Category Archives: Doc’s Classic Movies Reviewed

Scare Me (2020)

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5 of the October 13

Scare me is a comedy horror film written, directed and starring Josh Ruben, who has also directed Werewolves Within and Heart Eyes.

I do not remember where I found this film while I was compiling my possible list of the October 13 this year, but I am truly pleased that Scare Me made it. Comedy-horror is difficult to do. There are way more examples of films that try it and fail than those that are successful. Josh Ruben appears to be someone who can find that perfect mix between the genres.

Fred (Josh Ruben) rented a cabin in the Catskills with hopes of doing some writing. Fred meets Fanny (Aya Cash), who had written one of the best horror novels of all time. During a power outage, Fanny comes over to Fred’s cabin and the two of them take turns telling stories, trying to scare each other.

This was really great. It was so funny and still provided that creepy feel that you didn’t know what was next. Josh Ruben and Aya Cash worked well together, creating some compelling stories to present to each other.

Chris Redd joined in on the fun for a short while as Carlo the pizza delivery guy.

The film uses a ton of references from other horror movies including Jaws, The Shining, Misery, and Poltergeist. The movie clearly has a love for horror films and the manner in which they are created, while also messing with the tropes of the genre.

I watched Scare Me on Amazon Prime, specifically with Shudder. It was an excellent time, blending humor and horror perfectly.

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

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4 of the October 13

There was a movie from 1959 called House on Haunted Hill, that starred Vincent Price. It was a fun time as five people were challenged to stay the night in a haunted house for $10,000.

Well, in 1999, the fee goes up.

It was $1,000,000 dollars in the 1999 remake, and it was at an old abandoned insane asylum.

And I would not classify this one as “fun.”

The film included  Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan as those poor souls trying to survive the night. That’s a decent cast list of actors, but the writing was anything but good, and character development was lacking even more.

Some of the special effects were bad, although it was 1999, so you have to take that into consideration. Of course, 1999 had the Sixth Sense come out and those effects were much better.

This was nowhere near as good of a movie as the Vincent Price version, and it was the first poor movie in the October 13 for this year.

The Devil on Trial (2023)

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2 of The October 13

A first for the October 13, a documentary.

Netflix’s documentary The Devil on Trial featured the supposed demonic possession of 11-year old David Glatzel. This was a case taken up by Ed and Lorraine Warren. During the exorcism, Arne Cheyenne Johnson reportedly challenged the demon, which everyone took as a bad thing.

Then, Arne Cheyenne Johnson killed his friend with a knife, and his trial was the famous “The Devil Made Me Do It” case. The judge would not allow that defense, but the doc presented that case.

I will say though that this doc was very balanced, because one of David’s brothers, Carl, provided an other side of the story. He came out and told a story about his father coming into the room, slapping David after he had been cursing at his mother, and David went and sat down. His manner of telling the events was definitely calm and convincing.

He also mentioned the belief that their mother was giving her kids and husband Sominex in their food. Again, he was very believable in the way he presented the details.

The doc presented both sides of the Warrens. The side where they have helped a lot of people and another side where they were in it to make money. I like the Warrens, but you have to wonder about their motives.

I did enjoy the doc, especially since it did not push one side or the other.

Final Destination (2000)

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1 of The October 13

The first film of The October 13 for 2025 is the first Final Destination, a movie that I had never had any interest in seeing until this past year. That was when I went to see Final Destination: Bloodlines, which was just fabulous. So I figured that I could give the first film of this franchise, which has always had good word of mouth, a chance during The October 13.

I am so glad that I watched this movie, because it was just exceptional.

According to IMDB, “After getting a premonition about a plane crash on his school trip, Alex, a student, saves a few of his classmates. However, their situation gets complicated when death starts chasing them.”

The cast included Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Kristen Cloke, Sean William Scott, Tony Todd, Daniel Roebuck, Roger Guenveur Smith, Chad Donella, and Amanda Detmer.

The film does not dive too deeply into any of the characters as they are basically fodder for death, but part of the fun is to see what is going to happen to them next. I was rooting for Devon Sawa as Alex, as he desperately tried to help the others avoid their fate.

The deaths are over-the-top for sure, but that is part of the charm of these movies. I do think Final Destination: Bloodlines is the better film, but I really did enjoy this movie.

Mr. Deeds (2002)

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I was not sure what I wanted to watch as the final film in the Sandler Saturday, because the last couple had snake-bit me so hard. So I decided on Mr. Deeds.

This one finished up the day with a film that was not as bad as I expected.

