McConnaughay's Reviews

In some respects, I was excited for Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey. In most respects I wasn’t, but, in some respects, I was. This isn’t a film I will be talking about for inclusion in the Nickelbib Nightmare Deck nor is a film I will be nominating soon for the Dustjacket Hall of Fame. It was never a film I had considered as in contention for either accolade either. This is a film a friend and I chose to watch while we shot the breeze and reminisced, one that we ourselves weren’t too heavily invested in. At the same time, I can’t say I wasn’t enthusiastic for the film.

In the same way I will most certainly watch The Mean One when I can, I found myself drawn to Blood & Honey. It felt like a relic of a bygone era, like something back from the eighties, a decade where I am still finding unheard of slasher films like it is a bottomless well. They aren’t usually very good (although sometimes you will find something to appreciate from them – for example, The Burning isn’t what I’d call a good film, but Tom Savini is what I would call a good make-up artist in horror), but I appreciate them. If there was ever a time to use the phrase ‘schlock,’ I believe that would apply to my expectation of this film.

In total, I found Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey both better and worse than what I expected.

The film was directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield.

His prior work includes a film called Firenado, and I believe that is inline with what I expected him to have previously directed (and who knows? Maybe Firenado is fantastic!), a low-budget, exploitative horror flick, cashing in on the absurdity of its own existence more than its merit. This isn’t always a bad thing, per se. It seldom leads to high-art exactly, but it sometimes leads to a fun film. For example, a film like Head of the Family or Chopping Mall is completely worthwhile and more than watchable. Sometimes though, it leads to “so bad, it’s good” cinema, which doesn’t really appeal to me, personally.

Some people like that. The Asylum films or mockbusters, and films like Sharknado, but I am not among them. It is a fine line and some moviegoers may not be able to differentiate them, but it is an important separation in my opinion. Something like Chopping Mall isn’t entertaining me with how absurdly bad it is, but by how well it is able to portray an absurd concept. Enjoyable performances. Fun, likable characters. Good makeup. Clever camerawork. They are all variables that factor in, and if you succeed at those variables or others, you will make an enjoyable film – no matter what, if you enjoy a film, that implies it has some kind of good-quality, not a bad one.

The camerawork in Blood & Honey is better than expected.

This is, for the most part, the extent of the praise I will ultimately afford the film. I had an image in my head before I watched the film of what I feared it may look like. I imagined two different possibilities – cheap, grainy-looking footage and a shaky cam, or that heavy digital aesthetic that has become more prevalent, where it looks deceptively high-quality yet very fake and unappealing to the eye.

This film doesn’t have a high-production value by any means, but it was better than I expected (which was truly bottom of the barrel). By the end, it did skirt awfully close to bottom of the barrel, but, early on, it had a couple shots here and there that suggested a cinematic prowess I hadn’t expected. It isn’t anything that will blow your hair back, but it is still better aesthetically than some of what’s out there. Some critics singled out its bad camerawork as a main point of criticism. They’re not wrong. They’re simply not succumbing themselves to what I am.

This is a film that wasn’t meant to find the amount of eyeballs it has – akin to something like Pinocchio’s Revenge or The Curse of Humpty Dumpty. This is something no one was meant to care about (something I wasn’t even supposed to be writing about!), that managed to ride a meme-like “for the lulz” popularity and the prior theatrical success of Terrifier 2 (and other horror films post-Covid) into becoming a successful film.

The costumes look bad. Early on, we are treated to a brief animated introduction meant to set the stage for the film itself. It isn’t anything too crazy, but I liked it. The costumes, however, leave a lot to be desired. It isn’t even that they look bad, it’s that they’re made to look bad. They look on par with the film they are in. The issue is that they aren’t shot in the best ways (here I am contradicting the single praise I offered the film, but I digress). If you have a costume that looks like a costume, the best thing you can do is use your lighting and visuals to try and disguise that fact. It’s a basic, evergreen strategy in horror – if you have a shoestring budget, less can be more. Obviously, this type of film is more about excess and in your face absurdity, but, for a film that plays it straight, I believe it would have done itself a favor to not have shown shots that made it so blatantly apparent that a human’s face was behind the Pooh mask. Just keep it darkly lit or be selective about how you frame him. This film does neither.

The story doesn’t exist. Well, I mean, it does, but it doesn’t. It is an incoherent mess that only further unravels the longer you think about it or try to dissect it (so don’t). As prefaced, I wasn’t horribly invested in Blood & Honey, but I did pay attention to it. And, you know what? I couldn’t tell you what was happening / anything about the characters in the film. I mean, you did have Christopher Robin and Pooh, but the rest of the cast? I couldn’t tell you a single character trait about them. They are empty characters, void of any and all traits (like Piglets lined up for the slaughter).

The concept of Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey actually seems like an alright idea for a slasher film. Christopher Robin left Hundred Acre Woods and all the animals behind, and while he was absent from them, they either starved to death or went mad. It’s both dark and a perfectly fine idea for a slasher film.

I can imagine a lot of different angles for it.

It is such an easy idea, after all. Have Christopher Robin show up with a bunch of friends, and then, let a slasher film be a slasher film. It is an easy foundation to build upon, but the film feels like it never develops its ideas beyond their infancy. (We could even have it be that a group of hunters murdered and made pelts out of Winnie and friends, justifying why it was clearly men in costumes!)

The deaths are largely uneventful. They’re neither grotesquely gory (a la Hatchet or Terrifier) or particularly clever, they simply are.

The acting is subpar and the dialogue is one-dimensional.

I don’t usually write reviews like this on Nickelbib.com, and it is for a reason. I write to create a “Best of” list, never a “Worst of”. I don’t like to punch down on a film that tries in good faith and I don’t like to play the “woe is me” reviewer who suffers through a film that supplies low-effort entertainment. For that reason, I will simply say that I hope they look at this as an opportunity for improvement.

In 2015, I discovered a low-budget anthology film called All Hallows’ Eve. This was the first feature length appearance of Damien Leone’s character Art the Clown – an eccentric, peculiar, and very violent murderous clown. The film was rough-around-the-edges, but I was taken by the Art the Clown character. Three years after the anthology (which was composed of much older short films), the director released Terrifier, an all-out standalone film starring horror’s newest slasher villain. Like its predecessor, Terrifier was more than a little rough. It was a below-average film, but an above average slasher film.

The struggles the original film had largely dealt with its lack of cohesion / story development and a few choice moments I felt worked against it. I didn’t hate it though, and, in fact, I found myself still rooting for Damien Leone and Art the Clown. As a lifetime fan of the slasher genre, we honestly need a character like Art the Clown to make some noise and wreak havoc.

2022 has been prolific for the slasher genre. As a matter of fact, I would argue it might be one of the most significant years for the genre in a few decades. Our headliners were Halloween Kills, Scream, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which didn’t all exactly deliver (I liked Scream, I didn’t care too much for the latter two), but they kept the torch lit. Meanwhile, Don Mancini continues to have fun with Chucky on television, and we’ve had well-received under card slashers in the form of X (and its prequel film Pearl) and Orphan: First Kill.

For me, as much as I am a fan of Scream, I found myself most excited for Terrifier 2.

I wanted the film to succeed.

At the box office, the film already has – raking in $8 million off a small budget (reportedly $250,000) and achieving mainstream attention. The film will likely do a lot in helping Bloody Disgusting‘s new streaming service Screambox be taken seriously as well.

Set after the events of the original film, Art the Clown has risen from the dead and once more begins to brutalize anyone he can find. This sounds simple, but it is actually far more fleshed out and expansive than the original film (or slashers, in general, for that matter).

The main character is a young woman named Sienna Shaw who is intended as the series’ official final girl character moving forward (their Nancy, Sydney, or Laurie Strode, if you will). Her character is likable enough, whereas her situation is easy to place oneself in – she lives with her mother and younger brother, and has been experiencing tough times since her father’s death. Her brother Jonathan is experiencing troubled times at school and it seems like she can’t stop butting heads with her mother, meanwhile she finds herself haunted by nightmares that appear to hold deeper meanings within them.

The characterizations and story for Terrifier 2 are a drastic improvement on the original film. Although I had moments where I felt like the acting didn’t always land exactly as intended, I mostly found it satiable overall (most of the criticism has to do with certain characters like Sienna’s mother feeling one-note or archetypal). The story itself, especially what involves Sienna and her brother, lands rather well, and I found myself invested in them as characters.

Art the Clown is a lot in this film.

I mean that in more ways than one. He’s a lot, but there’s also a lot of him. Terrifier 2 is a long film. Clocking out at 138 minutes, I can confidently say it is likely the longest slasher film I have ever watched. The director argues that every scene was integral and he couldn’t imagine any of them ending up on the chop block. I respect the sentiment, but I would, however, disagree, saying that more than half an hour of this film could have been edited out of the official runtime and it would have been a more concise, superior film. It wouldn’t even be a matter of deleting scenes, but shortening moments that overstayed their welcome – of which, I feel there were a few.

Thankfully though, a perceived lack of restraint aside, the film is a highlight reel of goofy, absurd moments that make it a lot of fun to watch.

I have read all the articles about “vomiting” and the film’s ultra violence, and while I can understand it, I don’t believe Terrifier 2 is that offensive of a film. There is a lot of bloodshed, for certain. Art the Clown is mean and has a thirst for cruelty unlike nearly any other slasher villain put on film. He’s the type of slasher villain that will rip your arms off and mutilate you, then, come back with a container of salt to dab on the wounds.

However, it is difficult to take seriously, and that’s the charm of a slasher villain. Terrifier 2 is fun in how it celebrates the macabre. The blood looks like corn syrup and the severed limbs look like they are made of foam (or something like that), and the film is better for it. It allows you to disconnect and take it as a goofy, crazy-ass film, rather than how you’d feel watching Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Everything from the score and sound design, to Art the Clown‘s tongue-in-cheek portrayal, make Terrifier 2 feel like a relic of a bygone era – like he would feel right at home tormenting his victims in the eighties.

By the end, I ended up pretty head over heels for Terrifier 2.

The film is not perfect at all, nor are most of my favorite slashers films, for that matter. The more you pick it apart, the more you will find wrong with it. However, taken for what it is, a throwback to old-school slashers with a more balls-to-the-wall sensibility, it has a feast made up of some of the very same ingredients that made me love A Nightmare on Elm Street and what made these films so infectious to watch. Itis a superior sequel (in every way) and perhaps the best slasher film I’ve seen from a franchise that didn’t start before the turn of the millennium.

Congratulations, Damien Leone, you have yourself a slasher classic.

Since it feels like my biggest criticism on The Brides of Dracula film dealt mostly with its lack of originality, I decided the next Hammer Horror picture I should review should be south of the border, so-to-speak. If offered a choice, I always single-out Dracula, whether I’m looking for a Hammer Horror film or a Universal Monster movie, Dracula is the character I am most interested in. I believe this has most-to-do with my perception of each of the characters through the years and not necessarily the quality I attach to each individual film. In this latest film Night Creatures, however, I will find no caped vampires, no howling wolf’s, and no mummies. Night Creatures, other-wise known as Captain Clegg, is a film of a different breed.

The 1962 British adventure horror film was directed by Peter Graham Scott, drawing inspiration from Doctor Syn, a book series written by Russell Thorndike. The film stars Peter Cushing, Yvonne Romain and Patrick Allen.

