Category Archives: Doc’s Movie Reviews

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

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Typically, I do not like starting with anything Christmas until after the Thanksgiving holiday. People just keep making the Christmas holiday celebration earlier and earlier.

That includes the movie community as well, as Netflix dropped this musical, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey a few weeks ago. I ignored it for a while, but I saw a very high Rotten Tomatoes score for it, which I had not expected. I know Netflix has been having some great movies this year, so I decided that it would be a good addition to my queue.

Brilliant young girl Journey (Madalen Mills) arrived at her eccentric grandfather’s business with a hope. Her grandfather was Jeronicus Jingle (Forest Whitaker), one of the great inventors of all-time, but an inventor who had lost his way after an old apprentice Gustafson (Keegan-Michael Key) had betrayed him years before, stealing his book of inventions.

Due to the betrayal, Jeronicus had lost the the magic and he had succumb to depression. The special ability that led him to becoming the greatest toymaker in the world deserted him.

Jingle Jangle was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The message of the movie was strong and I liked most of the performances from the actors. The music was good too. I was very much reminded of The Greatest Showman with the music and the choreography of the film, and while I did not like The Greatest Showman overall as a movie, I did think the music was extraordinary.

However, the film did feel too long and it seemed to take forever to get into the heart of the story. I felt as if the film was losing me early and I could see someone claiming that the movie was dull, especially the first half.

To be fair, the second half of the movie picked up the pace considerably and there was a pretty cool scene with Journey and her grandfather’s current apprentice Edison (Kieron L. Dyer) escaping from Gustafson’s factory. There was some early thought while watching this movie that I would fall into the minority of critics who did not like the movie, but the second half of the film did grab my attention considerably more than the first half.

I do believe that this movie would have benefitted from dropping some of the scenes in the film, but Forest Whitaker was wonderful, Keegan-Michael Key makes a solid villain and the young lead Madalen Mills is charming and powerful in her role. No doubt the performances and the music carry this film along.

3.3 stars

Come Play

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At one point, I had considered heading to the theater to see this film. It seemed intriguing and I like a good little horror film. Key word in that phrase though was good, and Come Play does not reach that level of quality.

Oliver (Azhy Robertson) was a little boy with Autism who had been having plenty of troubles at school. Non-verbal, Oliver required the use of a phone to help him communicate. Oliver’s parents, Sarah (Gillian Jacobs) and Marty (John Gallagher Jr.), were having issues in their relationship and battled over the amount of time each other spent with Oliver.

The problems facing Oliver allowed the young boy to be a target of a monster from a nearby dimension that is unable to interact with this world, except through the screens of phones, iPads and TV screens, using the electricity to jump around- being used as doors.

The monster’s name is Larry.

No… really.

And poor Larry was lonely. He just wanted a friend.

Honestly, while there were some parts of the premise of Come Play were decent and had potential to be more, it fails in the execution. There are really dumb things that happen.

Azhy Robertson does a decent job as the main kid, but I did not buy his as Autistic. It felt like the film was using Autism as a way to have the kid isolated. It seemed as if Oliver was only sort of Autistic, kind of a film version of the disorder. He was a likable actor though.

This film also has a strange connection to Spongebob Squarepants. The cartoon seemed to be the one thing that could calm Oliver and the theme of the show was a major piece of the story. Not sure if the producers of the movie had some kind of connection to Spongebob, but it was a weird piece of the movie.

In the end, Come Play had some effective jump scares and a somewhat scary looking monster…Larry, that is… (Larry made me think of Flukeman from X-Files days) but any positives the film may have had were spoiled with the way the plot developed and the choices of the characters. Not even Spongebob could save this movie.

2.4 stars

The Goonies (1985)

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Nostalgia can be a powerful feeling.

I was in the mood to watch the 1985 classic, The Goonies this morning so I had to go searching for it on the streaming services. I finally had to resort to renting it on Vudu… and it was worth every penny.

There is such a magical feel to the great film, where a group of kids find a pirate treasure map and go searching for the “rich stuff” to prevent their homes from being foreclosed upon by the wealthy businessman. During their search, the kids have to avoid the dangerous Fratellis, who are involved in, among other things, a counterfeiting plot.

The film had that 1980s Spielberg magic (as Spielberg wrote and produced the film) with it being directed by Richard Donner.

