Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

CAT SICK BLUES (2015): A woman who's lost her YouTube-celebrity cat meets a man at a pet bereavement support group who just happens to be a cat-masked serial killer who believes he needs to kill nine women to resurrect his lost kitty. One of the oddest slashers you'll ever see, it's brutal, verging on vile, for most of the runtime, then takes a turn towards Miike's "Audition" at the end. Hard to predict whether anyone will love or hate this, but it's definitely different. 2.5/5.

[M.10rda]

Any onscreen cat-death? 

[M.10rda]

FREAKS OF NATURE (2015):
Humans, vampires, and zombies all cohabitate in an uneasy and inequitable truce in a small suburban town run by Trump-like megalomaniac bully Denis Leary - until extraterrestrials show up, first turning the town's inhabitants against each other in (all-out, splattery) class warfare, then uniting them at last against a common foe. For about 40 minutes FREAKS OF NATURE fires on all cylinders and appears to be a really sharp-witted, mean, weird sci-fi/horror satire like they used to make 'em in the 80s. The benchmark is set about 5 minutes in by Keegan-Michael Key delivering a truly hilarious extended set-piece as a vampire English teacher who's deeply disgruntled after 91 years on the job. There are a bunch of laughs after that, too, and then things get bloody, and then, roughly midway through, the movie decides its a heartfelt romance/character drama  and then in the final stretch it just takes several quite dumb turns. 

Besides Leary and Key, there are plenty of good actors onscreen, including star Nicholas Braun from "Succession", who makes a reasonable male lead in spite of his distracting height; Mackenzie Davis (from BLACK MIRROR: SAN JUNIPERO) as a lithe and charming love interest; Josh Fadem (TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN) as an abused nerd w/ a chip on his shoulder; Joan Cusack (looking great) and Bob Odenkirk (funny as always) as Braun's parents; Mae Whitman playing a zombie girl as a young person with developmental disabilities; Vanessa Hudgens trying to shake off her Disney roots as a filthy slut; Rachael Harris, oddly brunette as the nerd's mom; Ed Westwick from "Gossip Girl", who is kind of a crap actor but does his part by looking exactly like Pattinson in the "Twilight" movies; priceless Patton Oswalt for about 3 very funny minutes midway through; and, incredibly, Werner Herzog in a surprise cameo at the end. I mention Herzog even though his appearance is kind of a spoiler, as there's no other good reason to endure FREAKS OF NATURE until the ending except to enjoy his one-of-a-kind delivery. All the actors deserve better.

My biggest gripe w/ FON is that it pulls no punches when it comes to the bad guys' cruel abuse of the protagonists early on, but then at the end those vile characters either get somewhat punished but then redeemed (the nerd's father and brother) or get let entirely off the hook (Leary). The movie isn't making any point about injustice or lack of accountability - it seems to just be pulling some lame eleventh-hour Dickensian change-of-heart bull$#!t. I wish FREAKS OF NATURE was a lot smarter than it ends up being.    3/5    But it does have some real laughs in the early going.

[Rev. Powell]

Any onscreen cat-death? 

Yes, at least two I recall (faked, of course, once quite absurdly).

[M.10rda]

Well that's a hard pass then. Thanks for the warning.

[M.10rda]

BACK STAGE (1919):
Another hit from the House of Arbuckle, w/ Roscoe, Buster, and Al playing members of an inept theatre company. The plot begins slowly and overall BACK STAGE feels longer (it is - 26 minutes) and more drawn out than other Arbuckle joints of the era - but there are some truly impressive bits that distinguish BACK STAGE from OUT WEST or MOONSHINE. A clever visual gag early on - where a promo for the theater is inadvertently revised - pays off as a plot point and additional punchline in the final third.

BACK STAGE also has a central romantic plot that actually drives the conflict, with a Strongman arriving at the theater for a gig and Roscoe drawn to the brute's abused girlfriend. The Strongman, played by the physically impressive Charles A. Post, is a big jerk to begin with, but once Roscoe makes eyes at his girl he becomes a full-blown psychotic menace. Post is significantly taller than Roscoe (a big guy) and looks about twice as tall as little Buster. There are two surprisingly violent fight sequences, one midway and one at the end, where the Strongman is literally trying to murder the girlfriend and everyone who works at the theater, and Roscoe and Buster and Al don't hesitate to reciprocate w/ equal force. This level of bloodlust isn't unheard of in this era of Arbuckle but man, he and Keaton were never funnier than when they were unleashing lethal force on foes. There's a handgun, an enormous freeweight, electricity, an axe, and a trunk full of sandbags - and much of the action looks totally unsafe.  Buster does perhaps the most impressive work I've seen from him yet, swinging from the stage to the balcony and back and performing a couple of crazy flying kick-attacks on the strongman. Okay, Arbuckle's Auteurist films have made me a Buster Believer. Buster was truly the silent era's Jackie Chan. The guy's amazing - moreso than in the films I've seen that he directed himself!