The feature begins in 1776 as a sailor is left on an island to death after assaulting the wife of pirate captain Nathaniel Clegg. By 1792, our pirate captain Clegg has allegedly been captured and hanged by the Royal Navy. The countryside surrounding his resting place is home to a group of masked figures called the Marsh Phantoms who ride on horseback in the night and terrorize the villagers. All of this, as interesting as it may sound, does not prepare you for a lot of the film that awaits, however.

I found myself taken by the Marsh Phantoms; a visual presence that I believe serves as the single-most striking image in this film. They aren’t an unheard of visual. The Marsh Phantoms don skeleton glow-in-the-dark skeletal costumes as they wreak havoc, offering a bright-white contrast against the nighttime backdrop.

Everything takes a turn in the film as Captain Collier and his band of sailors arrive in Dymchurch to investigate reports that the locals have been involved in the smuggling of alcohol from France. Remember that sailor who was left to die on the island? That sailor now accompanies the sailors as a slave, apparently with a heightened sense of smell that allows him to seek out wine from a great ways. Despite the sailors’ inability to find any of the sought after wine, the village is, in-fact, housing smugglers led by the village parson Dr. Blyss, played by Peter Cushing. That’s what this film is about, for lack of revealing more sensitive information on its behalf.

I have conflicting thoughts about this film.

Straightaway I’ll say that, for a film that’s less than an hour and a half, Night Creatures feels like it takes forever to end. Also, having watched the film, I can say the title Night Creatures is far more misleading than the original Captain Clegg title.

The film is not a horror film and not an action film either, not by standard definition. While the film does see glowing skeletons on horseback for a short period and Peter Cushing does, in-fact, swing across a chandelier, I would not say either of those fulfills the necessary requirements to be called either action or horror. You could, at best, call it horror-adjacent, but I think it would be more appropriate to call it a period-drama. After all, the film’s primary concern is finding all this unaccounted for alcohol! Spooky stuff.

The acting is straightforward and plain, with certain characterizations that can best be described as hammy or over-the-top, like our death-sentenced sailor turned servant, affectionately named “Mulatto” in this film (an offensive phrase meant to describe someone who is mixed-race). The character, played by professional wrestler Milton Reid (or The Mighty Chang), feels akin to a feral child with animal-like behaviors. I would say Peter Cushing’s performance is the highlight of the film, carrying a certain stoic wit in his banter that I enjoyed. He’s an actor I believe would benefit from other, more light-heart characters bouncing off of him, and yet, I find so many of his films have the balance beam shifted in such a way that doesn’t compliment his natural and frank acting-style.

The photography and visuals of this film, through cinematography conducted by Arthur Grant, are worthy of recognition. I mentioned the black-and-white contrast during the Marsh Phantoms’ presence, but the photography, complimented by the film’s settings are on-point.

I believe the story-line in this film had potential, but is bogged down by its inability to engage through enticing dialogue or enthusiastic ideas. I feel that the film’s closing moments bring things together to a satisfactory conclusion. Now, since disclosing the finer details would be obtrusive to your own viewing experience, I’ll keep a lid on exactly what I mean by that. However, the problem is, it feels like the film has such trouble in the mean time of its payoff, as though it’s suspended in limbo until the eventual reveal. The moments beforehand feel ho-hum and arduous, with the run-time feeling padded and wasteful. I’d call myself a big stickler when it comes to wasting time, and, for a film that’s so short as it is, for its scenes to plod on like they do, it highlights the feebleness of its script.

I liked Captain Clegg (that’s the name I’ve decided I like best) more than I liked The Brides of Dracula, but, for its pitfalls and tedium, I can’t help but consider it another tally in the loss column as far as my experience with Hammer films. It’s disappointing and not what I’d like to be writing, but it’s the opinion I’m left with. It isn’t that I dislike Captain Clegg as a film, but, rather, it’s like I was left no particular reaction to it whatsoever.

Wes Craven’s career begins in 1972, with a film called The Last House on the Left. An exploitation film, The House on the Left is a real meat-and-potatoes debut. Not only was the film directed by Wes, but it was written and edited by him, from a budget of less than ninety thousand (Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead cost quadruple that). This is a film where a lot of variables come into play that factor in. How capable is Wes Craven as a screenwriter and editor, and what is he able to do with the resources available to him?

Produced by Sean S. Cunningham, the co-creator of Friday the 13th, The Last House on the Left was released to a mixed reaction by critics but did fairly well at the box office (grossing $3 million). As an exploitation film, that response was exactly what was to be expected. “Can a movie go too far?” That was the tagline of the film, and the mission statement was clearly to shock audiences and capture the zeitgeist, not through its quality, but its audacity. Critics would be appalled, whereas curious eyes would wander in to see what all the fuss was about.

Like many films of the same type, The Last House on the Left begins with a disclaimer falsely claiming the events on-screen are based on real-life, actual events. It is an old trope that occurs often in 70s horror, with the most notable instance being, perhaps, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which, incidentally, came out two years after. At least that film could claim it was loosely based on Ed Gein, even if the real events weren’t a massacre, didn’t involve a chainsaw, and happened in Wisconsin.

Straightaway, I was caught off-guard by both the choice of music and the cinematography of the film.

I will be honest with all of you, even though I have seen every Elm Street half-a-dozen times, all the Scream films, and many more from Wes Craven’s filmography, I hadn’t ever seen The Last House on the Left. The only thing I had to go on for what to expect was my prior experiences with exploitation films and the cover artwork, which features a black-and-white photograph of a dead woman.

Where I had expected a gritty, more edited, low-quality aesthetic, I was instead met by what feels remarkably like I am watching an old-fashioned sitcom. The music doesn’t fit the initial expectations I had of, nor does it feel thematically inline with the subject-matter. The dialogue, too, feels playful, even goofy. I am not certain what to make of it yet. Is it a deliberate decision? The idea of leaning in the wrong direction so that when you swerve the other way it feels like more of a kick in the teeth?

The initial premise is straightforward and simple enough. “Two girls are tortured and left to die after they become captives of four prison escapees who end up facing off with one of the girls’ mothers,” that’s the description provided by Tubi TV, where the film is available to watch, free of charge.

The way it is edited and shown, however, is a real marvel. In one shot, you have two young women led into a rundown building, a knife is pulled on them, and it’s clear they’re now held captive by rapists and child molesters. In the next shot, the music and aesthetic make it feel like I’m watching Happy Days.

Something about it though is, as goofy as it does come off, I’m not actually against it as a stylistic decision. It isn’t the subtlest, and, in fact, it’s very much in your face, but that’s part of why it works as well as it does. Since having looked at other viewer’s reaction to the soundtrack, I’ve heard more than a few criticize it, saying that it was distasteful and disturbing to accompany such gratuitous, uncomfortable scenes by such an unfitting soundtrack. However, I feel like that’s kind of the idea.

The film is meant to be distasteful and, if that decision disturbed you, that was the idea. In terms of horror, The Last House on the Left certainly falls into the “that’s ****ed” category, acting as a black comedy that deals with murder and rape with a wink and a nod. The film is audacious in its approach. Not only is its presentation tonal dissonance, but it makes the bold decision to include both slap-stick comedy and a couple knucklehead police officers, neither of which belongs in such a film, and that’s why it is such an interesting inclusion.

It isn’t something that wholeheartedly succeeds, but I can’t deny that, when the other shoe does drop for a quieter, more intimate moment, and the music stops, backed only by birds chirping and the sound of a victim’s cries of torment, it isn’t effective. Without it, the whole film would have been dramatically different and less unique, measuring up as a run-of-the-mill rape-revenge flick.

As much as I defend the horror genre, I will admit I have a lot of unresolved emotions about certain aspects of it. One such aspect is the portrayal and treatment of women in film. Horror isn’t any one thing, and, as much as I believe the genre can be a source of empowerment for women, like the portrayal of Ripley in Alien or Laurie Strode in Halloween, I know that those are exceptions and not the rule. Sometimes horror can be very misogynistic.

At the same time, as I find myself asking why there are so many rape-revenge films or horror films that focus on a masked man stalking and murdering women, I find myself met by the answer that it’s a reflection of the real-world. In my youth, I felt it was insulting the way women were portrayed in scantily clad clothes or lack thereof as a masked man chased them. Now, I realize the real ones who should leave the theater ashamed on behalf of their gender are men. After all, if asked to name a female serial-killer and a male serial-killer, I’ll have rattled off thirty men by the time you’ve finished Googling whether Lizzie Borden counts.

This isn’t my way of explaining away real, valid criticisms about horror, but to suggest there are a lot of layers to why things are the way they are, and how I hope we can continue to improve them.

It’s everything after with this film that I feel suffers both narratively and visually.

Once the trio of killers leave their victims for dead, they visit a house nearby to where their car broke down that just so happens to be the parents of one of the young girls. Hereafter, as you expect, is where they begin to receive their comeuppance for their crimes. I feel this second-half is the lynchpin for a large part of making the film successful. We’ve spent an hour of the hour and twenty-minute runtime establishing our antagonists, and really making them feel like the worst of the worst, meanwhile, in contrast, we’ve kept the mother and father relatively wholesome.

This is where I feel the film would have benefited from a simpler, more concise conclusion. A quick, sudden barrel shotgun or even going full Hostel on them. The music drops. The credits roll. And scene!

Instead, it feels messy, too complicated, and like it works against itself. Incidentally, it actually reminds me of the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street when Nancy does full Home Alone on Freddy with nonsense traps. I never realized until now that this is something Wes Craven just does.

Although I can certainly understand the criticisms levied against The Last House on the Left in-terms of how it chooses to present its dark subject-matter and I believe the argument of its thematic dissonance is valid, I believe it does work taken as a black-comedy and if it were focused more on the violence-violence of the film and not the sexual violence of them, a lot more might be open to its approach. The film does begin to fall apart by the end, and I think it does so enough that it keeps it from being what I’d call a knockout-punch for Wes Craven’s filmography, but it’s an interesting, unique film that I don’t regret watching.

The Perfection is an example of a film I knew nothing about heading in, had modest expectations of, and was ultimately surprised by.

After her breakthrough performance in Jordan Peele's film Get Out, I became interested in actor Allison Williams. She's talented enough she could be a solid hand in about any role she is in, and she's attractive enough that she will likely be cast in a lot of them (it's a vain industry, after all). To my surprise, when I searched through her filmography, I discovered her resume was bereft of very many options to choose from. As far as horror fare was concerned, it more-or-less came down to M3gan, Get Out, and this film.

I had stumbled across this film at least a dozen times while searching through Netflix, always intrigued by her appearance in the film, always deterred by my own disinterest when I read the film's description.

I looked at it as a throwaway, cheap film released without any fanfare to it. It happens a lot. Instances where you will find a more known actor released in a lesser known film, with the film unceremoniously dropped someplace to bank off their newfound success (the leading lady of the new Scream movies has a new film on Tubi, for example). I am a fairly devout horror fan, and I would like to think I do a fairly good job at keeping my finger on the pulse of what is relevant. I trust myself, and so, that means if I didn't know about it, it was likely for a reason. Outliers are undiscovered gems and are an always welcome thing to happen.

Directed by Richard Shepard (who I had never heard of until now, but do, technically, own a copy of his film Oxygen on DVD), The Perfection also stars Logan Browning and Steven Weber.

The concept of The Perfection is interesting to say the least. It is interesting enough that I almost don't want to tell you anything about it as a way to keep you in the dark about it. Let's say that it is a dark psychological thriller that sees Allison Williams reenter the lives of her school's headmaster and meet a young cellist with a bright future in music ahead of her. Anything else beyond that, I feel would unveil too much about the film.

The Perfection is a topsy-turvy type of film.

