Amazon Prime has two new films in the Welcome to Blumhouse series. The first one I watched was Black as Night, taking place in New Orleans and fighting vampires.
Shawna (Asjha Cooper) is a 16 year old girl who, along with her best friend Pedro (Fabrizio Guido), the boy she was crushing on Chris (Mason Beauchamp) and a vampire ‘expert’ (Abbie Gayle), went on a mission of revenge one summer to kill vampires, in particular one who had killed her mother (Kenneisha Thompson).
This is one of those movies that was fun when initially viewed, but slips upon reflection. There were plenty of things that were silly or troublesome when you think back on it. Asjha Cooper is a 28-year old actress whose character is supposed to be 16. I never really bought her as a 16 year old as she always felt older. Another drawback was the inclusion of a second group of vampires who were wanting to help. That plot point came out of nowhere and did not pay off in any sufficient manner.
How these kids suddenly became these great vampire fighters was another surprise. I was not fond of the third act conclusion either.
Keith David is also in the movie and he is always a great addition to a cast.
The movie dealt with the fallout, even over a decade later, of Hurricane Katrina on the population of New Orleans. This bit of the story worked well, and I enjoyed Shawna and her father’s (Derek Roberts) relationship. They had a nice scene as they discussed the death of her mother.
Overall, the film can be fun, but thinking back on it, there are too many elements that simply do not work.
I have never seen even one episode of The Sopranos. When it was announced that they were making a full length movie prequel to the series, it was not something that excited me. Still, since it was being released on HBO Max as well as in theaters, I figured I would give it a chance. My guess is that there will be several Easter eggs that I will not recognize or characters that I have no idea who they are.
I was aware of Tony Soprano, as played by the late Joseph Gandolfini. I am aware of the series finale and generally what happened. In The Many Saints of Newark, young Anthony Soprano is being played by Joseph’s son Michael Gandolfini, which is an interesting casting and placed a lot of pressure on the young man. This is the reason why Anthony was not our main character in the movie. From what I saw of Michael, he was solid as a young Anthony Soprano.
However, the main character is Uncle Dickie (Alessandro Nivola) who Anthony looked up to a lot. The Soprano clan was filled with some oddball characters. Anthony’s mother Livia (Vera Farmiga) had several problems with her marriage to Johnny Soprano (Jon Bernthal). Ray Liotta was Uncle Dickie’s father ‘Hollywood Dick’ Moltisanti. The cast was very strong.
Set in the civil rights unrest of the late 1960s, we follow several of the family members and their constant outbursts and anger. The racial riots as a background for the movie was an interesting choice, but none of that felt important to the overall story. Leslie Odom Jr is excellent again, but I really did not know much about his character.
There were some brutal scenes of violence peppered through the film that show how these characters are on the edge of exploding at any moment.
Again, since I did not watch The Sopranos, I do not know if I missed some undercurrent of the story. I still found it an enjoyable watch falling into the gangster genre.
Found footage films are inconsistent. Some are really well done and others are just silly. With the success of The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity franchise, found footage became a big deal, especially in the horror genre. Recently, there have been fewer found footage films, which is a good thing because it was really becoming stale. However, the 2018 film Butterfly Kisses took the subgenre to another level.
Director Gavin York (Seth Adam Kallich) discovered a box full of tapes from a student film school project by Sophia Crane (Rachel Armiger) and her friend and cameraman Feldman (Reed DeLisle). They had been recording a local urban legend, The Peeping Tom, for a documentary. Gavin sets out to prove that the tapes were real, leading him to become lost in his project as nobody believed what he was saying. He was accused of creating a hoax.
This movie does an amazing job of blending the two stories together, from Sophia and Feldman in the past and the present with Gavin. The two stories work extremely well with each other.
The Peeping Tom is a cool design and the film uses the character in a proper manner. It does not over use the images of the creature and it keeps us wondering about what it is. In fact, there is a doubt from the movie whether or not the original tapes are real or were they just a pair of students who needed to make a splash.
Like many great found footage film, there were some times where I thought this might be a real story. When the director of The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchez, showed up it really crossed the real world with the fantasy. I knew this was not a true story, but with all of these people playing themselves in the film, it kept that little doubt inside.
