Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

APOCALYPTO (2006)
 I must have been under a rock (or in a bottle) when this came out, because I never even heard of this film before last night.
 It's the story of Jaguar Paw, a Mayan tribesman's struggle to survive a devastating attack upon his people by a degenerate rival tribe and reunite with his pregnant mate and child.
 I have to give director Mel Gibson credit- the battle scenes are intense and gory, and the pursuit of Jaguar Paw threw the jungle by his sadistic tormenters is nail biting.  It's refreshing to see an original idea for once coming out of Hollywood that's not a rehash or remake.  I can't recall seeing any other film- ever!- set in this era and place in history.
 Dam. Mebbe the best film I've seen all year.

It was good. It was buried on release because the Gibson antisemite scandal broke just before it was set to debut.

[Rev. Powell]

I AM: CELINE DION (2024): Singer Celine Dion struggles with a rare neurological disorder ("stiff person syndrome") that disrupts her ability to sing and perform. There are times, when Dion's crying and enduring a paralyzing attack of painful spasms, that this documentary almost feels like an invasion of privacy, but these moments of intimacy are the only thing that elevates this portrait above the ordinary. Dion seems like a genuinely nice person, but the documentary still reminded me I have more theoretical sympathy for people with this disorder who can't afford to have the world's most accomplished physical therapists perform house calls to their Las Vegas mansions. 3/5. On Amazon Prime, but I am only watching it because I need to catch up on documentaries before awards season officially hits (I won't be voting for this one). 

[Neville]

Terrifier 3, so far the nastiest of the three films in terms of gore. I am a big fan of the first two, but somehow this one failed to interest me in the same way. It's not as meandering as the second one, and Damien Leone insists on the gory set pieces with gusto, yet... I don't know. Something is missing. Or maybe it's just me.

[RCMerchant]

Terrifier 3, so far the nastiest of the three films in terms of gore. I am a big fan of the first two, but

Wasn't this the first one? It's 2013. I've never seen any of them, but saw this was on Tubi- and the clown looks the same. And the director is the same.

[Alex]

Terrifier 3, so far the nastiest of the three films in terms of gore. I am a big fan of the first two, but

Wasn't this the first one? It's 2013. I've never seen any of them, but saw this was on Tubi- and the clown looks the same. And the director is the same.

There are (I think) three movies that came before the first Terrifier that have Art in them in some capacity (I think they are portmanteau with him in one of the stories each, but I've not seen them so I couldn't be sure).

[Neville]

You're right, Art the Clown appears in two previous Damien Leone movies. I like the second one.

[Rev. Powell]

LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024): A misfit high school senior girl who hangs out at the graveyard finds a new love interest when a freak electrical storm reanimates a handsome bachelor corpse. There's some promise here but it doesn't really come together; it starts out as a parody/homage to 80s teen films of John Hughes and Tim Burton, but stumbles as it transitions to darker shades of black comedy. It is free on Prime. 2.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

Wrapped up my October horror-thon last night with...

"Tales of Halloween" (2015)
A fun anthology flick featuring ten tales of terror which all take place around the same small town on Halloween night. The stories include killer trick-or-treaters, a Jason-style slasher who meets his match, a kidnapping plot that goes really wrong, and carnivorous jack-o-lanterns. Not every story is a home run but this flick's mix of goofball humor and gory nastiness, with lots of in-jokes for long time horror nerds, make this one a fun watch for me year after year.

[LordGraal]

Levels (2024)
After witnessing his girlfriend's murder, a man risks everything - including reality itself - to discover the truth.

I quite enjoyed this Canadian indie movie.  It's derivative of The Matrix but kept my interest and the acting was very good.  The artwork is misleading though.

[Rev. Powell]

THE MADS ARE BACK: GIANT GILA MONSTER: The Mads took a couple of months off, and have stopped doing monthly broadcasts, which is probably for the best (because they're running out of usable public domain material to riff). This one is, of course, a MST3K re-riff of a very dull giant monster movie with very little monster (an ordinary iguana in forced perspective), lots of dull teenagers, and not one but two comic drunks. I chuckled frequently. The after show guests were the guy who does Svengoolie and his producer or head writer (maybe both; not completely sure what the other guy's role is). The Q&A is my least favorite part of the show, but it's decent for a single watch. No announcement of when the next show will be, but I'm guessing they go quarterly with these. 3/5.