Early on, I was brought in by a certain elegance the film had. The cinematography was on-point, the dynamic between Allison Williams and Logan Browning was good and, dare I say, sexy. Then, at about half an hour in, it derails and becomes an entirely different film than what I originally expected. The thing is though, it was a good surprise - it caught my attention and was enough to make me stop the film and wait until my wife came home to watch it with her.

To my surprise, the abrupt twist of fate that occurs early on the film isn't the only instance where the film is turned on its head. In fact, it's kind of The Perfection's thing, so to speak.

By the end, I am not certain whether I feel it is one too many or not, but I will say I was gripped from start to finish by the finish, and that matters a lot.

The performances are compelling through and through, but, after a point, we do find ourselves making a tonally uneven shift from being a conventional thriller film to an over-the-top (camp, even) melodrama that requires a large suspension of disbelief from whoever's watching it. It's a film that will at first grip you, shock you, then, make you laugh a little bit at its absurdity - and I was here for that.

The eccentricity of The Perfection is a double-edged sword. It both muddles the waters too much for the capable cast of characters to reach their fullest potential, but it also made the film a memorable outing for everybody involved. It isn't what I feared it'd be (a competent, forgettable film), but, rather, what I hoped, a modest, undiscovered gem that I find myself recommending to you.

It isn't without its faults and frivolity, but it kept me engaged by its audaciousness, and was bolstered by skillful performances and an admirable visual flare (I particularly liked the closing shot of the film, which I felt was very distinct).

My brother and I saw this in a packed (!) theater. Interesting film, but doesn’t quite work for me.

This is the type of film that definitely rode the momentum of its own absurdity akin almost to like a meme that goes viral, and I wouldn't imagine a lot of real time, effort, and resources went into its production. For that reason, I am at least modestly curious about what they can do with a sequel now that that has changed a little bit.

Meridian: Kiss of the Beast

Directed by Charles Band of Full Moon Features, Meridian: Kiss of the Beast is a film I knew I would talk about one of these days on Nickelbib.com. Quality aside, it was one of the first Full Moon films I ever watched, discovering it blindly from a cheap movie collection from Walmart over a decade ago. It left an impression, a foggy impression, to where, I couldn’t even remember what it was about, but it was a film in the catalog I knew I would one day talk about.

It is a film I don’t believe many moviegoers will necessarily be drawn to, and it is certainly not a film I have heard mentioned around anyplace anywhere, but I do feel compelled to log my opinion on the film. The reason I was apprehensive all these years has to do with two things in-particular, (a) because I have seen it listed sometimes as an erotic thriller or even cataloged with Charles Band’s dirty-birdie soft-core film company Torchlight Entertainment and (b) because, while I remember teenager me not thinking twice about the film’s subject-matter, I believe that adult-me will have a couple things to talk about. Erotic thrillers are a genre I don’t talk about very often on The Bib (although I did write a review of 50 Shades of Grey way back when it came out). Mostly, because I don’t seek them out / have a particularly interest in them.

The film was released in 1990, and is, thus, one of the first films released under the Full Moon Feature umbrella (which proceeding Empire, known for Re-Animator, Dolls, and arguably the best films in Bands-produced catalog). Likewise, it has that early Full Moon-ness to it.

Over the years, I have sometimes wondered if that’s a compliment or not.

I am nostalgic for it, however. It reminds me a little bit of the nostalgia a person holds for Christmas and seeing their family. It’s familiar to them, and that might make them feel warm, fuzzy feelings, but then you realize your grandparents were a lot more racist than you remembered.

The film has the old-school musical styling of Full Moon Features and a lot of the cinematography as well – I like the cinematography, which has an old-school style charm about it. I am usually pretty into Full Moon’s simple, atmospheric scores and this one is no different (this one isn’t composed by Richard Band though, instead we have Pino Donaggio, a fairly accomplished artist, known for his collaborates with Brian de Palma). I have heard some say this is far from his best work, which may be true, but it’s more than par for the course in a Full Moon film.

The can of worms that is Meridian: Kiss of the Beast springs out when we start to talk about the story itself. Catherine and her best friend Gina arrive at Catherine’s family castle in Italy after her father’s death.

They attend a local carnival, where they become acquainted with the participants, which includes head magician Lawrence and his crew – they invite them to the castle for dinner. Everything is all well and good, until Lawrence drugs and rapes both of them.

This might make you imagine a very different film than what I watched. If you read me that summary and asked me to come up with what happens next, I would have surmised we were watching a Last House on the Left or I Spit On Your Grave style film. Surely, Catherine and Gina are about to murder the head magician and his crew in spaghetti western style? As you can imagine, this isn’t the ideal circumstances for a romantic film. Personally, I would dare say this isn’t ideal for an erotic film either.

The scene itself is about what you would expect from a soft-core film. It’s overly-produced, and it’s framed in a peculiar way. Charles Band made it not feel like I was watching an assault, like what I was feeling was meant to be sexy. I find that to be an odd decision and, in general, I find it all to be an odd concept for a romantic film. Afterward, the characters and their reaction feels diluted and understated, given what occurred.

Soon, it is revealed that the head-magician has a twin brother (he’s the nice rapist), and that both are stricken with a curse that turns them into werewolf-like monsters. One brother’s an awful person, and the other brother’s an awful person too (on-account of being a rapist) but is meant to be seen as a sympathetic, cursed soul who is under the thumb of his brother and longs for his own death (something I can get behind – his death, I mean). The issue is though, that he knowingly raped somebody and didn’t have to. The character wasn’t forced to by his brother, wasn’t blackmailed, didn’t have any type of hidden mind-control making him do bad things. He just raped somebody. That’s an ambitious hurdle for Full Moon Features to think it can overcome – it can’t, by the way.

The film culminates in about the fashion any person would expect, clocking out just shy of an hour and a half. What Meridian is, at its core, is a romantic fantasy with an aesthetic that vaguely calls to mind Beauty and the Beast and the classic evil brother / good brother clash. At its core, that is what Meridian is. If taken only as that, it is a modest, generic film. Nothing special, but nothing so egregious it’d find its way on any Worst Of list, I don’t think. The acting is melodramatic, with Malcolm Jamieson having the campy assignment of playing the sensitive brother and the evil twin. Of which, I think he is decent. He can pull off the visuals of the cocky brother versus the sensitive brother pretty well, but the performances, like the film itself, falls victim to the stylized, old soap-opera quality of itself.

I did find Sheirilyn Fenn to be a likable presence, hopefully I run into he again under better circumstances (I know she’s in Twin Peaks, which I’ve needed to watch for ages).

However, the sloppily handled way the film portrays sexual assault, and the messy, muddied execution makes it among my least favorite of the Full Moon Feature catalog. I realize Band and friends can be a little careless at times and likely didn’t realize the implications, but they should have.

I wouldn’t recommend it in the least.

The DC Extended Universe has been ripe with debate and disillusion. Whether it be the stigma it has as badly trying to imitate what was established with Nolans' Dark Knight Trilogy or the sentiment that it's high-scale, low-logic. In my opinion, while I don't necessarily hate the DC Extended Universe altogether, nor do I necessarily want it to approach all of its subject-matter with a light-heart nature akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I definitely think it has a lot of flaws that keep it from being as good of a representation for DC Comics as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is for Marvel Comics. Unless it's a rendition of Adam West's Batman, I think the Caped Crusader is best-suited with a more mature, jaw-clenched approach, whereas I think The Flash is better off with a more light-heart, vibrantly enthused approach. Instead of having every film carry an inherent tone, I think each film should play it out in whichever way best plays to the strength of their characters. As far as what the approach should be for a film like AquaMan, I would say, what I wanted from the film was a charming, action film, that would focus less on exposition and being a high-stake, grandiose epic, and more on energetic, ludicrous fun. That said, here are my thoughts on DC's splashing new fish-into-water story Aquaman.
Aquaman is a 2018 American superhero film based on the character of the same name, acting as the sixth installment in the DC Extended Universe, and, already, the highest-grossing film of the series worldwide.

The DC Extended Universe has oftentimes been dubbed as a failed project by Warner Bros., after all, when you compare Justice League to The Avengers' box-office performance, or even compare Justice League to The Dark Knight's box-office performance, it's obvious Warner Bros hasn't recouped on their investment as strongly as they likely had hoped. Other-wise though, calling DC's foray into shared-universes a failure, at least from a financial perspective, has always been unfounded, oftentimes calling it a failure merely because its returns appeared anemic compared to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, at the end of the day, Batman v. Superman and Man of Steel were both modest box-office successes, recouping their budget and enjoying successful returns on the home-market. According to The Numbers (dot) com, Batman v Superman has made nearly 80 million on the home-market in domestic markets alone. Meanwhile, although loathed by many, including myself, Suicide Squad was a box-office hit. Many covet Wonder Woman as the first real feather in DC's new series of films, and while it came up short worldwide compared to Batman v. Superman, it did so with a much smaller budget and succeeded more on a domestic level. The reason I mention all of this is because it's still so outrageous to me that we left 2018 with Aquaman being the front-man of the franchise.

Directed by James Wan, with a screenplay written by David Leslir Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, from a story by Geoff Johns, Wan and Beal, respectively, I was curious for what this film would amount to. Although Wan has made strides in action before, like with the Fast and the Furious series, I mostly think of him as untapped as an action-director, and I'm more likely to associate him with his horror films like The Conjuring or SAW. The film stars Jason Momoa as the title character, along with Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, William Dafoe, and Patrick Wilson. Also, while it's always nice to see Patrick Wilson, and it's cool to see him working with Wan in another genre, I found it very awkward watching him a role other than the everyman in a horror film.

In the film, Arthur Curry is the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantic, and is pressed to step forward and lead against his half-brother, Orm, who seeks to unite control the seven underwater kingdoms and pit them against the surface world.

As I think most of you would expect, this is a silly and outrageous film. I don't think anybody doubted that heading into the film, but the question I think most had is whether or not they'd try to play the silly and outrageous concept with a straight face or if they'd loosen up and have fun with it. The answer is somewhere in the middle.

Jason Momoa is very likable in the role as Aquaman, which was something I was on the fence about when he was first announced to play the character, but, having now seen him, he oozes a likability, walking the fine line between being a brooding character and one that's easygoing. I've had issues with how Superman doesn't have the contrast with Batman as I'd like, feeling very dark and serious, and it's to my surprise that Aquaman is portrayed the way I'd like to have seen Superman portrayed. The humor isn't what I'd call “laugh out loud” funny, but it's charming, with Amber Heard and Momoa keep it light when everyone else tightens their stares. Unfortunately, some of the more serious moments are, in-fact, “laugh out loud” funny, with an over-the-top, ridiculously cheesy to them that doesn't feel intention. I remember a scene in-particular where Orm is threatening people in Atlantis and he says, “Don't call me the King, call me the Ocean Master,” and it has to be one of the most cringe-worthy lines I've seen in a superhero film in years. This film is brimming with groan-inducing dialogue, and, although some might laugh at the audacity it has, I found these moments particularly ho-hum and dull.

The special-effects and set-design are a mixed-bag in my opinion, slanted more toward the positive side of the spectrum albeit. On one-hand, depictions of Atlantis feel imaginative, so much so I wish more of the film's plodding run-time was spent showing the aesthetically appeasing aspects, either that, or I simply wish half an hour of this film would've ended up on the cutting-room floor. Many of the characters and their wardrobes missed with me, which isn't something I necessarily felt about every character, but is something I felt about many of the characters in this film, with some of them feeling like they were copied-and-pasted from a cheesy science-fiction film (which is what this film is, in some respects).

