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Reviews
Trigger Warning with Killer Mike (2019)
Mixed at best...
I love Killer Mike. I don't agree with all of his political views but the ways he states his opinions and unapologetically constructs a framework to support them is amazing. His viewpoint is wholly original. I love seeing him interviewed when he catches the interviewer by surprise with how wide-read and unlike their prejudice he is.
I expected the show to reflect that, and there were pieces of it throughout. But at the same time, it felt very much like this was Netflix's cartoon of what Mike is and he just ran with it for the camera time.
He had all these really amazing ideas. I loved some of the execution. But I was left with a real sense of honest dishonesty. What I mean is, while they made no attempts to paint anything fake, and instead spoke directly what they were feeling. But you could totally see so much of the trickery used by editing and other shady tactics in reality TV to try and tell a tale, often bending reality to make that happen. It seems like every episode, they went in with a story to tell, and had to massage things and change stuff to make that story work.
Then there were these sudden train-wrecks that felt like they were supposed to be Earth-shatteringly important revelations throughout but just fell flat, like Mario somehow becoming this unlikely villain in the series.
Every episode went like this:
"So there's this thing that white people take as normal. And it hurts black people. So I thought we would do this new, challenging thing that still operates under the same rules as they do, but do it 'black style'. We went to a bunch of people and they said it wouldn't work. We tried it out and it failed. So then we figured out how to do it to better create the goal we were looking for. And it seemed to be going well. Too well! So we had to create some drama somehow. Well, after the drama we created ended dramatically, then we finally road-tested it. Most of the responses were apparently and transparently just awkward and confused. So we had to manufacture some responses that better suited our story. End moral. Roll credits."
But along the way, there is this very honest approach to real problems. And I wish he had done it better. It did leave me with some bigger questions. But instead of, for instance, starting your own religion in response to a white Jesus, why not look into the overall destructive nature of religion and the sheer meaningless vein you tap into Religion throughout. You had to take something meaningless and try to inject your own meaning into it, while operating under the social constraints of what you consider religion to be. You could have been asking why those constraints are there. Why does it all feel devoid of meaning?
A lot of times, the actual answers to these problems kept resurfacing. But, instead of going down the roads that were obvious, Mike keeps plunging headlong down the same cliches he is trying to fight, not to destroy the cliche. He'd rather rebuild that cliche in the likeness of the old one. I saw this with Crip Soda: "Hell's Angels are a gang that has merch and Crips don't have merch so let's get merch for Crips!" instead of "Hell's Angel's have merch! Np gangs should have merch! Let's see about stopping that!" just as an example.
Cloverfield (2008)
Better than people give it credit for...
I really don't like big-monster movies other than as fodder for MST3K. And this isn't so much about the monster itself as it is what the monster does. People somehow are missing that, partly because so many movies are just about the monster and some stereotype characters.
But this is different.
And it resonated with me because I understood what the film symbolized. Everyone's trying to evoke Sept. 11 and it's about that, but not the way people think. We're looking at 9-11 through the eyes of 7+ years of memory.
Think back to that horrific day when you had no idea what was happening and you just felt like an ant being fried on the sidewalk by some evil kid with a magnifying glass and you were helpless and unprepared and incapable of comprehending what was happening.
THAT is what Cloverfield is about. In the end, you have no idea what that thing was or where it came from and you doubt you'll ever know the truth...
...just like so many things in life. And when you come right down to it, disaster movies and their ilk, to me, are not about how cool the special effects and action are, but how it takes that feeling of being side-swiped by life and magnifies it so out of proportion that you don't feel so bad about it anymore by comparison when your car breaks down or you lose your job.
Sure, that sucks, but at least I'm not watching my friends get hit by flaming wreckage from some sort of towering colossal beast while everyone screams and runs.
I give it 8 out of 10. Flawed but then, so are the events in life.
And if there was a real giant monster attack, you can believe it would occur like this.
Beyond Re-Animator (2003)
A total letdown compared to the first two...
