Category Archives: Doc’s Classic Movies Reviewed

In a Violent Nature

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June 20

In a Violent Nature is a film that I have had on my queue on Amazon Prime for quite a while. I remember seeing it playing at Cinemark, but never getting around to go to it. I also had it on a list of possible horror movies for last year’s October 13 watch, but it did not make the cut. I finally watched the slasher film for the June Swoon, and I tell you what, I was entertained.

According to IMDB, “When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 70-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it.“

This movie was really brutal and bloody, with Johnny, played by Ry Barrett, marching through the woods in pursuit of these dumb individuals who took the locket. He found some horrific brutality to murder them as he tried to reclaim his property.

I mean… all he wanted was his locket back. These kids were basically grave robbers. You can’t blame poor Johnny for wanting to bend someone’s head through their torso.

The film is intentionally trying to keep you uneasy as much of the dialogue from the kids were off screen, and we spent most of the film from Johnny’s POV. That meant there was a ton of trudging through the woods. That is obviously meant to be unsettling as was most of the sound design of the picture. You get to a point where you are desperate for some of the sound cues to end.

The film’s pacing is very slow, again on purpose. It really does take the subgenre of slasher films in a direction that it has not gone before. I can see people not being a fan of this because of the pacing and the feel that the creators of the film were going for. Still, I found it to be entertaining and one of the better, more original slasher films we have had in awhile. In a Violent Nature was worth the long wait to finally see it.

Black Barbie: A Documentary

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June 19

It is Juneteenth and, for the June Swoon today, I am watching a documentary that debuted on June 19th last year on Netflix. It had been at SXSW film festival in 2023. Lagueria Davis is the writer/director of Black Barbie: A Documentary.

The documentary looked at the creation of and the history of the black doll and how the process of Black Barbie came to be.

According to IMDB, “Love her or hate her, almost everyone has a Barbie story. Even if they don’t have a story, there’s a story as to why they don’t have a story. In this film, we tell the story behind the first Black Barbie, because yes, she has a story too. It started with the filmmaker’s 83-year old aunt, Beulah Mae Mitchell and a seemingly simple question, ‘Why not make a Barbie that looks like me?‘”

Where as it seems like a trivial concept, the importance of black dolls, specifically Barbie, have upon the self-image and self-esteem of young black girls. Some of the most powerful comments of the film indicate how the young black girls would see themselves as ugly because of the color of their skin.

It is one more example of how important it is for play for children. How important it is for the people in the doc to have a doll that resembled them, and not just Barbie with brown skin.

The Last Showgirl

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June 18

Hulu was the destination this morning for today’s June Swoon entry, the independent film The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson.

Pamela Anderson was most well known for her role on the television show Baywatch, a role which she parlayed into an infamous lifestyle and career. Whether fairly or not, Anderson was perceived in a manner that may not have been too positive.

However, Pamela Anderson completely dominated this role in The Last Showgirl, bringing an energy and an emotion that she has never shown before. She was a revelation.

According to IMDB, “When the glittering Las Vegas revue she has headlined for decades announces it will soon close, glamorous showgirl Shelly sets out to plan her next act. Reconciling the decisions she’s made and the community she has built, Shelly decides to repair her complicated relationship with her daughter.”

I kind of get the same kind of feeling with this movie that I had with The Wrestler. Performer, getting old, and desperately hoping to hold on to what they know best. Anderson’s character, Shelly, is less miserable than Randy “The Ram” Robinson, but she definitely has parts of her life that she looks back upon with regret.

The film has a solid cast around Pamela Anderson, including Dave Bautista, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Billie Lourd, and Jason Schwartzman.