Although there's definitely the foundation for an Aquaman 2 that I think could be a lot of fun, I struggled to care about anything happening on the screen. Although I enjoyed the Aquaman character and his interactions with Mera, as well as the special-effects for some of the scenery and set-pieces, that's really about all I leave with having to say as praise for this film. I never felt like I was made to care about the central conflict, no matter how many long-winded, contrived speeches or forced dialogue I endured, I never cared about the antagonist, I never cared about Arthur's mother, and, ultimately, I never cared about the film. I think the biggest issue with the film is it suffers from many of the same pitfalls as the rest of the Extended Universe. It tried so hard to make an epic, and, for what it's worth, I actually enjoyed Batman v. Superman for the most part, but, I don't care with this film. It tries so hard to make an epic, but the moments that work best are when it's after a smaller, more contained narrative, focusing on Aquaman and the individuals he interacts with, and not the conflicts he's dealt. It isn't the worst of the DC Extended Universe, but it definitely isn't something I'd recommend, amounting to what I think was an ambitious, but, unfortunately, below-average film.

As a devout fan of the slasher genre, I was looking forward to the eleventh installment in the Halloween film series, aptly titled Halloween, acting as a direct-sequel to 1978's classic, also titled Halloween. Although the series' story-lines and continuity are muddied and confusing to the uninitiated, I was excited when I found out this film would build from the original and disregard the rest of the series.

After Carpenter's first film, the series went in a different direction. In Halloween 2, Laurie Strode was revealed as Michael Myers' sister, a fact I always felt undermined the mystique and aura of the character. Halloween 3, notably, went in an entirely different direction, focusing on the Silver Shamrock organization, whereas Halloween 4 revealed Laurie Strode died in a car accident, with that film and Halloween 5 focusing on Laurie's daughter Jamie Lloyd. Halloween 6 took a wild turn, focusing on Myers and a mysterious cult, and, by the next film, Halloween H20, it was revealed Laurie Strode faked her death and Jamie's character was thereby retconned (but, she did have a son). In Halloween: Resurrection, Laurie Strode was killed by Michael Myers, then, Rob Zombie rebooted the series. Now, here we are, forty years later, Laurie Strode has been “un-remade,” brought back from the dead twice, and is no-longer related to Michael Myers.

Halloween is a 2018 American slasher film directed by David Gordon Green, with writing credits given to Green, Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBridge, respectively. As suggested, the film focuses on Laurie Strode and her “final” showdown with Michael Myers on Halloween night, forty years after she last escaped his killing spree. Nick Castle also reprises the role of Myers in this film, with occasional assist from stuntman James Jude Courtney. Other film stars featured in this film include Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, and Virgina Gardner.

I went into this film modestly excited. I was excited because I think the slasher genre has always left a lot of stones unturned, whether because of rushed productions or never having the right people involved. With that in mind, I wasn't very excited about seeing Jamie Lee Curtis reprise her classic role and was fearful it'd be a disappointment akin to Halloween H20, where she also fought Michael Myers for a “final” showdown. Something I'm very excited to say is that the new Halloween film is definitely a part of the series worth highlighting, and is, not only the second film to receive a positive reception from critics and audience-members alike, but a massive success at the worldwide box-office. As of this writing, Halloween is at 253 million worldwide, with a domestic total of more than both Halloween remakes and Halloween: Resurrection combined, and that's while adjusting for inflation. Without adjusting for inflation, the new Halloween's worldwide total is about as much as the eight original Halloween films made combined. Needless to say, theatergoers and horror-fans have spoken and affirmed the genre's demand.

One merit bestowed in the new film's marketing was John Carpenter's involvement on the musical score, a fact I wasn't at all excited about. Honestly, as talented as Carpenter is, I had my doubts that they'd shy away from the series' iconic sound enough to warrant the excitement. In-retrospect, I was right about that initial assessment, but I do think it was more than a recycling job, and I thought they breathed some life into it, adding a pulse during the suspenseful moments and adding more dimensions and layers to the score.

As a sequel, Halloween benefits from building solely from the original film, Michael Myers' mystique has returned, and he feels more like evil incarnate, a human shrouded by his desires for violence, than he does a supernatural monster, although aspects of that still remain.

Laurie Strode is traumatized in this film, and although there are new characters featured, front-and-center, the core of the narrative is Laurie and Michael Myers' relationship with each-other, their history, and what Myers has meant to Laurie. Jamie Lee Curtis does well in the role, and, although I wouldn't call it a criticism about the film itself, but, rather, a personal preference, I felt like her “fortress of solitude” was a little more over-the-top than it could have been. Certain hiccups plagued the film, certain decisions I feel could have been excluded for a tighter, more effective experience. Scrapping the godawful scenes with Dr. Ranbir Sartain would be a good start, and I'm also a stickler for tonally inconsistent comedic relief. The cinematography and the approach yearn for a darker, unflinching tone, and I wish it would have played it straight and not have sabotaged itself as often as it did.

Like the first Halloween, with the 2018 film, I think a lot of what I like about this new film is in-retrospect, rather than what I feel from my experience with it as a film. With the original, I think about the mystery shrouding Michael Myers and how it's difficult to know what goes on behind ones' eyes. The idea someone could madly go on a killing spree without rhyme or reason isn't a hypothetical, but something that often occurs. Laurie Strode wasn't targeted for any reason (til Halloween II), and that intrigued me, the idea that if no one would've been home that night, Laurie Strode would've never met the “William Shatner” masked madman, and he would've simply found someone else. In this film, it builds from that train-of-thought. Michael Myers is back on a killing spree and although Laurie's physical wounds have long healed, the trauma and inner turmoil remains. However, Michael Myers doesn't look like he is harboring any grudges, it feels like business as usual, a one-sided relationship where Laurie is tormented by Myers and Myers is unaffected. This isn't necessarily what I think was always portrayed in the film, but what I left the theater thinking about.

In the end, is 2018's iteration of Halloween a return-to-form for the series? I think I'd call that a fair assessment. It doesn't break any major molds as a slasher film, purposing trodden paths and through technique and execution, making them feel like walks worth taking again. Where it ranks with the rest of the series is something I'll need to investigate before I make any declarative statements, but, if nothing else, I can't think of a better slasher film in the current decade.

Books have been adapted into some of the finest films we've ever seen, and so, why is it so difficult for video-games to bring about the same? You can bet your ass that the creativity is there, as well as the structure, there is definitely enough available to create a worthwhile screenplay depending on what it is that you are adapting. In the end, it matters what the director or the company involved wants to accomplish. I hope this is something that will be demonstrated in the eventual adaptations for Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Twisted Metal, and The Last of Us, but those are all far away and there isn't really any reason to become bent out of shape or worry about any of them. Why are there so many bad video-game movie adaptations? A lot of that has to do with how they tackle it. If you are attempting to make a film about something that already has a well-respected following, you have to be able to embrace the finer parts about it while at the same time enabling it to embrace the cinematic aspects that the movie-industry beckons.

Also, a skilled director will be the difference between something worthwhile and something that is most-obviously meant as a cash-in. Ladies and gentleman, have you met Uwe Boll?

If you haven't, some others have, in-fact, some have even referred to him as a modern-day Ed Wood. That is, in other words, calling him one of the worst directors ever. Say what you will, Boll's existence is actually a stroke of genius. By manipulating German laws about filmmaking, Boll has successfully made tons of high-budget films that have been enormous box-office failures. He bought the movie rights to various different video-games, notably Far Cry, Postal, House of the Dead, and Alone in the Dark. He bought the rights quick before everybody realizes how bad he is or by buying them before the video-game is even released, which is what he did with FarCry. I decided to review this film, not because I wanted to bash it but because I reviewed the first video-game and found it for two bucks, so why not?

BloodRayne is a 2005 German fantasy action horror film set in 18th century Romania, directed by Academy Award nominee Uwe Boll, the film stars Kristanna Loken, Michael Madsen, Billy Zane, Meat Loaf, Michelle Rodriguez, and legitimate Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley. Like established, the film is based on the video game of the same name from Majesco. A few known names in this flick, Michelle Rodriguez might not have the most critically acclaimed filmography but she has become one of the most famous female action stars, whereas Ben Kingsley is beloved.

The film's budget was around $25 million and was only able to draw about $4 million at the box-office. A box-office failure indeed but it was critically disclaimed as well. Loosely based on the video-game series of the same name, it tells the tale of a character named Rayne, a Dhampir and the daughter of the Vampire King Kagan. She was conceived after her mother was raped and also witnessed Kagan killing her mother later on. King Kagan has gathered an army of thralls in an effort to annihilate the human race, meanwhile, Rayne is after him seeking revenge.

Let's look at the scenery first ... the setting depicts the time-period well enough,or at least, I think it looks fine enough to keep it from looking completely horrid. I will say that some of the characters look bad. Ben Kingsley looks hilarious to me, and some of the wigs look especially fake. That is a little bit difficult to forgive considering that the film had enough of a budget where things like that should have been taken care of. As far as the acting is concerned, there is a lot of capable actors in this film. While I can't really pinpoint one actor as being the one that ruined it for the rest, I can say that none of them ever felt too inspired throughout it all. The scenes with Meatloaf admittedly come across as the stupidest aspects of the film. Ben Kingsley actually said before that the only reason he did this film is because he wanted an excuse to dress up like a vampire. He did do that, albeit poorly. Kingsley eventually did do a role in a much better video-game adaptation for Prince of Persia by the way...

The directing and cinematography doesn't really do any favors for the actors either. I remember a couple of times where I could only faintly hear what the actors were saying, or I felt like I wasn't seeing what I was meant to be seeing. The dialogue is absolutely atrocious, I remember toward the beginning of the film there was a scene where Rayne is given a necklace with some 'sentimental' value and it just comes off cheesy as hell. Scoring for this one is also kind-of ridiculous. I never really mention score all that much, some films have it so well that they are worth the mention but other-wise they are done averagely and don't leave enough of an impression on me to talk about in a review. This film, however, I distinctively remember stopping and thinking, this music really adds absolutely nothing to the scene, in-fact, this music actually makes it worse.

BloodRayne makes certain to include an ample amount of nudity to work with, all of which doesn't come off very organic or nature, Uwe Boll actually hired prostitutes for a scene with Meatloaf in an effort to save production costs. There's a sex-scene with Rayne as well, which is neither here nor there. I can't really say anything about them somehow 'demeaning' the character since the makers of the second BloodRayne video-game actually took out a spread in PlayBoy for the character but I will say that the scene seemed awkward and unnecessary. The scene didn't establish much of an underlying romantic storyline, in-fact, after that scene, the whole thing is sort-of dropped without any notice at all whatsoever. The action-scenes suck as well. There aren't a whole lot of them, but for an action-movie, every one of the scenes felt slowed down or too improvised to appreciate.

I feel like one of the most expected criticisms to offer about a video-game movie is whether or not the characters and the story take enough from the source material. Rayne's character absolutely nothing like how she is in the video-game and of course, most of these themes are completely allover but I suppose that there's some certain elements that can be seen throughout it. The film doesn't really develop any of the characters though, by the end of it, I don't believe I really learned anything at all about the characters. Rayne's a vampire-human ... thing, but who are all of these fellas. They establish titles, like what this character does, but they never actually tell us who the character is, and that's the type of development that needs to be seen for a film like this to work.