According to IMDB, “When small-town pizzeria owner and poet Longfellow Deeds inherits $40 billion from his deceased uncle, he quickly begins rolling in a different kind of dough. Moving to the big city, he is besieged by opportunists all gunning for their piece of the pie. Babe, a television tabloid reporter, poses as an innocent small-town girl to do an exposé on Deeds, but his sincere naiveté has Babe falling in love with him instead. Ultimately, Deeds comes to find that money truly has the power to change things, but it doesn’t necessarily need to change him.”

The big difference between this movie and some of the others that I have watched today is that Adam Sandler’s character Longfellow Deeds was a sweet, kind hearted guy. He was not the obnoxious crude a-hole of some of the other characters in Sandler’s oeuvre. That was a nice little switch. He was still just playing himself, but without the misbehavior. Deeds went around helping everyone and he was a beloved individual in the small town where he lived. He was not a foul mouthed a-hole who had to learn a lesson.

This was a remake of the Frank Capra classic “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” which is a movie that I have not seen before so I did not feel the difference. I am afraid that if I see the Capra version, I would see the excessive problems of this film.

I did not recognize Winona Ryder as Babe Bennett, the reporter who pretends to be a school nurse to get close to Deeds. What is up with John McEnroe in these Adam Sandler movies? Were they friends of some sort?

I was happier with this non-offensive film finishing up the Sandler Saturday. At least I did not hate myself for watching it.

Billy Madison (1995)

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What am I doing to myself?

The early films today had some good stuff, but the deeper I got into these films, the more I realized that my initial thoughts were pretty accurate.

Billy Madison followed Jack and Jill on the Sandler Saturday and, again, ten minutes into the film and I was ready for it to be over.

According to IMDB, “Billy Madison is a 27 year-old man whose father Brian is the head of a major hotel chain. Even though he is groomed to replace his father who is about to retire, Billy is extremely immature and unmotivated in life. When Brian considers making Eric Gordon (whom Billy despises) his new replacement, Billy decides to prove to his father that he is capable of taking over. He must repeat grade school all over again (2 weeks for each grade) in order to take over the hotel empire. The further Billy progresses, the more Eric tries to derail Billy.”

Billy Madison is one of the least likable characters I have seen today. To be fair, he does improve over the course of the movie as he is working with the other kids in the different grade levels.

At one point in this movie, someone says, “Everyone in this room is dumber for listening to that.” I knew exactly how that that felt.

There is so much insanity in this film. So many things that just did not make sense. The conclusion of the film with the big competition was so ridiculous.

Steve Buscemi is definitely the standout for the minute and a half he is on screen.

Jack and Jill (2011)

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I was dreading this one. But any kind of Sandler Saturday would not be complete without the infamous Jack and Jill. I had heard that this was a bad movie.

I had no idea.

Jack and jill is one of the worst movies ever made.

Adam Sandler played twins. Jack and Jill. This is one of the most obnoxious films I have ever seen.

Sophomoric. Diarrhea jokes, which are always my favorites. It is borderline racist, among others.

Somehow Al Pacino decided this was a good career move. There were other well known celebrities in the film and I can not figure out why.

This goes on my worst movie list of all time with Movie 43, Batman and Robin, Holmes and Watson, Transformers: The First Knight etc.

I don’t know if YUCK is strong enough for this monstrosity. I’ll pull out the original…

Murder Mystery (2019)

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After the bad taste The Waterboy left in my mouth, I tried to find something for the Sandler Saturday that might not be as awful as that one. I pulled up Netflix and put Murder Mystery on next.

According to IMDB, “When an NYC cop (Adam Sandler) finally takes his wife (Jennifer Aniston) on a long promised European trip, a chance meeting on the flight gets them invited to an intimate family gathering on the Super Yacht of elderly billionaire Malcolm Quince. When Quince is murdered, they become the prime suspects in a modern day whodunit.”

So, this movie had the benefit of matching up Sandler with Jennifer Aniston, who is very charismatic in this movie. Sandler was also at a more restrained level with his performances. This film did not have him so over the top as he is in many other films. He is playing a character here instead of just being Adam Sandler and that seems to always be a key.

Unfortunately, the story of the murder case is desperately messy and filled with clichés. The concept was fun, if not realistic, but there was just too much going on with the other characters and the answer to the mystery was not the powerhouse reveal that it should have been. The film ended in a silly car chase.

I would say that Murder Mystery is a watchable movie on Netflix that is not offensive. I would say it is a mediocre film that has a couple of appealing leads.

The Waterboy (1998)

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Well, it was nice while it lasted.

After two enjoyable movies in the Sandler Saturday, the streak is over as I watched The Waterboy and I was ready for it to be over ten minutes into the film.

Adam Sandler played Bobby Boucher, a waterboy who was constantly being abused and picked on by the coach (Jerry Reed) and other players. When the coach fired him, Bobby went looking for another waterboy position. When he joined the South-Central Louisiana State University Mud Dogs, coached by Coach Klein (Henry Winkler), he discovered that the years of being abused allowed him to direct his anger into tackling people. This led Klein to offer Bobby a place as a linebacker on the team.

