Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Kaos]

The Northman

What in the Icelandic blue FUCK was that? 

What a turd.

[The Six]

Told y'all Halloween Ends sucked.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers/Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers/Halloween 666: The Origin of Michael Myers is like The Third Man compared to the mid-off that was Ends.

[Kaos]

Told y'all Halloween Ends sucked.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers/Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers/Halloween 666: The Origin of Michael Myers is like The Third Man compared to the mid-off that was Ends.

Other than the initial flashback and the absurd final 10 minutes, this was essentially a bad Hallmark/Lifetime Movie with a splash of blood, starring re-enactors from an Investigation Discovery episode of Primal Instinct.

[Kaos]

31
Rob Zombie knows how to do dirt. No filmmaker in the world does a better job of conveying the dirty, trashy actually dirt-covered sub-strata of human existence.  From House of 1000 Corpses to Devil's Rejects to his Halloween entries to this entry, 31, he's incredibly effective at capturing that dirty, seedy look.

31 is a redneck horror movie, filled with dirty, seedy characters and his wife.  It's what you'd have if you took Squid Game, threw in a little Saw, added a splash of Purge and rednecked it all up.

Zombie has a habit of plucking former stars off the scrapheap of time.  This film throws in aged porn star Ginger Lynn, Dottie from Valley Girl (who is in several of his films), Washington from Welcome Back Kotter (and not much else), Jeff Daniel Phillips (who's in a lot of Zombie projects including playing Herman in Zombie's abysmal take on the Munsters), and Malcom McDowell (who will apparently do anything for a dollar). 

The worst/best of all here is Meg Foster, the ice-blue eyed heroine of They Live (sexy there) who looked like she'd spent the last 15 years in an alley smoking meth.  Never seen an actress go that far downhill.  She was stringy and wrinkled, the eyes about the only recognizable remnant of who she used to be.  She looked horrible. 

Basic premise: A bunch of cross-country travelers get kidnapped and forced to compete in a game called '31' by a group of powdered-wig weirdos who bet on who will survive.  The captured have 12 hours to make it through a series of sicko murderers - all of whom have stupid names like Doom-Head, Sicko-Head, Psycho-Head.  There's a midget, a rebel flag, nazi imagery, gross clowns, chainsaws, a duo of murderers called Sex-Head and Death-Head, and the final murder clown played by Richard Brake.

In the right hands, Brake's super-intense psycho clown could actually have the potential to stand alone and kick start its own series.  It's way more intense and horrible than Terrifier.  Zombie almost gets it right.  The look is great, Brake's intensity is over the top, his kills appropriately joyful.  It's like a cognizant and expressive version of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees who toys with his victims. The movie just didn't give it enough room to breathe.

Like all Zombie movies it soars and suffers from his unique touch and relentless need to showcase his wife. 

It's not a great movie, but I've seen way worse - and way worse from Zombie.

[GH2001]

Other than the initial flashback and the absurd final 10 minutes, this was essentially a bad Hallmark/Lifetime Movie with a splash of blood, starring re-enactors from an Investigation Discovery episode of Primal Instinct.

the last 10 mins is what I have been envisioning Laurie (or SOMEBODY) doing for the last 30 years. Thats all that was needed at the end of the last one.

[Kaos]

the last 10 mins is what I have been envisioning Laura (or SOMEBODY) doing for the last 30 years. Thats all that was needed at the end of the last one.

We're all too stupid to understand.  Michael wasn't the killer.  This unseen evil entity that possessed him was.  Chew up his body, so what?  It will find another host in another time or universe.  Maybe in space!

[Kaos]

The Black Phone

From the mind of Stephen King('s son Joe) comes this tale of kidnapping with a supernatural element. 

The story itself is fairly short.  Granted, some of King's best adaptations have come from short stories, so maybe it'll work the same for his kid?  Nope.

There were too many things going on.  The whole kidnapping weirdo stuff would have been fine even with the ghosts calling the phone, but the movie lost its way with the psychic sister. 

The King family must have been bullied unmercifully at some point by biker-boot wearing greasers because it seems like every single one of their collective films features one of these character caricatures beating up on somebody.  And it's always wrong.  Same here.  Just another added, useless layer to the film. 