By the end of it all, BloodRayne seems adamantly intent on accomplishing absolutely nothing. The film doesn't have the action-scenes to make itself an action-movie, the acting isn't inspired and the storytelling is even worse, there are about a million-and-one parts that didn't need to be in there, and the movie simply comes off as terrible. What's funny is that it was better than what I expected, which is one of the worst movies of all-time, this film is bad and lazily slopped together but it doesn't at all meet those standards. BloodRayne is just a bad movie and there is nothing really to take from it besides that.

I don't think it'd be an understatement to say I set my bar of expectations very low for Venom. The 2018 superhero film is based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, but is from a production company that is still very much estranged from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has thus far built a reputation for entertaining, well-produced superhero adventures. They aren't all classics, with some very so-so films on their resume, but, for the most part, I'd say I've enjoyed what the MCU has brought to the table, accomplishing the unprecedented feat of creating story-arches that have unfolded across around twenty films now. I think it's appropriate to say Sony might not be learning the best lesson from all of this in-terms of what will make the best films, however.

Before Sony, at last, bit the bullet and worked out a deal for Spider-Man to appear in the MCU, it's easy to forget what came before it and what was considered. While the first two Sam Raimi films for Spider-Man were fantastic, Marc Webb's Spider-Man series was a little too disheveled and uneven to really breakout. While The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made the promise of The Sinister Six, rumblings about a Black Cat film, a Kraven the Hunter film, and even, at one point, an Aunt May film, circulated. Although many of them fell by the wayside, Venom is one of the films from Sony's own Spider-Man cinematic universe that has come to fruition. As interesting of an idea as I think a Venom film could make, I was uneasy about the Ruben Fleischer directed flick, especially when I heard about studio interference and that it had been wedged into a PG-13 rating as a way to perform better financially.

With a screenplay by Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinkner, and Kelly Marcel, the film brings Tom Hardy into the fray, alongside others like Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, and Reid Scott. On it ways to 600 million (as of this writing) from a production budget around 100 million, Sony can be at ease knowing their Marvel adjunct Cinematic Universe is able to tread water. The film follows journalist Eddie Brock as he finds himself latched onto by an alien parasite or symbiote, giving him superhuman abilities as a result. The kicker being that the parasite and its species as a whole have the intent to invade Earth.

Tom Hardy is a very accomplished actor, and one I believe is able to elevate a lot of what he's involved in. For instance, although I've reviewed well-over 200 films on Out of Frame, and of them, only two have received a “Perfect” 10 out of 10 score, one of them being the Tom Hardy fronted Mad Max: Fury Road. It isn't necessarily Hardy's performance itself in that film, but the way he is presented as an everyman, making it easy to put yourself in his shoes, no matter how chaotic what's happening on the screen actually is. In this, Eddie Brock has a lot more visible personality than, say, Mad Max, but I wouldn't single it out as anything that moves the needle in the positive or negative column.

In the film, Tom Hardy plays Eddie Brock competently and gets the job done, whereas the high-concept and the novelty of his relationship with the symbiote are what make the film. Something I feel has plagued a lot of the superhero-genre involves messily strewn together subplots or character-developments. While I definitely liked Venom more than Suicide Squad, it does occasionally feel workman-like in a similar fashion. In Suicide Squad, one of the biggest problems I had was how it felt like the relationships between the characters weren't developed organically, so when one of the characters tried to claim his teammates had become family, it felt cheap and unearned. Like that, I feel like the relationship between the symbiote and Eddie Brock felt like it didn't have enough time to properly develop. Likewise, while I wouldn't necessarily say it was messily strewn together, the antagonist in this film is very much reminiscent of the type of generic bad-guy we'd seen in a superhero film from fifteen-years ago. Riz Ahmed says nothing new as Carlton Drake that we haven't heard before from other villains, and although the actor brings natural charisma and personality to the role, it doesn't make him any less generic.

Something benefiting Venom is that, in the sum of its parts, it's an entertaining film. The action-scenes are entertaining, even if they're nothing we haven't seen before and even if it feels like the subject-matter called for sharper fangs. Once again, this is most likely based on financial interest with Sony not wanting to detriment crossovers with Spider-Man later on, but even if it makes sense for them, that doesn't mean it doesn't take away from the film. Even the edgiest scenes in the film feel neutered and tame when it's understood the production doesn't even have the gumption to spill a drop of blood. Obviously, a film doesn't need gratuitous violence or gore in-order to succeed, but when symbiote's are shown already chomping off people's heads, its absence feels difficult to overlook. As said, Tom Hardy does his part, but, more-than-that, it's entertaining to see the Venom character on the big-screen in a brighter light than his presence in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3. It isn't ideal, it's more of a straightforward, conventional superhero film from a different era than what I think myself and most fans of the character wanted, which was more of a monster movie about an antihero, but it still has its moments.

The humor mostly falls flat in my opinion, but it wasn't as cringe-worthy as it could very well have been. Although it might contradict what I said earlier, I don't actual have an issue with Venom in a PG-13 film or, even, a Venom film with comedic elements. Growing up with the Spider-Man video-game on the PlayStation, I always associated Venom as having comedic traits and I didn't need to see him destroy everyone in-sight. But it feels like this film wants both worlds and that adds up to a tonally inconsistent execution, self-sabotaging and undermining itself at every turn.

I remember when I left the theater, I remember telling everyone it wasn't nearly as bad as what I feared. It wasn't the most enthusiastic of compliments, mind you (and maybe I've become jaded or cynical), but I still left it pleasantly surprised. Venom has capable actors delivering competent performances of a flawed, uneven script with a generic antagonist and under-cooked development and story resolution. The action-scenes and special-effects help with a lot of the heavy-lifting, as does the spectacle itself. Is it a film that can tussle with Black Panther or Avengers: Infinity War? Absolutely not, but it at least avoids the Mendoza line, a step above Fantastic Four, Suicide Squad, or the Ninja Turtles. I didn't mind it.

Nostalgia is very powerful in the entertainment-industry, as film companies try to appeal to the youth, they simultaneously try to appeal to adults in-search of that child-like wonder they felt in their youth. In 2015, a big-screen feature-film for the Goosebumps was released, and I was on-board. I enjoyed the R. L. Stine novels when I was a kid. A lot of them were derivative and hastily rushed onto book shelves, but, I did have an appreciation and respect for the way R.L. Stine brought old-school monster stories and made them relevant and engaging to a younger audience. It was for that reason a Goosebumps film made a lot sense to me, like the television series that also adapted Stine’s work. I wrote a review of the film on Out of Frame when it was released, and I more-or-less said it was everything it needed to be and would be fun for its core audience, eventually rating it a score of “Decent” or a “5 out of 10”. I was hopeful they would create a sequel, but I didn’t know the likelihood of that. The first film made 150 million worldwide with a production budget estimated of around 60 to 80 million dollars, and when you factor in the amount of the profit that’s divvied up to the theater-chains, then, calculate the amount also invested into marketing the film, there’s no way Goosebumps could’ve broken even on theater sales alone. That said, it seems the film must’ve found a second-life on the home-market and through streaming services, as, the new film Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween did get greenlit and released, this time with a production budget of about half its first film. Does the film flounder the potential of a Goosebumps franchise or does it rise to the occasion to deliver something that can be fun for a new era of fans?

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is directed by Ari Sandel and written by Rob Lieber. The director is also known for the Netflix film When We First Met, which I wasn’t a fan of, and The Duff. Acting as a direct-sequel to the first film, it spins a familiar yarn, two young boys are outcasted, bullied and targeted by other classmates, and they like to go “treasure hunting,” a euphemism for going through old-houses and other junk, scrapping it for whatever they can get. They find themselves asked to look through an old abandoned house that happens to have once belonged to R.L. Stine. Looking through the house, they find an old-book that ends up with them releasing Slappy the Dummy who brings to life many Goosebumps monsters to wreak havoc and cause trouble on Halloween night.

The story holds a lot of similarities to the previous film, which is a complaint I heard a lot of critics make. I do think it retreads a lot of familiar-territory, specifically when the cogs are set in-motion and the creatures begin to run roughshod over the town, but I don’t think it’s enough to really condemn the film for. The two young boys may not offer a wholly unique spin to the film, but they likeable enough, and I think they do offer a different angle than the original trio of characters did in the original film. The film does seem to have some self-awareness to certain retreads, particularly with Jack Black’s scenes as R.L. Stine, but being aware to something doesn’t absolve from the act.

The scenes and the film’s allocation of time are less than stellar at its worst. A run-time of 90 minutes is about what a Goosebumps film warrants until it becomes stretched beyond its means, but this film still manages to feel like it’s padding the run-time and that a lot of scenes could have ended up on the cutting-room floor. In one scene, the young boys and their babysitter (one of the boy’s sister, actually), are in a moment where time is of the essence, they decide to dress-up as monsters to blend in. The scene thereafter is a nonsensical, tonally inconsistent opportunities for our characters to accessorize, including incorporating forced, unnecessary plot-threads to be used for the final half of the film. Along with that, it feels like all of R. L. Stine’s scenes could’ve and should’ve never happened. Although the film is aware of how unimportant he is to the film’s conflict, that doesn’t change the fact that the scenes could’ve been exorcised or re-worked in a way that either tightened the central story or shortened the film’s length. I’m of the assumption that the reason Jack Black wasn’t featured heavily in this film has to do with the budget being cut-in-half. The expenditure of having him in the first place feels even stranger when you consider he was barely featured at all in the promotional content. Perhaps that’s because they wanted to avoid appearing similar the recently released The House with a Clock in Its Walls film? Either way, it seems like they would’ve been better off simply making an in-world Goosebumps film without R.L. Stine. But, I suppose hindsight is 20/20.

Instead of having Jack Black do the voice-work for Slappy the Dummy in this film, they, instead, opted for Mick Wingert to take the reins of the character. This decision makes a lot of sense when you consider Mick Wingert is also known for his uncanny imitation of Jack Black from the Kung Fu Panda cartoon series on Nickelodeon. Unfortunately, I found that Mick hammed it up more than I would’ve liked, with his repetitive laughter coming off as overbearing.

I enjoyed some of the special-effects in this film, and in-fact, even more than my personal enjoyment of the film, I find my stake in the success of Goosebumps has to do with its willingness to celebrate the horror genre with a younger audience. Although, like its predecessor, the film is very heavy on CGI (which can be fantastic if done well) that adds a glossy, inauthentic quality to some of its characters, some of them I thought seemed inspired and true to the Halloween spirit.

A lot of my criticisms won’t apply to its target-demographic, but I feel its still relevant to point out complaints and praise quality in the entertainment provided to younger moviegoers. In some ways, I like Goosebumps: Haunted Halloween more than the original Goosebumps simply because it has a more ghoulish nature to it. Unfortunately, because its lacking story-line, misuse of its own potential and run-time, I feel compelled to leave it as a below-average, 4 out of 10 film.

The Purge first arrived in 2013, bolstering the brilliant premise of an event in time where all crime would be considered as legal. In-general, I think we can all admit that a lot of horror franchises tend to milk themselves for all their worth or overstay their welcome, but every now and again, a concept like The Purge arrives that makes sense for the long-haul. The possibilities and angles you could take The Purge are virtually limitless. It could implement elements of a home-invasion horror, which is something we saw in the original film, or incorporate traits of a slasher flick, something seen on some level in the fourth film. It has a lot of ways you could tackle it, but one way, from what we’ve seen so far, it can’t be tackled, is very well. When the first film arrived, it squandered the potential its concept had, and, as I wrote in my review on Mishmashers at the time of its release, it amounted to a Below-Average film.

