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Ouch Television My Brain Hurts! (1996)
Watching internet humor being born
Though arriving in the earliest days of the internet, this is a pre internet artifact; a collection of video clips and absurdities gathered from television onto VCR and spliced into a feature length collage. It presages the internet culture that would form around easy access to mass pop culture without being part of it; and the bizarre meta humor of the internet a decade later is on full display, if in an awkward, half formed version. You can see what is to come, but it isn't quite there yet - not quite as fast, not quite sure what will stick, still very homemade and personal.
Watch to see a new (if now itself outdated) approach to culture forming right before your eyes; using tech and sources becoming eclipsed even in the period it was made within.
Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea (2023)
Doesn't earn it's ending
For all the time spent spooling out this story; they never actually did the character work necessary to make the ending seem natural, much less inevitable. If the ending is David putting a final cap on the argument that Cliff doesn't understand either what he has or what David is going through; then that is the debate that should have run through the story. It wasn't. What ran through the story was David wanting what Cliff had, not David wanting Cliff to understand his pain and Cliff's privilege. Throwing Cliff out the airlock and pretending to be him to take over his life? That would have been a natural progression of this story. But what actually happened just doesn't have the foundation to support it; and with the run time present it really should have.
No criticism of the actors here; they were great. It was the way the piece chose to spend it's time that let down the ending. The lack of wildness or danger to David, the lack of flashes between Cliff and David that signals the real issue brewing, most of all the lack of time to show how being cut off again effects David.
Terrifier 2 (2022)
A mean, gritty horror with an hour of padding
The first film had a clarity of purpose that stood out - a killer clown pitted against people who wanted to live and mostly fought like they wanted to live, and that's that. This sequel... does not have that clarity. It's padded with scenes of family drama, extended dream sequences, magical phenomenon, unneeded backstory, and lengthy kills whose cruelty and gore test even hardened genre fans. Art remains a solid big bad, and the heroine is top notch; but it would have been a better film at half the run time. This really exists for gore fans looking for something new; but they will find their patience tested as often as their stomachs.
The Ten Commandments (1956)
A tale of tragedy and hubris
Moses refuses the throne that would allow him to free his people; thus leaving them in bondage for years - then he returns to torture the people of Egypt until the man he gave the throne to does what Moses could have done years earlier.
This is a fascinating a well made film, but it is a cruel tale, filled with foolish decisions and dark magic from the lead.
Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021)
An excellent prelude
This is a solid work that sets the stage for more He Man to come, with higher stakes for He Man himself, a credible threat in the newly up powered Skeletor, and a more compelling and built up supporting cast.
In five episodes this series fixes most the problems with the original series (mirroring above - no stakes for the hero, a laughably incompetent villain, cardboard cutout characters) and paves the way for an excellent show; while teasing just enough of He Man and Skeletor to keep the audience salivating for more... and the children of the 80's cry and tantrum over it.
This is clearly the prelude to a show, and a better one than this audience deserves. They might kill it in the crib with this fit they are throwing, but it's unfortunate for both them and the rest of us if the show these episodes build to never arrives. They will only have themselves and their impatience to blame.
Head Count (2018)
Good work let down by an unsatisfying finale
This is largely a good horror movie, with a good buildup, a creepy "monster", a novel approach and a sense of real (if underdeveloped) characters. However, in the end it is let down by lack of time and budget - the ending third just doesn't or can't offer up what is needed for a good payoff. It's creepy, sure - but there is good reason so many people felt let down by the end. For all the buildup of suspense and character the film managed, the final scene neither tied into nor required any of it. If the finale had been the opening stinger for a horror film, it would have worked exactly as well on every level. There is a reference to the characters "making their choice", but in truth nothing that happens stems from the characters or their choices - their fates are not tragic, or ironic, or poetic. For all the buildup and suspense, in the end those characters who are doomed suffer a fate as narratively satisfying as dying in your sleep to a gas leak.
¡Tintorera! (1977)
Free Love, Hungry Shark
Horror always manages to find the secret fears of a generation, and this snapshot of the dying tail of the 70's senses something dangerous in the waters the fashionably hedonistic elite had jumped into - beautiful beaches, frank sex, blue waters, and an all devouring emptiness swimming up from beneath, all teeth and dark eyes.
Three times in this film main characters decide they will enjoy a rational, comfortable, idyllic, liberated and jealousy free relationship, and each time their relationship is torn apart by... well, a big shark. As a metaphor goes it's a bit on the nose, but as a stand in for all the messy jealousies, rivalries, hurts and disease that circle the lifestyle portrayed, a big hungry shark does bring a certain simplicity - it certainly saves on dialogue. The characters may believe they are in paradise, but reality has no such illusions. The disinterest and offhand violence of the characters let's us know all is not right with them, and the world around them reflects these traits back in it's purest form. A hungry fish.
None of this is to say this is a GOOD movie, which it is not by any means. It does, however, capture something greater than the "soft core with a shark" tag indicates... which explains the perhaps otherwise inexplicable fact that people still talk about this film today.
Bikini Bandits (2002)
100% Rubbish
This movie SOUNDS great. Not in any high minded, intellectual fashion, but just as some great cheese to down with your buddies. It has half naked women, guns, Dee Dee Ramone as the pope, Jello Biafara, Maynard as Satan, time travel, fast cars... it sounds brilliant, right?
It is not. This is, without a doubt, the worst film ever made. This is from a man who loved "Jesus Christ - Vampire Hunter". There's no plot, no point, and worst of all, no FUN. The closest thing to a running gag is the joke they pulled on you by getting this thing released. It's clear they had no idea what to do with the film; but they rightly guessed that if they got some cult celebrities together with a bunch of hot women, they could get it released regardless. To fill out the time they throw out a series of unconnected skits, woodenly acted and lacking any conceivable flow. Even the violence/sex this kind of movie falls back on to hide deeper troubles are strictly PG-13 (Baywatch is more graphic than anything here). The (very) few funny moments have nothing to do with the plot at all, but are quick inserts thrown in to pad a movie that had clearly failed even in the eyes of it's director.
The director clearly has an amazing talent; he sold this movie to some amazing guest stars, to whoever funded it, to whoever agreed to release it...but he never had a movie to begin with. People show up on screen, do their bit, and move on presumably under the impression they were going to appear in a movie; but in the end it's just a parade of pointless clips, nothing more. Even having seen it, the pitch sounds good (underground rockers, time traveling bikini bandits, guns and cars, who can go wrong?)... but the movie isn't there. A talent for salesmanship makes you a great car dealer, not a great director.
In closing, Corey Feldman called this film the worst mistake of his life.
Corey. Feldman. Called it the worst mistake of his life.