Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

OBEX (2025): An agoraphobic computer nerd travels inside a video game to rescue his dog, kidnapped by the demon-boss Ixaroth. Another quirky, warm-hearted, and lightly surreal parable from Albert Birney (SYLVIO, STRAWBERRY MANSION), this time with a 1980s VHS/Macintosh aesthetic (and, for some reason, presented in black and white). 3/5.

[Alex]

The Trail.

A mute young woman goes on a hike and has an extraterrestrial encounter. With very few words spoken, this movie relies on visuals and background music to convey all emotion. It's very slowly paced, and your entertainment is going to vary widely according to your tolerance for that. 2/3rds of the way through it and its kept me interested enough to want to watch it to the end.

[Jim H]

You're Next - Still a really fun film, though I think I've seen it too many times now, some of it gets a little thin eventually.  I appreciate the film reframing who the hunted and hunted are in the last act, something I didn't quite notice the first few times.  Another bit - KPG, the military company the father works for, is the same company Lance Reddick works for in the Guest.  Shared universe it seems. 

[lester1/2jr]

Super Snooper (1980) aka Super Fuzz. I've now seen this 3 times in the span of 30 years. Each time I forgot everything about it, I don't know why. I don't watch many comedies as I'm sort of allergic to the post "There's Something about Mary" endless gross out humor and "but it has a heart" warmth combo, so this provided some badly needed variety. It's a little long though (one hour and 45 minutes) and the plot is rather thin. Whatever, it still rules.

Charismatic lead actor Terence Hill is a new cop working with grizzled veteran Ernest Borgnine, who seems to have a great time here. He gets zapped by nuclear rays and turns into Super Snooper. There's really no limit to his powers when he uses them and it defies all rational logic. I saw another Italian movie "Super Argo Man" that did that; Where the powers make him basically God and why doesn't he just snap his fingers and solve all known problems on Earth? Americans raised on super hero comics don't go for that, really.

"Supaah Snupaaaaah" 4.75 /5 can't wait to watch it again in 10.2 years.

[indianasmith]

WEAPONS (2025)  Re-watched this one last night, and still think it's one of the best horror films in the last decade. HIGHLY recommended!  5/5

GRAVEYARD SHARK (2024) - So I've been on a TubiTV bad movie kick lately, and this one DEFINITELY checks all the B-movie boxes, and checks them with enthusiasm!  The "shark" is actually a human/mermaid hybrid with the skull of a hammerhead shark, and he is NOT CGI!!!  That alone makes this one worth checking out. Throw in gallons of fake blood, the occasional gratuitous nudity, and dialogue that is so bad it must be heard to be believed, and you have one of the best bad movies I've seen in a while!  5/5

[M.10rda]

I went to film school w/ the screenwriter of YOU'RE NEXT and THE GUEST. He's a smart guy and I wish he could've continued creating his shared universe instead of having to write crap like the BLAIR WITCH reboot for $. He also co-starred in one of the features I made in '99, which shares some general plot elements/beats w/ YOU'RE NEXT. I ain't mad about it, we were pretty good friends and spent lots of time talking about things we wished we'd see happen in horror movies.

SUPERFUZZ was such an early 80s HBO staple. I have no actual proof of this but I feel like it must've been a big enough hit in the U.S. to inspire "The Greatest American Hero" starring Terence Hill lookalike William Katt and Robert Culp well-cast as Ernest Borgnine.

[M.10rda]

SON OF FURY (1942):
Most of this 19th century melodrama threatened to put me in a coma, w/ a boring screenplay and inert direction, yet it does wake up on occasion to deliver some worthwhile bits in isolation. The strikingly studly Tyrone Power projects little more charisma or acting ability than he did in the even more somnolent RAZOR'S EDGE in '46, and his lovely RAZOR'S EDGE co-star Gene Tierney is wasted in an empty love-interest role that she also happens to perform in yellowface.    (Her character is a Polynesian native lass, which of course prevents her from saying anything substantive or interesting to Power's British protagonist.) George Sanders is the bad guy, in powdered makeup and a pompadour, which makes him look alarmingly like Conan O'Brien doing ethno-drag on his HBO travel series.

Director James Cromwell neither demonstrates nor incites any interest in the proceedings for very long stretches, yet wakes up occasionally for bursts of surprisingly vigorous violence (at least for the early 40s), like a real-WTF sequence early on where Sanders sadistically whips Roddy McDowell (as the young Power) at great length, and then a knockdown/dragout fist-fight at the finale that is almost as absurdly protracted as the famous one from DARKER THAN AMBER. There's also a very effective, almost moving short scene where Power sneaks into a prison to visit his estranged grandfather. And, rather significantly, John Carradine plays a large role as a guy w/ at least 2.5 dimensions who isn't a monster or mad scientist or narrating Criminologist-type. This is almost certainly the most screen-time I've ever seen Carradine get in a nominally Serious (non-horror) movie. He looks hale & hearty, does a pro-job, and presumably was off-the-sauce for his many days on-set.

However, there's one major distinction that redeems SON OF FURY and shows that Cromwell might've been a strong director if he could maintain interest for the duration of a feature. Around 1/3 of the way through, my beloved Elsa Lanchester appears for a 10-minute setpiece as a workin' class dame who helps Power escape some assassins. For the record, Elsa in '42 was still about as hot as Elsa in '35, and of course her performance during those 10 minutes is a tour-de-force. But this all-too-brief scenario, and Elsa's expansive talent, really seems to have snapped Cromwell out of his malaise, because the entire sequence is impeccably handled and ends on a lovely grace note. On its own it would be a 4.5/5 short film, and if the entirety of SON OF FURY was as good as that 10 minutes, the film would've been a masterpiece!    3.5/5