There is a solid cast in the film including Oscar winner Kathy Bates, Henry Winkler, Fairuza Balk, Jerry Reed, Lawrence Gilliard Jr., Paul Wight, Blake Clark, and Rob Schneider. There are a bunch of cameos too including Bill Cowher, Jimmy Johnson, Brent Musburger, Dan Patrick, Lynn Swann, Lawrence Taylor, Lee Corso, Chris Fowler and Dan Fouts.

This was so stupid. I was so ready for this to be done. I did not like the character of Bobby and I thought everyone around him was so mean and rotten that it made things hard to watch. None of it was funny. It was also sadly predictable.

The football game at the end had some giggles to it, but it was way too late to save this.

I have put this one out of the way. It is a crapfest.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

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We’re off to a great start, this Sandler Saturday.

I would definitely say that Punch-Drunk Love is not an Adam Sandler movie. He stars in the film, but it is an Adam Sandler movie the same way Uncut Gems is an Adam Sandler movie. Uncut Gems was a Safdie Brothers and Punch-Drunk Love was a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

According to IMDB, “Barry Egan hates himself and hates his life. The only male among eight siblings, Barry is treated poorly by his overbearing sisters. Despite owning his own business, he has gotten nowhere in life largely because of his insecurities. He leads a solitary life, which allows him to hide his violent outbursts that occur when he’s frustrated. His solitude however allows him to think, he stumbling upon a scheme to travel the world on a pittance, travel which he has never done. Concurrently, he meets two people who pull him in two different directions. The first is Lena Leonard, a friend of his sister Elizabeth. Barry is slow to realize that Lena is attracted to him, he making her make all the first moves. Lena is eventually able to get Barry out of his shell, she who sticks around despite his obvious problems. His burgeoning relationship and thus new life with Lena is threatened by the second, “Georgia”, who he contacted in an effort to alleviate his loneliness. Georgia and her “band of brothers” do whatever they can get get out of Barry what they want, no matter the price to Barry.“

Adam Sandler is really good in this movie. Again, he is playing a character and it is a character considerably deeper than most characters he plays. Barry is a socially awkward, lonely man who has a horrible self-image. He is extremely compelling during the film even when he is doing some of the strange things that he does. You can see how much talent Adam Sandler actually has as an actor.

The film is very much a PTA film, weird, strange and fairly chaotic. There are many surreal elements to the movie that work well within the context of the film.

I loved the relationship between Barry and Lena (Emily Watson). It was sweet and original. I liked how it did not go the way I expected.

We are 2 for 2 so far.

Happy Gilmore (1996)

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I kicked off the Sandler Saturday special event her at EYG with Happy Gilmore. This idea came about because I noticed that, though I have said that I hated Adam Sandler movies, that I really haven’t seen very many of them. So I planned a day to binge as many Adam Sandler movies that I could stomach.

Happy Gilmore was the first of the films and I have to say, I kind of liked it.

I know… I’m surprised too.

Of course, I had seen the infamous scene with the Bob Barker fight. It is easily the most famous fake celebrity fight in movie history.

All of the things that I have hated about Adam Sandler movies in the past were in Happy Gilmore, but it felt to me as if they were kept in check. The traits that I have hated in Grown Ups 2 or Pixels were not as annoying as they were there. Perhaps cause it felt like Happy Gilmore was a real character and not just the same Adam Sandler-type that I have seen him play over and over. Maybe if I had seen this at the end of today it would stand out more. But as the first film in the Sandler Saturday, Happy Gilmore was better than I thought.

That does not mean that there aren’t stupid things that would never happen. The whole ending bit with the tower or the Volkswagen hitting him on the golf course are ridiculous, but, for whatever reason, they worked here. I can suspend disbelief for certain things.

So we are off to an unexpectedly good start for the Sandler Saturday.

Absolution

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June 30

We have arrived at the final day for the June Swoon 4: Two Day. The final movie for the 2024 films (“It’s Then, Now”) is a Liam Neeson film called Absolution that I watched on Hulu.

A lot of Liam Neeson films are similar over the last few years and they have titles that are anything but distinct. This movie had the same feel to it. The title “Absolution” seemed just as random as many of the other films. It i snot memorable.

However, Absolution does take some different steps in the story to set itself apart from “Retribution,” “The Ice Road,” “The Marksman,” “Cold Pursuit,” “The Commuter” and such.

According to IMDB, “An aging gangster attempts to reconnect with his children and rectify the mistakes in his past, but the criminal underworld won’t loosen their grip willingly.”