In 2014, I believe they righted their wrongs on a lot of levels. Although The Purge: Anarchy opted for a more action-oriented approach, it at least was able to capture a liveliness and did attempt to realize its concept. My favorite scene from that film involved a swinging pendulum that nearly kills the main-character, and when it doesn’t, it’s met with disappointed reactions from the perpetrators. The reason I liked it is because that’s what I wanted from Purge as a series, a depraved world that doesn’t understand the extent of its misdeeds and allows for a day of uncontrolled chaos. Not only that, but I believed the aesthetic and the amount of people involved would have made fodder for some intense and inspired horror. Imagine a scene where the main-protagonist is being chased around by a madman, and the camera pans out far enough to show several people are experiencing the same thing at the same time. Or escaping one madman only to find another.

The concept really made sense and even if I only rated Purge: Anarchy as an Above-Average horror film in my review on Mishmashers, I was very invested and excited about what it could possibly pave the way for. It was then, however, in 2016 that The Purge: Election Year officially ended any level of excitement or expectation I had of the series. The characters participating in The Purge were ridiculously over-the-top and cheesy, and not only that, but it simply wasn’t a very fun film. If I had to narrow it down to one singular issue I have with the series, it’s that it has such a surrealist concept and yet, instead of exploiting that concept as a means to make bone-shattering, self-contained and unique horror, it opts to spend most of its time explaining itself, trying to make sense of something when the answer is so ham-fisted and uninteresting. Regardless, I always knew The Purge series would carry on. While The Purge fell only a small amount shy of 90 million at the box-office, Anarchy was able to cross the 100 million threshold, and Election Year was able to barely surpass Anarchy, grossing nearly 120 million worldwide. Each year the series surpasses itself, and with The First Purge making nearly 140 million worldwide, I don’t anticipate this will be the last we see of the franchise in theaters.

The First Purge is liberating in some respect. Theoretically speaking, it allows the franchise to free itself from the shackles of its convoluted and political narrative, opting instead to focus on the audacity of the concept as it’s implemented. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really happen. Once more, like what plagues much of the series, The First Purge is very heavy-handed with its political undertones, unable to really conceal itself through nuance, it’d much rather beat you over the head with its themes and agenda. I think what I would prefer to see from the series at any point, is a random year of the Purge, not focusing on anything except the survival of its characters. Then again, I understand the series’ marketing campaign has often directly exploited its political themes, and that might very well be why the series is the only horror that has had its films improve on themselves from a box-office perspective three consecutive times. After watching The First Purge, I can say, with the fullest certainty, that I believe it is an improvement over Election Year, but is it a good film?

The film once more focuses a lot more on why it chooses to legalize the purge and the scrutiny that ensues thereafter in its regards. I will say that I like the way the film tries to provide answers and present a plausible explanation for itself. The concept of overpopulation and finite resources is a conversation relevant in today’s age and the film continues to double-down on the idea that the New Founding Fathers of America are targeting the lower middle-class. The First Purge is an experiment on Staten Island, and although many citizens decide to leave before the purge ensues, the NFFA convinces many people to stay by offering a financial reward of $5,000, as well as further compensation for active participation in the experiment. I think this was a clever touch, although, I will mention the film does have some screwball dialogue that leaves some to be desired. It isn’t anything as bad as the “candy bar” nonsense from the last film, but I do remember one of the activists spouting that they wouldn’t be coaxed into the purge and that the NFFA knew full well poor people would stay if they were offered financial compensation. ... Yeah, that’s kind-of why they did it. They offered money so people would stay knowing that people who’d need money would stay, and while saying you won’t be coaxed into it, you are, in-fact, playing right into their hand.

There’s four stories at-play worth acknowledging when talking about the film’s plot. There’s the bigwigs monitoring The Purge, who need it to be a success and are willing to exert themselves to make that happen. There’s Isaiah, an angry teenager who is desperate for financial gain to free himself and his sister from their shoddy living conditions, that is actively trying to target a person named Skeletor. That person Skeletor is a crazed drug-addict who is actively partaking in the purge in-order to engage in a killing spree, which is the third central story in the film’s plot. And, finally, we have our main-protagonist, Dimitri, a gang-leader, who finds himself in a position to protect the civilians of Staten Island.

The intermingling storylines, while, although nothing to write home about, are mostly fine. Isaiah being angry and, at the same time, having too much of a moral conscience to kill, is a familiar, but finely executed theme, and it’s expected, but fine as well, that the NFFA would be involved in tampering with the result of the purge experiment. As for Skeletor, that character borders in the same unlikeable territory as what was seen in Election Year, seeming over-the-top and cartoonish. Dimitri’s character, or, more specifically, Y’lan Noel, the actor who played him, is actually my favorite part about the film, because I feel he had a very likable and charismatic personality to him that elevated the film. Whether or not a gang-leader would have the altruism or loyalty to his city to protect them and expend his gang-members to do so is neither here nor there, but the portrayal to character did feel consistent and authentic.

The film doesn’t offer much in the way of enticing visuals or memorable, distinguishable moments worthy of being singled out. A lot of that is because the film tries more at being an action-film than it does a horror. That said, it doesn’t offer a lot of action worth singling out either. I would call it a very conventional and standard in that regard akin to the rest of the series.

In conclusion, The First Purge isn’t to The Purge: Election Year the knee-jerk reaction that The Purge: Anarchy was after the awful first film in the series, but it is a considerable improvement in-terms of sheer functionality. It still makes a lot of the same mistakes that plague the series, but I think it amounts to an average film overall. Below The Purge: Anarchy and above the first film. I never actually wrote a review of Election Year, but, with that film being my least favorite, you can imagine that this film is considerably better. ​

The Conjuring series arrived unexpectedly in 2013, although, in-retrospect, it seemed like we should have anticipated it. James Wan had already flourished and found success with the SAW franchise, the Insidious series, and had more than a handful of horror productions on his resume, it was only a matter-of-time before he had such a financially and critically lucrative break-through. In the 2000s, very few horror films have managed to cross the 300 million thresholds. Even less if you omit series’ that only share strands of the genre’s DNA like The Meg or World War Z. It only leaves The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, the more-recent adaptation of Stephen Kings’ IT, Annabelle: Creation, and now, The Nun. A film series managing to outdo itself in the horror genre so many times is unheard-of, and while the series may have peaked with the original film from a critical standpoint, although, my favorite of the series remains The Conjuring 2, The Conjuring Universe really is the first time we’ve ever seen an established horror world since the loose-threads that connected the Universal Monster films of yesteryear.

Similar to the Annabelle films, which spun off from the first Conjuring film, The Nun is a film adapted after its introduction in The Conjuring 2. The Nun is a gothic supernatural horror film directed by Corin Hardy and written by Gary Dauberman. Dauberman is a screenwriter I feel like I’ve talked a lot about on Mishmashers.com, as he also received a credit for the new It film and Annabelle: Creation. Corin Hardy is other-wise known for his directorial work on The Hallow, a film I have seen, but, for the life of me, and recall anything about. Set in Romania, the film follows a Roman Catholic priest and a nun-in-training as they look to inquire information about a nun that has committed suicide. The film is a period-piece set in 1952 and stars Demian Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, and Jonas Bloquet. Something interesting of note is that Taissa Farmiga is the daughter of Vanessa Farmiga, star actress from The Conjuring film series.

Something worth mentioning is that prior to this review, I also did a half-hour discussion with Beccah Grace on The Mc’s & Mash Podcast, where we shared our opinion on The Nun. Our opinions on the film still had to be digested, although, I do think what I said about the film on that Podcast aligns well with what I will say on Out of Frame. Keep in mind that the discussion isn’t spoiler free, whereas this review will hold-back on pertinent details.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of supernatural films related to exorcisms or ghost-related subject-matter. I think this goes back to the Paranormal Activity films and films like Annabelle which arguably depend too heavily on cheap scares and dated parlor tricks. In the horror genre, it’s commonly accepted that what goes unseen in a film can often be scarier than what is shown. This is a method of thinking I believe has been exploited over the years. If you have a good idea for a film and have enough talent to bring that idea to fruition, it will usually amount to a good film, but what I think is done a lot with the horror genre is the recycling of old, dated horror tropes and ideas. If a film has a low-budget, it usually exploits this mind-set, however, there’s a fine-line between slow-burn and having a gun that’s firing blanks.

The Nun isn’t absolved of sin, but, something worth commending about the film is that it does deliver some imagery and ideas I think are worthy of acknowledgement. The scares aren’t that of a horror maestro, but I did walk away from the film thinking that some unique ideas and creative uses of the environment made their way into the film, and that can often be a rarity in mainstream horror. The film has received fair-criticism on account of its use of jump-scares, but I found them tamer than the worst of the genre and am thankful they at least had some ideas hand-in-hand with the jump-scares. Some of the ideas can be easy to telegraph. In one scene, it shows bells dangling by strings near tombstones, a feature added for when persons are mistakenly pronounced dead. Just mentioning the fact they acknowledge such a detail is enough to predict what’s likely to happen next. Even if you can predict its best moments beat-by-beat, I will say they’re cool ideas and the film does try and add some unique flavor to them.

The actors in this film are commendable and solid through and through. Whereas The Conjuring’s premiere spin-off Annabelle featured actors that, in my opinion, could be referred to as cookie-cutter, this film has actors more on-par with the main-series. Demian Bichir delivers strongly as the front-and-center everyman and Taissa Farmiga isn’t a slouch either. One or more of the lines in the film might have been hokier than I would’ve liked, especially as a line of dialogue from Jonas Bloquet later in the film, where I feel like they undermined The Nun with a tonally inconsistent comedic line, but I would consider it decent overall. They are complimented, as well, by nicely created set-pieces, which depict familiar imagery, but do so very well. The music, lighting, and cinematography, through and through, I would say are all very solid technique from individuals very skilled and knowledgeable of the craft. The film doesn’t feel like it held-out and felt like it had an actual vision for what it wanted to accomplish. Granted, what it wanted to accomplish wasn’t fully unique or innovate, but it does capture an atmosphere and identity. And even if that identity isn’t necessarily distinguishable, at least we can say that it was realized. Cemeteries with large, white wooden crosses may always look beautiful in the night. But you can only see a preacher spouting jargons to vanquish the evil so many times before it starts to feel played out (I’m thinking sometime in the 80s).

The most unfortunate aspect about The Nun, however, and why I think it has received the negative reviews it has, is because it never really develops a strong-narrative for its central conflict, failing to lure us in through its antagonist. Not only that, but it fails to provide any biting development for its ready-to-go cast. The film succeeds more as a treatment of a horror film than it does as an actual horror film. It has the talented cast, and they even deliver solid performances, but they’re not given engaging dialogue to work with. They have the atmosphere and the set-pieces, but The Nun isn’t able to engage as the antagonist. I don’t think The Nun necessarily deserves the damning response it has received, and I do think it’s head-and-shoulders better than the first Annabelle, in-fact, I think it’s on-par with Annabelle: Creation, but I think it has problems that keep it far-short from sainthood. It’s an above-average 6 out of 10 horror film, but doesn’t particularly warrant a recommendation.

I was excited when Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them first arrived in 2016. Like many of you, I am an avid-fan of the Harry Potter franchise and have a nostalgic affliction with it. Whereas the Harry Potter series felt fun and unique, however, I found the opposite could be said about Fantastic Beasts, which boasted a story-line and performances that simply didn't mesh well with what I wanted out of the film. Many others seemed to believe the “magic” was still there, but I didn't share the sentiment, citing it as an average 5-out-of-10 film in a series where the standard is usually higher. Nevertheless, I was excited for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, perhaps that's out of loyalty to the J. K. Rowling Wizard World, but it's also because I've found that with long-form storytelling, once the initial groundwork is laid, the meatier, more realized drama can come to fruition. The tenth film in the Wizarding World franchise, it follows Newt Scamander and Albus Dumbledore and their efforts to defeat the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald.

