Recent theatrical viewings

[Rev. Powell]

HOT SPOT: A detective living in a city run by a totalitarian AI, surrounded by wastelands, investigates a murder at a refugee camp and a series of cyberattacks that are accelerating the rate at which citizen's heads are exploding. Many will complain that genuinely interesting sci-fi concepts are left by the wayside in favor of meaningless psychedelic trip sequences, but this is still likely the most entertaining movie about a telepathic post-apocalyptic detective in a blond mullet who is slowly turning into a big cat after an encounter with a cyber witch that you will see all year. 3/5. I was the only person in the theater, which made the world feel right again.

[Rev. Powell]

BUDDY: Big orange unicorn Buddy turns homicidal whenever the children don't play along with his lessons. Told almost entirely from within the reality of a kid's TV show, it's like if a demon-possessed Barney became dictator at Pee-Wee's Playhouse. There are hints, if not a complete explanation, of what Buddy really is and how his world works. It's also at times very cruel, and probably metaphorically represents what it's like to have an abusive father. Despite all this, it's not as unhinged as what I would have expected from Caspar "Too Many Cooks"/"Adult Swim Yule Log" Kelly; it's coherent enough that it's almost aimed at a commercial audience. I remember standing at the urinal afterwards thinking to myself, "he really toned down the weirdness for mainstream audiences" when a perturbed patron walked in muttering to himself, "what a weird movie." 3.5/5.

[M.10rda]

I remember standing at the urinal afterwards thinking to myself, "he really toned down the weirdness for mainstream audiences" when a perturbed patron walked in muttering to himself, "what a weird movie." 3.5/5.

^^^My entire filmgoing existence!

[Rev. Powell]

COYOTE VS. ACME (2026): Wile E. Coyote contacts an ambulance chaser to start a personal injury lawsuit against mega-corporation ACME after being injured by dozens of defective products. Surprisingly clever, funny for kids and adults, lots of nostalgic Looney Tunes cameos (cartoon Peter Lorre!), technically stunning, and for once, Will Forte isn't annoying; hard to understand how this was shelved. Yay Ketchup! 4/5. 

[Rev. Powell]

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM: A farmer is mistaken for a monster after a mixup between hair gel and an experimental miracle pumpkin growing potion. Clever slapstick farce that's nonstop gags (reminiscent of a 20s silent, but animated and sustained), with a pleasant Halloween theme and no coherent words spoken. 4/5. My niece didn't want to see this with me because it wasn't branded, so I was the only person in the theater---as it should be.

[M.10rda]

Resident Evil - Very solid adaptation of the games.  Funny, great lead performance, terrific pacing, constantly moving. Guess Cregger don't miss, eh?

RESIDENT EVIL (2026):
Jim liked it, Zombie No.One didn't....... I can imagine objections to it, such as:

The simplicity and linearity of the plot could be seen as reductive; the main character is at least a little bit of an idiot and it takes a while to warm to him; the stylistic and metatextual acknowledgments to the (video game) source material are unapologetic; and (pursuant to those acknowledgments) the humor verges occasionally on the ridiculous (though less so than in, for instance, the generally beloved and entirely puerile "Resident Evil 4").

However, none of those criticisms stick for me, because (as Jim suggests) Zach Creggar is such a strong director, w/ such an outstanding grasp of geography (always invaluable in the horror genre), and such a capable hand for pace and tone. So I found RESIDENT EVIL non-stop suspenseful fun w/ some chuckles and some good gooey gore and even some scares.

It's only 99 minutes, it ain't quite as artful or thoughtful as WEAPONS, but it way overdelivers for a RESIDENT EVIL movie or really any mainstream zombie movie.    4.5/5!

Also, per this comment:

another (15) certificate that is easily gorier and grosser than any of the banned 'video nasties'... in fact if this is a (15) for gore, what the heck would an (18) require?

C'mon, gorier and grosser than CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY? Maybe there's more blood in RESIDENT EVIL, but there's no torture or slow mutilation/dismantling of bodies or prolonged human suffering (well, besides maybe the lead character at the end). RESIDENT EVIL isn't even as disturbingly violent as Eli Roth's most violent films, let alone Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD (still a high-water mark for onscreen brutality). I think Carpenter's THE THING times two is a more reasonable comparison here.