Pamela Anderson proved that she was more than just her red bathing suit. She was compelling, passionate, emotionally-charged and carried this movie completely. She showed that she was more than what people gave her credit for back int he Baywatch days. She is an actor.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

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I have started season 10 of The X-Files, with just 15 more episodes to complete my rewatch of the whole series. I have been working on this on and off since late 2023. With the end in sight, I thought it would be a good choice to go ahead an rewatch the second of the X-Files movies that came out in 2008, The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

According to IMDB, “Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) worked at the F.B.I. as partners, a bond between them that led to them becoming lovers. But now they’re out of the F.B.I. and have begun new careers. Scully works as a staff physician at a Catholic hospital. Her focus these days is on a young boy with an incurable brain disease. Administration wants to give up on him. Scully, who feels a special bond with the boy, does not. Meanwhile, Mulder’s focus is on clipping newspaper articles, throwing pencils into his ceiling and writing about the paranormal. Scully and Mulder are brought together as partners again when a special case requires Mulder’s expertise, and Scully is prevailed upon to convince him to help. The case involves a pedophile priest who claims he is having psychic visions regarding the whereabouts of a missing F.B.I. Agent.”

First off, I love the characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. They are some of my all-time favorite TV characters. They are a major selling point for this movie, especially since I am right in continuity of the TV rewatch to where this film would take place. Seeing David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson together once again would improve any movie.

It just does seem that this movie does need that improving. The story in this film is fairly ugly and has moments where it is just not easy to follow. It is convoluted and turns into the weirdest “Frankenstein” type film, seemingly from out of nowhere. The secondary plot of the boy with the disease that Dr. Scully is trying to help despite the administration at the hospital that she works is too medical TV show for a movie like this.

Father Joe (Billy Connolly) is a bizarre choice in many ways, but I do enjoy the conflict that he throws into the mix. As a possible psychic seeing flashes of the kidnapping, that is questionable enough, but when it was revealed that he was a pedophile as well, it was a rough choice. The character is still kind of set up to be the heroic one, which did not go well for Scully and, I would guess, most of the audience. Billy Connolly is an awesome actor though and this was a solid performance.

I do wish this story had a little more construction to it, because what they gave us seemed too strung together without enough connective tissue. Still, I did enjoy seeing my two favorites back together in a movie that would be basically a “monster-of-the-week” structure from the show.

Ultraman: Rising

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June 17

The June Swoon film today sees us head back to animation for a fun tryst into the world of the classic superhero character of Ultraman. Ultraman: Rising brings the character back into the present world of Kaiju fighting and worldwide threats.

The original series of Ultraman debuted in 1966 and there have been many versions of the hero over the decades. This co-production between Tsuburaya Productions, who owns the franchise, and Netflix Animation looks to reintroduce the hero to the world. And with this film, they have done a wonderful job of it.

According to IMDB, “Ken Sato, a superstar baseball player who returns to Japan to become the latest hero to carry the mantle of Ultraman. His plans go awry, however, when he is compelled to raise a newborn kaiju monster the offspring of his greatest enemy as his own child. Sato will also have to contend with his relationship with his estranged father and the schemes of the Kaiju Defense Force.“

Tying this new hero Ken Sato to Japanese baseball is a excellent idea. Shohei Ohtani is a huge draw among the MLB baseball stars worldwide and having Ken Sato in that vein should help connect this to other fans around the globe.

The designs of the characters are great, as they are all awesome to look at and engage the creativity of the viewers’ imaginations.

The CGI/animation works very well too. There is the feel of old school Japanese monster flicks as well as the current day look of a big budget animated movie. The colors are flashy and entertaining.

The story does more than the typical fighting Kaiju story as it wraps itself around the idea of fatherhood and the relationship between father and sibling, both with Ken and his father, but also Ken and Emmy, the baby Kaiju that Ultraman rescues. This is a universal theme to which everyone could relate.

The villains of the KDF are a little underdeveloped. There are some interesting things going on with the KDF, but it is really basic and surface level. There are some deeper ideas available had the film chose to develop them.

Overall, I thought Ultraman: Rising was really solid. I enjoyed the superhero action and they developed the character of Ken Sato very well. This is a fun film on Netflix.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

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June 16

The world of Middle Earth can hold many stories, both before and after the well known Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy. The world of animation seems to fit perfectly among the setting. Unfortunately, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim does not take advantage of the medium to the point that it could’ve.

According to IMDB, “Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films, it tells the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan. A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless lord of Rohan, with dubious ancestry, having many ties to Dunland, he seeks vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg-a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep. Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Héra, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction.”

