Tag: review

Monday Morning Movie Review: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

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Yours portly is kicking off the Halloween season a bit early this year—after all, it’s the first day of autumn!  I’m doing so with a classic Universal Pictures monster flick, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.

Prior to seeing the flick for the first time a year or two ago, I only really knew about the plot from Young Frankenstein (1974), which spoofs key scenes from Bride and Frankenstein (1931).  Shudder had Bride back on its service as of last week, so one night I watched it again, and really enjoyed it.

Bride of Frankenstein moves in a more comedic direction than its bachelor predecessor, with Frankenstein’s Monster smoking (and becoming addicted to) cigarettes and humorous homunculi—like an overly amorous king—offering up some laughs (and padding out the film’s refreshingly swift seventy-five-minute runtime).  But it still offers up some classic scares.

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Ponty Ponders Attack of the Meth Gator (2024)

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Good ol’ Ponty is back with another B-movie review.  2023 was apparently the year of exploitation films about drug-addicted animals, with Cocaine Bear (2023) as the prime example of this bizarre subgenre.  I wonder if any desperate indie filmmakers made Fentanyl Fox or Oxy Otter or the like.

Well, somebody made Attack of the Meth Gator (2024), which demonstrates well the B-movie tendency to jump on the latest fad and churn as many bucks out of it as possible.  The Asylum made the film, which should come as no surprise—they’re the same folks behind the terrible-but-popular Sharknado franchise.

Apparently, the film is based on a joke Tweet (long since deleted) from a police department in Tennessee, warning residents not to flush their drugs, lest gators become hyper-aggressive “meth gators.”  Such a thing might not be possible, but even the remotest possibility is too terrifying and silly to contemplate for long.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of this timeless classic:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: 28 Weeks Later (2007)

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This summer’s 28 Years Later may have been the best film of 2025.  Apparently, the film is already getting a sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, slated for release in 2026:

I’m excited to see that sequel, so I was even more excited to see 2007’s 28 Weeks Later on Shudder.  Shudder experienced a bit of a dry spell this summer, with basically just a bunch of low-budget French and Indonesian films from the the 1960s and 1970s.  I like foreign flicks, but sometimes I just want to watch a movie, not read one.

I’ve still got to see 28 Days Later (2002), but I enjoyed Weeks immensely.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Intruder (1989)

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The first, tiny hints of autumn are in the air in South Carolina.  Temperatures have been down the past few days, and I can just make out the tiniest bits of golden-brown in the leaves.  I announced the home varsity football this past Friday, and driving back up to campus with the windows down (my car’s A/C is still not working) gave me that sensation that only fall can give.

Naturally, this weather brings to my mind the best autumn holiday:  Halloween.  And Halloween means (among other things) horror movies.

Now, I’ve never been big on slashers, but one I re-watched recently on Shudder is a good example of the genre:  Intruder (1989).  Its unique setting—it takes place in a grocery store—and colorful cast of characters makes it really enjoyable.  It’s also strangely wholesome for a slasher; as I recall, there aren’t the usual lurid displays of teenage sexuality, just lots of grocery kills.

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Phone it in Friday C: YouTube Roundup CLX: Civilization VII is Gorgeous

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Folks are probably tired of me writing about Civilization VII, which is shaping up to be one of the least popular Civ releases ever.  That’s a shame, because the game is getting better and better with each update.

For awhile I thought that I was lying to myself about liking the game.  Something felt off about it for awhile.  But I realized that my main complaints—the dragging late game, the lack of visual information—were ultimately fairly minor.  Every game in the series drags in the late game.  If anything, Civ VII has a more robust late game than Civ VI, although it’s still pretty lackluster in the Modern Era.

Ultimately, though, I feel like the time I have put into the game has reaped dividends.  There are times when it’s not always fun, but those are rare; mostly, I can’t help but keep playing (often to the detriment of my sleep schedule).  That’s the mark of a good game in my book.  Even when it’s a slog, there is some objective towards which I am working.

One thing about the game is that, in spite of its poor visual information (which has improved since launch, but I still can’t figure out which buildings I’ve built where in a city), the visuals themselves are stunning.  It is a gorgeous game.  The same quality that makes the visual information obscure is also what makes the game look great.

As such, I shot a YouTube short last week while playing a game with a buddy of mine.  My World Wonders-encrusted former capital was just too sumptuous not to share.

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Ponty Praises: Typoman

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Good old Ponty is back with a video game review, and one with a particular relevance to blogging:  Typoman.