The Goonies is so successful, in large part, to the wonderful cast of young actors involved in the movie. Sean Astin, Corey Feldman, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Ke Huy Quan, Kerri Green and Martha Plimpton embodied their roles in the film and brought a fantastic group ensemble aura to out heroic protagonists. The Fratellis were cheesy and over-the-top in the perfect way for the villains of this film, bringing personality and a real sense of menace to the plot. Anne Ramsey, Robert Davi and Joe Pantoliano have amazing chemistry with one another, bringing both a comedic element and a sense of dread to the Fratellis.

Then, former football star John Matuszak as the oft-abused Sloth provided the proper addition of heart to the cast, an innocence that surpassed even the Goonies themselves.

While the story may be silly, the combination of these actors really sold the tale they were telling. There was so much heart and youthful energy that The Goonies emanated magic and family feeling. It says that anything can be accomplished with bravery and dedication. Goonies truly never die.

The Outpost

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I was discussing some films with one of my 7th grade literacy students and he brought up The Outpost, from Netflix. It was a film that I had never heard of before and so I thought I would look into it.

He had told me it was a war film that took place in Afghanistan. While I have never been a huge fan of war films, my student raved about the film. Typically, 7th graders’ film opinions do not match up with my own, but the info I found on The Outpost looked intriguing so I decided to place it on my queue.

Tonight, I found the time to watch the film, and he was right. It was a really tense and anxiety-filled film based on a true series of events that show just how devastating and horrific war can be.

The Outpost did not have a distinguished throughline of a narrative for the movie outside of the life in an outpost named Camp Keating, a camp situated in a valley, surrounded by mountains. The Taliban was all around them and made a regular occurrence of shooting at them. The Americans attempted to keep a peace by negotiating (and paying off) local village elders, but the trust between them was sketchy at best.

As we see a continual parade of new leaders at the camp, everyone was on edge. Eventually, the Taliban launched an attack on the camp and the soldiers desperately tried to survive.

While there was a strong cast, the characterization of the men involved was not the main focus of the film. Outside of the powerful performance of Caleb Landry Jones as SPC Ty Carter, many of the soldiers were surface level. The characters were not the main thrust of the film. It is to show the horrors of war and the danger that these men faced every day.

The film does just enough development to make these men relatable and keeps the audience rooting for them.

The action scenes in The Outpost was brutal and realistic. The fear and struggles of the soldiers was patently apparent as they were desperate to keep alive so they could return to their loved ones. While the film did not glorify the gore, it did not hide from it either. The brutality was essential to the story that was being told and each moment of violence had purpose.

Netflix has been having a solid year, which is great considering how down the national theaters have been because of the virus. Netflix has given us two of my top films of the year, Da 5 Bloods and The Trial of the Chicago 7, as well as excellent films as The Old Guard, the animated Over the Moon, Enola Holmes, Extraction, I’m Thinking of Ending Things and the horrifying documentary The Social Dilemma. While this could be considered a tough watch, The Outpost should be added to this successful list of films showing how the streaming service has taken the step to becoming a major player in movies.

4 stars

Let Him Go

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I have not been to a theater for several months. I decided to go out today to see the new Kevin Costner/Diane Lane movie, Let Him Go. So I put on my best mask and headed to Cinemark.

The movie was good. I would not call it great, but it was worth the watch.

After losing their son in a horse riding accident, George (Kevin Costner) and Margaret (Diane Lane) Blackledge discovered that their daughter-in-law Lorna (Kayli Carter), who was now remarried, took their grandson and disappeared with her new husband Donnie (Will Brittain).

Worse yet, it was just after Margaret had witnessed Donnie striking both Lorna and the little boy.

The grandparents went after them, with the idea of bringing their grandson back with them.

The film does a solid job of ratcheting up the intensity of the moments. The film starts slowly, but it builds very efficiently toward the third act, which created a seriously tense situation. The pacing was well done and the initial slow build helped the feel of the seriousness of the situation.

Kevin Costner was good, but we have seen him play this kind of part many other times. However, Diane Lane was the standout of the movie. She brought a power to her performance and was easily the strongest part of the film.

Yet, there was a lack of character development among all the characters, even Costner and Lane, that kept me from completely investing in the emotional stakes that they were facing. I never felt as if I understood the characters well enough to know why they were doing something or how they may react. That led me to question a lot of the motives on display in the film.

Worst of all, the characters in the family known as the Weboy family, which included formerly Oscar nominated Lesley Manville and Jeffrey Donovan, were so one-note that they came off cartoonish much of the time and that was disappointing because I think it could have turned around these character with just a little bit of development. They are definitely menacing and anxiety-creating, but the film could have been so much more compelling with a more developed crew. The acting was certainly there.