Good for Roscoe for putting Buster to great use. They clearly liked each other. Roscoe literally throws Buster around like a ragdoll during a ballet routine. "Fatty" also dances agilely and [SPOILER WARNING] gets the girl at the end. Priceless stuff.   4/5

[indianasmith]

HIDDEN (2015) - Alexander Skarsgard stars in this gripping post-zombie apocalypse movie.
Ray, his wife Claire, and their nine year old daughter Zoe are living a tenuous existence in an underground shelter, with a rapidly dwindling food supply, hiding from the scourge of subhumans that they only call "the breathers."  For over 300 days they have lived underground, subsisting on canned food, keeping a strict regimen of silence so that "the breathers" don't find their hiding place.  But then one day a fire, caused by an overturned lamp, sends enough smoke out through the vent to reveal their hiding place, and the "breathers" come after them . . .
  This is a brilliantly acted film with a twist at the end I never saw coming.  HIGHLY recommended!  4.5/5

[M.10rda]

That's a pretty good one! It was written and directed by the Duffer Brothers, the guys behind "Stranger Things". I thought the twist was... fine. But up until the twist, the movie is super-tense and well-made.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Thunder of Gigantic Serpent" (1988)

Terrorists steal a formula that causes plants and animals to increase in size, but lose it during a firefight with the police. The formula is discovered by a young girl who feeds it to her pet snake, aaaand... you can probably figure out the rest.

...a poorly dubbed, haphazardly edited slice of Hong Kong giant monster junk, "directed" (and I use that term loosely) by the legendary Godfrey Ho, who apparently took the monster footage from a Taiwanese film called "King Snake" and shot the rest of the terrorist storyline to fit his needs.
The only other Godfrey Ho film I've seen is "Robo Vampire," and while "Serpent" was better than that, it's still faint praise.
AVOID unless you have fondness for Z-grade junk.

[Rev. Powell]

CAMP (2025): A traumatized college girl agrees to volunteer as a counselor at a camp for "damaged" kids, but when she gets there she finds the other female counselors are practicing homemade witchcraft. There are some lovely stylized compositions here, with painted mountain backdrops and sparkly stars across the scenes, but this indie drama/horror is undone by draggy pacing. 2/5

[Jim H]

Spider Labyrinth - What an odd film.  Shot in english but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the director probably is not a great english speaker, as despite clearly being originally in english it still has some of that weird feel of dubbed Italian films.  It's about a guy being sent to investigate vague old artifacts that do...  Something.  It has some good eerie atmosphere at times and is pretty well shot, but it never builds to much.  It feels like the first 70 minutes should have been the first 20 minutes, then it should build from there, instead of just quickly moving and ending from there, if that makes some.  Like seriously, almost nothing happens in that time frame from a story or character perspective, and the atmosphere doesn't really tighten down either.

Some of it is cheap in a bad way and not well done, especially the main "killer" person, their look, and how people get killed, just lacking in imagination.  Some good moments (I like the final bit with the baby), doesn't fully add up, I dunno about this one.  It wasn't completely terrible.  Free on Tubi.

[indianasmith]

BECKY (2020) - This was a re-watch for me, but still one of the more enjoyable revenge flicks out there.
Becky is a 13-year-old neurodivergent girl mourning the loss of her mother to cancer a year before. Her Dad takes her to their old summer house to introduce her to his new fiancée, which does not go well - but then the party is wrecked by some Neo-Nazi escaped convicts looking for the key to a box full of treasure, which they hid in the cabin years before.  When they kill Becky's Dad, they have to face the wrath of a teen hellcat who is out for revenge in the goriest manner she can achieve it!   It's an ultra-violent, darkly funny film that has become a guilty pleasure of mine.  4.5/5

[Dalmatian Bobby Samaritan]

Zodiac (2007) - I somehow didn't know about this or that David Fincher directed it. The first thing you notice is the real lack of Hollywood glamour. It's like he was making it for A and E or even PBS. There's even Wikipedia ish scenes where they make sure the audience gets certain facts "Here it is Christmas 1970 and we just got the second Zodiac letter. It sure is a crazy world." etc.

The Zodiac killer is loose in early 70's California and cops are having a hard time figuring out who he is. He does the thing where he writes taunting letters to the newspaper and sends them weird codes to decipher, but always stays a step ahead, somehow. Robert Downey Jr, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Chloe Sevigny are among the cops/ newspaper people whose lives would come to be defined by the whole thing.

Again, it's basically a 2 (and a half) parter A and E season opener, but where it's all re enactment and no talking heads or voiceover. 

5/5 I'll be watching something a little more lively next, but I can't deny the formal integrity on display.

Tauntuan Heteroptera agitate and Madam Curie or Eocene bug Morphology looks like the Star Spangled banner on the cover of Smithsonian 2014. Does it matter if we can make Bugs glow in the dark now with stem cells. And I don't mean fireflies. Call Jake Gyllenhall..I think these people have wish they were Luke Skywalker and could have had a chance to sleep in a Taun Taun Syndrome.
That is an almost epic Ax grinding takedown of the movie. Call Jeff Meldrum and have him make a cast of your foot stomping it.

It seems like in a way too. Zodiac was a bit callous and disrespectful to the events that actually happened. Not very prudential. I mean if it is based on something true. If you want to learn how to make a movie based on something true (or somewhat fictionalized true) and that happened fairly recently, I believe The Right Stuff did it right.