Anyone who writes daily will tell you that you will have typos.  If you’re not taking time to proofread, revise, and edit your writing (which I rarely do for these posts), you’re guaranteed to have them, no matter how fluidly and clearly you wrote.  Some lone word, some misapplied apostrophe, some stray letter, is going to sneak its way in.

Also, a game about spelling words is perfect for a blog, one that possesses pretenses of featuring literary non-fiction on rare occasions.  Words that must be spelled in a dangerous video game environment are even better.

But let me wrap up, lest I commit a dreaded typo.  Ponty delivers a great review of what sounds like an amazing game.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of Typoman (let me know if he—or I!—have committed any crimes against spelling and grammar):

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Monday Morning Movie Review: My Dinner with Andre (1981)

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A couple of weeks ago my older brother texted me this classic clip from The Simpsons, which he dubbed one of his favorite throwaway gags from the show:

The Simpsons largely accounts for my love of absurdist humor (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), but also for my vastly encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth-century pop culture and politics.  It is solely because of that clip that I know of My Dinner with Andre (1981).

Even knowing nothing about the movie when I saw the clip above as a kid, the joke landed because the idea of playing an arcade game about two guys having a conversation was just so absurd, my brothers and laughed our butts off.

But, as The Simpsons often did, it planted the name of that film in my mind.  When my brother sent me that link the other day, it got me thinking that I really needed to see the movie.

I’m so glad I did.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

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The excellent horror host Joe Bob Briggs opened the current season of The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs with a screening of the 1925 silent film The Phantom of the Opera (1925), the classic starring Lon Cheney in the title role.  I had never seen the film, and I can see why it has stood up to the test of time.

It’s also wild to consider that this movie is 100 years old.  It released the year my paternal grandfather was born, between the World Wars, before the Great Depression.  The 1920s and the 2020s share more than we realize, but it was also a fundamentally different world.  That the movie is still enjoyable is a testament to the strength of the story.

There is no original print of The Phantom that survives today (according to Joe Bob), and the score to the film has, it seems, been lost to time.  The version Joe Bob presented seems to track closely with the plot on Wikipedia, and featured a score composed and recorded in 2011.  The version he presented also featured colored tinting, an early version of Technicolor.

Based on the music credit after the film, this version is not the one Joe Bob presented, but it’s a reasonable facsimile and worth your time:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Strain (2014-2017)

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Today I’m taking a bit of a departure from my usual reviews.  Instead, I’m going to review a television series, although one with a cinematic quality and a Hollywood director attached:  The Strain (2014-2017).

The Strain is about a group of creatures that resemble a zombie-vampire hybrid called the strigoi (also called “strigs” and “munchers” in the show).  These creatures are filled with parasitic worms that they pass onto their victims.  Even one worm will multiply rapidly inside a host body, although the full transformation into a strigoi takes a few days.

The strigoi in the show are under the control of The Master, an ancient, powerful strigoi who has almost limitless power over his minions:  he can see through their eyes; he can speak through their mouths; he can command them to attack (or not to do so); and he can give some strigoi greater or lesser degrees of autonomy and/or their original personalities.  The Master can also transfer himself (in the form of a red parasitic worm among thousands of white ones) to other bodies, and can give humans “The White”—a white substance that, in the right doses, grants humans incredibly renewed health and an extended lifespan.

There are strigoi not under The Master’s control, but the show never clearly explains why.  One strigoi, The Born, is the vengeful offspring of The Master and a human.  There are also The Ancients, a set of which reside in New York City (the “New World Ancients”), and a set that reside in the Old World.  The New World Ancients are portrayed as vampiric husks, existing in a state of stasis and complacency.  All of these strigoi are at odds with The Master.

A plucky band of humans, led by the elderly Jewish pawnbroker Abraham Setrakian, also fight against The Master, to degrees that grow increasingly desperate as the show progresses and their numbers dwindle.  Setrakian is a Holocaust survivor, and his archnemesis is Thomas Eichhorst, the chief lieutenant of The Master.  Eichhorst was the commander of the concentration camp where Setrakian was held captive, and the two share a lethal bond that, I would argue, is the best part of the show.  The decades-long duel between them is fascinating viewing.

So, what of the show itself?  I have mixed feelings about it, to be sure.  Over the course of its four seasons, I found much about the show that I found tedious and boring.  Season 3, particularly, got bogged down in side stories, but the finale almost made the ride worth it.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: 28 Years Later (2025)

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Yours portly and his brother made it to a couple of movies during this most recent trip to Indianapolis.  While we were up in Chicago, we beat the heat with a viewing of 28 Years Later (2025), the third film in a long trilogy spanning back to 2002 with 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007).  Apparently, this third installment lingered in development hell for two decades.

It was well worth the wait.

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