Butterfly Kisses proves that the found footage subgenre is still alive. You just have to have a smart story with effective use of the footage that will create a mood. This movie does that in spades.
Jean-Claude Van Damme leads a tournament called Kumite, the ultimate martial arts tournament. He was a military man Frank Dux who wanted to compete in the Kumite in honor of his master. The military did not want Dux competing because of the danger involved as many times there had been fights to the death.
The martial arts in the film are excellent, albeit repetitive. The acting…not so much. The characters are underdeveloped and not worth the time.
There are a bunch of montages throughout the film.
I don’t really want to say much more about this one. The acting was terrible and the action solid, but repetitive.
Jean-Claude Van Damme fought well. The ending fight with former champion Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) was well done, but Chong Li was a real dirty fighter, which makes one wonder where the respect in this tournament was.
I was always a fan of the Addams Family in their other iterations. The TV show with John Astin, the two live action movies with Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston and Christopher Lloyd were some of my favorites. So I was very disappointed with how much I did not like the last animated movie in 2019, The Addams Family. When I heard that there would be a sequel to the film, I was hoping that it would lean toward the positive Addams Family that I enjoyed.
Nope.
If anything, this was even worse than the last one.
There is a great voice cast in the movie with Oscar Isaacs, Charlize Theron, Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Bette Midler, Bill Hader, Wallace Shawn, Javon “Wanna” Walton, and Conrad Vernon, but the inane story and unfunny bits wasted this talented group of people.
The story includes a suddenly insecure Gomez trying to connect with Wednesday, though she is going through a teenage rebellion. They decide to go on a family vacation. It is a plot we have seen hundreds of times. There is also the old plot where Wednesday may not be biologically an Addams. We have played this out dozens of times.
The animation of the film is top notch and the character designs look good, but there needs to be more than appearance for an animated movie to be good. The Addams Family 2 was just a horrendous film.
There was a scene with “I Will Survive” that I did not hate, but was dumb.
This was a total waste of money. I am glad I did not go to the theater for it, though.
Most of the time, Netflix movies do not pay off. They are typically poor or just cheap films that the streaming service loads on to give the public a quantity of potential watches. Most are not worth the time it takes to watch them. Though not as common, Netflix does have some good films to go with the quantity. Although the title of this weekend’s new release on Netflix is a dull and boring one, the film is anything but.
A demoted police officer Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is awaiting trial on something he had done, was working the 9-1-1 calls when a dramatic call from a woman named Emily (Riley Keough) came into the switchboard. Emily implies to Joe that she had been kidnapped and was in a van being taken away from her children. Angry, frustrated and full of attitude, Joe, who was already on edge with his court case, his own failing marriage and being unable to see his own little daughter, bonds quickly with Emily and goes wild trying to do anything he could to help save her.
I do not think it is hyperbole to say that Jake Gyllenhaal is currently one of the best actors on the planet. He’s had a series of unbelievable performances in films like Nightcrawler, Nocturnal Animals, Prisoners, Donnie Darko, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Southpaw, End of Watch and Zodiac. Gyllenhaal absolute carries this film on his back as he is on screen almost every moment of The Guilty. His levels of performance from anger to grief is amazingly touching and makes you connect with this guy who was clearly being an asshole to everyone around him and who had committed a mysterious offense. Gyllenhaal was exceptional.
The film was difficult to watch and ended with a lot of emotion from me. All this was because Jake Gyllenhaal was masterful in his role. This was even after I guessed what was actually happening in the film. Even that, which many times disrupts the plot for me, did not detract from the emotion and the tension of the story.
There were several actors who only provided voices in the film and they were excellent too. Not only was there Riley Keough as Emily, but Peter Sarsgaard as her husband Henry, Eli Goree as Joe’s partner Rick, Ethan Hawke as Sgt. Bill Miller, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the CHP Dispatcher were all providing such fantastic voice over work.
This is one of the best Netflix movies in quite a while. Jake Gyllenhaal continues to show his Oscar-worthy work and the film is powerful.
The DailyView binge has reached October and, while I will not be strictly watching the horror genre in honor of Halloween, I will be increasing the number of horror movies I watch this month. The first one was a 2012 independent horror movie called I Am a Ghost.
