Tag: movie

Monday Morning Movie Review: Southern Comfort (1981)

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Shudder serves up some strange dishes sometimes, including a good bit of non-horror fare.  For a service that is ostensibly dedicated to horror, it’s always interesting when something outside of that genre pops up.

Of course, “horror” is a pretty broad category, and there is horror in many situations.  Perhaps that is the rationale for the inclusion of Southern Comfort (1981) to its slate of films.

Southern Comfort follows the foibles of a Louisiana National Guard unit on a weekend bivouac into the swamps of Cajun country.  After a truly stupid act, the weekend warriors find themselves embroiled in a guerrilla war with murderous Cajuns.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: History of Evil (2024)

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Political allegory is a tricky thing.  For every 1984 or They Live (1988), there are thousands of crappy, one-dimensional morality tales.  It takes seriously talented, subtle writers to pull it off, regardless of the medium.  It takes a hack to write an annoying screed that preaches at the audience.

In modern film, the screeching moralizing typically takes the form of putting woke buzzwords into the mouths of characters in iconic franchises.  No one will ever forget (or forgive) bitter diversity characters like Rose Tico, the character perhaps most synonymous with Rian Johnson‘s obliteration of Star Wars as a profitable franchise.  Brie Larson’s turn as Captain Marvel (2019) did much to sour audiences on what was once the unstoppable juggernaut of Marvel Studios.

At least one could argue (albeit, I think, incorrectly) that those films were essentially apolitical summer blockbuster fodder, with few DIE hires tossed into the writers’ rooms to throw in “The Message” for “modern audiences,” to borrow parlance from The Critical Drinker.  I think they were intentional subversions of classic heroic archetypes, but what do I know?  I’m just a hardworking chump with alleged “privilege.”

I digress—even if one could make that argument about the aforementioned films, it is significantly harder to make about a great deal of modern, socially-conscious horror flicks.  It’s always ladled on thick (almost every horror film made in the West—and every single horror film made in Sweden—features a lesbian relationship), and it’s always very clear that White Men Are Bad, or that Orange Man Bad.

History of Evil (2024) takes that trend to its logical conclusion, and throws out any sense of allegory or metaphor.  The entire film is an extended riff on the basic premise that all white, male characters are villains (even the one that seems good) and all brown, female characters are heroes.

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Memorable Monday Morning Movie Review: A Very Portly Christmas: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

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With Christmas Break looms large, I’m taking it a bit easier with the old blog.  I’ve seen some great—and not-so-great—movies lately, but they can wait a few weeks for 2024.

Instead, I thought I’d take a look back at a timeless Christmas classic of yesteryear, a film I reviewed along with Audre Myers and Ponty during the 2022 Christmas season.

That film, of course, is 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  It’s a film that is somehow more than a mere movie.  It’s a flick that can be judged and appreciated as a movie, of course, but it’s also one that transcends the medium, and is part of the whole Zeitgeist of Christmas.  It’s hard to separate it from the very notion of “Christmas.”

With that, here’s my review from last year:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Napoleon (2023)

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Hollywood is in a weird place right now.  All of the major franchises and studios are bombing at the theaters.  The Marvel Cinematic Universe used to be a money-printing machine; now, it’s dropping like Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame (2019).  Disney is sinking faster than The Little Mermaid‘s hometown.  Star Wars is exploding as if a couple of proton torpedoes hit its reactor core.

At the same time, there have been some major prestige films that have done well with critics and audiences alike.  Oppenheimer (2023) became a cultural phenomenon due to its release alongside Barbie (2023).  Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) is earning accolades.

Now there’s another nearly-three-hour-long flick charging cinemas, and it’s quite good:  Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023).

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Birds (1963)

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I had the opportunity to see Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) a Sunday or two back on the big screen.  I love how these classic flicks get rereleased on their anniversaries, as there’s something different about seeing them in theaters as opposed to television.

In this case, the main difference is settling in with a massive tub of popcorn and a liter of Diet Pepsi.  The Birds works on the small screen just as well, I think, but it was still super cool seeing this oddball in such a setting.

One thing I did not realize about The Birds is that it lacks a traditional soundtrack.  The “soundtrack” such as it is, consists of electronic recordings of various birdcalls, layered together in a form of early musical synthesizer.  The early 1960s was an incredible period of experimentation with blended electronic musical samples, as the seminal Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys would demonstrate just three years later.  That album didn’t sample birdcalls (as far as I can remember), but it did see Brian Wilson tinkering with blends of unusual instruments and chord voicings that were examples of synthesizing analog sounds electronically.