We get almost nothing between Lorna and Donnie so we have no understanding for her plight. We can imagine what was there, but the film rarely gives us more than a surface level reason.

Because of that, the strong third act felt as if it was missing something. I was connected because I like Kevin Costner or Diane Lane instead of caring about their characters.

As I said, the third act was very tense and was filled with violence. I believe that this could have been so much more rewarding than it was. Still, there are really good performances for what we had and the third act is definitely anxiety-filled. While I wanted more, Let Him Go was a decent time.

3 stars

The Craft: Legacy

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I am not sure if The Craft: Legacy was a sequel or a reboot or a remake. I’m not sure if the people at Blumhouse know either. It sure feels kind of like a mixture of all three.

I just watched for the first time the original “The Craft” last night as the final film in the 2020 October EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest. I thought it was good, not great. The best part of the film was the four lead characters. That was not as much the case with The Craft: Legacy.

I don’t mean to say that the four ladies leading this movie were bad. Far from it. They just did not stand out. And none of the characters had much of a personality or character development. They were unremarkable.

Lily (Cailee Spaeny) and her mother Helen(Michelle Monaghan) were starting over as Helen was moving them in with her new boyfriend Adam (David Duchovny) and his sons (no Brady Bunch references here). Once there, Lily meets three girls at school, Lourdes (Zoey Luna), Frankie (Gideon Adlon) and Tabby (Lovie Simone). These three girls were in a coven and were hoping to find a fourth. Fate stepped in.

The girls bonded and discovered their power was working well, as they put a spell on high school douchebag Timmy (Nicholas Galitzine) to make him “woke.”

However, problems begin to surface and new father figure Adam started looking like he was not the Mike Brady that he, at first, appeared.

There were some storyline beats in the first half of the movie that could have been developed into something more than time fillers, but that feels like that is all they were. There were some hints about the youngest of Adam’s sons, and there were several 21st century high school drama topics tossed in, but none of them were developed past surface level.

The story the film chose to follow mostly was truly one of the weakest of the bunch and lead to a disappointing and sudden third act that did not feel like it fit with what much of the early part of the movie was setting up.

I will admit that I will always have issues with seeing David Duchovny as anyone other than Agent Fox Mulder. That is my own issue and not the fault of the film. However, it did take me out of what they were trying to do with that character.

Then, the film’s twist at the end came out of nowhere and only seemed to appear in the third act. That is never a good way to drop a major storyline twist. You should always be able to go back on a rewatch and see where the hints for the twist were and how it made other things make sense. This one felt like a simple throwback and had very little weight.

Quite a step down from The Craft, The Craft: Legacy feels like a Disney Channel movie with about that level of depth.

2.35 stars

The Craft (1996)

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The final film that will be considered part of the 2020 October EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest is one that I watched in order to watch a sequel that is currently available from Blumhouse. That film is The Craft: Legacy, which I will watch at some point soon. It is based on a 1996 film called The Craft.

Witches.

One of the staples of Halloween is the witch and this features four young high school girls enraptured with the power of magic and losing the control over their own personal attitudes.

The Craft does not have a great story, as it is really more about the four main female characters and the things they did. The movie does not go into a great deal of effort to tie the narratives together outside of “look how these young girls failed to deal with their newfound power”.

However, the film succeeds on the strength of the four leads. Sarah (Robin Tunney), Nancy (Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell) and Rochelle (Rachel True) were the main reason to watch this movie and they brought the goods. I was thoroughly impressed with each of these young actors, despite the fact that I had only ever heard of one of them. The film is carried on the girls’ backs.

Each character has a solid base of development to them and they each have their own pratfalls and problems. You see them overcome with their powers and the magical ability plays into their high school teen angst. It is about what one would think if you gave high school teens such an amazing power.

I thought the effects were decent and I did not find any CGI that really took me out of the film. It may not be at the level of today, but there was no “Darkman” examples that made me look away.

While this was not a great movie, I enjoyed it enough, mainly because of the four lead actors involved. It was a suitable finale for the Halloween Horror Bingefest for 2020.

Drag Me To Hell (2009)

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After watching Darkman this morning, I coincidentally had lined up on my queue another Sam Raimi movie to continue the October EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest. It was unintentional but it did make a solid double feature. This was Drag me to Hell.

A young bank loan officer Christine (Alison Lohman) rejects an old woman’s request for an extension and evicts her. The woman (Lorna Raver) went crazy and placed a gypsy curse on Christine, a curse that would bring forth a demon that would drag Christine to Hell.