...But also, who's complaining?!  It's Rated R (17+) over here by the way but I would've loved this at age 15!

[zombie no.one]

Also, per this comment:

another (15) certificate that is easily gorier and grosser than any of the banned 'video nasties'... in fact if this is a (15) for gore, what the heck would an (18) require?

C'mon, gorier and grosser than CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY? Maybe there's more blood in RESIDENT EVIL, but there's no torture or slow mutilation/dismantling of bodies or prolonged human suffering (well, besides maybe the lead character at the end). RESIDENT EVIL isn't even as disturbingly violent as Eli Roth's most violent films, let alone Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD (still a high-water mark for onscreen brutality). I think Carpenter's THE THING times two is a more reasonable comparison here.

...But also, who's complaining?!  It's Rated R (17+) over here by the way but I would've loved this at age 15!

I guess it's maybe not a fair comparison then... to me the new ultra CGI spatter type stuff just seems so much more visceral and in-your-face compared to the older stuff, that I see it as 'worse'

glad you enjoyed the movie though. - in my short review I didn't mention the ending 15 mins or so
 which I actually thought was so hammy and over the top I (kind of) enjoyed it. 

[M.10rda]

I agree with you that CGI provides horror filmmakers w/ splatter tools they didn't have in the previous century. Often these have been used kind of poorly/unconvincingly but RESIDENT EVIL's huge team of Eastern European artists  do boffo work!

Perhaps we'd be remiss in not mentioning Peter Jackson's analogue gore FX in BAD TASTE and DEAD ALIVE, particularly the latter. So much red liquid and all of it 100% real.......

[M.10rda]

I kicked off a full month of horror movie-viewing on a very high note this Saturday night w/ RESIDENT EVIL, then the B-feature on the double-bill uhhh reset my expectations more modestly...

THE INFLUENCER PROJECT (2026):
Brand new so I will avoid any specific plot discussion, as this was only (mostly) watchable because I knew nothing about it going in.

We drove away from this one unhappy, but based on early Letterboxd reviews, no one seems to like it, so I feel less obligated to beat up on INFLUENCER PROJECT and instead I'll mention a couple things about it that are positive.

There is one sequence in this movie (about midway through) where characters realize they are being spied on and filmed/live-streamed, and attempt to ascertain the location of their stalker in real-time w/o alerting said antagonist. This scene was really interesting - DePalma, Lynch, and Haneke would all approve. I wish the whole movie was this self-aware.

There's also a brief section, maybe 2/3rds in, where the film briefly becomes a feminist/anti-toxic masculinity/#metoo polemic. I'm all aboard for that shiz - however even as it was happening I was nervous about the film being insufficiently smart to back up the check it was writing. Indeed the final act of the film seems to reflect little interest in female empowerment or holding men morally accountable for their violence. So, this plus ends up becoming a minus.

TIP has much bigger issues, though those are related to the moral confusion I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Its protagonist is a boring, shallow, self-absorbed person, yet the viewer is presumably urged to identify w/ her and feel concerned for her during most of the running time... yet the climax flips its script and tries to make the audience feel foolish for sympathizing w/ the protagonist....... before thinking better of it once more, doubling back, and asking us again to side w/ her. 

Also, the suspense/action scenes are sometimes shot and edited in a manner that is so frenetic and/or disjointed as to provide no visual (or audio!) clue as to what is actually happening. The climax of BLAIR WITCH has nothin' on TIP. Major information is sometimes provided through an intertitle (as in the semi-preserved silent films I've been watching). I must assume that some scenes just weren't covered properly and/or the film was rewritten in post.

The main character "Chiara King" is played, ala BLAIR WITCH, by real-life influencer "Chiara King". Personally I think this might've been a bad move on her part - I can't imagine her onscreen portrayal will attract any but the least discerning followers.

2/5, generously. Co-produced by Eduardo Sanchez (who has made some good films post-BW) and (bizarrely) Ahmet Zappa. TIP flopped at the box office this weekend, grossing about as much as OBSESSION deserved to gross.