Recent Viewings, Part 2

[lester1/2jr]

Demon Wind (1990) - Imagine if Evil Dead was missing the magical ingredients that made it such a classic and instead was a dull but colorful collection of cute girls and gory effects? I really wanted to like this, but it just...lies there. 

A guy brings his cute girlfriend and other friends to a rural shack of some kind to have a showdown with his Satanic ancestors. Why would he do that? Why when ( slight spoiler) one of them gets killed do they not talk about it at all? What exactly are they trying to DO? It took me 3 nights to watch because the story and motivations are just so thin. That said, if you like having movies on in the background and/or talking over them, this would be a fantastic choice. It's got lots of state of the art special effects and even a little bit of nudity.

It has a fairly high Google users rating, probably a lot of people who fell asleep watching it on cable.

2.75/ 5

The last half hour was relatively strong.

[M.10rda]

How'd you like the badass Siegfried & Roy life partners?

[lester1/2jr]

They were magicians for 5 seconds.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Vigilante Diaries" (2016)
A former black-ops assassin recruits a team of fellow bad-asses to assist him in a private war against a powerful Armenian mob organization.
This low budget action junk sports an impressive cast of D-listers like Michael Madsen, Jason "Clerks" Mewes, and Michael Jai White. It starts off promising, but drags on far too long and goes off in so many random directions that it completely stops making sense around the halfway point. Skip it.

[Dr. Whom]

X (2022)

Now there is film title that is impossible to Google.

In 1979 a small film crew rent a secluded farmhouse to shoot a direct to video porn movie (which was then cutting edge technology) However the elderly couple they rent it from (and their trained alligator) have murderous intentions.

It starts out creepy enough, and then suddenly turns into a slapstick slasher. Quite enjoyable, also because it touches on themes like aging, sex and relationships. Like many modern movies, it takes its time to get going as nothing much happens in the first half hour or so. However, you do have a creepy atmosphere, Mia Goth is positively delicious, and you get some (soft) porn action, so there is that. It does mean that, when the action starts, they have get through the rest of the cast at a brisk pace.

This was the breakout movie for Mia Goth, who, I now know, is actually called Goth.

[Rev. Powell]

HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCE (2025): A recently-widowed man falls into a ghost-haunted nightmare. Abstract, but technically accomplished in both its dark ambient audio and morbid psychedelic visuals that produce some unexpectedly stunning images; the rating is a bit low, however, because this debut feature is essentially in the "student film" genre and will only be appreciated by a tiny audience. It's the kind of thing that can fascinate you for a few minutes, but watching for more than an hour with no real plot can be a chore. Debuting on Tubi February 11. 2/5, but it's one of the better of these types of things that I've seen (and I've seen a lot).

[M.10rda]

They were magicians for 5 seconds.

Yes, but they were badass for the entire fifteen minutes they were inexplicably in the movie.  I wish the whole movie was about those guys.

[indianasmith]

HIM (2025) - I saw the trailer for this one in the theater last summer, and then last night I saw it had dropped on Peacock so I watched it for free. Football-themed horror films are rare (unless you count the Cowboys' last few seasons), but this one is genuinely creepy, definitely wrapped around the whole concept of football stardom, and has an absolute WTF ending.  Totally worth the watch!   4/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Live Free or Die Hard" (aka "Die Hard 4.0," 2007)
A dozen years after his last go-round, Bruce Willis returns as John McClane, who's teamed up with a young computer hacker (Justin Long) to stop a high tech terrorist (Timothy Olyphant) who's out to cyber-attack America back to the stone age on July 4th weekend. As usual, many bullets fly, things explode frequently, and many butts are kicked. A satisfyingly silly slice of big budget popcorn action junk.

[Rev. Powell]

KINGDOM OF THE CROOKED MIRRORS (1963): A spoiled young girl enters the Land of Mirrors, where she goes on a quest with her mirror twin to rescue a boy imprisoned by the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors and his devious daughter and Toad courtier. The colorful sets and costumes in this Soviet fairy tale are stunning, action is constant, and the U.S. dub is actually decent; this underseen cult item ranks with the works of Aleksandr Ptushko. Now available mostly in poor quality rips of the dubbed version, it desperately deserves a restoration and re-release for Western audiences to discover. An outlier on the disc "Krazee Kidz Video Party," where it's the only unironically good movie. 4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Mary Magdalene (2018) - I had a discussion with a Star Trek fan once about how I didn't get Star Trek. "They just stand in that room looking out the window and saying stuff". He responded "yeah, but the stuff they're saying is cool". I imagine that's how people who aren't that interested in Christianity will see this movie. They move around this rocky seaside area saying a bunch of stuff, but in my opinion, it's cool stuff. It looks and feels a lot like Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew. I'm guessing both were authentic locations? or approximations of such.

Mary Magdelene is played by Rooney Mara, who I'd just seen in "Side Effects" (2013). She's decent, if not amazing. The wild cards are Jaoquin Phoenix as Jesus and a black guy as Peter. Phoenix was eccentric but good and the black guy didn't distract me. They quote the gospels but also invent some discussions and stuff. If you are familiar with the aforementioned gospels, this is a whole lot like Mark, the first one.

It got very mixed reviews on IMDB. Basically, it conveys the modern sort of academic viewpoint of Jesus as a guy who is not thrilled about what he sees as his fate, rather than the heroic version of the guy on the cross saying Shakepearean sort of stuff. What's the real version? Well I don't know. I wasn't there, was I? I thought they got Judas' motivation uniquely right. I would not be surprised if Bart Ehrman, James Tabor or some such person was consulted on some of the theology. There's a bit of ostentatious CGI when they get to Jerusalem. I guess they couldn't splurge for a gigantic temple with gold thingies hanging down.

5/5 but wouldn't recommend unless you are interested in the subject matter, and even then it might not be your view of the events or even your kind of storytelling.


Phoenix's portrayal reminded me of Cimabue's Jesus