Emily (Anna Ishida), a troubled spirit, haunts her house, repeating normal daily chores and actions. Emily is unable to leave the house and finds herself confused and lost. As things begin to add up, Emily winds up having discussions with Sylvia (Jeannie Barroga), a clairvoyant hired by the current residents of the house to remove the spirit contain within.
Through the therapeutic discussions, Emily is forced to face terrors from her past that may hold the key to why she is unable to pass on to the other side.
This film is very disturbing and keeps audiences unsettled. The music, the repetitive scenes and the truth of what was going on was nerve-wracking and frightening. Anna Ishida, who provided the only real face in the movie, does an amazing job of giving us every level of emotion possible.
The third act of this movie is David Lynch level of filmmaking. There are terrifying moments and images that are just beautifully tragic. Exceptionally unnerving, I Am a Ghost started slowly, but built up extremely well and, as I said, the finale was unbelievable.
I Am a Ghost is directed by H.P. Mendoza, who did a spectacular job. It is a very eerie and unsettling film worth the time for a Halloween viewing.
A powerful and compelling documentary about the life of Harvey Milk, one of the leading voices supporting gay rights in the late 1970s, his struggles to battle the prejudice and hatred of people and the terrible assassination by a former political adversary.
Narrated by Harvey Fierstein, the documentary presented information on Harvey Milk and his charismatic manner of working for his causes. You could see just what kind of a wonderful man Harvey Milk was in news reels and footage. Just as compelling was the aftermath of the trial of Dan White, the man who murdered Milk and Mayor George Moscone, where protestors took to the street and violence erupted.
The documentary is just as relevant today as it was back in 1984. In fact, I think it may be even more relevant in today’s society because it can be seen in many different levels. It is almost impossible to watch the doc and not think about the riots and the protests after the George Floyd murder in early 2020.
I was unaware of this story and that is a shame. This kind of tragic tale is one of the deepest seeded problems our country has to this day. While gay rights have become a more accepted topic, the underlying hatred is still there and hopefully can be carved out. Harvey Milk is a figure that should always be remembered.
The murder mystery on a train is a classic trope of the mystery genre and Basil Rathbone brought the iconic detective to the screen in one of his series of black and white thrillers from the 40s.
When a brilliant diamond is stolen and a man is murdered, Sherlock Holmes is on the case, anticipating that an old enemy is behind the theft.
Basil Rathbone does his typically great job as Sherlock Holmes. Nigel Bruce once again takes up his sidekick role as Dr. John Watson, being a little more bumbling than the last time I saw him.
In Terror By Night, the story does a good job of setting up suspects, but it feels a tad rushed as the run time was just under an hour. What was involved in the movie was fun though.
Rathbone carries himself with the gravitas of Sherlock Holmes as this is one of his later films. The end of the film was pure unadulterated Holmes.
I have always liked Vincent Price and his body of work. He is an iconic figure in the genre of horror for many reasons, but one of the most distinct is his recognizable voice.
Scouring through the list of films on Shudder tonight, I came across Witchfinder General starring Vincent Price and it seemed like a perfect fit for the evening’s DailyView.
I have come to discover that Matthew Hopkins, Vincent Price’s character in this movie, is a real historical figure. He was a man who, empowered by Parliament, to travel with his henchmen to different villages and towns during the English Civil War to search out witches and carry out their execution. His brutal methods led to the “word of God” being brought down on these innocent people. Hopkins would collect silver for every witch that he was able to find, making his motives anything but pure.
This film is a highly fictionalized version of Matthew Hopkins, and places Hopkins in the sights of a soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), whose fiancé Sara (Hilary Dwyer) was taken advantage by Hopkins and his second hand man (Robert Russell) and whose uncle (Rupert Davies) was hanged as a witch. Richard Marshall swore vengeance against Hopkins and pursued the witchfinder across England.
Vincent Price does a marvelous job of making the audience hate him. Even I, who watched the movie in the first place because of Price, really wanted him to get his in the end. The horrible facts of how people were handled when accused of witchcraft was shocking although it was not 100% accurate in timing. In reality, there were court cases, but the fact that people were still accused and executed is a terrible moment in human history.
Considered “historical horror,” Witchfinder General was originally called The Conqueror Worm” in the United States. The film faced plenty of troubles because of the violence within it, especially back in England. The film has become a cult favorite over the years.