[M.10rda]

CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD aka KILL, BABY, KILL! aka KILL, BABY... KILL! aka OPERATION: FEAR (1966):
First-time viewing (last week) of a film I thought might make it on the Top 25 list. It didn't but I'm not mad about spending the time on it. Nor was Madame, who immediately started trashing it in the first 5 minutes for looking like a cheap/bad 60s Euro-horror (which it does initially, I guess) but then settled down and watched it (mostly quietly) for the duration. That in and of itself is an implicit compliment. She hated/liked the creepy little ghost girl (who kind of looks like our niece), was somewhat more concerned about the protagonists' survival than irritated at their foolishness, and ended up very much appreciating the art direction. Yeah, if you watch this film even just for the gels, I think you'll walk away happy. SUSPIRIA might not look like SUSPIRIA if not for this film.

Myself, I most admired Bava's insistence on delivering exposition in the tiiiiiiniest bits and bites, or withholding it altogether, which works perfectly well in a dreamlike gothic flick like this one. This approach only fails in the final 10 minutes, when two surviving characters confront each other and desperately try filling in the remaining narrative blanks like their lives depend on it. Their lives are of course in peril, but they needn't have bothered to clarify the exact particulars of Why to this viewer, plus their hurried attempts still confused me on some (completely unnecessary) details. Maybe this was a result of the English dub job and not Bava's fault at all - but (being a 60s Roma horror) is there even a subbed print in Italian somewhere for me to watch?

I digress. For me the main attraction and main event was a scene I'd read about for 30 years that purportedly inspired a brief yet indelible sequence in TP:FWWM. That scene exists, but moreover there's a whole 'nother scene here that David Lynch recreated almost exactly in the season finale to TWIN PEAKS S2... right down to blocking Kyle MacLachlan's (and Kyle MacLachlan's stand-in's) movements to precisely match those of Giacomo Rossi Stuart and his doppelganger. Such slavish recreation of another filmmaker's style is virtually non-existent in the Lynchian canon and it blows my mind a little. Lynch must've really dug this one.

4/5 I like it too - maybe the best Bava I've seen.

[indianasmith]

THE FUNHOUSE MASSACRE (2015)

Turns out I'd seen this one many years ago, but it was a fairly enjoyable flick on a second viewing, opening with a cameo by the one and only Robert Englund.
   A female serial killer poses as a journalist in order to get into a hidden asylum for the criminally insane and liberate six deadly murderers, who then take over a Halloween haunted attraction that was based on their crimes and kill all the guests.  Other movies have done the same thing, but few have done so as well.  Overall fun slasher mayhem!  4/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024)
Ryan Reynolds is back for a third go round as Marvel's Merc with a Mouth, and this time he's brining everyone's favorite X-Man with him!
When a super-villain threatens to mess with Marvel's multiple timelines and eliminate Deadpool's universe altogether, The Pool enlists the help of a past-his-prime Wolverine (as well as a few other surprising cameos whom I will not spoil) in order to put things right. As usual, the bullets, F-bombs, bodies, and one liners fly in equal measure. An absolutely crazy, action packed hoot. Loads of ultra-violent fun.

[M.10rda]

Technically DP's FOURTH go-round... 

[indianasmith]

"Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024)
Ryan Reynolds is back for a third go round as Marvel's Merc with a Mouth, and this time he's brining everyone's favorite X-Man with him!
When a super-villain threatens to mess with Marvel's multiple timelines and eliminate Deadpool's universe altogether, The Pool enlists the help of a past-his-prime Wolverine (as well as a few other surprising cameos whom I will not spoil) in order to put things right. As usual, the bullets, F-bombs, bodies, and one liners fly in equal measure. An absolutely crazy, action packed hoot. Loads of ultra-violent fun.

My wife and I laughed ourselves silly during this one!