What the hell happened to Brian Yuzna? When he made the first two Reanimator films and From Beyond, I saw the magic of a young horror director who cared about his work and, through the campy, goofy gore I was blown away by the cajones he had to make these films.
The dreadfully plot less Dagon and this latest entry in the Reanimator series show me he should just throw in the towel and direct commercials or something more constructive.
To his credit, the single redeeming quality of this film was Jeffrey Combs who somehow made his role in this awful excuse for a sequel workable. He delivered his performance with the same on screen mania that was so unappreciated on the other films.
The rest of the characters are flat caricatures of real people. The prison warden is laughable, the cell-mates are stereotypes and the reporter... well, she only had two "talents" that got her cast as best as I can tell. The entire cast, Combs aside, seemed like people who had been turned down for soap opera work.
While the first two films suspended believability, they did so with a tongue in cheek and wink of the eye that made those flaws allowable.
SPOILERS AHEAD...
In this film you have an attractive young lady in a courtyard full of imprisoned men and they don't even move on her. RIGHT! JUST LIKE REAL LIFE! If you think that's some sort of stretch of the imagination, consider the guy running around cut in half... he's not mad at the woman who cut him in two. He's mad at Herbert West for corrupting his pet rat. I couldn't possibly have made this up.
And speaking of that rat, if you think cutting to a shot of the poor creature rolling around a severed penis is entertaining, you need to read more books and perhaps graduate middle school.
Which leads me to what bothered me most about this film. Despite all the attempts to rekindle the energy that made the first two films work, Yuzna failed to not only conjure up the atmosphere and giddy playfulness his first two films had, but the film is heavily padded.
During scene after scene of what some will no doubt incorrectly label as genius, we're given shots of prisoners looking, people wandering around incoherently, exterior shots of the prison and that rat with the genitalia. All of these scenes come from nowhere and go nowhere. They seem like some sort of setup for a joke but the punchline never appears. It just keeps going and going as if disconnected from the story.
I'm left with the impression that Yuzna cut the original film and realized that it was 45 minutes long, so he strung in some cutting-room floor footage to space it out a bit and hope nobody notices. I noticed.
You have to understand... I'm a die-hard fan of the first two. They pushed boundaries, shocked people and made for great jokes about nude women strapped to tables and lecherous, talking heads.
Our antagonist, the prison warden, is like Ricky Ricardo on crack and he does everything he can to give you the impression that no man in his mental condition would be given any more responsibility than a fry station at McDonald's. David Gale would mop the floor with this guy, even without his head and no bat wings.
Bárbara Elorrieta is no Barbara Crampton, even if they share first names. Here's a fun drinking game. Every time she slips and her accent starts popping up, take a drink. You'll be wasted before you get to the second act. Also: I nearly threw up during the "tender" scene where she and Jason Barry spout clichés at each other.
As to the gore... well... that's one reason we watch Yuzna's films, now isn't it? Sure... Screamin' Mad George is at it again but his work gets less screen time then any of Yuzna's other films. There's more of the red stuff in the last fifteen minutes of the first film then all of this sequel.
Having said all that, the first scene is great. A little campy but I thought going in it was going to be a return to form after the dismal failure that Dagon was. Oh to be so lucky.
If H. P. Lovecraft were alive, he'd be calling the wrath of Cthulu down upon Brian Yuzna for this.
* INSERT WITTY JOKE ABOUT REANIMATING A GOOD MOVIE SERIES AND IT NEEDING TO BE PUT DOWN BECAUSE IT HAD GONE BAD * If you're a fan of the series, by all means, leave this one on the shelf and watch the original two instead.
Invasion from Inner Earth (1974)
Without a doubt, the absolute WORST film I have ever seen, hands down...
My friend John and I are both Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fans like many of the users who comment on this site. We frequent the odd video stores that are not chains searching for those elusive bad movies with quirky charm and shoestring budgets that will provide us an hour plus change of kitchsy laughs and provide us with plenty of fodder for our jokes. Sure it's immature. Sure it will never pay the bills or get us national acclaim or whatever. Fine.