This summary from IMDB does not touch upon the seminal fact of the story that made this Liam Neeson performance different than all the others. Since it is not mentioned here, I will avoid spoiling it and say that this one fact really adds to the typical character that Neeson plays.

Neeson’s co-star was Yolanda Ross and she was excellent in her role. I thought the scenes with Neeson and Ross stood out from the rest of the movie and I wish there had been more of this.

I also liked the young actor Terrence Pulliam, who played Dre, Neeson’s estranged grandson. The two of them also had some good scenes that gave Neeson’s character more depth than it would have had. Pullian does not have a ton of dialogue, but he played the scenes well with his facial features and looks.

Some may think that this story was too slow, but I liked the pace of the film. It gave us a chance to get into the character Neeson was playing and connect with the choices he had made and the regrets that were swallowing him.

There was a series of weird scenes with Neeson and his father (Josh Drennan) that seemed to be in a different movie, but these scenes did not derail the film for me.

Absolution was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I did actually like a lot of what was there. It has a 55% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a shockingly low 32% audience score. I think it is much better than that.

The Order

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June 29

The penultimate day of the June Swoon 4 saw me head over to Hulu for a movie listed there called The Order.

The Order was directed by Justin Kurzel and starred Jude Law and Nicolas Hoult in a film dealing with the FBI vs. White Supremacists. This movie is based on the non-fiction novel The Silent Brotherhood: The Chilling Inside Story of America’s Violent, Anti-Government Militia Movement by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt.

According to IMDB, “In 1983, a series of increasingly violent bank robberies, counterfeiting operations and armored car heists frightened communities throughout the Pacific Northwest. As baffled law enforcement agents scrambled for answers, a lone FBI agent (Law), stationed in the sleepy, picturesque town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, came to believe the crimes were not the work of traditional, financially motivated criminals but a group of dangerous domestic terrorists, inspired by a radical, charismatic leader (Hoult), plotting a devastating war against the federal government of the United States.”

I was impressed with the performances of Jude Law and, especially, Nicolas Hoult. Hoult was extremely sinister as leader of the Order, Robert Matthews. Nicolas Hoult lost himself inside this role and delivered a chilling performance. I think this bodes well for Hoult’s soon to be role of Lex Luthor in the upcoming Superman movie in July. Jude Law played well opposite Hoult too.

It is a sad tale that there are people who feel the way these characters do in The Order. I don’t understand why people have to approach others with hate because they have something different about them. Movies like this remind us how far we still have to go.

Babygirl

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June 28

I was going to go to see Babygirl at the end of last year, but something came up that caused me to not go. At that point, I put it on the list for the June Swoon. It was available on HBO Max and today was the day that I finally watched it.

I just did not like this movie.

According to IMDB, “Romy, the head of a large company, accustomed to managing people, becomes the plaything of young intern Samuel. The rules are simple: she obeys all his orders, and he keeps her secret. But the passion that escapes outside the office threatens to destroy them both.”

I want to start out by saying that this is a truly brave performance by Nicole Kidman. What it exposes to her as an actress is a passion for her work and her commitment to the role. The underlying insecurities of Romy had to be difficult to play and she does it with a flourish.

I did not enjoy the story. I found it dull and I was not interested in all the sex scenes that they showed. The scenes were very intense but I just found most of it uncomfortable.

Antonio Banderas was great in his supporting role. Banderas has been a great performer over the last several years as he has found a bunch of great roles and has excelled in them.

Hitpig

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June 27

The June Swoon has been on a bit of a down swing. It happens every year as we go through stretches of movies that are not very good. We’ve been luckier this year than before as we have had some really good films. Then there was Hitpig.

Hitpig was an animated movie from 2024 featuring a strong voice cast with a poor script. The humor is forced, the story is predictable and the dialogue is cringy.

According to IMDB, “Hitpig is a pig hired by humans to bring back their escaped animals. It’s not easy, but it’s a living. His latest hit is Pickles, a naive but vivacious elephant who has escaped the clutches of an evil Vegas showman. Though Hitpig initially sets out to capture the perky pachyderm for big cash, the unlikely pair find themselves on an unexpected adventure criss-crossing the globe that brings out the best in both of them. Set in a futuristic cyberpunk world, Hitpig proves sometimes what we want isn’t what we need. From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Berkeley Breathed’s wild imagination comes an adventure about learning that sometimes what we want isn’t what we need“

The voice cast was stacked. The cast included Jason Sudeikis, Lilly Singh, Flavor Flav, Rainn Wilson, RuPaul, Anitta, Andy Serkis, Hannah Gadsby, Lorraine Ashbourne, and Charlie Adler.

The animation is good and the colors and character designs are well done. Little kids probably will enjoy the bombastic nature of the story and will be distracted by the look. Unfortunately, I need more in an animated movie than this offers.