This documentary was surprisingly difficult to watch.
I had an ache in the pit of my stomach during nearly the entire run time of the film. It felt like a terrible tragedy for so many involved.
This doc looked at the capture and use of killer whales at certain water parks, including SeaWorld. It followed the story of one particular orca, Tilicum, an aggressive whale that had been credited with the killing of three people over the years.
The doc also aggressively went after the idea of keeping these animals in the structures at these water parks and how it is not an environment to maintain a healthy life.
Some of the stories told during the film was heart breaking, both of the attacks of the orcas on the human handlers and the manner in which these creatures were being harvested for the industry.
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite compiles a compelling case against the capture of these whales and it is hard not to see the point with the devastating visual evidence shown in the movie. It may feel one sided, but it was stated that SeaWorld was contacted to be interviewed for the documentary multiple times but refused to comment. It is not hard to wonder why.
This is a powerful documentary that really drives home the message right into the heart of the viewers. While it casts Tilicum in the role of a villain, it does not ignore the reasons for the orca to have been the way he was and why SeaWorld may have been willing to turn the other cheek. The doc feels more like a thriller.
Tilicum died four years after the release of the documentary.
As I was going through the movies available on my streaming services, I came across a movie that I had not heard of before, despite it starring Kurt Russell. It was called Breakdown and it sounded like a typical action/adventure movie, which appealed to me this lazy Sunday afternoon.
It turned out to be quite a thrilling ride.
Kurt Russell played Jeff Taylor, who, along with his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan), were traveling across country, preparing to move. When they encounter some car trouble, Amy accepts a ride with a trucker (J.T. Walsh) to go and call for a tow. However, Jeff is able to get the car running and goes to where the trucker said he would drop off Amy. She was nowhere to be found. Jeff becomes desperate and, after finding the trucker again, he is shocked when he denies ever stopping to help them.
Where is Amy and what has happened to her? Who is involved in her disappearance?
I really enjoyed this movie a lot. Yes, it has the typical action/adventure logic stretches, but there is nothing in the film that takes me out of the film, and it is certainly carried by the frenetic performance of Kurt Russell. You completely buy the desperation of his character as everything he tries seems to turn up nothing. Finally, when the answer is presented, the film bumps up into an even more thrilling spectacle.
The antagonists of the film do a great job of creating slimeballs that you can really hate, even though we see a second side of J.T. Walsh’s character in the third act that humanizes him a touch. The standout of the lowlifes is LOST’s own Mr. Friendly, M.C. Gainey as Earl. This guy is the first face of the problems that Jeff and Amy have to face and Gainey just thrives in the movie.
The tension amps up through the movie and the pay off in the third act is tremendous. The concluding scene on a bridge is dramatic as could be, even if it is hard to believe. By this point, you are happy to accept what happens because you are so into the action.
The fifth film in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes movies popped up on my list in YouTube after I finished watching And Then There Was None, and I decided that I would watch this film. I have always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes in many of his iterations, but I have not seen any of the Basil Rathbone films making this a perfect film for the DailyView.
In Sherlock Holmes in Washington, the iconic detective travels to Washington, D.C. in pursuit of a document that would cause major disruption if it fell into the wrong hands. The British agent who was transporting the film in Washington aboard a train passed it off to Nancy Partridge (Marjorie Lord), an unwitting American woman, just prior to his own abduction by German spies.
Sherlock Holmes was recruited by the British government to find the document and see what had happened to the agent.
Basil Rathbone made a very solid Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce performed a role as the comedic relief as Dr. Watson. They were excellent together and you could tell that they were very comfortable in their roles by this point in the series. The rest of the cast are basically there to play off of our two main leads and to fill the time until Sherlock’s deductive reasoning wins the day. I do wish Rathbone would have worn the classic Holmes deerstalker cap during the movie, but that is a minor complaint.
The story was simple and fairly straight forward. We knew where the document was from the beginning and it was more of a interest to see if anyone would realize where it was as it made its way around to plenty of the extras during the film. Our villain, Richard Stanley (aka Heinrich Hinkel), played by George Zucco, was not the brightest bulb around and did not really pose much of a threat to Sherlock or Watson.