That said, we've seen our share of bad films. Hell, we've seen more bad films in a year than most people will watch in their entire lives. One thing has forever haunted us. This film is without a shadow of a doubt, hands-down, no joke, without question, the worst film we have ever seen. PERIOD. The contest is over. You have a winner. Go home and try not to even THINK about this film.
I wish I could describe for you how infernally bad this film is. I wish the English language possessed the proper adjectives to put into some sort of written context how miserable this film is.
Imagine smacking yourself over the head with a brick for an hour and a half straight and you've only begun to scrape the surface. Imagine covering every square inch of your body with highly adhesive duct tape and then having it slowwwwwwwly peeled back all at one time and you might begin to feel it burn. Imagine standing in line on a humid day in the DMV surrounded by angry, smelly people screaming into their cell phones while the fluorescent lights overhead buzz and the door keeps making a grating squeaking noise every time it is opened and that's every couple minutes and a little boy next to you has just vomited on the floor and you got it on your shoe and you realize you have to pee but you're in the middle of the line and if you leave you have to start all over at the end but dammit you really have to pee and oh god it's never going to stop is it... where's that cyanide pill when you really need it?
Well, enough lavish descriptions.
The film itself is about... um... it's about... let's see... there are some people in the woods. In a cabin. The cabin is remote. Um... four of them. Maybe twenty. I can't tell the characters apart. They might have names. They might not.
Let's see, cut every so often to the frantic scene of a city being menaced by colored smoke and then cut back to the cabin people who need a radio so they can call home and then a red light shows up and then something happens. Every time a red light shows up, it's bad. I can tell you that much. Beware of those red lights. The apparently do something.
Someone escapes in an airplane and they might have been killed but let's just forget about them since the movie never really explains it. Someone is shined upon with a red light in the woodshed. The people in the city are running in circles. There's colored smoke! Run people! Run!
I know I sound like I'm being vague but trust me, I'm not. I still have no f*cking clue what the HELL happened in this film. If you figure it out, let me know. Please.
For one and half mind-sucking hours you could spend on something more constructive like nailing your feet to the floor or jabbing yourself in the eyes with newly-sharpened number two pencil, you watch as characters discuss the radio, walk around inside and outside, are attacked by a red light and occasionally cut to other scenes as over and over people in the city run in fear from colored smoke in what becomes increasingly obvious as a the same footage shot at three different angles, tops.
Now, you may want to actually go see this film. You may read my review and others and think, "Wow! This is so bad! It must be entertaining to watch something as bad as this! I'll go rent it right NOW!" I wish I was as innocent of mind as you.
But if for some ungodly reason you want to violate all rational sense and go pick this up, ignore the next bit with SPOILERS...
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS...
Still with me? Good. You don't want to watch this film. You don't even want to consider it. That whole poking-in-the-eye thing I mentioned earlier sounds like fun by comparison. You might want to consider it.
This movie ends after the two remaining characters strong enough to resist whatever the hell the red light does walk along the railroad tracks. The Earth is decimated. They are the only two survivors. They ponder their existence and look around at the ruins which look vaguely like a regular city where some crappy b-movie director has gotten permission to vacate all the buildings while he shoots his crappy movie.
This man and this woman (if the characters had names, I certainly didn't notice/care/wish to remember them) are alone in the world. All alone. Just the two of them.
Suddenly, they become naked children.
No, really. That's what happens. Through the magic of shoddy editing they are suddenly both naked children. They walk down the railroad tracks and into the badly framed sunset and roll credits.
You probably think I'm kidding. Hell, if I told me that was the ending, I would probably think I was kidding too. And I've seen this movie so I know better.
I know. It's some sort of Adam and Eve metaphor, right? I don't think so. Sure the Adam and EVe angle comes into play but the way it's shot, I have no doubt in my mind the director really turned his two remaining characters into naked children.