This was a lot of fun and had a lot of the same flavor of the Ash vs. The Evil Dead TV series from a few years ago. I loved that series and this movie certainly feels like a perquisite for that.

There were plenty of sudden gross-out jump scares that worked remarkably well in the movie and, once again, you did not have any questions about who the director of this movie was. It had Sam Raimi’s fingerprints all over it.

Drag Me To Hell is a riot, filled with funny moments and some great scary situations. The film looks great and uses effects that are well used.

Justin Long played Christine’s boyfriend and he does a great job in a supporting role and he plays a huge part in the conclusion of the film.

This is great fun and I would put this up with several of the other Raimi films.

Darkman (1990)

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Here on the final day of October, the EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest will be coming to a close for another year. To start today’s final few films, I pulled out a movie that crosses genres and has, basically, only elements of the horror genre. Still, with Sam Raimi at the helm of the film, I think it works for the bingefest.

The film’s called Darkman, and it’s a horror/action/superhero/crime film starring Liam Neeson in an early action movie for him.

Scientist Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is trying to create a synthetic skin, but he has had only minimal success. The skin failed to maintain itself after so long. Westlake had a happy life with his girlfriend Julie (Frances McDormand). Unfortunately, a group of local gangsters attacked him and left him for dead in his burning lab.

Surviving the assault, Westlake was terribly scarred and his mental state was shattered. Westlake dedicated himself to revenge against those who took his life and devastated it.

This is clearly a Sam Raimi film. There are few directors whose movies are so apparent, who have such obvious tells. It is bombastic, over-the-top and filled with bright colors. Darkman checks all of these boxes.

This movie, which I remember not loving in the theaters, is fine. It is really cheesy, but it a good way. Liam Neeson is overacting like crazy. Sure the dialogue and the story is not great. but you can absolutely see glimpses of what would eventually become Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy in the film Darkman.

In fact, the third act finale really reminds me of the third act of Spider-Man 3. You can see parts that have been recycled from the director.

Sadly, the CGI does not hold up and that makes the scenes involving the CGI (especially during the finale) difficult to watch.

I would say that I did enjoy this more today than I did when I saw it in the theaters, but it is not a great movie. It’s fine.

House of Wax (1953)

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Sticking with classic horror movies, next up on the EYG October Halloween Horror Bingefest is a Vincent Price film called House of Wax.

After his partner burned down his museum, Professor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Prince), who was believed killed in the fire, returned, injured and with a different perspective on the world. The sculptor’s hands were damaged and he was forced to create his wax sculptures through his students.

His wax museum had become darker, featuring death and pain.

Meanwhile, when her friend Cathy (Carolyn Jones, Morticia from the TV show Addams Family) is murdered, Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) discovered the body and found that the killer was still in the room. The killer pursued her and she ran from him.

Vincent Price shows exactly how great he is in this role. He has several layers of this role, requiring him to show different sides to the same man. Price does it exceptionally. You can tell why he was a star of the kind of horror movies during these decades.

Sure it was a sign of the time, but it felt weird as the female characters of the movie were basically just screaming victims. I understand that was part of the time, but I still did not find it entertaining.

The story was pretty simple, but it worked well. Jarrod was as much of a victim in this story as anyone else, but he was able to find some revenge on those who harmed him.

The Mummy (1932)

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Breaking out of the horror/musical genre, I returned to the Universal Monsters bank for the next film in the October EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest with Boris Karloff’s starting role as The Mummy.

After uncovering the mysterious tomb of Egyptian Imhotep (Boris Karloff), the mummy curse seemed to lead to some major problems. With Imhotep returning from the dead, he discovers an old love, Helen (Zita Johann), reincarnated years over and he hatches a plan to return his love to him.

There was less monster involved here than in some of the other Universal Monster films, and the typical appearance of the Mummy, wrapped in the bandages, only appearance once in the film. Still, there was a great deal of tension and nerves built through the film as Imhotep, in the guise of modern Egyptian Ardath Bey, planned his strategy to get her back.

Director Karl Freund created an impressive monster movie without distinct monster. There was a real tragedy surrounding the Imhotep character as his background story was unexpectedly sorrowful.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

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I had thought that I had already done this movie in the Classics section, but I could not find it on my list, so after watching the oddball “so bad it is good” musical Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, this felt like a perfect way to continue the EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest. The film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, starring EYG Hall of Famer Tim Curry as the iconic Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has become a massive smash with its midnight shows and its wonderfully sexual circumstances. It is an iconic film, especially around Halloween time. The engagement with the audience and the crowds in such an interactive manner brought this to a new level in the world of pop culture.