It really felt like a half-hour episode that was stretched far too long, while at the same time not letting Ethan Hawke really lean into the meaty nastiness of his character.  There was so much to tell, so much to do there and it ended up just being flat and one-dimensional.  Not Hawke's fault at all. 

Could have been good.  Wasn't. 

[Kaos]

Smile
Not as creepy as I hoped. 

When your main horror focus is a drone that turns shots upside down for no reason at all?  You've humped the goat. 

Not really much to say about this other than it was a huge disappointment.  Failed on almost every level.

[GH2001]

Smile
Not as creepy as I hoped. 

When your main horror focus is a drone that turns shots upside down for no reason at all?  You've humped the goat. 

Not really much to say about this other than it was a huge disappointment.  Failed on almost every level.

Kevin and Kyra's daughter is a decent actress.

[Kaos]

Kevin and Kyra's daughter is a decent actress.

She has man hands. 

[Kaos]

8 Bit Christmas

Tries to be “A Christmas Story” for kids who grew up in the 80s. 

Instead of a BB fun the quest is for a Nintendo, and to a secondary degree, a cabbage patch kid. 

I lived through the cabbage patch craze.  Was working retail, watched people brawl in the aisles, made side money black marketing a few I got off the truck.  That was fun. 

This movie wants really badly to be Christmas Story for the next generation.   It doesn’t fail completely but it doesn’t have the same comedic or sentimental chops as Ralphie’s search. 

It follows many of the same themes as ACS, down to milquetoast kid taking down the class bully.  It just couldn’t quite get there. 

One of the bigger problems is Steve Zahn in the old man role.  Another is the bully, a guy who was equally problematic in Mr Harrigan’s Phone in a similar role. 

It really needed to lean a lot harder into the look and feel of the 80s.  It missed the boat there. 

[Kaos]

A Christmas Story Christmas

Some things are better left in the past. 

I wish it had been good to see Flick and Schwartz and Randy and Ralph and even Scut Farkas.  Not really. They all aged so poorly.  None but Farkas and Ralph have been on screen since the 80s.  And there’s a reason. 

They’re all pretty bad.  Randy in particular. 

The story is a little wonky.  It has its moments but can’t hold a candle to its parent.

Worth watching once just for the quality nostalgia. The dishes and storage containers some of which I still have). The outfits. 

I did like the way it ties into the original, but you have to churn through a lot of contrived and hokey scenes to get there. 

The timeline gives me a bit of a headache.  How long after somebody dies do you write an obit? And is the wife of a deceased spouse gonna just be perfectly okay the day after?   

If there had been no Christmas Story?  This would be a terrible movie.  It could not stand alone.   

[Kaos]

Christmas With the Kranks

Christmas movies are my favorite (well, after Halloween movies). This one, though?  It's bad.  Don't enjoy it much at all. 

It's contrived. It's hokey. The music isn't good. The casting is terrible.  I'm typically okay with Jamie Lee Curtis. Tim Allen has some quality performances (Galaxy Quest comes to mind).  Neither is good here. No chemistry together. It's forced and fake. It's saccharin.

If I'm ranking Christmas movies, this one is way down the list.  Behind Deck the Halls. Behind Jingle All the Way.  Behind a lot of Hallmark films.

Speaking of lists, I'm taking this one off mine. 

[Kaos]

The Night Before

Garbage.  Crude. Crass. Typical for what passes for humor in this Apatow/Rogen world.  Had some decent moments but was undone by the associated garbage.


Klaus
Reviewed before.  The more I watch it, the higher on my list it goes.  When/if I have grandkids it will be close to the top of the list.  Not a fan of the animation choice, wish it had been done old style, but that’s really the only flaw.  A funny and creative Santa origin story.  Gets you in in the feels at the end. 

Miracle on 34th Street
The original version.  Maureen O’Hara at her statuesque hotness height and a perfectly jolly Santa.  With a baby Natalie Wood. 

Amusing story, one that has a hard time fitting in a new America where everything Christmas is slowly deemed offensive. 

