Recent Viewings, Part 2

[chainsaw midget]

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS


I just finished watching the series (all 6 seasons) so I decided to track down the movie it was based on.  Or perhaps inspired by.  There are none of the same characters, setting, or anything between the two.  Just the same general idea.  A documentary crew is filming the daily "life" of a group of vampires that live together in modern times. 

While the TV series takes this a step further and makes them all basically idiots, the original show just has them... completely out of whack with modern day life.  There's not much of a plot to it, the closest thing it has is the fact that one of their victims at the beginning of the movie gets turned and they roughly guide him in what being a vampire is actually like. 

I wouldn't say it's laugh out loud funny, but it is quite amusing in places.  Also a lot bloodier and gorier than the Tv series. 

Worth checking out if you like vampire movies. 

[indianasmith]

LINCOLN (2013) - Watched this Stephen Spielberg masterpiece with my Dual Credit history class during out last week of school.  This is one of my favorite films of all time:  Lincoln is my personal hero, the cinematography is gorgeous, and the casting simply perfect.  From Sally Fields totally losing her s**t as Mary Todd Lincoln to Tommy Lee Jones as the acerbic, brilliant abolitionist Thaddeus Stephens to Joshua Gordon Levitt as Robert Lincoln, every actor and actress rose to the occasion and created a brilliant tribute to the genius and tragedy of our 16th President. LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!   5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Til We Start To Shout" (2025)
Fan made documentary about KISS' tumultuous 1982 "10th Anniversary Tour" in support of the Creatures of the Night album, created with a mix of live concert clips and interview footage. I didn't learn anything new but it was a cool trip down memory lane.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Truck Turner" (1974)
Mack "Truck" Turner (soul music legend Isaac Hayes) is the baddest bail bondsman in L.A., but after he kills a powerful pimp during a shoot out, he has a price on put on his head.  Now EVERY bad mo-fo in the city is gunning for him. Nichelle "Lt. Uhura" Nichols totally steals the movie in a cast-against type villain role as a foul mouthed madam, and the "pimp funeral" scene is one of the greatest things ever committed to celluloid.
"Truck" is one of the best action movies to come out of the early 70s "blaxploitation" craze and it's held up to multiple viewings.

[lester1/2jr]

Scream for Help (1984) -  I like 80's horror movies, I like "The Stepfather"/ Lifetime type plots, and I like movies that are a little bonky and wacky, but I just can't abide by this thingy. It was an entertaining train wreck, but still a train wreck.

A girl suspects her Mom's much younger new boyfriend is up to no good. Like 4 people die and the police and her Mom are still like "You young girls and your imagination". The main character is cute and sort of clever and it doesn't skimp on the trashy dialogue and brutal scenarios, but the director really just doesn't have a feel for this kind of story.

One website called this "The doofiest 80's horror movie" and I agree wholeheartedly. If an electrician was shocked to death in my basement I would talk about it for 10 years. If a middle aged woman started dating a guy 15 years younger and way out of her league all of her friends would suss the guy out immediately. Somehow these plot holes work themselves out in made for tv movies, but not here.

3.5/ 5 I can't fully hate it either though. It's like if all the celebrities at the MET Gala wore their outfits inside out or something. You just watch it like "boy, what is this?" I think someone from Cannon films was involved, but not Cannon itself.

[indianasmith]

NEVER BLINK (2021)   One of the most thoroughly ridiculous premises in the history of bad horror/scifi films - apparently, when we blink, our minds open gateways to other realities.  A scientific institute is studying "what happens inside the blink" and one of their test subjects goes catatonic and opens a portal which lets a murderous entity come into our reality and go on a killing spree.  The monster was cool, the final girl was very cute, but this thing was an absolute train wreck in both plot and execution!   2.5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Good Boy" (2025)
Indy the dog and his human master move into a secluded house in the woods, and the faithful pooch quickly detects a supernatural entity in the place that only he can see.
This surprise hit, told with minimal dialogue and shot mostly from the dog's POV, is an unsettling little creep show with a unique premise. The dog is adorable and puts in an impressive performance, even if the movie itself is a little on the meandering side. Worth seeing if you're a dog person who enjoys slow burning horror.

[M.10rda]

Another characteristically unpopular opinion:

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS tv series >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> WWDITS feature film.

The series does swing wildly in quality from season-to-season (from Funniest Thing Ever to Just Pretty Good and back and forth) but I laughed very little at the movie.
Same creators/showrunners - I think they just loosened themselves up and had more latitude to go to crazy and hilarious places in the series.

Laszlo Cravensworth and Colin Robinson alone elevate the series to legendary/GOAT status.

[M.10rda]

COPS (1922):
I thought I reviewed this one but I can't find it in either thread. Maybe I typed it and clicked "Post" but I was signed out or someone else had posted in the meantime and it didn't post. Curse my OCD...

This is Buster Keaton in his early solo period, following Roscoe Arbuckle's unofficial cancelling/deep cover career post-1921....... Keaton writes, directs, and stars w/ a mostly blank/passive expression, which was a popular/Chaplinesque approach to silent clowning, but I liked it better in Keaton's earlier appearances when he would actually emote. The first half of eighteen-minute COPS is pretty slow and lame, but the second half goes big. Keaton's horse and buggy mishap interrupts and eventually wreaks havoc on a large police parade, inciting an entire metropolitan police force to pursue him on-foot with a bloodlust. I've remarked in previous silent reviews about how early silents often tried to recycle the same dozen or two dozen extras, in the same shot, over and over to appear like a mob of scores or hundreds. Not here....... COPS definitely has fifty or more dudes in police uniforms running through city streets after Buster - and that verite makes all the difference, comedically speaking.