This movie is okay, but it could have been so much more. The story of Héra is one that we have seen dozens of times. Filled with cliches, there are no really good character moments or story bits. The battles are the best part of the film, but they do not hold the same oomph that they could have because these characters are not deep and do not make you invested in their story.

The animation is, at best, average. Some background scenes look good, but much of the actual character animation looked choppy and, at times, cheap. They tried to cover some animation with snow and other imagery, but it did not work.

The relationship between Héra and Wulf was touched upon, but it was not developed to an extent that I believed the eventual response. Perhaps I can see Wulf’s anger toward Helm Hammerhand, but his all-consuming hatred is unexplained. He comes off as just a one-dimensional villain.

The film is way too long too. At two hour and fourteen minutes, it way exceeds what an animated film, even an animated epic as this intended to be, should be. Still, this is not the worst film I’ve seen. It just could have been so much better.

The Brutalist

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June 15

This is probably the biggest film during the June Swoon this year. The Brutalist is a multiple Academy Award winning epic film. It is a massive three and a half hour long with an intermission in the middle, even on HBO Max.

Adrian Brody won his second Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect who immigrated to the United States after surviving a concentration camp during the Holocaust. László meets industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, played by Guy Pierce, who also received an Academy Award nomination for the role. He became László’s client, hiring him to design a project in honor of his dead mother.

Felicity Jones was another cast member to receive an Academy Award nomination for her role as Erzsébet Tóth, László’s wife, a journalist and a survivor of Dachau. These three performances were the backbone of the movie.

The look of the movie was amazing. The shots of the film was both wonderful and painful. There was a lot of dread in the shots. The music made this movie even more special, compelling the story to move in such a major way. Both the cinematography and the score were award Academy Award wins.

The second half of the movie does go off the tracks a bit, but that feels like it was destined to do so after such a brilliant first act. Some of the resolution of the ending seemed unsatisfying after such a commitment to the film. Without spoiling what happened, it felt as if it came out of nowhere. Still, there are some powerful ideas happening within the film.

I do think this is easily a film built on the performances, as well as the technical aspects. These are standout sections of The Brutalist.

Queer

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June 14

I do love Daniel Craig. I think his Bond may be my favorite of all-time. I love Benoit Blanc from the Knives Out franchise. He is just a tremendous performer.

I do think he is the best part of Queer, the movie I watched for the June Swoon today. He received a Golden Globe nomination for the role.

Unfortunately, I just did could not get into Queer, despite the topline performance of its lead.

According to IMDB, “William Lee, an American expat and heroin addict in Mexico City, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community he lives in. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, an expat former soldier, makes him believe it might finally be possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.“

Part of the issue was that this felt too stream-of-consciousness-y to me. It is designed, at times, as a dreamlike film with an abstract story. As in some independent movies, the plot is not important, and that does feel like what Queer is. It is a character piece, and that is fine, but I just did not engage in the film.

Daniel Craig is great, as is his co-star Drew Starkey. I just lost interest in the film early and it never got me back.

Small Things Like These

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June 13

Today’s entry in the June Swoon is a historical drama that was available on Hulu entitled Small Things Like These, starring Cillian Murphy, hot off his Oscar win for Oppenheimer.

According to IMDB, “In 1985 devoted father Bill Furlong discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers shocking truths of his own.”

Cillian Murphy has placed himself square in the upper echelon of actors working today and this is one more outstanding and very subtle and sublime performance.

The movie deals with the concept of the Magdalene laundries, which according to Wikipedia, “were institutions usually run by Roman Catholic orders” which were “run ostensibly to house ‘fallen women’, an estimated 30,000 of whom were confined in these institutions in Ireland.”

“In 1993, unmarked graves of 155 women were uncovered in the convent grounds of one of the laundries. This led to media revelations about the operations of the secretive institutions.“

This was a bit of history that I did not know about and it was a truly harrowing tale. Cillian Murphy is remarkable with the backdrop of this history in the foreground of this movie. There are flashbacks used to Murphy’s character’s, Bill, childhood.

This is a small film but it carried a strong message about a terrible time in the world, including the potential questions that this could raise about religion and belief in such.