Some scenes are a little outdated.  The black kitchen help, working mom letting her daughter disappear with some random guy across the hall, for instance.  For those of us who still enjoy Christmas and don’t too much give a fuck if your non-chick-fil-a eating, rainbow haired, non-binary, buddhist , soy sucking, joyless, triggered, bitch ass gets offended or not?  It’s a feel-good, nostalgic movie.  A good one.

[GH2001]

The Night Before

Garbage.  Crude. Crass. Typical for what passes for humor in this Apatow/Rogen world.  Had some decent moments but was undone by the associated garbage.


Klaus
Reviewed before.  The more I watch it, the higher on my list it goes.  When/if I have grandkids it will be close to the top of the list.  Not a fan of the animation choice, wish it had been done old style, but that’s really the only flaw.  A funny and creative Santa origin story.  Gets you in in the feels at the end. 

Miracle on 34th Street
The original version.  Maureen O’Hara at her statuesque hotness height and a perfectly jolly Santa.  With a baby Natalie Wood. 

Amusing story, one that has a hard time fitting in a new America where everything Christmas is slowly deemed offensive. 

Some scenes are a little outdated.  The black kitchen help, working mom letting her daughter disappear with some random guy across the hall, for instance.  For those of us who still enjoy Christmas and don’t too much give a fuck if your non-chick-fil-a eating, rainbow haired, non-binary, buddhist , soy sucking, joyless, triggered, bitch ass gets offended or not?  It’s a feel-good, nostalgic movie.  A good one.

Caught Miracle earlier this week. Watched it for the first time start to finish. I liked it.

[Kaos]

Glass Onion: Knives Out Story

Knives Out was a fun, better-than-expected throwback mystery. No gore, no nudity, no crudity, little profanity. Just a well-written story and a strong cast to carry it off (and keep you guessing).   That film featured Jamie Lee Curtis, Don "Sonny Crockett" Johnson, Captain America, Ana de Armas, Christopher Plummer, Toni Collette and Michael Shannon with Daniel Craig (and his bad southern accent) as the mystery-solving detective.  The cast really made the movie work. 

The second episode of the Knives Out saga The Glass Onion (which is a Beatles song, something I didn't know) features the same quality writing, the same manner of exposition, the same snappy dialogue and the same bad Daniel Craig accent. Where it lacks is the cast.  There's a significant drop-off in quality here.  Kate Hudson, It was Agatha All the Time, Dave Bautista, Edward Norton and a bunch of unknowns (at least to me) populate the film.  It's not quite B-movie parody, but it leans that way.  Even Craig's detective character comes way too close early on to overplaying its hand.

The saving grace is the story. It's entertaining enough once it gets rolling to overcome the glaring cast deficiencies, even if it is a little ridiculous. 

It did lose me a little when the script allowed for the destruction of a treasured piece of history to satisfy one character's need for revenge.  That, to me, felt really wrong. 

If there's a third Knives Out film, I hope they choose a better cast.

[Kaos]

Beast

Should have named this Lujo.  It's Cujo with a lion basically.

Idris Elba protects his kids from being eaten by a pissed off lion.  It's honestly a ridiculous movie and I wish the older daughter had gotten eaten.

Just not that good.

Terrifier 2
Art the Clown is one of the best horror characters of all time. His murderous clown antics, the deranged glee with which he goes about his bloody work is different, unique, outlandish, absurd and funny as hell.

Art originally shows up in All Hallow's Eve, which is a low-budget, barely B-level movie of short films the director had made cobbled together in an incoherent storyline.  But the Art character was memorable enough that it got its own stand-alone film. Terrifier was a different kind of movie, a blood-soaked surprise that was way better than it should have been. It achieved cult status and helped bring Art's gory antics into the mainstream.

Terrifier 2 tries to lean into the things the director apparently thought made the Terrifier a surprise hit. He leans way, way too far. The violence was gratuitous and the level it was taken to was really beyond what was needed. It also goes full bore into the Halloween-ish immortality of the character extending the supernatural elements (Art committed suicide in Terrifier but was resurrected by some unnamed evil). It takes it two steps further with a half-baked, poorly explained arc about a magical sword that somehow heals instead of kills (nobody got that until the director explained it after the fact) and a kind of avenging angel that the lead girl becomes (I think).  All of that was too much. 

