between grading papers - but something was in the late 20th century cultural water supply and these Organizacion Negra guys got dosed with it first!

4/5
If I'd been in Argentina in 1988 and witnessed this performance you can bet I'd still obsessively be telling people about it today. 
https://youtu.be/_ynKdq7adjI?si=DobRc9B9HoZo05Ra

[FatFreddysCat]

"Rent-A-Cop" (1988)
After a drug bust goes bad, a Chicago cop (Burt Reynolds) is kicked off the force. He is then hired by a call girl (Liza Minnelli) to protect her from a psycho killer.
Burt and Liza's careers were both on the decline when they made this comedic action/thriller, which tanked at the box office and earned each of them a couple of Golden Raspberry nominations. It wasn't a must-watch by any means, but I actually kind of enjoyed it. Lord knows I've sat through worse.

[lester1/2jr]

The Mirror (2014) - forgettable found footage thing. 3 friends purchase a big mirror that the owner claimed was haunted and film it waiting for something to happen. As is often the case, there's probably a decent concept for a movie in here somewhere, but this is just a lot of people going around their apartment trying to be like reality show people and not going to get help/ leaving/ doing something logical when things go awry.

2.75 /5

[Rev. Powell]

BEST WISHES TO ALL (2022): A nursing student returns from Tokyo to her grandparents remote village, where she finds they are acting oddly... or has she just repressed memories of her family's secret? Dreamlike Japanese horror that poses a disturbing question: is it possible to be happy without someone else being miserable? 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

Getting my annual Schlock-Tober Halloween horror marathonstarted a day early with an oldy but a goodie...

"The Last Man in Earth" (1964)
The great Vincent Price stars in this public-domain favorite as a scientist who is also the lone survivor of a worldwide plague that has turned the rest of humanity into vampire-like mutants who only come out at night. Filmed on the cheap in Italy, Price gives a bravura performance in what is essentially a one-man show for most of the movie.
Based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend, this flick was remade as The Omega Man in the 70s and again as I Am Legend with Will Smith in the 2000s.

[Rev. Powell]

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2025): A high school senior relocates to a small corn-town where a clown is stalking teens. Deliberately (?) cliched and witless black-guy-dies-first slasher that could have been dredged up from the sludge of the VHS era. Be aware that I don't like slashers in general, though; if you like them, you might find this serviceable. A disappointment from the guy who made "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil." 2/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

Getting my October horror-thon started with two old favorites:

"House on Haunted Hill" (1999)
An eccentric millionaire throws a birthday party for his wife at a former insane asylum which, naturally, has something evil dwelling within its walls.
Stylish remake of the 1958 Vincent Price oldie has a decent cast, cool set designs, and gooey effects.

"The Changeling" (1980)
After his wife and daughter are killed in an accident, a composer (George C. Scott) moves across the country to start over. He rents a long-vacant old house and soon learns the place has a dark secret of its own.
I've seen this creepy-cool, slow burning haunted house story several times over the years and it has held up very well. Recommended.

[M.10rda]

NOW YOU SEE ME (2013):
I took a break from my pre-Octobering to spend couch-time with Madame and watch this absurdly stacked ensemble adventure that immediately comes off as OCEAN'S ELEVEN with magicians, though maybe the producers were really going for THE AVENGERS with magicians as AVENGERS had just premiered and made a literal billion dollars the previous year.

Woody Harrelson and his lil' buddy from ZOMBIELAND Jesse Eisenberg, the lovely Isla Fisher , and generally inoffensive non-actor Dave Franco  are Robin Hood's band of Merry Magicians, bankrolled (for a while) by Michael Caine and directed by a mysterious anonymous mastermind. Morgan Freeman, actual AVENGER Mark Ruffalo, the always-welcome Michael Kelly, rapper/actor/pro-literacy activist Common  , and some vanilla blonde French girl are the anti-Magician faction pursuing and trying to bust them. Caine and Freeman get one (nice) scene together, reminding us that they were both in pre-AVENGERS mega-blockbuster THE DARK KNIGHT. There is lots of (mostly illusion-based) action and some suspense. Some of the "magic" is explained but lots of it retains its "secret" so to speak, which really means of course that it's probably impossible B.S. fabricated by the screenwriters, though that's fine for a popcorn potboiler.

I was honestly digging NOW YOU SEE ME for most of its run-time, but it has two issues which ultimately hamstring it. The lesser issue is that the affable Marxist Magicians become secondary characters in what was presumably their movie and the majority of the focus shifts to Ruffalo's drunken sourpuss Agent. Ruffalo is a good actor who deserves lead roles but the decision to spend most of the screen-time with him ends up underminding the abrupt, probably obligatory USUAL SUSPECTS-type reveal in the final minutes. (Also, his character is just plain less entertaining than Harrelson, Eisenberg, and (mmmm) Fisher.) The more serious issue, however, is the wholly unnecessary and artificial romantic subplot involving the French lady, contrived at great length to no payoff. When the mysterious mastermind breaks down in the film's last scene and tells the tres fade French lady that they "saw everything coming - except for you" [closely paraphrasing here], I could almost hear the screenwriters high-fiving each other somewhere in Burbank. Even my romantic-movie loving wife wouldn't swallow that swill!

3/5
Mild SPOILER: Franco's character appears to die horribly  then of course he comes back.    I remain unconvinced he is an actor or a director or anything but James' diminutive brother, but maybe eventually I'll watch Allison Brie in TOGETHER and be persuaded otherwise.

[Rev. Powell]

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN (2024): A judge suffers a stroke and ends up in a nursing home; as his physical and mental condition deteriorates, he becomes the target of a sadistic fellow patient. Great acting by Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow in this odd (horror? geriatric thriller?) story set in an novel milieu. 3/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Cut" (2000)
A dozen years ago, the filming of a low budget horror movie was halted when the director was murdered, and the footage was shelved. Now, a group of film students want to complete the movie. You can probably guess how well things turn out for them.
I'd never heard of this Australian slasher flick, but I was compelled to press "play" based on the bizarro casting, which included Aussie pop music superstar Kylie Minogue and Molly "Breakfast Club" Ringwald. It tries to be hip and self-aware like "Scream" at times, but it's mostly a series of the usual slasher flick clichés. I've seen worse, but I doubt I'll ever sit thru this one again.