Caddo Lake

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June 12

HBO Max is the home for this sci-fi/thriller called Caddo Lake. I had no real idea what this movie was about, but I was intrigued by the synopsis I read on HBO Max. It read: “When eight-year-old Anna vanishes, her family’s broken history is forever altered by a series of past deaths and disappearances.“

I did not expect what we wound up getting from this film.

It would be difficult to go into much detail on this without spoiling it, so I am going to just touch on some things. In fact, the biggest reason this is a compelling story is a huge spoiler, so this may be a bit of a thin review. I will say that I really liked that bit that I can’t talk about without spoiling it. It was extremely well done, in my opinion.

Dylan O’Brien leads the cast that included Eliza Scanlen, Lauren Ambrose, Eric Lange, Dave Maldonado, Caroline Falk, Diana Hopper, and Sam Hennings.

The story truly grips you immediately and you want to know what was going on. My first thought of what was happening was completely wrong and I wonder if they did a specific scene with a dead alligator for a reason, as a bit of a red herring.

I recommend you go into this movie without a lot of details and enjoy the ride it takes you on. I do believe that it will be worth it. Pay attention though.

My Dead Friend Zoe

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June 11

The film for today on the June Swoon is film I saw on Fandango called My Dead Friend Zoe. It was a film that I had never heard of before, but the timing fit for today so I gave it a chance.

The film deals with grief, loss, PTSD and the military as well as the challenges of a family dynamic between people who struggle to relate.

According to IMDB, “MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE is a dark comedy drama that follows the journey of Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), a U.S. Army Afghanistan veteran who is at odds with her family thanks to the presence of Zoe (Natalie Morales), her dead best friend from the Army. Despite the persistence of her VA group counselor (Morgan Freeman), the tough love of her mother (Gloria Reuben) and the levity of an unexpected love interest, Merit’s cozy-dysfunctional friendship with Zoe keeps the duo insulated from the world. That is until Merit’s estranged grandfather (Ed Harris) — holed up at the family’s ancestral lake house — begins to lose his way and needs the one thing he refuses… help. At its core, this is a buddy film about a complicated friendship, a divided family, and the complex ways in which we process grief.“

This is a very deep character study about life after loss and how individuals need help getting through the pain of life and loss. There is a bit of a twist at the end of the movie that recontextualizes the idea of the story, but the fact is that it is still dealing with the loss of an important person in your life.

There are strong performances in the film, especially that of Sonequa Martin-Green and Ed Harris. Two veterans, both with their own pain from loss, trying to get through their lives. Morgan Freeman is always a great addition to a cast, even if he may not have as much to do in this one.

My Dead Friend Zoe may be a touch long, but the character study of Merit, in particular, is full of important little steps and that is a realistic tale. This was based on a true story and it was a very powerful film that lets you think about other people in a different light.

28 Weeks Later (2007)

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Preparing for 20 Years Later which will be released later in the month of June, I wanted to rewatch the first two films of the franchise. I was up to 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later.

28 Weeks Later was different than the first film, but it was still very intense and anxiety-filled. The second film listed Danny Boyle and Alex Garland as producers, but the direction was done by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

Then, 28 Days Later featured a cast with not very many big stars, where as 28 Weeks Later would be considered an all-star cast. The cast of 28 Weeks Later included Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Robert Carlyle, Harold Perrineau, Rose Byrne, Imogene Poots, Catherine McCormack, Amanda Walker, and Mackintosh Muggleton.

According to IMDB, “Almost six months after London was decimated by the unstoppable Rage Virus in 28 Days Later (2002), the U.S. Army has restored peace and repopulated the quarantined city. However, the deadly epidemic reawakens when an unsuspecting carrier of the highly transmittable pathogen enters the dead capital with the first wave of returning refugees. This time, the horrible virus is more dangerous than ever. Has the next nightmare begun?“

This was a solid sequel to the first film and this brought a serious vibe to it. The desperate struggle to survive was even more in effect here as our protagonists faced so many more obstacles than just the return of the “Rage” virus. The military brought yet another level of threat to our characters.