The film is short and well paced. Rathbone and Bruce are naturals by this point and their performances were dependable. Holmes is our hero again and spends time gazing at the American monuments and quoting Winston Churchill. This is an entertaining way to spend an hour and change.
I was on YouTube this morning and I came across a free film based on an Agatha Christie novel. And Then There Were None is a 1945 black and white film which lays out one of the classic mystery tropes of a group of people staying together in an isolated mansion and having them being bumped off one at a time.
Ten strangers are invited to an isolated island by a mysterious couple named Owens. Turns out that each person has some hidden secret that has led to someone in their lives dying. As the guests begin dying, they realize that they are being targeted by Mr. U.N. Owen in retribution of their crimes. The killer was following the nursery rhyme “Ten Little Indians.”
The cast included Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, Roland Young, Jane Duprez, Mischa Auer, Judith Anderson, C. Aubrey Smith, Richard Haydn and Queenie Leonard.
It was a fascinating mystery. It was determined early on that the ten characters were alone on the island and that it meant that one of them was the murderer. As the characters slowly bit the dust, the list of possible suspects dwindled. I must say that I had no idea where the film was heading as each victim turned up. I kept thinking that there would be a twist and we would find out that they were not alone on the island after all. There as a twist, but that was not the one that would come.
I kept waiting for the guests to analyze that nursey rhyme and discover what the next victim’s fate would be, but, despite referencing the poem, they never did that.
In the end, the killer’s motive was thin, but the mystery was compelling and kept me in suspense, wondering where it was going next. I had a decent time with it and I would say that any fan of Agatha Christie or this type of whodunnit would find this a good watch.
I have heard about The Raid: Redemption for years as being one of the greatest action films in recent memory, but I had not watched it before. Once again, the subtitles and reading the movie is something that I have to be in the proper mood to do. I have rarely been disappointed when I have done it though. It always feels like as the film is underway, you do not even realize that you are reading it anymore. You kind of lose yourself into the story. That happened again with The Raid: Redemption, but the story was not the main standout of this film.
Rama (Iko Uwais) was a rookie on an elite team of commandos that are launching an assault on an apartment building controlled by the brutal crime lord called Tama (Ray Sahetapy). Organized by Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno), this S.W.A.T. team headed into the building only to find that the place was filled with killers and thugs loyal to Tama, and that Wahyu had an ulterior motive than law and order.
The team had to do whatever they could to survive the trap and to attempt to escape with their lives.
The film started off with more gunfight than I thought there would be. At first, I was a little disappointed because there is less originality or impressiveness involved with guns, and I had heard the action was exceptional. I had anticipated it being more of a hand-to-hand/martial arts movie and that is not how it started. However, it absolutely became that as the film progressed.
Once it got into the martial arts of the film and started to use the guns in a more minimal manner, this absolutely took off, action-wise. Iko Uwais was utterly amazing in his stunt work, as was several of his opponents. In particular, the battle with Rama, Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), and Andi (Donny Alamsyah) was brutal and breathtaking. The beauty of this fighting is an art form and the film does an amazing job of following the action, allowing the audience to see what is happening. So many martial arts films use the shaky cam or film in ways that make it difficult to see, but The Raid: Redemption does not shy from that. The violence is right in your face and it is a spectacle to see.
They did not avoid the blood or the gruesome results of the brutality either, although I do have to wonder how these men continued on after so many destructive encounters. Rama, especially, has some kind of unbelievable endurance to keep going despite what had to be multiple concussions.
Rama had something to focus on though as the film gave him a wife with a baby on the way and he used that as an inspiration to keep going. Still, I wonder how he could possibly be walking still, but that is real life intruding upon the fantasy, and the fantasy is incredible.
The story is simple, but this is the type of movie that you are not watching for a deep, in-depth plot. There was enough plot to keep things moving and it did have a twist or two, but it knew what kind of movie it was and what the major selling point was going to be. You’ve got to appreciate that.
The Raid: Redemption is an artistic masterpiece of martial arts violence and a brutal look at the violence surrounding it. You are sucked into the action, especially when the major amount of gunfire in the first act or so is reduced into more of a one-on-one (or one-on-many) struggle. It has some of the best action you are going to see anywhere and the story is just enough to keep you invested. This is a great film.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 