Truly, if you were only judging the film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show would come up short. However, there are so many extra layers and variables to this film, its place in the history of films is set.

Tim Curry’s performance as the alien transsexual Frank-N-Furter is unlike anything that has been seen on the screen and very few, if any, could have delivered the same effort. Curry brings an unmatched level of sensuality and menace as Frank-N-Furter elevates every moment of this movie with his powerful persona.

The music is catchy and provides some of the greatest dance routines in any film dealing with aliens. I know the music, especially the song The Time Warp(as I heard on the Dr. Demento Show), introduced me to the film. I first saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show at one of the midnight shows while I was in college. I had actually bought the soundtrack which included the crowd interactions so I was fully ready to go at the show. Rocky Horror helped inspire the story of Dalton Hill, which is one of my books.

While the movie is not as fun on a smaller screen, the charms and humor still work. This has aged well and may be impossible to recreate (as the failed attempt at a show on NBC showed). The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a stalwart symbol of Halloween.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)

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With just today and tomorrow remaining in October, the EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest is winding down for 2020 and we are pulling out the real big guns… or at least… the big fruit.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was an absurd film from the late 1970s. It is a comedy. It is horror. It is a satire. It is a musical. It has pieces from all kinds of genre.

It is just terrible.

It is one of the worst movies you are going to see.

Still, it is fun watching it, picking out the most ridiculous moments in this film where tomatoes come to life and try killing off the human race.

There are scenes in this that do not feel remotely connected. There was a Hitler joke. A joke Jesus Christ doing a commercial. A meeting of generals in a tiny room. There was a Lois and Clark/Superman joke. None of these fit in with killer tomatoes.

Some of the voice overs are clearly added later. The sound was so off that it made you think they did it on purpose, that it was part of the gag. It did not have a cohesiveness to it.

There is a great theme song to this movie that I enjoyed every time I heard it on Dr. Demento when I was younger.

I shook my head as much as anything else. This has become a B-movie classic because it was so bad. It falls right in line with Birdemic, The Room and Manos: Hands of Fate.

On the Rocks

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I found this movie on Apple + and it appealed to me because…who doesn’t love Bill Murray? So I watched On the Rocks mainly because of the presence of the comedic actor.

I found the film to be a pretty normal and average film that was elevated by Bill Murray. He was so great here and he brought the charm of Bill Murray. He took the On the Rocks film and made it more than what it was going to be before.

Laura (Rashida Jones) is a young mother who has started to believe that her busy husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) was starting to ignore her. Since her father Felix (Bill Murray) had cheated on her mother when she was a child, the thought that Dean might be doing the same thing entered her mind.

Felix encouraged the thought, perhaps subconsciously, to spend more time with his daughter. The two of them started to follow Dean and to investigate the suspicious behavior.

Directed by Sofia Coppola, On the Rocks shows Bill Murray at his best. He has great chemistry with his daughter Rashida Jones, who holds her own beside the scene-stealing superstar. The relationship between Murray and Jones drove the film and there is a scene where they discussed Murray’s character’s infidelity and it was powerful.

An A24 film, On the Rocks was a fun time.

3.6 stars

The Others (2001)

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Next up on the EYG Halloween Horror Bingefest is a film from 2001 starring Nicole Kidman called The Others.

Kidman plays a woman named Grace, who moved into an old family home near the end of World War II with her two children to await for the return of her husband (Christopher Eccleston) from the war.

Grace’s children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), were photosensitive so they needed to stay out of sunlight, requiring the curtains to remain closed. There were plenty of other rules that seemed quite strict too.

When former servants of the house arrived looking for jobs, they were hired and things begin to unravel.

The Others is a great film, filled with supernatural scares and a mystery of what is going on that keeps the viewers uncertain and off-balance.

Nicole Kidman is excellent as the controlling mother, confused and alarmed at the situation surrounding the house. She starts to believe that the house is haunted, but every attempt at finding answers is met with a new problem or hurdle.

Fionnula Flanagan (Eloise Hawking from LOST) played Mrs. Mills, one of the servants who arrived and she clearly had a secret, but is it sinister?

Along with the strong performances in the movie, The Others features a fantastic setting that helps to create a mood of fearfulness and anxiety. You are never sure exactly what is happening or how it fits together. I will say that the ending did surprise me and that is always a good sign for me.

The movie is a slow burn, but it is worth it. There are a lot of moments of nervousness and anxiety. Nicole Kidman was amazing and The Others is a cool Haunted House story.