There's also a pretty crazy stunt involving a de facto teeter-totter near the end. Always amazes me that more people weren't killed on silent film shoots. (A bunch were, but it's amazing that fatality wasn't even more common.)    3/5    Or 3.5 if you're particularly ACAB.

[indianasmith]

PRIMATE (2025)  A college girl comes home for the summer with some friends, looking forward to seeing her sister and her deaf/mute father - as well as the highly intelligent chimpanzee her family has raised and cherished like a sibling.  Except . . . "there's something wrong with Ben."
   This was a surprisingly good flick with some great gore effects and a very scary rabid chimp running amok!  4/5

[lester1/2jr]

^that looks awesome https://youtu.be/wo87F-va410?si=-BKbuYuqppsQxe8X


"Get in the pool, Ben can't swim!" Okay, we might be crossing a line here.

[Rev. Powell]

KRAKATIT (1948): From a hospital bed, a feverish chemist dreams about his discovery of the ultra-powerful atomic age explosive "krakatit" and the efforts of shadowy agents to acquire the formula from him. Effectively dreamlike, paranoid Czech atomic nightmare film, with beautiful black and white cinematography. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics" (2010)
...Ryan Reynolds narrates the long, bumpy history of DC Comics, from its humble 1930s beginnings as National Periodical Publications, a publisher of saucy pulp magazines, to the current multi-media powerhouse that's home to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and countless other iconic characters. A very cool documentary loaded with nerd trivia.
(on YouTube)

[M.10rda]

Rifftrax: Twilight:
yeah, it's as bad as you imagined, maybe even worse. Full of plot holes and continuity errors (though not nearly as much sparkling as I'd heard), and of course you never would have guessed that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson would eventually go on to become GOOD actors... I blame director Catherine Hardwicke for misdirecting these youngsters. (Anna Kendrick also appears; though playing a teenager, she's 23, so you don't have to feel so pervy for noticing she's hot as hell.) Fortunately, Rifftrax rescues this teen romance mess, having a lot of fun with the awkward pauses. 3.5/5 (Rifftrax version)

RIFFTRAX: TWILIGHT (2008):
We had somehow/coincidentally been planning to watch this even prior to Rev's review.  Madame 10RDA watches the entire TWILIGHT series about once every two-to-three years.  Fortunately the sheen (sic) may have worn off the original/vanilla versions and now the Rifftrax are required for further reps. 

Although I appreciate the inclination towards holding Catherine Hardwicke responsible for this trainwreck, she has done good work elsewhere and more importantly - if you've only ever seen the first TWILIGHT - the next four films get progressively and significantly worse.  It's true. I've now seen TWILIGHT Chapter One three times - the first two sans riffs - and at least it kind of resembles a Real Movie, if an often puzzling and silly one. The rest of the series is unwatchable and I'm not even confident that Riffs will make it possible to digest.

There are some funny riffs here (particularly the one about Animal and Dr. Teeth) but TWILIGHT might be Fun/Bad enough to even entertain Badfilm fans w/o the riffs. Here are some weird/interesting/amusing things I appreciate (quote-unquote) about TWILIGHT even notwithstanding the efforts of the 'Trax trio:

* I actually think Robert Pattinson gives a decent Pattinsonian performance, which is to say "oddball" - if one keeps in mind that he's playing a 100+ year old pedophile who wants to do or eat teenage Kristin Stewart, or both, even though she makes him chronically nauseous. (The riffs even characterize his performance as Walkenesque at one point, which is fair.) His character "Edward Cullen" is bizarre and distasteful, but that ain't Pattinson's fault.

* Stewart, however, is terrible in this and makes me nauseous, too. Why can't she cut out the rapid blinking during every third line-reading? Is it Tourettes? Honestly the only Stewart performance I've liked was in PERSONAL SHOPPER so maybe she's usually a mess. Also it appears as if she doesn't understand ketchup and has never applied it to food before.

* Yeah, the vampires sparkle in daylight but moreover they can only play baseball during thunderstorms.    Why??? 

* Edi Gathegi (Mr. Terrific from Gunn's SUPERMAN) plays one of the vampires. Head vampire Peter Facinelli looks like a wax sculpture of himself. Vampire Jackson Rathbone looks stoned out of his mind on 'luudes (and apparently has attracted a cult following for this performance). Vampire Ashley Greene has insanely long/nice legs.

* It took me a long time to warm up to Anna Kendrick (I prefer her in comedies over dramas or musicals) and don't think she looks "hot as hell" here (though to each their own!). I do think she looks perpetually confused about what she's doing in this movie and in this series and about her character's circumstances in every single (inconsequential) scene in which she appears. She would blow up shortly after this was released and yet was locked into the rest of the series and hilariously her (human) character never does anything important or interesting IIRC for the next three movies.

* Gil Birmingham from "Yellowstone" plays the wheelchair-bound uncle or grandfather or something of the kid who becomes the werewolf rival to Pattinson in the next movie. I think Birmingham is in the other movies too but his character isn't a werewolf, I think, but darn it, a paraplegic werewolf in a wheelchair is a great idea for a Bad Movie!

Also there's Radiohead and Muse on the soundtrack, so 3/5....... at best, w/ riffs, but again the series doesn't get better than this.