What the Terrifier series needs are 1)a budget so they don't have to hire anybody they meet off the street to take most of the roles.  2) A budget so they can spend money on set decoration. It was supposed to be Halloween and none of the houses were decorated. It was supposed to be Halloween and the school re-used the same three paper pieces of decoration whether it was the classroom, the office or the hallway.  It was supposed to be Halloween, but it people were sweating. 3. A budget so they could spend money on locations. 4. A budget so they could spend money on production values so the movie doesn't look like two assholes filmed it on their iPhone 3.  5. A budget so they could hire a director and a production staff.  6. A budget so they could hire writers (not the ones who wrote Halloween Ends) who could take the story elements and craft them into something that didn't require the creator/director to go "oh, that was a healing sword" after the fact.   

The character is lunatic. That much is without question.  Got to give the guy who created it credit.  But at this point he needs to step back and let more creative people bring some direction and focus to it. I'd like to see it get an adequate treatment. 

Basic story:
Art the Clown is back. He didn't die at the end of the prior film.  And he's on another rampage. Because his kills are apparently random and because the motive behind his attacks and the people he targets is never given any room to breathe there is no coherence to the movie at all.  It's over-the-top gory, but other than Art's comedic aspects and the semi-hot lead actress, the ludicrous carnage is all this film has going for it.  When it tries shoehorn the Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees 'can't be killed' aspect it really begins to lose its way. Art's not the only one overcoming what should be fatal wounds either.  It doesn't sink the film entirely, but it drags it down.

The main girl is kind of hot in a weird way.  Other than the semi-hot main girl and the off-the-wall campy carnage of Art, the rest of the cast and the story were straight ass, especially the supernatural components.

It's got moments that are worth watching just for the insanity.  The laundromat scene, for instance, is outrageously unhinged - a perfectly deranged mix of horror and comedy.  The dream commercial is equally unhinged but is poorly conceived, too long and a major misfire.

I hope some day they reboot Art and give the character the kind of attention it deserves, not this second-rate hack job.

Side note: Don't blink or you'll miss it but there's a brief appearance by the youngest LaRusso offspring.   Not sure why he was slumming here in a bit part, but there he was.

[Kaos]

Banshees of Inisherin

Collin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as best friends on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland in 1923. 

Best friends until Gleeson’s character arbitrarily decides he doesn’t like Farrell any more and doesn’t want to speak to him any longer.

Gleeson and Farrell were perfect in In Bruges, one of my favorite movies of all time.  Their interaction made that movie.

They play off each other well here too.  Farrell’s Padriac is a lonely milk farmer living with his sister.  Gleeson’s Colm is a depressed would-be composer, living alone trying to write a song on his fiddle.  It’s the custom for the two to head to the local pub together at 2 pm.  When Colm decides he no longer wants to be Padriac’s friend it sets off his quest to find out why - with dire consequences when he refuses to accept it. 

It’s nowhere near as good as In Bruges. The island setting was stunning.  Gleeson and Farrell play off each other effortlessly. Beyond that?  I didn’t really understand the movie.  I assume it has some greater meaning behind what I saw but I didn’t get it.   

It was bleak sadness and misery set against a beautifully desolate island existence. 

It’s not something I will watch again. 

[Kaos]

The Marksman

Another crusty Liam Neeson is a badass movie. 

Here he’s a rancher and former marine saving a kid from the Mexican cartel after he runs across him trying to cross the border on his ranch.

Improbable situations. Unrealistic coincidences.  Sham emotional resolutions.

Boilerplate stuff. 

Buy a pack of hot dogs, don’t be disappointed they don’t taste like steak, right?

[CCTAU]

The Marksman

Another crusty Liam Neeson is a badass movie. 

Here he’s a rancher and former marine saving a kid from the Mexican cartel after he runs across him trying to cross the border on his ranch.

Improbable situations. Unrealistic coincidences.  Sham emotional resolutions.

Boilerplate stuff. 

Buy a pack of hot dogs, don’t be disappointed they don’t taste like steak, right?

Screw that anti gun asshole making money off of  guns.
Not one red cent!