Johnny Depp returns to the role of Grindelwald, although, this time in a more prominent capacity, a fact shrouding the film in controversy and conflicting emotions. Depp's alleged misbehavior is unfortunate, especially when posed the question of what type of person you're supporting when you buy a movie-ticket. Ultimately, however, in the confines of this review, that doesn't change the fact his performance is by leaps and bounds my favorite part about this film. Whether or not Fantastic Beast 2's lighter than expected box-office performance (expected to be about two-hundred million shy of its predecessor) can be attributed to him or the mixed-to-negative reviews, is a topic for debate.Fantastic Beasts 2 is a lot more complicated than Harry Potter. A lot more complicated than the first Fantastic Beasts, in-fact. This might be appealing if we were discussing a jigsaw puzzle, but one of the most appealing aspects of Harry Potter, I think, had to do with its simplicity and how it evolved with the series. Fantastic Beasts 2 feels overstuffed with sub-plots and sentimentality, and like many modern-day franchises, feels completely subservient to the will of its eventual successors, struggling to earn its keep as a stand-alone film. This is different than what I thought about the Harry Potter series, except for, maybe, the first half of the Deathly Hallows, which I always thought was self-contained enough for each film to stand on their own. I could skip Sorcerer's Stone and comfortably watch and enjoy Chamber of Secrets, whereas Fantastic Beasts is far more dependent on the sum of its parts.

The characters struggle, in-particular our lead of Newt Scamander, who is plain, like a video-game character left on his default-settings. One could continue the comparison to Harry Potter, if they wanted, but unlike Harry, who had Ronald, Hermione, and some truly wonderful supporting-characters to liven things up while Harry acted as the relateable everyman, Newt's dry character is side-by-side with equally ho-hum character-roles. It isn't all disagreeable, as I found some scenes with Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore to be enjoyable, and I liked the proposed dynamic between him and Grindelwald. However, that doesn't change the fact I fundamentally don't care or feel made to care about anything at all in this film. I don't care about the Queenie and Jacob subplot, and I feel like their characters could be discarded for a tighter, more streamlined film. I'm never made to care about Credence as a character, and thereby, feel no reason to care about his origins. They don't feel like characters in a world, they feel like cogs in a machine. Like the film is going through the motions, checking off bullet-points, too busy getting geared up for Fantastic Beasts. It's a phrase everyone will use if they criticize Beasts, but it really does feel like it has lost all magic.

A speech given by Gellert Grindelwald at the film's home-stretch is what I enjoyed most about the film. His ideologies aren't anything very innovative or insightful. Usually any time someone's presented as a dictator, they throw out a few lines that vaguely resemble Hitler's, and their followers slap on arm-bands that resemble the Nazis. Grindelwald doesn't offer new subtleties or intricacies, but Depp delivers considerably on his execution. It's my favorite part of the film, and I'm still criticizing it more than praising it.

The special-effects are large and expensive, but I can't say that's what ever had this film-franchise on my radar. Wands shooting out magical light-beams and large, “fantastic” beasts brought down in anticlimactic, light-heart ways.

In the end, maybe some others will enjoy Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. I hope they do. I don't claim to be an arbitrator on whether a film is good or bad, but someone who watches films and walks out of the theater with thoughts I'd like to share. From my perspective though, Fantastic Beasts 2 is a busy, overly-complicated film, too focused on the series' endgame than itself, bloated with unnecessary, dull subplots, and woven-together with a sentimentality that depends on familiarity to the characters of its superior series predecessor.

Funny People

Last week, I made the off-kilter decision to purchase a large movie lot. As a consequence of my decision, I now find myself 137 movies richer. I had a wide-range of films included in the batch, which if you're at all curious in, you can read me talk about here. All in all, I was satisfied with the purchase and I do see myself doing it again someday soon. The only caveat is, in-order to justify such an expenditure, I need to actually watch and review the films I have bought.

Funny People is a film I have wanted to talk about for years on Nickelbib.com, but I have never been able to make the stars align well enough to do it.

Even now, as I write about the film, I am way behind on a lot of other films I need to review and I risk having them fall to the wayside until I can re-watch them again and recollect what I thought of them.

Neither Judd Apatow nor Adam Sandler are artists who will appear very much amongst my favorites - neither are mainstays for the Black Deck exactly.

Apatow, for the most part, is a capable comedic director. I may not identify him as a heavy-hitter exactly, but with films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The King of Staten Island, Knocked Up, and This is 40, Apatow has made a name for himself as a solid hand for the genre.

Adam Sandler is an actor I have been exposed to a lot. I have seen dozens of the man's movies and, frankly, still hold a lot of nostalgia for him. In retrospect, his films usually weren't very good. In fact, a lot of them were godawful. However, I still watched them and found enjoyment in his late-90s, early-2000s fare.

For awhile, I lost a lot of faith in him - films like Grown Ups and Jack and Jill show exactly the worst of what the Sandman is capable of.

It was through more dramatic turns, like the fantastic Uncut Gems, that audiences were shown that Adam Sandler is capable of being a great actor when he tries to be.

What makes Funny People so special though, and what makes me love it as much as I do, is that it isn't an Uncut Gems or a Reign Over Me film. It isn't Adam Sandler stepping out of his comfort-zone, at least, not exactly.

This is one of the most Adam Sandler-iest films around. In some ways, I think you could even call Funny People the ultimate Adam Sandler film.

In Funny People, Adam Sandler plays a comedian who is now face-to-face with his own mortality, staring down the business end of his own demise. After being diagnosed with a rare blood disease, Adam Sandler's character George Simmons recruits a young comedian played by Seth Rogen as his assistant, and begins to perform standup comedy again and start putting his affairs in-order.

Through the creative use of archival footage (of which, Adam Sandler has a lot), the film is able to flesh out who George Simmons was, repurposing home-video and making mock-trailers for fictional movies one could very much imagine Adam Sandler playing in during his heyday. It's a simple idea, but it works wonders in this film, offering both hilarity and a unique sense of immersion. We've seen filmmakers do this before, but I believe this might be my favorite instance of it.

The story is heavier than the average Adam Sandler film, but it plays directly into one of Sandler's greatest strengths - the sad clown / the cynical funnyman. Although Uncut Gems blew me away with how different Adam Sandler seemed from himself, in some ways, it feels like this was the role all of Adam Sandler's career was building toward.

The character George Simmons has more money than he will ever spend and is cherished by his fans, but he has found that his fame is an empty consolation prize for a lack of personal connection.

To quote BoJack Horseman, "One day, you're gonna look around and you're going to realize that everybody loves you, but nobody likes you. And that is the loneliest feeling in the world."

George Simmons is a lot like Adam Sandler is. This is a near one to one recreation of him, in fact. He does the goofy voices and has a filmography filled to the brim of absurd comedies, a lot of them looking corny and more than a little stupid. However, it's from that foundation the film builds wrinkles to who he is, what he is searching for, and what he wants out of life. The character is complicated. Nuanced, even. He isn't necessarily good nor bad.

The character has become desensitized to his life, having sex with anyone and everyone he can, and living a fairly selfish lifestyle that sees others thrown to the wayside. Now, knowing it might all come to an end, he is able to make the first steps toward changing himself and making amends for the bad things he has done to others. It's noble and relatable, but, at the same time, life usually doesn't wrap up with a neat, orderly bow like that. He is still arrogant, and still entitled, and still unready to make the changes needed to really improve himself. As he casts himself out in new situations, or tries to rekindle old flames, you root for him to achieve that, but you also realize that he hasn't earned it.

The film is intelligent in how it portrays his character and makes you appreciate the small victories it leaves you with.

This is Adam Sandler's film through and through, but, it does allow room for Seth Rogen's character as well, who has his own entanglements to work out as well, but largely serves as an onlooker to George Simmons' lifestyle - initially enamored, eventually disappointed, like everyone that meets him.

Funny People is a very ambitious film, which can be a double-edged sword in some ways. The comedy-drama has a runtime of nearly two and a half hours, like some type of Martin Scorsese gangster film. I don't fault it, per se, but I could understand the argument that it could have been considerably shorter. The many different undercooked subplots, like Seth Rogen's character and a love-interest, the conflicts with his friends, etc., likely could have ended up on the cutting-room floor and resulted in a tighter, more concise finished product. The best moments always happen when Adam Sandler's character is on the screen, and I think that they could have leaned into that.

At the same time, I do appreciate how they tried to let things breathe the way they did and, in some ways, it helped elevate the film to an epic-scale. It feels a little like two mid-sized films squished together, one being the relationship between Sandler and Rogen's character, the other being Sandler's character and the character portrayed by Leslie Mann.

Could the film have been shorter? Certainly. Is the film self-serving or indulgent? Maybe a little bit.

I choose to look at the film as a celebration of Adam Sandler's career, filled to the brim with familiar faces from the 2000s comedy scene (and ones we hadn't fully met yet like Bo Burnham), and a thoughtful character portrayal with George Simmons, rediscovering his enjoyment of things and learning to cultivate relationships that aren't simply one-sided.

This is the Adam Sandler-iest film there is, but is, in the truest sense, the first time it has wholly been for the better and not for the worst.

Sweet Home Alabama is not a film I would normally watch. Like my previous review of Funny People, this review largely exists because I bought a 120-film (actually ended up being just shy of 140) mystery movie pack on eBay. Unlike Funny People though, which I loved a lot, Sweet Home Alabama is not.

Directed by Andy Tennant and written by C. Jay Cox, Sweet Home Alabama is a comedy film starring Reese Whitherspoon, Josh Lucas, and Patrick Dempsey. The film has a straightforward premise - following a young woman who has left her small 'hick' town in favor of the bright lights of New York City. Everything changes, however, when her boyfriend proposes to her, and she now must return home to Alabama to force her husband to finally sign the divorce papers he had been ignoring for all these years. Her husband is reluctant, and makes her jump through hoops in-order to convince him, helping her rediscover the hometown she left behind.

I am not left with a lot to say about this film. I think, maybe, first, I should reiterate that it isn't a film I would normally watch. In the title Sweet Home Alabama, "Sweet" is as prevalent to the story-line as Alabama is. The film is overtly sentimental and completely saccharine in its approach.

In the real world, a person wouldn't have to jump through these types of hoops for a divorce and, if they did, their husband wouldn't be seen as anything other than the antagonist of the film. Instead, the film romanticizes his unruly behavior, framing it as though Reese Whitherspoon's character is in need of a reality. And, maybe she is. Her character makes rude comments directed at her hometown, as well as unwarranted, rude comments (but only after she has been harassed by her husband) toward certain townspeople.

However, who is her husband to appoint himself the moderator on who needs a "reality check"? If she doesn't want to be married to you, leave her the hell alone and let her be on with her life!

In fact, the only character in this whole film that I feel should be absolved of all criticism is the fiancee, who is understanding throughout the whole film, in spite of being lied to and, frankly, mistreated.

Maybe I am overthinking it? And, maybe that is what it comes down to for a film like Sweet Home Alabama. The story is generic, embroidered with vague, under-cooked subplots (the fiances' mother has an issue with Alabama, but they don't really do a whole lot with it), and goofy sentiment. You don't need to think for this film.