The Birds was cutting-edge in this regard.  There’s no sweeping string orchestrations, or even stabbing ones, like in Psycho (1960).  It adds to the naturalistic terror of the film, as the only “music” is the squawking and chattering of the lethal, titular birds.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Retribution (2023)

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There are a handful of actors whose films I will always see:  Nicolas Cage, Kurt Russell, Liam Neeson.  Maybe it’s not always on the big screen, but I’ll find a way to view their films.

If the movie is just $4—as it was when I saw the latest Liam Neeson vehicle Retribution (2023), it’s a no-brainer.  What’s not to love?  An aging action star with improbably young children taking on a dangerous criminal and all of the Europol and the Berlin Polizei?  Take my money, please!

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

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It’s been a big moviegoing summer for yours portly, and I’ve availed myself of the offerings at my local cinema quite frequently.  While I was still on summer vacation I managed to slip into a 4 PM showing of The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), a film about the doomed ship that carried Count Dracula to England in the original Bram Stoker novel.

I was hoping for a delightfully blood-soaked (and blood-thirsty) romp on the high seas, blending the manliness of stoic sailors in the waning days of the Age of Sail with the Gothic horror of old-school Dracula.  Instead, I got a disappointingly plodding film and a stomach ache from eating too much popcorn, albeit with a pretty terrifying depiction of the dreaded Count.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Back to School (1986)

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As readers are doubtlessly tired of reading, classes at my school resumed last Wednesday, 16 August 2023.  Today marks the first full week of classes, which means that we’ll all be settling into a typical school year routine quite soon.

Modern education, like any institution, creates its own culture, complete with its own rituals, milestones, rites of passage, “canon events,” and the like.  These are all quite familiar to anyone who has attended a public or private school in the United States (and I imagine my British readers have similar milestones):  surviving exam week; reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; finding your table in the cafeteria; attending the dance; celebrating homecoming; attending football games; buying back-to-school clothes and supplies; graduating; etc., etc.  In the midst of these and other events, students (and teachers) live in, create, and adapt to an ever-changing school culture, the petite dramas—the successes and failures, the triumphs and tribulations—of their lives playing out amid hormones and deadlines.

Naturally, compulsory education provides many ripe fields for reaping and sowing narrative stories.  Just a school year has its own rhythm and tempo, so do good stories follow certain “beats,” so it’s only natural that screenwriters find ample storytelling fodder in school.  It’s also relatable, as virtually every American has, at one point or another, darkened the door of a classroom, and has enjoyed and/or endured the complicated thickets of modern education.

There are many excellent examples of films that deal with schooling.  There are also many terrible ones, as anyone who ever watched melodramatic WB teen shows in the early 2000s can attest.  Some of the real gems range from the dramatic—To Sir, with Love (1967)—to the ludicrously funny—Billy Madison (1995).

This week, I’m looking at one on the “ludicrously funny” end of the drama-to-comedy axis, but closer to “good, but not great” on the terrible-to-excellent axis:  the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back to School.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: #2: The Truman Show (1998)

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Ponty picked an impressive film for his slot, one that I wish had made it onto my list (it may end up as an honorable mention!).  The Truman Show (1998) is a powerful, surprisingly dark comedy about materialism, consumerism, and mass media, exploring what happens when we take reality television to its logical extreme.  What’s fascinating is that this film largely predates reality television, outside of the trash that aired on MTV at the time.

I won’t spoil Ponty’s review (he considerately offers a spoiler alert, but if you haven’t managed to see this flick in the twenty-five years since its release, you’re way outside of the “no spoilers!” statute of limitations), but he touches upon many of the troubling implications of enslaving an unwitting human in an artificial world and broadcasting the results of this forbidden experiment to the world.  I, too, wonder how Truman would live outside of the show; a part of me suspects he might go back to the only world he’s ever known, though I hope he never did.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 1998’s The Truman Show:

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Myersvision: Iceman (1984)

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A great joy of writing is that sometimes, our scribbled thoughts create inspiration in others—or other writers can inspire us!  So it was that my delayed review of 1982’s The Thing provided a bit of inspirado for our dear Audre Myers.

I don’t think it was my purple prose that jolted her memory about this film; rather, the genius of The Thing reminded her of this flick, which is also set in a desolate Arctic wasteland, and which deals with some quite complex questions about humanity, biomedical ethics, and technology.

I’m adding it to my must-see list, and I suspect you should, too.

With that, here is Audre’s review of 1984’s Iceman:

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