Robert Carlyle, who played Rumpelstiltskin in Once Upon A Time, is amazing in this film. He kicked things off making a choice that gives us a glance at his character, but you can understand where he was coming from. It did not make him look any better even if you do understand. I loved Jeremy Renner in this movie, even if I had a hard time thinking about him as anyone other than Hawkeye.

There were some scenes that really stretched credibility here. These scenes add tension to the story, even if they are unbelievably unlikely to actually happen.

I do believe the first film was a tighter story and the second one is a little messier. Some of the scenes of the infected attacking others remind me of scenes when Killer Bob would attack someone on Twin Peaks Still, the shots did feel more artistic than just gory.

I do not expect any connection between these two films and 28 Years Later, outside of the “Rage” virus because of the length of time. I am still pleased that I was able to watch these two films before 28 Years Later comes out.

28 Days Later (2002)

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Later this month, 28 Years Later will be released in theaters. The trailers to that movie look sensational so I decided to look back on the previous two films in the franchise both of which I have only seen once before. First up was 28 Days Later.

Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, 28 Days Later sets up the world as we see a group of animal right activists free a group of monkeys that, according to the scientists, had been infected with the “Rage” virus. The activists ignored the warnings and immediately discovered that they had made a serious error. The virus spread across Great Britain leading to the collapse of society.

Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bicycle courier who had been involved in an accident prior to the outbreak, awoke from a coma to find the world a much different and more violent place. London seemed deserted as Jim walks through the city in search of anyone.

This beginning reminded me of the beginning of the Walking Dead, with Rick awakening in a deserted hospital only to find the world had changed while he was unconscious. Obviously Robert Kirkman took inspiration from this movie for the idea for the comic book.

Cillian Murphy was excellent as the desperate Jim, struggling to survive in this savage world. Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Alex Palmer, Toby Sedgwick, Brendan Gleeson, Noah Huntley, Christopher Dunne, and Megan Burns filled out the cast of the film.

The tension built through the film and, as we see in many of these films, the theme of man being the real monster comes through strong in this. The second half of the movie was as nerve-wracking as you are going to find.

Despite the horrendous world around them, the film ends with a great message of hope.

Next up… 28 Weeks Later!

Y2K

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June 10

What did I do?

On HBO Max, I was looking at my watchlist and I chose to watch Y2K for today’s June Swoon.

As the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said…

“He chose poorly.”

Y2K is a movie. I regretted picking this movie five minutes into it.

According to IMDB, “Two high-school nobodies make the decision to crash a Y2K party. The night becomes even crazier than they could have ever dreamed when the clock strikes midnight.“

I do like Jaeden Martell (It) and Rachel Zegler (West Side Story and Snow White). They are so much better than this garbage.

You know that you are in trouble when the best moment of the film is Fred Durst singing George Michael’s “Faith.” Yeah, that happened.

I don’t want to waste any more time on this. What a terrible movie.

Love Lies Bleeding

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June 9

Today’s movie from the June Swoon is on HBO Max and it starred Kristin Stewart.

The film, a dark, erotic crime thriller, is directed by Rose Glass. There are some great scenes of violence and erotica in this movie. The acting is top notch and the shocks are all over the place.

According to IMDB, “Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.”

It started following the relationship between Lou and Jackie as Jackie prepared for a bodybuilding contest. When Lou’s sister ended up in the hospital at the hands of her husband JJ (Dave Franco), Jackie took her own ‘roided-up rage out on him. This forced Lou into a position to try and help her love.

As the film progressed from this love story into a crime thriller, Lou’s criminal father Lou Sr (Ed Harris) got involved, trying to pit Jackie and Lou against each other.

The third act went way off the charts as something very bizarre took place that made you look differently at this film than any other one. It is hard to speak about it without spoilers so lets just say that I think it might be metaphoric at the end.

That final scene or two really threw off my thoughts about this film. It felt like something that was tense and real made, dare I say, silly.

Kristin Stewart was great as Lou. She seems like she has always had great performances since Twilight ended. Ed Harris brings some menace to the film too.

Not sure what happened at the end and why it went this way. Still, most of this movie was strong and the end did not completely waste that good will.