The humor is squeaky-clean and sanitized, and about what you would see on a television movie - the characters aren't notable and the camera's only pointed at them to document what's in-front of it.

I review a lot of films, and a lot of them are probably worse than Sweet Home Alabama, all things considered. I review films like Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey and I can tell you this film is better all around than that film. That in mind, it has been awhile since I felt so much "nothing" about a film like I did this film.

Italian for yellow, 'giallo' is a genre of Italian filmmaking that blends elements of a murder mystery or whodunnit with other flavors of horror such as slashers, thrillers, or even terror of the psychological persuasion.

For me, I have always been on the outside looking in for giallo filmmaking, largely skeptical, yet still admittedly interested.

It can be difficult to engross oneself in a new medium of storytelling, even in good faith. Chances are, if I were to recommend somebody my favorite Full Moon Feature film, like Head of the Family, they wouldn't have the same reaction to it that I did. I embarked on Full Moon's particular flavor at an early age and, even though I harp on a lot of them (and for good reason), the ones I don't harp on are because I have an acquired taste for them. I recognize their charm and their intention, the same way I am able to recognize why a "slasher" film isn't always meant to be scary, but can also be meant to be fun and goofy.

In turn, I realize there is bound to be some facets of giallo films I won't immediately understand or appreciate until I have had exposure to them.

Likewise, cinema and art in-general are tricky and complicated. It is part of the reason I advise a reader not to take it too personally whatever I may rate a film by the end. In-order to fully appreciate a film, not only do you have to be able to understand its intention, but you have to be able to understand its surroundings (a fact I will delve into deeper shortly).

Directed by Lucio Fulci, Don't Torture a Duckling is widely seen as a highlight in the director's filmography. Set in a small insular village someplace in Southern Italy, the film follows a detective investigating a series of child murders that are committed throughout the town.

The name "Don't Torture a Duckling" is derived from a Donald Duck doll that appears in the film and plays a part in solving the murders.

Early on, the film features a scene where a young-boy sees a naked woman sprawled out near a pool. The young boy is, maybe, like thirteen or fourteen, or fifty (I'm not good with ages). The woman walks over to him and seductively flirts with him. There isn't a whole lot of reason for me mentioning it, but I found it an odd inclusion, even if it makes some sense in hindsight why they did it. At some point in the film, you are called on and expected to like this character, and I think that is a tall-order by today's standards.

The acting is decent, although I wouldn't single-out anybody in-particular as a standout amongst them.

I will say straightaway the version I had was, unfortunately, a dubbed version on the Tubi streaming service (I normally prefer the subbed versions when it comes to live-action films, and I think this film embodies a lot of why that is). The voice-actors are mostly satisfactory, but it'd certainly have been preferable to hear the actual voices coming from each person's mouths.

The storyline is interesting, if, perhaps, a little basic in construction. The themes involved are more potent than the actual narrative itself, which, stripped to its bare bones, is a rather predictable murder-mystery with an easy to telegraph outcome. The film's themes include a commentary on sexuality and of the Catholic Church, as well as the consequences of superstition and paranoia (a particularly gruesome scene about midway through highlights this pretty well).

Of course, elements that I call predictable might not have been seen as such fifty years ago in Italy.

Also, too, its themes which are recognizable now, would have only been even more potent back then. The criticism of churches and their predatory nature also ends up feeling awful ahead of its time in hindsight.

Personally, as a citizen of the United States, who was raised in a small village with cornfields in-front of his house and behind his house, and more crazy religious fanatics than I care to remember, the uncertainty runs thick. When I was a kid and found out certain people accused J.K. Rowling of witchcraft or anti-Christian propaganda because she wrote Harry Potter, I thought it was absurd. However, the reality is, now, and especially back then, a lot of that nonsensical hysteria existed and sometimes when enough uneducated people become scared and paranoid, they can do a lot of damage left unchecked.

The themes are relevant, even today, but, admittedly, are fairly scattered and messy in how they're laid out in the film. The characters, as well, I feel could have been integrated better than they were. There are a lot of ideas here. A lot of them pretty good. Most of them though, I feel like they could have been handled with a little more care than they were.

The visuals are nice to look at, offering nice shots at a small village in Italy, brimming with greenery and nature, which is always an upside. Back then, the special effects and violence was singled out and praised - and, uh, I can't particularly bring myself to do that, per se. I can acknowledge that it is a low-budget film from the seventies, and that, by those standards, it looks good. However, by current day standards, or even standards set only a decade later, Don't Torture a Duckling drew a couple chuckles from me. Unfortunately, they're because the climactic death scene at the end involves an obvious-looking dummy. (In its defense, a death scene earlier in the film looked much more impressive.)

I have to commend the dark subject-matter shown in the film. Although the death scenes can be fairly comedic at times, I'll mention another scene of a child dying from the friendliest, softest strangling ever captured on film as an example, the subject-matter is harsh. A lot of children's skeletons and a lot of dark implications are involved in this film.

My favorite scene of the film is when a woman's car breaks down and she receives assistance from a small boy. She offers him a kiss as restitution, and then, barely a second later, it shows the kid facedown in a puddle. The suddenness of it surprised me.

In total, I can't say that Don't Torture a Duckling kept me immersed from beginning to finish nor can I truly offer a recommendation of it to a casual viewer. That in mind, I do have a respect for what it did with what it had available to it, I commend its boldness, and believe it was a decent first film to start my foray into the genre.

Like many of you, the Toy Story series is one I’ve coveted for as long as I can remember. As well as this, like many others, I couldn’t entirely say I was on-board with Pixar’s decision to create a fourth film. It wasn’t a belief I held out of disdain or dislike, but out of contentment. After the credits rolled on Toy Story 3, I felt Pixar had completed a nearly perfect trilogy of films, closing the storybook in as satisfying of fashion as I could have imagined. Andy had grown-up with so many of us, and now, he tipped his hat to his beloved toys, allowing them to continue serving their purpose with a new child. The story felt very taut and tidy, and completed itself in a satisfactory fashion. I didn’t feel like there was need for a new film. I loved Finding Nemo, for instance, but I also believed it had said everything it needed, whereas Finding Dory, made me recall the direct-to-DVD sequels Disney would make, albeit with a much, much higher production budget. Sometimes I believe when a story runs its course, no matter how much it might leave viewers yearning for more, there’s admirability and strength in allowing characters and a story to have a proper farewell.

Toy Story, I believe, had that.

Regardless, when Toy Story 4 was announced, despite my concerns, I allowed myself to become excited. When the reviews came crashing in, boasting Toy Story 4 as another immaculate feather in the series’ cap, I arrived at the movie-theater ready to be swept away. After all, the toys were back in town. Does Toy Story 4 warrant its stay and breathe new life in the series or does it amount to a retread, coasting on its familiarity? Here are my thoughts …

Toy Story 4 begins with a flashback that shares the fate of Bo Peep, a character who had a significant role in the original film but was unaccounted for in proceeding sequels. Given away by Molly, none of the original gang had seen her since then; to the distraught of Woody, most of all. Since then, Woody, Buzz, and the rest have found a new owner: a young girl named Bonnie. Things seem like they’re going well, but Woody finds himself discontent and bothered by a lack of purpose. Where Andy celebrate Woody as his favorite, Bonnie, on the other hand, prefers to play with her other toys. While Woody has matured a lot since the early days of the series, it’s still difficult for him to cope with not feeling needed.

During her first day of school, Bonnie is upset and scared, which causes Woody to sneak into her backpack to accompany her. On her first-day, Bonnie creates her very own toy, a strewn together creation, aptly named Forkie. Bonnie loves the toy, letting it console her, but Forkie is hesitant about being a child’s plaything, to say the least. Seeing how important Forkie is to Bonnie, Woody tasks himself with protecting Forkie, who seems eager to return to the trash-bin he was found. In a journey that sees Woody and Forkie lost, trying to return to Bonnie, Woody sees himself targeted by other toys and reached out to by old acquaintances. He’s also forced to tackle his struggle with self-worth head-on.

The film has a lot of different storylines, but most of Toy Story 4 is rooted around Woody and his journey. As expected, the animation remains top-notch and the voicework from the talent involved is admirable, especially from Tom Hanks in the main role. Something Pixar has managed to walk the balance-beam on as far as the Toy Story series is concerned, is the way nothing ever seems to feel like a retread. Whereas other franchises would resort to rehashing old plot-threads or coasting off novelty, the Toy Story series is the rare pull-string toy that always has something new and different to say.

This doesn’t mean everything is said with careful consideration or every step taken is with the best foot forward, however. Although other familiar faces from the series are afforded subplots, their contribution can often feel arbitrary or workman-like. They often feel like they’re allowed screen-time for who they were and what they once meant to the series, and not because they mean anything or contribute anything to this film. One of the biggest examples of that is through Buzz Lightyear’s character, who receives a considerable amount of screen-time, but is given so little unique or interesting to say. Instead, he handles comic-relief for a film that already had a lot of comic-relief, worse yet, however, is how rarely the humor hits its mark.

The same can be said about Forkie, an intriguing character – he asks the question of what it means to be a toy and shows the answer to that is through the eyes of the child. His character isn’t fleshed out enough to really go the distance, with his character reduced to cracking jokes with diminishing returns. Or Duke Caboom, for that matter, a character voiced by Keanu Reeves, that strikes various poses, and not much else.

Toy Story 4 has several interesting questions but doesn’t supply enough consideration to what it’s trying to ask. Bo Peep has found a life without a kid to play with her, and although it had been such a taboo in the series, she has found fulfillment and liberation. Gabby Gabby is a 1950s pull-string doll that has never had the chance to be loved by a child and is desperately looking for that affection. Meanwhile, Woody is somewhere smackdab in the middle of them; uncertain and befuddled. Those ideas never feel as though they’re allowed to mature and blossom to anything beyond their initial concepts. I honestly feel like they could have drawn both storylines out in a Toy Story 4 and 5, respectively.

Gabby Gabby roams a creepily animated antique shop, backed by creepy ventriloquist dummies, and while I think the idea had a lot of potential, I found her development and eventual resolution unfulfilling and rushed. I could envision an entire film with Woody and Gabby Gabby’s dynamic, but with the idea allowed the chance to breathe. The same could be said about Woody and Bo Peep’s relationship. I would have loved to see a film solely about Woody and Bo Peep roaming cities, rekindling their own friendship, and Woody tackling his emotional struggles in a more complete manner.

Instead, what Toy Story 4 feels like is a lot of ideas wedged together and, in spite of how good they may have been at first, they end up for a bland experience as a result.

There we have it – the unfortunate reality of how I felt about Toy Story 4. I wouldn’t say it was a thoughtless cash-in by any stretch. I believe the film had a lot of inspiration and a lot of unique things to say for itself, but, perhaps in its own ambition, I believe it stretched itself across its means. As many good scenes as there were, I’m left saddened by how many of those scenes I believe could have been great. I found the humor frenetic and ultimately too over-the-top, trying harder to be funny than any Toy Story before it, and yet having far more jokes that fall flat.

I don’t usually see movies with many others, most times, I see them with my fiancée. I watched Toy Story 4 with my fiancée, my mother, my aunt, and three of my nephews. As I stepped out of the theater, the very first thing my fiancée said to me was that it “didn’t have the charm of the previous ones”. When I stepped into the car, my nephew who used to watch the Toy Story movies on repeat everyday when he was littler, told me he didn’t remember the other ones being so “boring”. My mother, quite bluntly said, “that movie sucked.” Personally, I neither thought Toy Story 4 sucked nor did I find that it bored me, but I was disappointed.