SPOILERS OVER... SPOILERS OVER... SPOILERS OVER...
Watching this movie, my friend and I were silent. We were unable to stop it. It just kept playing. A certain, disbelieving paralysis struck us. Could a movie really be this bad? Is it possible to go this low?
I have some possible suggestions for how this movie could be used:
1) Rent it and tape over it with something less tedious like televised golf or home video of your great aunt reading the Bible in a dimly-lit room or even time-lapse photography of grass growing. Whatever you do, make certain you take it back to the video store. You don't want to get to the afterlife having known you STOLE this film. Your pain will be legendary. Even in Hell.
2) Recommend it to someone you really hate. Sell it well. Tell them it is a cheap, budgetless film but that it has an original story packed with a unique direction that will not be forgotten. You certainly won't be lying there. DO NOT WATCH IT WITH THEM. If they invite you, make up some feasible excuse. And never talk to them again. This movie says it all for you.
3) Punish your children with it. Instead of TV restriction, tell them they can watch TV as much as they like, but all they can watch is this film. Trust me. Even the most rebellious child will transform themselves into an angel. Either that or kill you in your sleep and end up in an institution claiming the red light made them do it.
I wish I could say more. I've devoted a huge amount of time to writing this review because a movie this bad needs a headstone fitting of its badness. I wish I could properly convey to you in some way how much this movie is to be avoided. If they have it at your local video store, do your fellow patrons a favor and hide it somewhere that it won't be found. Let the good people at the store think they've lost it. Let them find if later and then hide it again so maybe they get the message. Take it out of circulation. Bring a magnet with you and leave it in the box. If this shoddy film ever comes out on DVD (surely a sign of impending apocalypse), KEY it. I normally wouldn't recommend illegal activity in your local video store, but trust me. Doing so is humanitarian. I'm not kidding. Mother Theresa told me so in a vision, and if it's good enough for the old 'Mum, it's good enough for me.
So I leave you with her review of this film:
"I suffered for many years toiling to bring happiness and health and beauty to the ravaged people of a place as decimated as Calcutta. I saw misery and human sadness I could not begin to put into words. But trust me when I tell you this... none of it can compare to the horrid time I spent watching this f*cking film. It f*cking blows. Hard."
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Beating a Living Dead Horse
Why have all contributions to George Romero's brilliant Night of the Living Dead trilogy sucked on toast? (excluding admittedly, its Savini-helmed remake of the first installment and Fulci's first attempt)
And why, with so much potential to make such an exceptional homage to the original by simply remastering it and perhaps spending some money on a real orchestra to augment the already stellar performances and tension, are we left with Cable Access Channel actors and keyboard demo music? Perhaps a small snip and tuck here and there would be livable but instead we're stuck with this hideous 30th edition which repulses far more than any of the zombie dinner scenes in the sequels.
I confess, the director did an adequate job of integrating the new footage into the old footage but that's where it ends. These new pieces add nothing and in many places, take away from the brilliant and original. A bookend bit of crap with a priest in the cemetery of the film alters the entire ending of the film (one year later!?) and makes the sequels (Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, not those insipid Return flicks) impossible. If anything, it makes the Return films seem like the logical conclusion. In fact, it feels like an extension of the Return films creeping into the original.
Zombies surround a car crash in an extended and obvious fake of the original's radio broadcast which drones on overtop. These zombies menace some bloody dummies sitting in the car. All of this is sandwiched into the scene where Ben searches the house for supplies. It adds nothing to the film (other than some shoddy gore effects and a lady with her arm obviously tucked into the back of her shirt to make way for the dripping fake stump) but it's there all the same.
Even worse: whenever Zombies appear on screen, cheesy moans and groans are heard. They don't even try and fit in with the sound of the original, giving you the impression they were recorded some 30 years later in a sound studio and added in via editing (hmmmm...).
My advice: avoid this one and all other rip-offs.
John Russo...
you should be ashamed of yourself. Why can't those zombies eat you?